Italeri

Semovente M43 da 105/25

Bassotto

For a look at a brief history of this vehicle and the First Look at the kit please go here:

 https://www.amps-armor.org/SiteReviews/ShowReview.aspx?id=15415

Building the Bassotto

This kit is sort of old school in that the lower hull is a “flat pack” design rather than a full tub. So the build begins with the interior hull floor, the crew compartment and associated parts.

Above we see the ammo racks and various items mounted on the crew side of the engine compartment firewall. There were some fairly large diameter ejector pin marks that I’d started to sand off of the floor at both ends, before realizing that they would not be visible.

Continuing on with the crew compartment, seats installed. Note the diamond plate surfaces for the crew to stand on while going about their duties. Parts fit was spot on, with clear mounting points.

Above - Drive shaft, and what I suppose is the transmission and brakes. Note the nice bolt detail.

Above - the crew compartment base painted, with a bit of chipping and basic weathering done.

The rest of the parts to construct the lower hull sides. Once built up,  black paint will camouflage the fact that the engine compartment is empty, if somebody looks too closely at the engine deck. I later found that I needn’t have bothered, as the cooling louvers / grating on the engine deck is solid and cannot be seen through.

Above - lower hull assembled. Be careful to align the firewall sides correctly to the lower hull sides. There are small ledges that help with alignment. A mis-step here would make mounting the hull top / gun case pretty troublesome.

The multi-part engine deck fit was quite positive, including the pair of access hatches. 

With the lower hull tub assembled, it’s time begin work on the suspension. The Bassotto had four identical bogies made up of a pair of side frames, eight road wheels and a leaf spring assembly up on top. Assembly of these bogies was straight forward with no complications. The leaf springs DO have the hated mold seam smack down the top middle to be cleaned up, one of my personally most hated tasks in building a model that has leaf springs.

At this point in the build I decided that it was time to pre-paint the lower hull sides and all running gear. I mixed some Tamiya acrylic colors to approximate the hull color called for in the instructions, and used an AK paint marker (rubber black) to paint the road wheels and rollers prior to bogie assembly. I love those paint markers for doing the rubber color on road wheels, they make a formerly tedious job quick, easy and precise.

Above - the nicely detailed two piece drive sprockets.

Above - great detail on the drive sprocket hubs, FIAT and ANSALDO markings.

Above - dirtying up the lower hull and running gear prior to installing the track runs.

Above - the track parts, link and length. I pre-painted them AMMO Dark Tracks color.

I won’t sugar coat it, building the tracks wasn’t a lot of fun. The individual links are tiny, and surprisingly tough to get mated up properly. It doesn’t help that the two sprue attachment points on the individual links are located on the link lugs that need to mate up to the next link. Patience and good preliminary clean-up work will make the job easier. The upper track run is molded in one long piece that extends from the drive sprocket to the idler wheel in the rear, with very nice sag between the upper track rollers. It’s a shame that none of this upper track run will be visible once the fenders are installed.

There are a total of twelve spare individual track links provided, so if you tweezer launch any don’t sweat it.

Above - the two piece fender / track skirt assembly mates up perfectly to itself and the hull.

Above - Both track runs installed, fenders and track skirts in place. The hatches in the front will be installed later, and are going to be left slightly open, they frequently were seen open to help cool the brakes and transmission.

Now it’s time to move onto the fender mounted gear, including the dual exhausts / mufflers, made up of five parts including the shields. The mufflers are two piece cylinders that mate up well. 

Above - a good bit of the fender surface will actually be inside the upper hull Casemate, and has equipment mounted on it. This includes the driver’s instrument panel, the radio, and MG ammo storage rack. Extreme care must be taken when mounting these items to the fender, as you don’t want to interfere with the casemate/ upper hull wall mounting.

Above - another view of the gear mounted from the opposite side.

Above - a view of the engine deck, mufflers, and some items mounted on the lower hull rear plate. Again, all fit well.

Above - the rear wall of the casemate installed. I wrestled with this piece a bit, and suddenly it seemed to pop into correct alignment. This part serves as a base for the rest of the casemate walls and roof, so be sure to get this aligned correctly.

Above - The kit comes with quite a few shells for this 105mm gun, as well as other calibers (not used for this kit). I wanted to have some fired casings to indicate the vehicle had seen action, so I razor sawed the warheads off of a couple, and hollowed them out. 

Above - parts for the 105mm gun, sights, and it’s mounts. The kit provides a turned aluminum barrel ( non-rifled ) as well as the traditional two part styrene gun tube.

Above - the gun parts all fit well with no issues.

Above - with the gun assembled, I turned my attention to the casemate walls and roof. There are a few kibbles and bits to be mounted prior to fitting the walls and roof to the vehicle, including photoetch hinges for the driver’s vision hatch.

Above - the casemate sides, and front where the gun mounts all fit together very well. The gun mounts to the front plate was trouble free. 

Also - an overall view of the interior prior to installing the roof. I did some weathering and chipping to try to get a lived-in look to the interior. The Beretta SMG was sourced from an Italian figure set that I had in the stash. The kit provides Italian and German helmets, so I opted to use one of the Italian ones. The box next to the helmet is what I think is a rack for Breda machine gun ammo clips.

Above - an opposite view of the interior. Even with the huge roof hatches open, much of what can be see of the interior will be obscured, so I didn’t go too crazy with the radio and driver’s panel instrumentation, just a bit of white for the gauges. 

Above - a view of the roof and casemate walls installed. These vehicles had the typical Italian Jerry can mounts on the hull sides, three per side, but apparently these were never used in mainland Italy service. All photos I found of the Bassotto in service showed empty Jerry can racks, every single one. The kit provides several nice Jerry cans, both Italian and German marked ones, but into the spares box they’ll go.

The kit doesn’t provide a radio antenna, they suggest stretching some sprue, I used brass rod for the aerial.

The final bit of construction was the assembly that the arrow points to above, I think it may be some sort of track tool, but I’m not sure. There is also a rack that holds the pioneer tools ( a spade, pry bar and sledge hammer ) that I’ll mount after doing the camouflage painting. So this concludes the build portion of the review.

Painting and initial weathering of the Bassotto 

The kit instructions provide a total of four paint and markings schemes, a mix of Italian and German units, all dated from 1944. I opted to use an Italian service scheme (partially seen in the below image) simply because I liked the markings.

I base coated the vehicle in a yellowish shade that the instructions call Flat Giallio Mimetico 3. I used Tamiya Dark Yellow as a base and tweaked it until I was relatively happy with the shade. Rather than do a lot of masking followed by airbrushing, I decided that this was as good a time as any to use the AK paint markers to replicate this somewhat complex three tone camo scheme. I first tried to draw the approximate color demarcations on the model with a pencil, and quickly gave up on that as it seemed to be not worth the extra work, plus the pencil markings were not entirely covered by the paint. So, I used the Mark 1 eyeball technique and did what I could. The markers worked pretty well, although the colors were not completely opaque until additional coats were applied. The instructions only provide three aspect views of the vehicle, so some interpretation of how to lay the colors on was needed for the top and right hand views.

Once the basic colors were applied, I airbrushed a bit of Future onto the model to give the decals their best chance at having a smooth surface to lay down on. The decals provided are made by Cartograf, in my opinion among the best made. Well printed, in register, solid colors, and with very thin carrier layers. As expected, the decals went on perfectly.

Once the decals were on, I applied a flat finish and began some initial weathering. This consisted of some light chipping and scratches, a small amount of metalizing of wear points with a #2 lead pencil, and some overall washes and pin washes with oils / Turpenoid. I then applied some dirt shade pigments. I have some additional bits of weathering to do, but in terms of this review, we’re done.

Conclusions

This kit builds up into a nice representation of a fairly rare Italian AFV. This kit provides a fair amount of extra parts for your spares box - Italian and German jerry cans, Italian and German helmets, a Breda machine gun, loads of extra road wheels and other bits. 

Parts quality is very good, with a reasonable amount of mold seams, etc. to be dealt with. I found the link and length tracks to be a mixed bag, with the tiny individual links being quite fiddly to assemble and mount. However, they look pretty good on the vehicle. Fit of the parts otherwise is quite good.

The amount of photoetched parts is appropriate for a smaller vehicle, with simple bends to make when needed. The metal gun tube is a nice plus. The kit instructions were clearly drawn, not overly crowded, and with attachment points well shown. The decals are from Cartograf and are top shelf.

The build was generally a fun, straightforward one. It had been a while since I’d built a Italeri kit, I thoroughly enjoyed this build. This is a nice kit, and should appeal greatly to fans of WWII Italian armor!

Highly Recommended! 

Thanks to MRC for the review sample

Reviewed by Chuck Aleshire, AMPS Chicagoland

AMPS 2nd Vice President, Midwest Region

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