Britannia Miniatures

28mm M998 Humvee with Crewman

by Bill Rutherford

This six piece mixed media kit includes a cast resin main body, four white metal wheels, and a white metal crewman operating a .50 cal roof-mounted HMG. I was very impressed with the resin casting – clean and bubble-free (well, I found five small ones – not bad for a model measuring approximately 1.5” by 3”!). Details are cleanly cast but, well, look as if they were sculpted free-hand by a really talented sculptor. That is, some things like the door outlines look as if they were drawn, not pressed out on a machine press…

The model itself scales out to 1/57th scale in length, 1/56th scale in width, and 1/50th scale in height. The scale discrepancy between the horizontal and vertical is more noticeable because a) it’s all located in the windscreen and roof height, and b) the hood’s a bit short, accenting the excess height. The gunner is 30M/H Barrett – I had to extrapolate, as he’s a partial figure. Detail is clean and crisp on both the gunner and the MG but the ammo box on the MG’s left side looks more suited to holding .22 rounds than .50 rounds. Plan to replace it (not hard to do). I’ve given up on trying to figure what scale a millimeter-scaled figure’s supposed to be, going instead for “how well’s the figure fit the vehicle?” In this case, the gunner’s simply too big. He adds to the impression of excess height. The gunner’s supposed to stick way up out of the vehicle but he’s much too significant against what is, after all, a 2.5 ton vehicle. All of this said, the model goes together well and once painted, the proportions for the Humvee itself look OK. You will still need to trim the bottom of the gunner or better yet, replace him, reassigning him to something bigger… This model should be available for $16.50 from your local game shop. If you can’t get it there, please contact the U.S. distributor for Britannia Miniatures, Combined Arms, Inc., at PO Box 2057, Warminster, PA 18974, by phone at (215) 635-2724, or visit them at their website at http://www.combinedarmsinc.com.

Back to Table of Contents -- Courier #87
To Courier List of Issues
To MagWeb Master Magazine List
© Copyright 2003 by The Courier Publishing Company.
This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web.
Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com