PMMS
Bison Decals
US M5A1 Stuart
NW Europe 1944-45

1:35th Decal Sheet BD-35032
Review by Terry Ashley

Bison Decals
This third sheet in this series on US Armor in NW Europe from D-Day from 1944-45 has markings for five M5A1 Stuarts with two separate decal sheets in the set.

The decals are printing in the UK by Colour Slide with good colour register and the carrier film cropped close to the edge of the printed image although this is not as thin as the previous sheets printed by Microscale but should still adhere well with a bit of decal setting solution, they also have a distinct matt finish. The extra "Dagwood" logos are printed on a separate sheet with an over coating of carrier film and you will need to carefully cut out each image before use.

The sheets includes the vehicle registrations, Unit insignia and Tactical markings for the featured vehicles plus the large white circled stars for the turret tops and hull sides and the thicker carrier film may have a problem sitting down over the turret roof detail but I haven't actually allied these decals to check, I couldn't anyway as the sheet with the large stars was missing from my set.

The instruction sheet has two full sized A4 sheets with small three view black and white drawings of the vehicles showing the location of the various decals as well as a few scrap views where needed to show other markings as well as a list useful reference books. There is also a B&W reproduction of the decal sheet with all items numbered to help identify the markings shown in the diagrams and there shouldn't be any problems in locating the correct decal.

The markings on this sheet are really only applicable to the Tamiya M5A1 kit as this is the only beast available at this time in plastic but of course there is the excellent Formations M5A1 conversion (set #F036) and the Legends M5A1 Update set (LF1021) but remember this is has the same dimensions as the Tamiya kit without the corrections included in the Formations set.

The images below and also available on the Bison Decals web site illustrate the markings included on the sheets as well as serving as additional painting guides.

Conclusion:
The sheets again have a comprehensive array of markings for the five Stuarts included and will provide some quite colourful finishes with a couple of well photographed Stuarts included.

Highly recommended.

Subjects covered are -

Bison Decals

See the Bison Decals website for full details of this and coming decal sheets.
Thanks to Johan from Bison Decals for the review samples.



Page Created June 15, 2006

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