Saturday, September 20, 2014
The Nubeena Sherman Imortalised
In 2010 I posted a pic of an engineering vehicle on a Sherman chassis in a boatyard at the small town of Nubeena on the Tasman Peninsula which I discovered while on a yacht cruise.
The blog was noticed by a South African chap, David Strauss, who's life's work is making models of every vehicle ever made on a Sherman chassis. I sent him the pics I took and now he has sent me pics of his finished model.
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2 comments:
That's so very cool!
Hi,
I think this is incorrectly identified as a modified Sherman – only 3 Sherman tanks were brought to Australia during WWII (for evaluation) and the type was never adopted by the Australian Army. The three Shermans never saw action and two of them are at the Puckapunyal Museum in Victoria (after being used as target pieces on the firing range) and the remains of the third were in a collector’s hands at Narre Warren several years ago.
I believe the above is a converted M3 General Grant (or Lee) tank and the track carriers tend to confirm that - the Sherman’s were quite different when looked at closely (although Grant/Lee tanks were often later retro fitted with Sherman track carriers).
Australia ended up with surplus General Grants after the North African campaign and they were only used internally and never saw combat, lasting into the post war period with the Citizens Military Force.
The M3s were not really suitable for combat due to a variety of reasons - the Australian military preferred the Matilda and the Stuart for jungle fighting – even over the Sherman.
I discovered this post whilst searching for more information on the tank at Nubeena as I too am interested in modelling it (in 1:48 scale). About to travel to Tasmania next week and will be looking for it at Nubeena (hopeful it might still be there) but any additional photos would be most welcome.
(NB: the South African model is an outstanding piece of work!)
David Price
davidprice480@bigpond.com
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