1/56 (28mm) Tortuga Tank/Armored Car

Venezuelan Blindadello Modello 1934 "Tortuga" half tracked armored car. The "Tortuga" is somewhat notorious as being one of the most distinctive, and arguably the ugliest, armored cars of the Interwar Period. It was one of the very first armored vehicles to be completely indigenously designed in South America, and was intended as much for intimidation as for war. In this case, Venezuela's Colombian neighbors had been making aggressive moves on their shared border, and the President of Venezuela ordered his engineers to develop a "tank" that could be built using Venezuelan resources. The result was an unusual vehicle, essentially a Ford Model AA pick up chassis, stripped down and covered over with an armored shell equipped with a conical turret and armed with the Venezuelan licensed version of the M1898 Colt Machine Gun. One unique, and sort of bizarre, feature, was the creation of a slip on caterpillar track designed to go around the rear two wheels on either side of the AA chassis, making this, in essence, a half tracked-armored car. Compared to the width and height of the chassis upon which it was built, the Tortuga was positively huge. Despite those two prominent "eye" like vision slits in the fore of the hull, visibility was reputedly terrible, and ventilation was questionable at best. A veteran of the Venezuelan Army who had been part of one unit of Tortugas described driving them during the daytime as "challenging" and at night as "terrifying." In responses to early complaints, the Venezuelan Army installed headlights on the vehicle... but they mounted them -under- the armored shell, essentially welded to the forward axle. Those small round sections you see are windows made of bulletproof glass, another concession to visibility. Recommended in BSF. Almost forgot one interesting detail: just prior to the outbreak of the Spanish CIvil War, the Republic of Spain apparently attempted to license or buy several Tortugas. While I haven't been able to confirm that any were delivered, this may explain why some "tiznaos" (improvised armored cars) in Spain look a -lot- like the Tortuga. Wouldn't be hard to use this for the SCW if you have a mind.