This is my latest AFV build. It's the 1/35 Heller kit of the Hotchkiss H.39 light tank and
is painted as a French tank during the 1939/40 period.
The model is "out of the box" apart from the colour scheme.
Like the other Heller AFV kits it is impressive for its age - finely-detailed
and well-moulded. There is absolutely no interior detail, however, though this is not
so much of a problem with French tanks as they have such small viewing hatches.
It's a shame they never made kits for other French WW2 AFVs such as the Char B.1, Panhard
178, FCM-36, etc. Mirage (Polish company) do make a very nice kit of the Renault UE tankette
though (as well as various captured German modifications of it)
The kit has an interesting story behind it as it was boxed as "Panzer H35(f)",
i.e a captured H.35 used by German forces. It had standard German cross decals
and an all-over Panzer Grey colour scheme recommended in the instruction sheet. Evidently
Heller were trying to cash in on the greater popularity of German AFVs by re-inventing their
H-35 kit as a German tank! It's a shame that it had no French markings or colour schemes included with the kit.
However I had plenty of reference material and so decided to build the kit as a French vehicle.
When I started to build it I was surprised to find that, although boxed as a H-35, the kit had all the alternative
parts to build a H-39 - the later, upgunned version. Apart from the gun, the extra parts included the sprocket wheel,
driver's hatch, turret vision blocks, engine cover, and exhaust pipe. So I built my model as H-39 instead (the colour
scheme I intended to use was for a H-39, not a H-35).
Anyway, this really seems like a missed opportunity for Heller, as the kit did not advertise the fact that it could be built as a H-35 or a H-39, nor did it have any alternative French schemes and decals. If it had the latter, it would
still appeal to German AFV fans, but would not put off people who wanted to build the French version!