French FT-17 Takom 1/16

A beautiful kit of this smaller tank. All details are present and neat. Only the ammunition is missing from the kit. Apparently there is the same kit in which it is present. The tank can be built closed or open. I opted for completely open. Always fun and challenging to build. Definitely recommended to build.

Background information:

Renault FT tanks were also fielded in limited numbers during World War II, in Poland, Finland, France, Greece, Romania, and the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, although they were already obsolete.In May 1940, the French Army still had seven front-line battalions, each equipped with 63 FTs, one under-strength battalion as well as three independent companies, each with 10, for a total organic strength of 504.105 more were in service in the colonies of Morocco and Algeria and 58 in French Levant, Madagascar and Indochina. Some FT tanks had also been buried within the ground and encased in concrete to supplement the Maginot Line.The fact that several units used the Renault FT gave rise to the popular myth that the French had no modern equipment at all; actually, they had as many modern tanks as the Germans; however, the majority had one-man turrets and were less efficient than German tanks such as the Panzer III and IV. The French suffered from strategic and tactical weaknesses rather than from equipment deficiencies, although many of the French tanks were also markedly slow (unlike the German tanks of the time). When the best French units were cut off by the German drive to the English Channel, around 390 FTs, previously used for training or stored in depots, joined the 184 to 192 FTs in service with internal security units.The Wehrmacht captured 1,704 FTs. They used about 100 for airfield defence and about 650 for patrolling occupied Europe.^[Some were used by the Germans in 1944 for street-fighting in Paris, but by this time they were hopelessly out of date.