converting firefly sherman to israeli sherman

Any way you can post the photos? The Israeis modified and upgunned their Shermans as time went on.  In 1956 during the Suez operations they were pretty much stock 76mm Shermans of any of the various types that they could get their hands on, both VVSS and HVSS. A handful of them would have been upgunned with the French high velocity 75mm gun type used on the AMX-13 and resembled Fireflies as they were built on M4A4 VVSS hulls and used the older 75mm turret with a bustle counterweight. But by the 1967 and 1973 wars they had been re engined and upgunned, and the non HVSS types were not likely to be seen.

Thank you, ive been brainstorming projects for the past couple weeks cause schools getting out soon and I want to do some summer builds. I want to take Verlindeds M50 turret and kit bash it with an composite hull and hvss suspension, from other kits. 

Do some image searches on Israeli Shermans, the M50 version in particular. Those look like a Firefly but will have a different muzzle brake on the French 75mm gun.

I believe Shepard Paine made a highly thorough and detailed step by step to convert a sherman of any kind to an Israeli Super Sherman. Some maker also offers the full kit but I cant remember which one.

Dragon did a 1/35 M50 and M51 (which is the M4A1 large hatch late hull and T23 turret).

A company called MP Models did a M4A4 based HVSS M50 back in the late 80s but it was a short run type kit and the company is long gone.

Shep's Sherman was based off the Italeri M4A1 76mm with a lot of surgery IIRC...

and of course there are M51s from Tamiya and Academy, with the Tamiya kit being the newest release

ive built the M50 orange box and tamiyas M51. I have the shep paine book back home, im gonna give it a flip through when i return for the summer.

Unless you already have the Verlinden M50 turret in the stash, I would recommend passing on it. It's not particularly accurate, and the gun tube is all resin and warps if you look at it wrong.

As to what hulls you could find converted to M50: almost anything, but the composite hulls were particularly scarce. Not to say it didn't happen, but a pic of one would be hard to find, I'm thinking...   Of course it's really hard to say "never" when talking about IDF Shermans.

Keep in mind the IDF had a fair amount of M4A4 hulls with the standard 75mm gun and preferred to convert them to M50, as the majority of the existing cast hull Shermans in inventory at the time were M4A1/76 HVSS, and the idea was to improve those tanks most in need of it. Since the 76mm gun in the latter was fairly potent with the right ammunition, the decision was apparently made to prioritize conversion of the older, less potent M4A4(T) with the 75mm gun.

In a strange way, this also accounts for the fact that most of the M51s were based off the M4A1/76 HVSS tanks.

A couple of sources for good M50 turrets are Greg Buechler and DEF Models. I have one of Greg's turrets and it's sweet. I plan on using it sometime soon, just not sure on exactly what hull yet.  If you can find one of the old MP kits they're pretty good too. I built a welded-hull M50 using one a little while ago, with what I think are good results. I did have to scare up an aluminum gun tube, since the MP part had some nasty ejection pin marks in it.

Pic:

i1236.photobucket.com/.../SD530900_zps1125bebf.jpg

Shep's book has an M51 that he cobbled up from lots of bits, and considering the amount of info he had to go on at the time, it's an excellent model. There are a few IDF Shermans in Jim Wechsler's (sp?) "How-to" Sherman book, available from Kalmbach, that are well done, and this book is readily available and a very good source of ideas.

Edit: Whoops, forgot to use "rich formatting"....    well,click on the link, should work.

My plan was to get the suspensions off ebay and use a cheap ebay sherman for the hull. Would a regular M4A1/76 turret work for an M50 sherman?

Thank you for the info, its really helpful. While on the topic of IDF whats the significant differences with IDF half tracks. 

Also thank you for the pictures there a bug help, and really nice detail

You will need a 75mm turret for the starting point of an M50. The 76mm T23 turret is the basis for the M51 version.

Any experiences with those kits? I'm interested in the Orange Box M50.

I built the orange box M50 awhile ago, it was a nice build, but putting on the suspension you had to eyeball it, there were no slots for the bogies to go into if i remember correctly, or it may had been the return rollers

BTW I bought a neat CN 75 50 barrel and muzzle brake from DEF. models. I wish I'd bought three!

https://www.scalemates.com/kits/229991-def-model-dm35022-cn-75-50-cannon-barrel-set

thank you for the barrel website, will definently help

Would the turrets on the M4s that were sent to russia be the kind of turret that would be on an Israeli sherman M50

There are two main types of M4 turrets: the 75mm turret that was the original type and modified during production, and the T23 turret mounting a 76mm gun taken from the T23 tank project and mounted on the large hatch 47* hulls. It also was modified along the way during production. I do not know if the Soviets received any Lend/Lease 75mm M4s, but I do know the certainly received 76mm M4s. That turret type is used on the M51 Sherman and not the M50 Sherman.  

stik: the majority of Shermans rec'd by the Soviets were 75mm gun tanks.  DML even makes 1 or 2 M4A2 75D kits as German captured, ex-soviet tanks.

IDF M50s used modified turrets from 75mm gun tanks .  75mm gun tanks were sent to all users of the Sherman -- what difference does it make if any Soviet Shermans had 75mm turrets, tankluver?

Like stikpusher alluded to, the Sovs rec'd Shermans with the 76mm gun turret as well.

I was looking at one of the ISherman and it had a turret that looked like one of the M4 76 that I had seen in a soviet lend lease sherman.

What I'm saying is anything you've seen on a Soviet Sherman, has existed in droves for non-lend lease Shermans.  The Sovs didn't get any tanks with turrets that weren't also used in American and UK/Commonwealth Shermans

Thanks for the information on Soviet Lend Lease M4s T26. My knowledge was lacking there on that area. TL, to expand on what T26 said above, the Soviets pretty much were sent lot blocks off of the production line. There was nothing specific for their use and seen nowhere else when it was sent to them. Any variation found on a Soviet lend Lease Sherman as built could be found on another Sherman of the same type being used anywhere else in the world by another country's tank unit. An M4A2 75mm (dry) built by factory Y in production batch x serving with whatever Soviet Tank unit in the Ukraine, would look the same when delivered as one from the same as one from the same factory and batch sent to the USMC in the Central Pacific, or a Commonwealth Tank unit in Italy. BUT, then they are subject to modifications made by end users.