Detailing the Academy M12

Although the M12(s) were available in the USA warehouses from the beginning of 1943, they were used since the conflict in Normandy, seeing action with good results up to the end of the war. The exiguous use these vehicles suffered , as well as the scarce amount produced (74 vehicles) turned them into difficult subjects to be found in injected plastic. But fortunately Academy decided to release this kit. AFV Club have announced since years ago the M40 (older brother and more modern than the M12, used in the WWII under the denomination T83) but up to the moment there are no news about its release.
Although at first sight, it seems that the M12 were manufactured over Sherman hulls, actually, they were manufactured over M3 Lee, but with more up-to-date bogies.

The Academy kit offers options for four versions, but unfortunately, it’s difficult to find which is right. Each M12 had a set of tracks, bogies, drive sprockets, idler wheels different from the others and it’s difficult to be precise about the proper combination for each vehicle.
For instance, according to the pictures available, the tracks provided with the kit (Cleat Bar model) correspond only to the Adolph Assassin vehicle. For any of the other options of decals (June Gil, Alberta IV and Corregidor) we will have to use aftermarket tracks.
In order to avoid complications, I decided to build an anonymous M12, giving more importance to the vehicle’s concept than to the subject itself.
Thus, along this article, I’ll not mention the possible mistakes with the combination of parts, I’ll merely mount the M12 with the parts Academy provided.
There were such a lot of mixtures of subcomponents that appeared during the manufacturing and later upgrade of the vehicles that it seems the most normal to suppose that some M12 has mounted this combination of bogies/tracks /drive sprockets and idler wheels.
Thus; I decided to approach my model with the classical white stars of the allies vehicles without the intention to represent any in particular.
Quite apart from this mixture of components, this Academy kit is quite good. Some parts could be better, of course, but as you know, it’s not usual to see superb kits manufactured by Academy.
The corrections were made with simple methods, since they were not so important Basically, I tried to thin down some parts adding small details.

The full article can be found here