IJA Type 89 Tank and Type 94 AA Truck

I'm back with some additions to my Bolt Action Imperial Japanese Army for the Second Sino-Japanese War/WW2.

First up is a Type 89 I-Go (Yi-Go) Medium Tank (八九式中戦車イ号). In 28mm, you have two options for this tank:  Trenchworx makes the early 1930's version, while Company B makes the late 1930's version (different turret).  I planned to used my tank in the 1937 Shanghai battle, so opted for the Company B version.

The Company B version is fully resin, and you can tell it came from a handmade master rather than a 3D print (like Trenchworx), as the details were not as crisp and fit tolerances not as tight.

While the body, turret, and skids were fairly well cast for resin, the treads had some issues. The back sides of the treads were not smoothly cast and there were no guide grooves or pins to help with alignment to the tank body. One tread was also slightly taller than the other. I glued the treads on using the fender clearance as my guide, but ended up with a tank that leans slightly to one side. There also was a space gap between the treads and tank body that resulted in some painting difficulties.

The other major casting issue with the treads was significant areas of tread breakage and/or poor casting that detracted from the overall appearance of the tank. I filled in as many of these as I could using bits of plastic strips, and though not perfect, my hope was that they wouldn't be too noticeable once painted.

To give the tank a bit more character and also draw the eye away from some of the model's flaws, I added a Warlord tank commander I had in my bits box. For the paint scheme, I opted for a tri-color with black edging style seen in Shaghai according to Tanks Encyclopedia. The image shown had no unit markings, but since I had a bunch of unused decals, I included some seen on the 8th Tank Regiment Type 89's in China.

From a size perspective, the Type 89 is very close to Warlord's Type 97.

The next vehicle is a Type 94 Izuzu Truck with a Type 98 20 mm anti-aircraft machine cannon in the bed. Company B is the only one currently producing this in 28mm, and the kit consisted of a resin body with white metal details.  The resin casting was fairly well done (though the connection points for the wheel axles and struts required cutting and filing, and there was a bubble mark where the front gas cap should have been), but many of the metal parts came badly bent and had to be twisted back into shape. 

My main area of concern with this kit was the drop down gates on the bed. These had no included pins or supports and would only have been held in place with glue if built as is. This seemed like a significant breakage risk, so I decided they needed to be beefed up.

The first step I took was inserting some brass rods into the resin body under where the gates would fit. The resin strip I had to drill into was rather thin, so the diameter of the rod was less than I hoped for and I felt additional support would be required. The photograph included on the information sheet indicated there were some support legs under the gates, but the image resolution was too poor to see the details and I could find not a better version of the picture online.  

The only other images I found of the Type 94 AA truck were screen captures from the War Thunder video game. They depicted the bed as having posts in the corners with chains connected to the gates.  I don't know of this was historically accurate, but it seemed like an easy way to build additional strength into the gates. For mine, I pinned thicker brass rods into the bed, added bases of plastic tubing, then connected them to the gates with jeweler's wire that was trimmed to length after the glue dried. The end result was relatively sturdy.

The next challenge was the wheels.  In addition to them being cast with the axle ends off-centered, the hole size and depth did not create a snug fit on the axles, particularly with the front wheels.  For the front wheels, I ended up drilling out the centers and using wood shims to hold the wheels in place during gluing to the axle. This resulted in a fairly sturdy bond without the wheels being up against the body of the truck.  The rear axle ends were unfortunately too short to allow this, and the wheels had to be glued on as is.  I had a couple of the wheels break off during painting, so I'll see how they hold up during gaming.

During construction and painting, I also had a lot of issues with the very thin barrel of the AA gun getting bent. Though I tried to salvage it, in the end I knew it would always be a problem and swapped it out with a piece of brass rod.

The included figures were of OK sculpting quality and run slightly smaller than the Warlord miniatures. For aesthetic purposes, I opted to cut them off their bases and pin them to the truck bed.  As a bit of additional detailing (the bed still looked too empty), I added in a resin crate and some brass rod clipping to represent spent shell casings. I also made a plastic windscreen, but unfortunately forgot to mask if before I sprayed on the varnish, so it came out fairly cloudy.

The size of the truck is almost identical to Warlord's Type 97 truck.

Final Verdict: Company B produces a lot of interesting 28mm IJA vehicle and figures that no other manufactures have, so I appreciate them being willing to tackle some of these more obscure items. That said, the design quality and detail levels are not as high as some of the newer offerings by others (particularly 3D prints and injection plastic kits), so you will need to invest more care into building and painted them for your table.