Building the Humber A/C
In this blog, I am constructing a plastic Humber armoured car kit from Warlord Games. The model was initially released in the Gentleman’s War starter set for Bolt Action. There, it was cleverly paired with the plastic Sd.Kfz 222 armoured car, so each side had an armoured car to play with. The plastic Humber has since been released separately.
I'd never picked up the resin version of the kit and thought it was time I built one for my Desert Rats.
The Humber was the successor of the Guy armoured car. Introduced in late 1941, it remained in use with British and Commonwealth forces until the end of the war. It was initially armed with a 15 mm light autocannon and coaxial machine gun. The Mark III version saw a larger turret to include a radio operator. The Mark 4 used the larger turret to upgrade the armament to a US 37 mm gun, losing the extra crewman (the kit comes with this option). Some 5400 were produced, seeing action in the African campaign, in Burma, and in Western Europe. After WWII, it was used by several nations, notably the Indian army, and thus the kit has some utility for post WW2 gaming. Hauptsturmführer Gräbner used a captured Humber IV when his men attempted to capture Arnhem Bridge back from the British paratroopers.
The kit comes as two sprue frames and is relatively easy to construct, with the caveats noted below. I used a standard plastic glue, Revell Contacta Professional. The parts fit well together, and the instructions were easy to follow. The numbers are not directly on the sprue frame but on a diagram in the instructions pamphlet, which meant a little to and froing during construction. The big question for me was going to be which version of the Humber would I build? The early Mark II or the late War Mark IV?
The hull of the Mark III and IV are identical, so I built the hull as a Mark IV. The turret of the Mark III had only a single periscope on the right of the turret. The additional periscope was removed. The turret ring on this version was not reinforced, so it was carefully cut back to remove the reinforcement. Finally, the Mark II gun mount needed to be slightly modified to fit the turret. This is easily achieved by making the back of the gun mount fully concave - it is squared off at each end to fit the Mark II turret. All of the modifications were carried out carefully with a sharp craft knife.
I found in construction that the hull had a slight tendency to bow outwards. This was soon fixed by glueing all the main hull sections together and securing them with an elastic band. Once dried, the kit held fine.
The kit comes with transfers for the Western Desert (7th Armoured Division, Desert Rats), Burma and Northern Europe 1st Armoured (Polish) and 43rd Armoured (Wessex). No German transfers are included for Gräbner's Mark IV.
This is an excellent and useful kit for British players and perhaps the odd German gamer, too. I am tempted to get another kit and make Gräbner's vehicle. I'll be painting this up for my next blog and adding stowage, plus cleaning up the minor damage to the hull surfaces caused by glue spillage.
