The Modelling News: Preview: Medium Tank T-72M in 35th scale from Das Werk

Das Werk's new 35th scale Medium Tank T-72M is the next kit in their 35th scale range. We look at the real thing, the CAD designs, colours & markings in our preview...

Preview: Medium Tank T-72M in 35th scale from Das Werk

Medium Tank T-72M (T-72M / ÜV-1 / ÜV-2)

(NVA / Hungarian Army / Czechoslovak Army / Iraqi Army)

From: Das Werk

Kit Number: #DW35032

1/35th Scale

RRP TBA

Product Link on the Das Werk Website

The Subject: Medium Tank T-72M

The T-72M is the export version of the original T-72 Ural and was the main tank for Warsaw pact states like Czechoslovakia, Poland, and East Germany (DDR) during the mid to late 1980s. Compared to the T-72A, the T-72 Ural/T-72M's main identifying features is a thinner, more sloped front turret, and a lack of smoke grenades. Normally the T-72 Ural, along with nearly all Soviet-era export tanks, are equipped with the TPD-2-49 coincidence optical rangefinder, but the T-72M version simulated in Steel Beasts Professional is modelled with the same 1A40 sighting complex and TPD-K1 laser rangefinder as found on the upgraded T-72 “Ural-1” (m.1976) and the later T-72A/T-72M1, allowing the vehicle to be user crew-able. Masochistic users may choose to disable the LRF in the mission editor for a more "realistic" early T-72 experience. Note that, typically, “monkey” models such as the T-72M lack features such as laminated borated polyethylene anti-radiation lining and the ability to mount mine plough/roller set later than the KMT-5/6, if at all, but due to a large amount of variation from one manufacturer to another, the simulated T-72M conforms to T-72 Ural-1 standards for the sake of simplicity.

A polish T-72M

Initially intended as a "modernization" to the T-64A, the T-72 series actually uses a different hull (the modified chassis of the T-62 based Obyekt 167) and a completely redesigned fighting compartment to accommodate the carousel auto-loader. These changes turned the T-72 Ural into more of a competing design, sharing many of the same philosophies, just executed in a simpler format and introduced as a cheap to produce “mobilization” tank to fill out second echelon and reserve forces.

A seized Iraqi T-72M1, during Operation Desert Storm.

Entering service in 1973, the T-72 Ural is comparable, and in many cases superior, to equivalent western tanks of the same era, although export models such as the T-72M perform poorly against more modern vehicle and ammunition types. Still, the T-72M was widely produced and exported to a large number of former Russo/Soviet client states, and when equipped with modernized ammunition, can be a credible threat to even the latest armour.

This early model T-72M1 was donated to the Tank Museum in Bovington, UK, in 2014 by the Land Warfare Museum in Bydgoszcz, Poland, in exchange for a Chieftain Mark 11.

This kit from Das Werk

This kit was developed in conjunction with Amusing Hobby, meaning that it is an Amusing Hobby kit with Das Werk colour choices and maybe some different options. Three versions are buildable, the T-72M / ÜV-1 or the ÜV-2 versions.