AMPS New Zealand. Stug III ausf C model images

Building and improving the Zvezda/Italeri ISU-152

Background

The ISU-152 had a brutally ugly look about it that really appeals to me. It was a heavy assault gun based on the IS-1 and later IS-2 chassis. The ISU-152 followed the successful SU-152 in production after the KV series on which the SU-152 was based ceased production. The ISU-152 mounted the same 152mm M1937/43 (ML-20S) gun-howitzer as the SU-152. Due to a shortage of 155mm tubes the 122mm A-19 gun was later fitted to the ISU-152 hull, this version being designated ISU-122. Externally the ISU-122 and ISU-152 were identical apart from the gun tube, while internally the ammunition stowage was the main difference. Some western observers called the ISU-122 a tank destroyer although, in practice, the Soviets deployed both types in the same way using the same tactics. Having said that ISU-122's were better suited to supporting tank attacks and dealing with enemy armour at long distances, while the heavier HE shell of the ISU-152 was more useful in urban warfare where it was especially effective against buildings and fortifications. ISU's were first issued to Soviet units and were later issued to the Czechs and the Polish LWP. ISU's were so well regarded by the Soviets that they were produced in larger numbers than the IS tank series on which they were based.

Kits Compared

Dragon was the first to release kits of the ISU series and these kits have generally been well received by the market. Italeri are marketing the Zvesda range of kits which now includes an IS-2M, ISU-152 and ISU-122. The Italeri ISU-152 looks to be a 1945 production type with a 12.7mm DShK MG mounted on the commander’s cupola. The kit also represents a vehicle with a front made from flat, welded plates instead of a rounded casting, which is more commonly seen in wartime photos. I believe the flat plates typical of a UZTM production type as the IS-2's produced here featured a welded nose. Dragon’s kit represents the type with a cast front so the Italeri kit provides a good complement to this. Overall Italeri’s kit captures the outline of the real thing quite well. Some of the upper hull detailing is quite fine, better in some places than Dragon's, while other areas are very crude to say the least. Below the waistline it starts to get pretty ugly, what I would term a detail free zone. By comparison I feel the Dragon kits on the whole have a better level of detail, particularly on the lower hull and suspension. The downside of the Dragon kits is that the lower hull needs approximately 4mm of plastic added to it's top to be dimensionally accurate. This means corrective surgery at the front and rear as well as the sides if you want to fix this. Dragon's road wheels are fractionally undersized, but nothing I would worry about, as you need calipers to tell the difference. Dragon provides individual link type tracks which are acceptable to all but those of us who have terminal A.M.S. (Advanced Modellers Syndrome). Italeri's kits come with flexible vinyl tracks made up of 2 lengths per run. I feel that Italeri's tracks have no redeeming features and I thus consigned mine to the rubbish bin. I used a number of after market accessories combined with parts I made myself from a variety of materials in building my model. I also used many parts from the Tamiya JS 3 kit to upgrade the kit's suspension. This was not as expensive as it may sound. I purchased 2 suspension sprues from the JS 3 kit as spare parts from Rainbow Ten in Japan at a cost of 680 yen each. These parts really give the suspension area a lift and also provided a few other useful details. A more economical way to detail the Italeri kit than I have chosen would perhaps be to cross kit it with a Dragon one. You could use the Dragon suspension, tracks and many of the detail parts to detail the Italeri kit to a level that is markedly superior to the original. Most of what is written here can also be applied directly to Italeri's ISU122 as it is essentially the same kit.

Lower Hull

As I said before, I think the lower hull and running gear are very poor and cry out for improvement. The lower hull construction is typical of Eastern European kits. It consists of a lower plate, which includes the lower front and rear plates, plus two separate sides. Before adding any parts a fair bit of work was done to bring the hull sides up to scratch. The Tamiya sprues contained new final drive housings, which I decided to use as those moulded on the hull sides were totally devoid of detail. I was not sure how visible these would be on the finished model but the work involved to change them was minimal, and besides I know that the details are there! The return roller mountings lacked the bolts that secured the real thing to the hull. I used a hex punch and die set to churn out the myriad of bolt heads required. The suspension arm mounting points also had bolt detail added in the same way. I used the buffer stops from the kit with the top bolt head replaced. The IS 3 buffer stops were unfortunately not suitable as they are of a totally different design. The raised lines used to aid location of the buffer stops were carved off before the stops were added. I then added strips of 10 x 20 thou plastic strip around the buffers and left these to dry. When the strips were dry I used an engraving tool to shape the strips to simulate weld beads. This was followed by a light application of liquid cement to tone down the effect and dissolve any loose chaff left over from the texturing process. The kit track tensioning units were little more than long blobs of plastic so they were carved off the hull sides. I later replaced them with spares from a Dragon IS-2, which conveniently provides a spare set. On the left hull side is a small round hinged flap that is not supplied with the kit. The Dragon IS-2 again provided a spare. A small angle bracket was added under this, which I made from a slice of fine Plastruct angle section styrene. I then assembled the lower hull. I used super glue combined with accelerator for this as the lower plate had a distinct bow and I wanted a quick strong bond. I applied glue to the front end first and secured this. Once this was dry I applied glue to the remainder of the joints and held them in place for a few moments until the glue had set. The rest of the suspension components were not added until a later stage.

Upper Hull and hull rear

The upper hull is moulded pretty much as a single casting with only the rear plate being a separate item. I bought the Eduard PE set for this kit and this provides replacement air intake screens. I removed the solid kit screens by drilling a number of holes before using a hobby knife to cut between the holes. Finally I cleaned up with files. The sponsons are unfortunately open like so many kits on the market. I made inserts from plastic card to fill the gaps. The parts were cut roughly to shape and filed down until they fitted. They were then glued in place and any gaps were filled with gap filling super glue hardened with accelerator. I then boxed in the area under the radiator intake screens. I added internal some framing based on a picture of a knocked out IS-2. I painted the intake area in a red brown colour to represent primer. I glued the upper and lower hull together. I rebuilt the tow shackle assembly that sits on the mudguard on the front left side of the fighting compartment. I used the Eduard bracket with a shim of 10 thou plastic card glued to its underside. This was trimmed slightly oversized and then the edges were textured to represent the welded joint. I used the Tamiya tow shackles. I removed the retaining pins and drilled them out to accept a new plastic rod pin. I made end caps for these pins with a punch and die. There were no taillights supplied with the kit. I made these up from plastic rod. They were patterned after the 2 sidelights on the fighting compartment.

I scribed a line where the lower hinged portion meets the fixed upper portion. I then carved off the ridge that Italeri had moulded there. I added a grab handle from orthodontist's wire. I added 3 lifting points from a Dragon JS 2 kit after first removing 2 of the kit ones which were in the wrong place. Photos were used to position these. The rear plate hinges were too small and lacked detail. I rebuilt mine from plastic rod, tubing strips and a little filler. I added Eduard towrope brackets to the hull rear plus a couple of hooks below the tow cable attachment points from brass wire. Russian heavy tanks had a unique device for securing towropes. Neither Italeri or Dragon supplies these with their kits but they are easy enough to make. I made mine using contrail plastic tube for the body, brass wire for the crossbar and the hooks were made from fuse wire. I used modified Tamiya towrope ends. First I filled the slots in the back of these with plastic strip. The plastic strip was left to set overnight before being carved to shape. I then drilled holes to accept the towrope ends. I used the nylon thread from Tamiya's JS 3 kit to finish the towropes. On the lower rear I used Tamiya tow hooks but mounted them on slightly oversized backing plates of 15 thou plastic card. The edges of these backing plates were textured to represent the heavy weld marks shown in my references. Each tow hook needs a spring catch device added below it. Dragon provide these in their kits but Italeri don't in their Stalin kits and neither does Tamiya in their JS 3. I used some spare Dragon items. The rear mudguards were replaced with Eduard ones to which I added a few dents.

Hull Front

The front left fenders were carved off and new battle damaged ones were fabricated from lead foil. New brackets for these came from the Eduard set. One common trait with Russian left hand drive AFV’s is that the right fender is often more damaged than the left. In fact I left off the front fender bracket on this side and added just a small section of damaged fender. I was more restrained on the left-hand side. I wanted to depict the interlocking plates on the hull front and glacis. I had some difficulty in determining the exact configuration of these. Some photos I have indicated that the hull sides interlocked from the top to half way down others indicated no interlocking here but rather a rebate in the rear of the front plate. I opted for the latter as I had a clear colour photo to back me up. I applied a skin of pre-cut 005-inch styrene sheet pieces to the front and glacis plates. Gaps of about 1mm were deliberately left between the plates. Weld beads were then added in the gaps by gluing fine plastic strip in the gaps and then texturing this with my engraver. This was followed by an application of Tamiya thin liquid glue.

Fuel drums

I used the kit fuel drums but replaced their mountings with Eduard Items. I did not use the Eduard straps, as they did not look right when compared with photos of the real thing. Instead I made my own using Grandt Line bolts and paper. The bolts were glued to the Eduard brackets at one end and the tank at the other. Paper strips were then cut so they extended about 1mm over the bolt shafts. The front end of these were coated with white glue and pressed onto the bolts. The paper was then massaged until it stretched snugly and conformed to the contour of the bolts. When the front joints were secure I then trimmed the rear to length repeated the process at the back. Once the white glue had dried I carefully applied thin super glue to the paper to lock it in place and seal it for painting. I replaced the handles at the end of each tank with Eduard ones. I glued shims of 5 thou plastic card to the mounting points of the Eduard fuel can racks. These were cut over size and trimmed to size after they were glued in place. This enabled me to use plastic cement to attach them to the hull, with the advantage of more time to position them correctly.

Fighting Compartment

The front and side weld beads on the fighting compartment were not as pronounced as the ones in shown my references. The rear corners were missing their weld seams completely. I replaced the weld beads on the fighting compartment with strips of 10 thou card. These were textured with an engraving tool followed by an application of liquid glue. These welds are one of the few types where a pyrograph would do a good job. Finally a little Mr Surfacer 1000 was used to soften some areas that were a little overdone and also to fill some small gaps between the welds and the superstructure. The rear welds were added by texturing the joint directly. I modelled the large rectangular hatches closed and added a torsion bar from brass wire plus a couple of handholds from telephone cable wire to these. A small dimple on the horizontal part of this hatch required filling. I added weld beads to the ventilator on top of the fighting compartment. I added the missing flange where the fighting compartment meets the engine deck. This was detailed with bolts made with my punch and die and plastic strip. The two circular hatches were cleaned up. I modelled the commander's hatch open and added a periscope mounting plate from the Eduard set to this. I added the cabling for the 2 side lights from fine brass wire encased in a conduit made from a length of plastic insulation taken from a piece of telephone wire. A conduit and cables were also added for the horn and headlight wiring. The conduit for this was again made from telephone wire insulation and the cables were made from fine copper wire strands. New mountings for the headlight and horn were made from scrap brass. The Eduard blackout cover was fitted to the headlight. The kit grab handles were replaced with new ones I made from orthodontist's wire. This is a silver coloured wire, which is harder than copper wire but softer that brass. A local AMPS member handed some out at a recent meeting for the rest of us to experiment with. I found it quite good to work with. I added six tie downs, 3 each side of the gun mounting. These were made from fine brass wire. I bent them into a walking stick shape with the shorter side cut at the correct length and the longer side having enough depth to anchor the tie down securely into pre drilled holes. Using this method you only have to drill 1 hole per tie down before gluing them in place. The I replaced the kit spade with one from my spares box and a new crow bar was made from plastic rod. I used the kit pickaxe as I felt this looked ok after I cleaned it up. I made new cleaning rods from plastic rod. I fitted Eduard brackets to all the tools. I drilled out the Pistol port above the driver’s station and made a new plug and added a PE retaining chain so as to show the port in an open configuration. The clasp on the small box that is mounted on the right rear of the fighting compartment was replaced with parts from the Eduard set. Eduard also provided mounting brackets for this. A radio aerial was made from fine piano wire with telephone cable insulation to represent the base.

Gun and mounting

I used a replacement gun and mantlet from the Precision Models "Hot's Barrels" range. Precision Models is a Czech company. A resin mantlet, a nice aluminium barrel plus a resin muzzle brake are included in the set. The mantlet has a roughcast texture. There is a resin plug on the top of the mantlet, which has to be removed. A rain cover flap covers this area up when the model is finished, so the resulting lack of texture is not a problem. The resin muzzle brake in my example had quite a few deformities. I found it easier to adapt the kit one to the new barrel than to fix it up. I also removed the mounting shaft from the kit barrel and carefully glued it to the back of the new barrel after it was fixed to the mantlet. This meant that the unit could then be attached to the kit mounting just like the original parts. The kit gun mounting lacks any real cast texture so I had to attempt to make it match the resin mantlet. I used baking soda and Tamiya thin liquid cement to do this. I covered a small area of plastic with liquid cement then used an old brush to stipple on the baking soda. I was able to work this around further by applying more cement. I used a couple of Tamiya hooks on the gun mount. The resin mantlet already had acceptable hooks moulded on so I left them as is. I added a small handhold made of telephone wire to the mantlet using photos as a guide. If you use the kit mantlet you will need to drill a sight aperture to the right (looking from the front) of the barrel as this is missing. The resin mantlet had the sight hole as standard. Finally, I fitted the rain cover and added new hinges from plastic strip and rod to it.

I decided to replace the AA DShK and mounting with a spare Dragon item. I felt that the detail was much better and it came with an ammo box which the kit version lacked. I carved off the kit MG mounting and adapted the Dragon one to the commander's hatch. Eduard provides an ammo box but I felt it would not portray the round corners of the real box very well and thus did not use it. I did use the Eduard handle for the ammo box and also their gun sight.

Suspension and running gear

I chose to leave the suspension until near the end of the building phase. I wanted to display the model on a scenic base depicting the vehicle sitting on uneven ground to add a little dramatic impact. This meant having to have the base finished to the point of having it's final contours defined. I decided to show the model parked with its front end over a railway track. The base was made from an irregular shaped piece of marine styrofoam board. A small section of Dragon railway track was mounted on top of a small raised area that I built up from laminated cardboard. The gaps in between the sleepers were packed with balsa wood strips to minimise the amount of plaster groundwork I would have to apply later. I could then go about fitting the suspension. I decided to use Modelkasten workable tracks. The flexibility of these tracks makes them well suited to diorama work as they hang just like the real thing and can be locked in place with liuid cement once the desire pose has been achieved. I replaced the suspension arms, road wheels, sprockets and mud scrapers with Tamiya items. I had to modify the suspension arms to get the wheel alignment right. I cut off the rear of the mounting points on these to be flush with the spring arm to stop the road wheels from sticking out too far. New mountings from plastic tubing were made to join the arms to the hull. I drilled out the square mounting holes to accommodate them. Note that the foremost arm should be square in section not round. Thankfully the Tamiya provides these. The kit roadwheels look very crude in my opinion, they have no real detail on the hubs and the rest of the detail looks heavy when compared to Tamiya's. T I glued the front and rearmost suspension arms into position with plastic cement. After adjusting the angles until they looked right I locked them in place with super glue. Next I fitted the number 3 arms in the same manner. Once these were done the rest of the arms were added one by one ensuring that they roughly followed the ground contours. I then test fitted the tracks. I made up a single length for each side, adding links until I had achieved the effect I was looking for.

	A Comparison of the kit parts with The Tamiya parts I used.
	A comparison of Drive Sprockets. left to right are Friulmodel, Italeri and Tamiya.

Painting and Markings

The kit decals are quite good but offer markings for a single Soviet vehicle only. There is a photo of this vehicle in Steve Zaloga’s ‘Eastern Front’ which indicates that the original vehicle was a cast nosed variant. I thus decided to save the kit decals for use on a Dragon kit. Colour choices are limited when it comes to Soviet armour, which to me is the one down side to modelling some of the most interesting AFV's of WW II. For the most subjects you have a choice of green or winter whitewash over green. I chose to do a Polish LWP example rather than a Soviet one. I had a photo of a Polish vehicle in Warsaw in 1944 that had the welded nose. The vehicle was numbered 330. Dragon provides decals that include markings for this vehicle with their ISU-152 kit so I decided that this was the vehicle for me. I gave the whole model a coat of Tamiya aerosol light grey primer. It is always advisable to use a proper primer coat on models that are made up from a variety of media. I used both pre-shading and post shading techniques on this model. I started out by applying a mixture of Tamiya JA Green and matt black around all joints, fittings and panel edges. A oversprayed a number of times using various mixtures of JA Green, Desert Sand and white. I did most of my painting at night under incandescent light and was dismayed to see the contrasts that looked so great the night before faded away under natural light. Another session with the airbrush and I was happy. The areas where the decals were to go were sprayed with Tamiya clear gloss varnish. I applied the decals and used Gunze "Mr Mark Softer" decal setting solution to ensure the decals bedded down properly. A light coat of matt varnish sealed the decals.

The base

I mounted the model on a simple base. The model is shown crossing a section of Dragon's very useful railway track. I mounted a Tamiya figure in the commanders hatch and added a Hornet Soviet scout figure to round out the scene. I was disappointed with how this base turned out. As a result I have decided to build more ambitious urban diorama where the ISU-152 is negotiating a pile of rubble. All I need is the inspiration to get started on this.

Summary

I enjoyed this project and am pleased with the transformation of a fairly basic kit into something that I feel is a very impressive and well detailed model. The basic kit is a lot better than the early models produced by Zvesda but still falls well short of Tamiya or Dragon's latest offerings. This kit and the similar ISU-122 from Zvezda complement the versions offered by Dragon and in my opinion are worth investing some time and effort into.

Kits/detail sets used

ITALERI/ZVESDA - Kit No 296. ISU-152.
ModelKasten. ISI/II tracks
EDUARD – Product no. 35157. ISU-152 SPG
Professional Models - Hot's Barrels HB 026 - 152mm ML-20 S with mantlet & muzzle gun for ISU-152
TAMIYA - Part no 0003525 - IS3 Stalin running gear sprue x2 (available as spare parts)

References

Internet

Russian Military Zone http://www.history.enjoy.ru/
Achtung Dish, Dmitriy Shumakov's homepage

Books/Magazines

Soviet tanks and Combat Vehicles of World war Two. By Steve Zaloga and James Grandsen. Arms & Armour Press 1989.
The Eastern Front. Armour Camouflage and Markings 1941 to 1945. By Steve Zaloga and James Grandsen. Arms and Armour Press 1983.
Soviet Panzers in Action. By Uwe Fiest. Squadron Signal publications 1971.
Russian Tanks 1915 1968. By John M Brereton and Uwe Fiest. Aero Publishers 1970.
JS STALIN TANK MODEL HISTORY. MODEL ART
The IS Tanks , Armada publications