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My "care package" from Great Models arrived on Monday with the Calibre 48 wading stacks, and few other goodies (who'd have thought on Columbus Day!). The Calibre 48 Stacks are very nicely molded in grey resin, and are much nicer than the stacks I was trying to make with evergreen sheet plastic. The stacks are made up of five resin parts, and two PE screens. You have to remove all parts from their casting blocks before the stacks can be assembled.





I was digging around trying to find any and all references on Shemans with wading stacks, when I came across an issue of Military Modelling (Volume 33 Number 6) with a great article by Steve Zaloga on D-Day Shermans. It's a typical Zaloga article, ie, part modelling how to, and part reference treasure trove! Who could ask for anything more?



Unfortunately after reading the article, and looking at the Calibre 48 stacks do I realize that the stacks are wrong for D-Day! They aren't totally wrong, most of the shape is right. The rear exhaust adapter on American D-Day tanks only partially covered the rear engine doors. The Calibre 48 parts completely cover the doors. This would be correct for a 1945 tank, but not for June '44. So now I have to decide whether to just use the Calber 48 part "as is," grind it down and fix it, or make a replacement part. A couple of other thing I noticed were the front intake adapter doesn't just press fit onto the hull, like they show on the instructions. You have to do a little carving on the hull flange to make it fit. Another is that the stack openings themselves are solid resin. The screens simply glue on the fronts. I'm not sure if I'll grind them out, or what, but they don't bother me too much.