+++ DISCLAIMER +++
Nothing you see here is real, even though the conversion or the presented background story might be based on historical facts. BEWARE!
Some background:
The Russian Civil War (Russian: Гражданская война в России, tr. Grazhdanskaya voyna v Rossii) was a multi-party civil war in the former Russian Empire immediately after the two Russian revolutions of 1917, as many factions vied to determine Russia's political future. The two largest combatant groups were the Red Army, fighting for the Bolshevik form of socialism led by Vladimir Lenin, and the loosely allied forces known as the White Army, which included diverse interests favoring political monarchism, capitalism and social democracy, each with democratic and anti-democratic variants. In addition, rival militant socialists, notably Makhnovia anarchists and Left SRs, as well as non-ideological Green armies, fought against both the Reds and the Whites.
Thirteen foreign nations intervened against the Red Army, notably the former Allied military forces from the World War with the goal of re-establishing the Eastern Front, and a wide variety of leftover WWI material was transferred. Three foreign nations of the Central Powers also intervened, rivaling the Allied intervention with the main goal of retaining the territory they had received in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk.
After the revolution the Bolsheviks swept through Russia nearly unopposed. The republic had collapsed after the Soviets were given all political power, leaving no solid resistance to the Reds. In May 1918, the Czech Legion in Russia revolted in Siberia. Reacting to this, the Allies began an intervention in Northern Russia and Siberia. This, combined with the creation of the Provisional All-Russian Government, saw the reduction of the Bolsheviks to most of European Russia and parts of Central Asia. In November, Alexander Kolchak launched a coup to take control of the Russian State, establishing a de facto military dictatorship.
The White Army launched several attacks from the East in March, the South in July, and West in October 1919. One of the hotspots during this period became Estonia and the Petrograd (Saint Petersburg) region. Estonia had cleared its territory of the Red Army by January 1919. Baltic German volunteers captured Riga from the Red Latvian Riflemen on 22 May, but the Estonian 3rd Division defeated the Baltic Germans a month later, aiding the establishment of the Republic of Latvia. This rendered possible another threat to the Red Army—one from Gen. Yudenich, who had spent the summer organizing the Northwestern Army in Estonia with local and British support. In October 1919 he tried to capture Petrograd in a sudden assault with a force of around 20,000 men. The attack was well-executed, using night attacks and lightning cavalry maneuvers to turn the flanks of the defending Red Army. The Allies gave large quantities of aid to Yudenich, who, however, complained that he was receiving insufficient support. This support even included a mixed bag of six former British tanks, including at least one “male” Mark I tank from 1915 and several modern Mark Vs. They caused panic whenever they appeared, since no tank had been available or even developed in Russia at that time, but due to their small number they had rather a propagandistic effect than actual battle impact.
By 19 October Yudenich's troops had reached the outskirts of the city. Some members of the Bolshevik central committee in Moscow were willing to give up Petrograd, but Trotsky refused to accept the loss of the city and personally organized its defenses. Trotsky himself declared, "It is impossible for a little army of 15,000 ex-officers to master a working-class capital of 700,000 inhabitants." He settled on a strategy of urban defense, proclaiming that the city would "defend itself on its own ground" and that the White Army would be lost in a labyrinth of fortified streets and there "meet its grave".
Trotsky armed all available workers, men and women, ordering the transfer of military forces from Moscow. Within a few weeks the Red Army defending Petrograd had tripled in size and outnumbered Yudenich three to one. At this point Yudenich, short of supplies, decided to call off the siege of the city and withdrew, repeatedly asking permission to withdraw his army across the border to Estonia. All tanks were abandoned and were quickly pressed into red Army service, sporting huge Red Stars. But, again, their warfare value was rather symbolic and one of these captured tanks (a Mark V “hermaphrodite” is still existing as an exhibit at the Kubinka Tank Museum in Moscow, carrying its post-capture livery.
Units retreating across the border were disarmed and interned by order of the Estonian government, which had entered into peace negotiations with the Soviet Government on 16 September and had been informed by the Soviet authorities of their 6 November decision that, should the White Army be allowed to retreat into Estonia, it would be pursued across the border by the Reds. In fact, the Reds attacked Estonian army positions and fighting continued until a cease-fire went into effect on 3 January 1920. Following the Treaty of Tartu, most of Yudenich's soldiers went into exile. Former Imperial Russian and then Finnish Gen. Mannerheim planned an intervention to help the Whites in Russia capture Petrograd. However, he did not gain the necessary support for the endeavor. Lenin considered it "completely certain, that the slightest aid from Finland would have determined the fate of [the city]".
Specifications:
Crew: 8 (commander/brakesman, driver, two gearsmen and four gunners)
Weight: 28 long tons (28 t)
Length: 32 ft 6 in (9.91 m) with tail
25 ft 5 in (7.75 m) without
Width: 13 ft 9 in (4.19 m)
Height: 8 ft 2 in (2.49 m)
Fuel capacity: 50 imperial gallons (230 l; 60 US gal)
Suspension: none (26 unsprung rollers)
Armor:
0.24–0.47 in (6–12 mm)
Performance:
Speed: 3.7 mph (6.0 km/h) maximum on even ground
Operational range: 23.6 miles (38.0 km) radius of action, 6.2 hours endurance
Power/weight: 3.7 PS/tonne (2.7 kW/ton)
Engine:
1× Daimler-Knight 6-cylinder sleeve-valve 16-litre petrol engine with 105 hp (78 kW)
Transmission:
Primary gearbox: 2 forward and 1 reverse
Secondary :2 speeds
Armament:
2× Hotchkiss 6 pdr QF gun
3× 7.92 mm Vickers or Hotchkiss air-cooled machine guns
The kit and its assembly:
This became a late/spontaneous entry to the “Captured” group build at whgatifmodellers.com in early 2021, after a deadline extension had been announced. The trigger was a picture of the aforementioned former captured White Army Mark V tank from the Kubinka Tank Museum, which carries a garish (but apparently authentic) livery in bright green and a greenish black, together with prominent Red Stars. I found the paint scheme cool and remembered an Airfix kit of a rhomboid WWI tank in my stash. This turned out to be a male Mark I, advertised as being 1:72, but, in reality, it is a 1:76/00 scale model.
However, the occasion was good to build it, and I started on short notice. I did some legwork and found out that six former British tanks had been delivered to the White Army in Estonia, as described above, and one of them could have been an early Mark I that had not been converted into a transport tank yet, replaced by more modern Marks.
As such the model was built OOB, a very simple affair but with surprisingly good fit and IMHO good surface details. In this case, rivets make sense! :D
The real trouble started on the finish line, when I tried to mount the vinyl tracks. This turned out to be total horror and almost ruined the build. Not only are the tracks markedly too short, by about 5mm, the material is furthermore pretty stiff and felt brittle and unevenly injected, so that I did not dare to stretch the parts for a proper fit. Mounting was furthermore hampered by the tracks’ thickness – bending them around the idler wheels called for calculated force, with imminent risk of breaking, and sticking the PVC tracks to the hull with some kind of glue also escalated. Not only did it take half a tube of superglue to attach them with a snug fit, one track eventually broke during the overnight curing phase, just on a front idler wheel… I was about to trash the model, but in a desperate attempt to save the situation I tried to bend/shape the broken section with heat, glued it into place with even more superglue and bridged the resulting gap (what I also did with the general 5mm gap, just on the underside). While the whole solution is not as pretty as I had hoped for, it’s O.K.
The trailer was kept, even though the White or later Red tanks would not have needed it for better off-road steering – but since the trailer can be raised (a common practice when moving on a street or level, hard ground), I kept it. The only personal modification is an air-cooled machine gun in the front port (left over from a WWI biplane kit) and an open hatch in the “commando bridge” with a 1:76 figure. This is actually a French soldier (from a Matchbox Char B1/FT-17 kit set), slightly modified and with a flag in one hand instead of a rifle – for a patriotic touch.
Painting and markings:
The Kubinka Mark V became the design benchmark, so that the model received a disruptive two-tone scheme consisting of Revell 360 (Fern Green, the “real” tone is even brighter!) and Humbrol 108 (WWI Green, appears a bit brownish in direct contrast with the Fern Green, 66 might have been a better choice?).
The few markings of the tank come from various sources: the Red Stars belong to a Soviet WWII Lend-Lease P-40E, the “02” is actually a “20” and comes from a Soviet T-34/76.
The model was thoroughly weathered in multiple stages, including a black ink washing, dry-brushing, treatment with water colors and finally mineral artist pigments, before a coat of matt acrylic varnish was applied.
The whole build went very quickly, hardware was done in just two days, but the track issues added two more painful days , which, on the other side, were used for the finish. The whole thing look pretty convincing – but it remains close to its real-world benchmark, so that the fictional element of this what-if model is rather small. But the paint scheme still looks cool, and so different from the typical British rhomboid tank liveries from WWI. :D
