New Zealand M2A4 105mm Howitzer
Conversion from Italeri’s M101 105mm Howitzer
The History
The M101 was designed during World War II by the United States and employed it as their main artilery piece, seeing service in both the Europe and Pacific Theatres.
New Zealand employed a varient of these guns as the replacement to the ever reliable but aging 25pdr. The varient used by New Zealand is the M2A4 gun on M2A2 Carriage. These were used by the New Zealand Artilery for many years until replaced by the L118 and L119 105′s, but continued service with the Teritorial units until early-mid 2000′s.
The Model
The Italeri kit (no. 319), although recieving bad press from some, is not a bad kit all and all. It has a good amount of detail considering its age, and at a better than fair price considdering what the DML kit costs. One sami-major issue that is presented in this kit is that it is not really a M101. This kit more accurately represents a M2A2 gun with a M2a2 Carriage, but with the earlier combat/bolted bead wheels. This is not really an issue for me as I was wanting to build a M2A4 gun with a M2A2 carriage. As stated, this is a really nice kit to build with good detail. Considering the age of this kit, there is very little flash overrun to clean up and little to no warping of parts. There are a few sink holes in awkward places to fill, and the inside of the recoil slide really needs a sheet of plastic card glued into it to hide the massive join mark, but other than that, all goes together without drama.
To make it more prototypical for New Zealand use, I have removed the top of the left hand shield. Although I am not sure as to why, many of these guns as employed by New Zealand all seem to have either the left side top section or both side top sections of the shield removed.
Once completed, this will be in the transit position and connected to a Unimog as used by the New Zealand Army.