Advantages: first kit of this tank in production anywhere; more accurate in some respects than ESCI T-55 kits

Disadvantages: odd type of plastic (NOT styrene) will make correcting errors/swapping parts difficult

Rating: Recommended

Recommendation: For those needing a "background" tank in an Iraqi War diorama, or anyone who wants a "runner" for the fun of it

    Thus far I have to admit that I have been disappointed with the Trumpeter kits from China, in that they are either not very accurate --having a lot of compromises made in their design to permit motorization â?" or are nearly impossible to assemble with anything other than the tube cement included in the kits.  The plastic is not "world standard" styrene but some variation of ABS or similar high-impact plastic, and it makes working with the material a problem.

    Having completed one of their kits (the Type 80, actually a Type 88 B or C) with much misery, I was not thinking of doing any more with them until Vern Goodrich purchased one of the Type 69-II tank kits at AMPS 2000. I recently picked this kit up to see if it was as good as the one Vern had looked in the box, and so far it is better than expected.

    The Type 69 was the follow-on to the Chinese Type 59 copy of the Soviet T-54 tank. It is roughly the Chinese equivalent of a T-55 with a number of improvements made to it internally, and a choice of armaments. The Type 69-I was a Chinese-only version with a 100mm smoothbore gun, which apparently doomed it to domestic consumption only. The Type 69-III was an upgraded version, mounting a Chinese version of the British L7A1 105mm rifled gun. The Type 69-II used the Chinese version of the Soviet D-10T2S 100mm gun, and as it fired the exact same ammunition as the T-54 and T-55, was a natural export tank. It came in three versions: BW121A line tank, BW121B battalion commander's tank, and BW121C company commander's tank. The latter two had extra radios, an antenna case on the turret roof, and stowage for cables and field telephone equipment on their rear plates.

    The kit provides the parts only for the A model line tank, but some study of photos of destroyed or captured tanks should yield enough info to make the B or C models. The antenna case is provided (part B32) along with mounting hole blanks in the turret roof.

    Some parts are rather odd. The wheels are better done than the ESCI T-55 but then have segmented rims which are incorrect. The turret shape is surprisingly accurate with the gun offset and bulge for the gunner present, and the 100mm gun is far better than the underscale and lame attempt at the L7A1 provided in the Type 80 kit (which shares its main parts sprue with this one).
    
    The electric drive is pre-installed and wired up in the hull, and no axle is included to replace it with a non-driven version. This can be replaced and the drive trashed to use its axle if desired. The motor did work when tested, spinning the axle at high RPM with a lot of torque, so it does appear that the little beast is "Designed to be Driven" as the commercials used to say. At least this kit uses poly caps rather than screws to attach the wheels, so it is not as difficult to "defrock" the motor drive nor turn it into a scale model. There are only two holes in the hull to fill (motor screw mount and front screw attachment hole) so it's much easier than older Tamiya kits to deal with.

     Some detail parts leave much to be desired. The RPG guards, cheerily referred to in Chinese sales literature as "Boom Shields" have the correct profile of being flat and not rounded as portrayed by some after-market manufacturers. But they are too thick and not deep enough; the actual blades in the shields are about 3/16" thick and 2 A½ - 3" wide, and these are about .030" x 030" square or 1" square tube in scale. Careful filing and attaching segments of Evergreen strip to the backs should improve their appearance. The kit's suggested holes also seem off from the box photos; all of the bases of the "boom shield" baskets should be in line and parallel to the hull roof, which the ones on the example clearly do not do. Figure on fiddling with the rear section to get a level fit.

    The kit's directions are not much help, but you do have a lot of options on how to fit this model out. Parts A16 and A17 are the early model headlight guards, which only lack a strip of non-skid steel on the top to complete them (open up the fender holes at the front edge of the hull top for using them); they're an alternative to the kit's late model parts A5. The kit also has the armored covers for the searchlights (parts A77, A78, and A29) as well as the laser range finder (parts A9 and A12).

    A rather blatantly copied set of decals (swiped from the "Desert Storm" vintage DML kits) are provided with both Standard and Arabic numbers. (Iraqis only used Arabic).

    Overall this kit does have possibilities, but its choice of an off-register plastic makes assembly much more difficult and clean, neat modeling a real challenge. (PS it also does not take well to ACC glues, so your choices get even more limited as time goes on!)

Cookie Sewell
AMPS