The Duckboard Gazette: Finnish FT-17 and Alpine Russian Tank Commander

About 15 years ago (give or take a few years), a friend sent me a copy of a fantastic book on Finnish armored vehicles: Suomalaiset Panssarivaunut 1918-1997 (The Finnish Armoured Vehicles) by Esa Muikku and Jukka Purhonen . This book is superb, it has both black and white and color photo's along with several pages of color plates. If you like your armor outside the box, track this book down, you won't be disappointed.

Back then, I was just an obsessed armor builder and this book was a great addition to my reference library. Anyhow, one of the pictures from the Winter War always intrigued me—it’s a photo of a FT-17 dug in as a bunker/observation point.

The Finns had a couple of companies of FT-17’s during the Winter War. Very few saw any action — the Russians captured most of them in February 1940 — they were still on the railcars that had transported them to the front. The few remaining tanks that weren't picked up by the Soviets were dug in as strong-points with the main guns removed. Over the years, I’ve searched to the point of ridiculousness trying to find another picture of a dug-in FT-17 in Finnish service. I’ve seen one or two, but they were tourist style picture taken in 1942-1943 during the spring/summer/fall (no snow on the ground). So, I finally gave up my search and decided to plunge ahead and build a small vignette with a dug-in FT-17 and a Russian officer standing nearby. I used RPM’s FT-17 and Alpine’s #35039 Russian Tank Commander.

I used the RPM FT-17 because it was cheap—I paid about $10.00 for it. It’s pretty basic as a kit with not a lot of parts and decent detail. Perfect for what I was going to do. All I needed was the upper hull and turret—everything else is buried. The turret is completely empty — the guns (from what I can tell, all of the FT-17’s that were dug in were armed with heavy machine guns) were removed prior to being dug in. This made things much easier for me, all I needed to do was paint the interior flat black and I was good to go. I also had to add rivets to the turret using my Waldron punch and die set. It was mildly dull, but came out pretty good (and yes, I forgot to take pictures of the unpainted turret after I added the rivets...oh well).

In the picture, the right rear engine deck has been opened and the engine is exposed. I used some Evergreen plastic structural shapes to cobble together a basic interior and then went to the scrap box for a radiator and engine. The radiator is from a long-gone Emhar German A7V (WWI German tank) and the engine is from Tamiya’s 1/35 Jeep.

I added a bunch of “engine looking” stuff to beef up the look of the engine. I found a ton of pictures of Renault engines on the Internet, so I had something to go with. I never intended on building an exact replica of the engine, just something that looked “good” once it was painted/weathered and in the engine bay. I used a section of guitar string to replicate the radiator hose (which is broken/disconnected).