Object 279 1/72 Takom

Object 279 was a sixty-ton prototype of a Soviet heavy tank developed in 1957-1959. The tank was characterized by very strong armor protection and its shape was intended to withstand the shock wave of a nuclear attack. It moved on four tracks with the possibility of changing the ground clearance of the vehicle, which should ensure high passability through difficult terrain. The armament consisted of an experimental 130-millimetre M-65 tank cannon with a rate of 5-7 rounds per minute, which was supposed to be able to penetrate the 300-millimetre-thick armour plate of the enemy. The cannon was equipped with Grozda stabilization and night vision, the range was 12,500 meters. A 14.5-millimeter KPVT heavy machine gun was coupled to the cannon. Only 3 prototypes were produced, serial production did not take place due to high costs and unsatisfactory test results. The only surviving example can be found in the Russian Tank Museum in Kubinka.

The Object 279 double kit was released by Takom in 2019, it included both the classic version with a long barrel and a version with a short barrel (279M) and in addition a figure of a soldier in an anti-radiation suit holding the iconic AK-47 (there are even two types of AK to choose from in the kit). In addition to choosing a variant of the cannon, we can also choose whether to build the model with a lowered or raised chassis (I chose the high one). The construction is fast, we are only troubled by the number of parts of the link-and-length tracks and, above all, the insertion of the two finished chassis blocks into the pre-moulded holes on the bottom of the body – for me, probably a critical part of the kit, where I did not do very well. However, what goes wrong with a tank can be covered with mud, right? Since the decals contain only the white number “120” and nothing more (what more would you want from a prototype, moreover, even this marking is fictitious?), I decided to finish the model as a “WhatIf?” in the fictitious marking of The Czechoslovak People’s Army (ČSLA) from the 80s of the 20th century and created a mini-diorama called “Somewhere in Ralsko”. The diorama frame is made of spruce slats, and the base of the terrain is from an expanded polystyrene block covered with a putty glue for polystyrene. A finer rendition of the terrain was made by the Polák scenic putty, the wet mud is Vallejo Acrylic Mud, the small vegetation is from Woodland Scenics bushes, and I created the “moss lake” layer by layer with differently dyed acrylic gel.  Finally, I had a lot of fun creating this interesting little monster diorama for my display case…