AER Moldava Resin 1/72 T60/BM-8-24 Rocket Launcher

History:

While conducting military actions in roadless areas, it was found out that the traction of "Katiusha" rocket equipped trucks was poor. Therefore, in September of 1941 in Moscow, rocket launchers known as BM-8-24 were mounted on the chassis of the light tanks T-40 and T-60.

These vehicles were successfully used in the Moscow battle, battles in the Crimea, at Stalingrad, and at the Northwest and Vokhov fronts.

The kit:

Back in the December 2002 issue of Internet Modeler, I did a review of AER's 1/72nd scale kit of the STZ-5 artillery tractor with the rockets on it. This time, AER has released a kit with the rockets mounted on the T-60.

The kit comes in a generic white, end-opening box. The box art is a large sticker that shows a photo of the model built up, with a wartime Soviet propaganda poster in one corner. This poster could be cut off the box and used in a diorama.

There is one large zip-lock cello bag in the kit. Inside this bag is a second zip-lock bag with all the resin parts in it.

The body of the vehicle consists of two parts: the top and sides (molded together) and the floor piece. The road wheel arms are molded solid into the sides.

There is a large squash-molded sheet with the link and length type treads on it. These will have to be carefully cut away and removed from the resin wafers they are in.

Also, in wafers, are the rockets and their fins. The launch-rail supports and fittings adorn still another wafer. Three wafers hold the launch rails. A couple of these had come loose, in my kit, and were floating around by themselves, but no damage to them. Another wafer holds the tools. Still another has the hydraulic hoist arm for the rails on it. Finally, the base for the hoist arm. All of which are molded in a dark gray resin.

The road wheels, return rollers, and drive sprockets are molded in white. I cannot determine if these are resin or plastic. The parts trees (there are two) are layed out like the spokes of a wagon wheel, with the parts at the end of each arm. These were obviously molded using a centrifugal mold.

In addition to the resin and white parts, there are a couple lengths of copper wire and some brass fenders. The wire is used to thread together the launch rails in two places.

The instruction sheet is just one small page, printed on one side. It gives the history of the vehicle in Russian and English. This is followed by parts tree drawings and five exploded drawings for assembly. These drawings will have to be carefully studied to get things in the right place.

There is a rather extensive (although small) decal sheet in the kit. However, there are absolutely no instructions as to where to put them on the vehicle. I have seen this vehicle in some of my WWII books and usually they are devoid of any markings. Still, a little info as to what these marks represent or if any were EVER used on a rocket equipped T-60 would have been nice. They are printed in red, white, black, and yellow.

Conclusion

The molding looks very crisp and sharp. I did not detect any surface bubbles in any of the resin parts. The unused parts of the part wafers are thin and can easily be removed from the parts.

I like AER's use of zip-lock bags. That keeps these tiny parts secure until you use them.

I want to thank Alex of AER Moldova for this review sample.

Greatmodels web store carrys the AER model line or contact:

AER Colectie Srl.
41 Bolgarskaya Street
Office 11 PO 391
Chisnau, Moldova
Tel/Fax: +373(2)273177