M10c Achilles

Manufacturer: BattleFront Miniatures

Product Code: BR????

Date of Article: 07 Nov 2008

Description

The M10c is yet another British improvision/ improvement on American technology. The M10’s 3″ gun was good, but the British wanted to mount their 17 pounder on it — and did. It was quite a successful conversion, being one of the comparative rare vehicles available during Normandy that had the 17 pounder necessary for dealing with German Panthers and Tigers.

Turret

This miniature actually comes with both 3″ and 17 pounder barrels to allow you the option to build either. Enterprising builders would want to see if you can do a swappable version; the answer is “Yes, but not worth the effort.”

You can find Rare Earth Magnets small and strong enough to do the job, but there’s a few complications:

• The 3″ barrel was fine, but the 17 pounder barrel was very tricky to do. There’s an external mantle to the gun, which should be mated to the mantle on the turret. This meant you need to be pretty precise about how far apart the magnets are, and whether it would cause the mantle to “float”. It can be done but it’s quite time-consuming to do.

• The surface areas to attach magnets is very small, and you do need to file things flat, otherwise you’ll get a off-center barrel. With the breech visible, you will end up with people asking how the round goes from the breech, do a 30 degree turn, and then exit the barrel. Tricky to do without a decent setup.

• Even if you get the above two correct, there isn’t much depth to the “post” into the turret, which means it’s easy to knock your barrel out of the socket. For display pieces, it’s not so bad. For gaming pieces it’s just lost parts waiting to happen.

So.. I went to the trouble of doing it, but ended up taking everything down and gluing 17 pounders into place. Too much effort for the effect.

17 Pounder Gun

As noted, the 17 pounder has an external mantle. The casting on this is such that there is a visibly longer edge on one side, but looking (in a limited fashion) at photos of real M10c, it’s not obvious whether the top or bottom had the longer edge. So just attach as you please.

Also, the 17 Pounder’s external mantle and the rim of the socket on the turret seems to interfere a little with each other. I would suggest filing or breaking off the bottom rim of the socket to get a better fit.

Tracks

By far the greatest problem with the M10c was its tracks. The version I have came with the Sherman’s plastic tracks, but there is a big problem with these. If you attach the tracks as is, the vehicle would wobble, as the rear left section would end up too high up.

It is tempting to solve this problem by lowering the right front track, and this works, but depending on the hull, you can end up lowering the track so far as to make the entire front visibly tilt to the left. And the tilt is extreme. The better way to solve this is actually to glue the right track as per normal, then lower the left rear track so that it touches the ground. That way the tilt is less pronouced, and is moved to the rear instead of the front, and is only really visible when you compart the idle wheel on the track against the idler axle on the hull.