M4A4 SHERMAN FIREFLY

In effect, the tank was an expedient solution designed by British engineers to face down the German Tiger tank. Thanks to some cunning rejigging of the turret, the large 17pdr gun could be squeezed into the Firefly. This gave a standard Sherman a killer punch.

For the first time, British tankers could engage enemy Tigers at standard combat ranges. Thanks to the power of the heavier gun, the Firefly could inflict quite a lot of damage to the previously impenetrable German battle tanks.

We decided to give our Firefly a dusty look. These days, the way to approach a finish like that is completely different. New painting techniques like filters would be combined with oil or enamel washes – all finished off with pigments.

However, when we made Dragon’s first incarnation of the British 17pdr Firefly (Dragon Ref: 6031) in the 1990s, all these techniques were in their infancy. So we relied instead on an older technique called drybrushing.

For those of you unfamiliar with this technique, you should check out our short “How To” video mini guide on the subject which tells you all you need to know. We used this Firefly in our film to illustrate a particularly heavy use of dry brushing to achieve that dusty look. So now we thought we’d post more shots of the finished model so you can see how it turned out.

It is interesting to see just how far painting techniques have progressed since we painted this kit – as well as how far model manufacturing technology has advanced. In truth, this was a less than perfect release & we added a fair amount of extra detailing. The supplied tracks were also replaced with Accurate Armour Traxpax. The main drawback with this release was the dimensional inaccuracies in the hull resulting in an overly extended M4A4 lower hull.

Still, it served its purpose well in our tutorial & the dusty look was successful enough at the time.