Tank Scratchbuild: Painting the Schneider FA

In the previous posts (1,2) I designed and scratchbuilt an alt-history interwar tank, the Scheider FA. Now, I've painted and weathered the tank.

I used the French WWI and Interwar Camo set of airbrush paints from Vallejo for the base colours. I marked out the camo areas with putty, put down a colour, waited for the putty to dry, then

I wanted to use a canonical Schneider scheme for this tank, but interwar French camo schemes are not consistent or well-documented. After many hours of research, I decided to go with a made-up scheme, vaguely based on a Schneider CA1 scheme from 1918.

The black crosshatches near vision slits were meant to disguise their location from enemy snipers and anti-tank rifles.

The interior of the engine bay was primed with a dark red oxide primer, while the fighting compartment started with black primer, followed by a white layer, to create a few false shadows.

The crew models fit inside perfectly. I'm glad the sculpted uniforms and helmets turned out. I need to touch up a few interior details, but I wanted to get the bulk of the tank assembled first.

Loader, commander, and gunner in the turret, driver, backup driver/radio operator, and backup loader/mechanic in the hull.

Here's how the tank compares to two other classic French interwar tanks: the Char B1 and the Renault FT.

The Char B1 was converted from the Tamiya B1 Bis kit to resemble the Char B1 101 prototype created as a partnership between Schneider and Renault. The twin machine turret seems to be a Schneider specialty, as it (or derivatives) crop up a few times in the literature. 

The conversion involved replacing the engine deck, towing hook, and turret, as well as a few minor adjustments to the hull. This article from Panzerserra was very helpful. You can see how a good modeler would tackle the project, instead of my ambitious but somewhat eccentric approach.

The turret was sculpted using apoxie sculpt over a bottle cap, then detailed with plasticard and wire.

The towing hook was built from wire, plasticard, and spare bits of photoetch brass.

The Renault FT is a superb kit from Meng. I didn't convert it at all, except to add some more stowage to the trench-crossing rail.

"What's with the crudely painted yellow stars?" I hear you ask. You thought this post was just going to be tank pictures? Wrong! Time to learn.

The European Civil War, Continued

Alternate history is a good excuse to learn about actual history, provided you start with a plausible end goal and don't take shortcuts. If you want to answer the question "Why Didn't X Happen?" you need to be able to explain "What Did Happen And Why." Since no historian has ever successfully managed this feat, you're in for a delightful exercise.

To briefly summarize this alternate history (and to avoid overloading this post with citations and quotes), the Paris Peace Conference collapses in early 1919, partially due to the sudden death of President Wilson after the kidnapping of Kaiser Wilhelm. President Marshall is unwilling to enforce Wilson's vaguely explained Fourteen Points by force, and even less willing to keep American troops in Europe. Colonel House and Secretary of State Lansing are left to salvage the Peace Conference with only their economic and logistic support cards to play.

The prospect of renewed total war, on (as the public sees it) flimsy and bloodthirsty grounds, leads to mass desertion, unrest, and rebellion. The UK tries to extract her army from the continent to fight the spectre of Communism at home and abroad (and very real uprisings in her colonies). France and Belgium attempt to garrison the Rhineland with insufficient and demoralized troops. Grasping for an unambiguous victory to offset the moral opprobrium of the blockade, the Kaiser's kidnapping, and the tragic muddle of the Conference, Lloyd George commits to "expelling the Turk from Europe," with catastrophic consequences in India, Syria, and elsewhere.

These alternate 1920s are at least as tumultuous as the real world, but with the added chaos of a divided France. Communist uprisings (including the Three Day Soviet of Paris), the militant National Front created by Marshal Pétain in the Rhineland, the battered Third Republic, and a variety of industrial/technocratic corporate states vie for control of France.

Western Europe becomes a mirror of Mexico and China, prompting John Gunther to write, with some exaggeration, that "An unbroken belt of warlordism stretches from Lisbon to Shanghai."

Yellow Socialism, Eugene Schneider II, and The War That Will End Peace

Yellow Socialism, or Syndicalisme Jaune, sought to avoid dreaded Communism, or any form of collective bargaining, by the creation of corporate-funded (and essentially domesticated) unions. The movement (if it can be called that) was created and largely funded by Eugene Schneider II. Incidentally, you may notice very different tones in the English and French Wikipedia articles on the topic.

Eugene Scheider II was also interested in empire-building. In this alt history, he makes the leap from building with capital backed by state power to building with capital backed by borrowed state power. Le Creusot and Rhône basin pay lip-service to whatever central government is currently recognized. A shadow-state, more flamboyant than most.

Total war proved to be unprofitable for everyone; almost as unprofitable as total peace. Laws capturing excess profit (and were) circumvented by investing in capital, which was not taxed. All that built-up capital in factories, machine tools, raw goods, and skilled labour would go to waste (or require costly readjustments, or be sold below its war-inflated purchase price) if the threat of war vanished completely. 

There is a limit on what the consumer will pay for a refrigerator, even if it is stuffed with features. It's a big box that makes things cold. Diminishing returns kick in. But if there is a development limit on a "kill-someone-waaaay-over-there-machine" we have yet to reach it.

The most desirable state, from the perspective of post-WW1 industrial conglomerates, seems to be peace at home (the circumscribed model factory-home, where wages pass through a worker like rented beer), a lopsided peace with major trading partners, war scares on the borders, and a few wars in unprofitable and unsympathetic parts of the world to serve as testbeds, advertisements, training, and cautionary tales. That this system, in this alt-history thought experiment, accidentally slipped into warlordism cannot be surprising.

Eugene Schneider II seemed to want to create a model community to match his ideology, like Henry Ford's Fordlandia or Pullman's Pullman. In this alt-history, he added an army to defend it.

These two hundred men, the cream of financial France, are an  amazing plutocracy. They are as snobbish as a vintage sardine or a Rue de la Paix hat. Mere wealth cannot buy its way into this  velvety inner circle. The two most flagrantly conspicuous of modern French millionaires, Coty the perfume man, Citroen the automobile manufacturer, were not members of what is customarily called merely the ‘oligarchy’. The chosen insiders combine the 6hereditary distinction of family as well as the contemporary command of wealth. They rise straight from pre-Revolutionary times; they were the upper bourgeoisie during Napoleon; they worked  together, consolidated their power under Louis Philippe and Napoleon III. The last person really ‘taken in’ by the oligarchy is supposed to have been Eugene Schneider, the steel and arms merchant, about thirty years ago.

-John Gunther, Inside Europe, 1940, pg. 167.

The root of the munitions problem is the fact that only highly industrialized countries can profitably manufacture appreciable quantities of arms. These countries sell to those less industrialized. Ninety eight per cent of the total arms exports of the world comes from ten countries; about sixty-five per cent comes from Great Britain, the United States, France, and Sweden, the four greatest exporting countries. France, typified by Schneider-Creusot, supplied in 1932 no less than 27.9 per cent of the world’s total output of arms.

Schneider-Creusot, like all great arms companies, is several things — an arms firm, a myth, a steel works, a microcosm of the munitions industry, a national institution, a nightmare to pacifists, an idol to patriots, a military necessity to more than one country, and a whale of a good business. The directors of Schneider and the other firms in the Comite des Forges which do munitions business are quite mild-mannered gentlemen. They do not seem ferocious; but their business is the invention, manufacture, and sale of implements of death.

The arms companies are as incestuous as white mice. They play together and breed. This is because they are in a signal sense noncompetitive; good business for one means good business for the others; obviously if Schneider, say, gets a big order from Country X, other companies will have a better chance of business from Country Y, which is X’s unfriendly neighbor. As soon as one country buys a new military invention, other countries must buy it also. Arms firms may underbid one another for a contract in a single state; but internationally they all stand to gain.

Extraordinarily interrelated and intertwined, the arms firms lace the whole world in their net. Schneider and Vickers were connected through Sir Basil Zaharoff, munitions salesman extraordinary. Schneider controls Skoda, the great Czechoslovak munitions firm, through a French holding company, the Union Européenne. An allied bank finances a big Hungarian bank, which provides loans for Schneider sales. The Schneider interests are believed to  control an Austrian bank also, which is interested in the chief  Austrian steel company, the Alpine Montangesellschaft. But the Alpine concern is ‘owned’ by the German Steel Trust! And through a Dusseldorff firm, Rheinmetall, Schneider is believed to be linked to Krupp.

It is, of course, an old story that arms firms maintain an extreme  political impartiality in their business. They sell to each side in  any war. They sell to friend and foe alike. Pluck a bullet out of  the heart of a British boy shot on the North-west Frontier, and like  as not you will find it of British make. Paul Faure, deputy in the  French chamber, is in possession of photographs showing representatives of Turkey and Bulgaria buying arms at Creusot before the War which during the War were used against French troops; he has also a precious picture of Eugene Schneider on a yachting party with the Ex-Kaiser Wilhelm. French munition traffickers helped arm Abdel-Krim in his Morocco campaign against the French. The Turks used British cannon to beat the British at the Dardanelles; British battleships were sunk by British mines. 

-John Gunther, Inside Europe, 1940, pp. 172-173

Management and paternalism

Whilst capitalising on technical innovations and diversifying the productions (steel, iron ships military machine guns, tanks and artillery, then electricity and civil nuclear power), each generation of Schneider contributed to extending the factories and improving the town’s urban development.

In addition to their economic achievements, the Schneiders developed Le Creusot into a model industrial community by introducing a paternalistic policy and enforcing it in all aspects of the workers daily lives: housing, education, recreation, healthcare. Their visionary, philanthropic business model was paternalistic in the sense that the Schneiders provided employees decent and affordable houses, amenities, welfare provisions and overall improved living conditions.  They shaped the town’s architecture and at the same time, ruled the economic and social life of Le Creusot. . Within a few years, they acquired a worldwide reputation and hosted many visits from customers and Heads of States from France and around the world.

Until today, Le Creusot celebrates the memory of the Schneider family, the paternalistic leadership and culture they left behind. Doted around town, a series of statues immortalize each of the iron masters, while streets and working-class districts echo their names. Boulevard Henri-Paul Schneider for example is named after a tragically lost family child, or the miners’ district called Jean and Françoise Schneider. Throughout town, you will find evocative street names that plunge us back to industrial times.

To get a deeper insight into this charismatic family of iron masters and understand the scale of their impact on Le Creusot, a visit to the Chateau de la Verrerie, their former residence, is highly recommended!

-Creusot Montceau Tourisme (accessed 2024/01/02)

The Wipers Times
aka
Tumblr Shitposts (1916 edition)

Further Reading:

• 'European Diplomacy Between Two Wars, 1919-1939', (1972), Quadrangle.
• 'The Secret International: Armament Firms At Work' (1932), The Union of Democratic Control.
  
• Fredrick Manning, 'Her Privates We', 1930, Serpent's Tail Classics. (Which, as an aside, contains the first appearance of the phrase "fucked up" in print.)
• Harold Nicholson, 'Peacemaking 1919', (1933), Constable.
• Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Paris Peace Conference, 1919 (1942), particularly Vol. 3.
• Jamie Camplin, 'The Rise of the Plutocrats: Wealth and Power in Edwardian England', (1978), Constable.
  
• John Gunther, 'Inside Europe', (1940), Harper & Brothers.
• Robert Lansing, 'The Peace Negotiations', (1921), Houghton, Mifflin Co.
• William A. Schabas, 'The Trial of the Kaiser' (2018), Oxford.
  
• Samuel Kalman, 'The Extreme Right in Interwar France: The Faisceau and the Croix de Feu', (2008), Routledge.  
• Modris Eksteins, 'Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of the Modern Age', (1989), Lester, & Orpen Dennys.
  
• James E. Sheridan, China in Disintegration: The Republican Era in Chinese History, 1912-1949, (1975), Macmillan.
• John Gunther, 'Inside Asia', (1939), Harper & Brothers.
  
• Edward A. McCord, 'The Power of the Gun: The Emergence of Modern Chinese Warlordism' (1993), University of California Press.
• Carol Willcox Melton, 'Between War and Peace: Woodrow Wilson and the American Expeditionary Force in Siberia, 1918-1921', (2001), Mercer University Press.

I am also working through:

• Elvire de Brissac, 'Il était une fois les Schneider : 1871-1942', (2007), Grasset. 
• Jean Garrigues, 'Les patrons et la politique : de Schneider à Seillière', (2002), Perrin.

And knocking billowing clouds of rust off my French in the process.

Tank Scratchbuild: The Schneider FA

With lessons learned from the Schneider CA and the Renault FT, the Schneider FA was developed in 1926 as a heavy breakthrough and infantry support tank. It was designed to counter FCM's formidable Char 2C, the heaviest tank deployed by the National Front and the Paris Guard, as well as any vehicle that might emerge from Italy or (in theory) the Free People's State of Württemberg.

The origin of the letters "FA" is uncertain, but they are probably a model code. Some sources suggest they stand for "Fourmi d'Assaut", after the tank's supposedly ant-like silhouette.

The Schneider FA's thick frontal armour, three-man turret, and high-velocity gun made it the terror of any battlefield it could reach.

The Schneider FA is shown here next to a Renault FT (also known as the FT-17).

Note that all models in this post are in subassemblies for painting, which is why they have armour gaps, wonky alignment, etc.

Mass: ?
Length (hull): 29'
Width: 16'
Height: 14.5'
Crew: 6 (Commander, gunner, two loaders, driver, backup driver/radio operator/machine gun operator).

Armour: 4" maximum on the front hull.
Main Armament: 1x 8.8cm high velocity gun (modified, under license from Krupp).
Secondary Armament: Two Reibel machine guns (one coaxial, one in a ball mount in the hull) and one pintle-mounted Hotchkiss machine gun.

Engine: 6 cylinder marine diesel.
Suspension: caterpillar sway bar.
Top Speed: 8 mph (allegedly).

The 8.8cm high-velocity gun mounted in the turret was originally believed to be a copy (possibly based on stolen plans) of a Krupp weapon. In 1928, National Front newspapers reported that the design had been licensed (and paid for), and that Schieder had purchased several guns outright, possibly through the intervention of Basil Zaharoff.

(It's definitely anachronistic to have a Pak 43/3) on a vehicle that's ostensibly from the 1920s, but I had the kit available.)

The turret basket allows the commander to stand at full height and see out the cupola prisms and rangefinder periscope.  The commander can also mount a folding step to stand or sit inside the cupola, or open the spring-assisted hatch. The cupola can be manually rotated.

The turret itself can be manually or electrically rotated, from both the gunner and the loader's position. The gunner has a seat with a top-mounted periscope and a mantlet-mounted sight. The loader does not have a seat.

The shelves at the rear of the fighting compartment contains batteries, Hotchkiss machine gun ammo, spare rounds for the 8.8cm main gun, the fire suppression system, and general stowage. The driver of this Schneider FA has stowed a typewriter and some canned goods next to their position (front left). The backup driver has the radio set (front right).

The tank has dual controls, with the radio operator's controls able to be locked out of the way when not in use.

There is plenty of space below the turret basket for the secondary loader, who scuttles around, passing shells into the turret when the tank is in action. The fighting compartment has an escape hatch in the floor.

Crew of 6. From left to right: commander (binoculars pending), loader, backup driver, backup loader, gunner, and driver.

Hats and overalls were sculpted (badly) to match interwar French designs.

The Schneider FA has front-facing hatch with a vision prism. The hatch is a single cast piece, as thick as the front armour, and has spring-assisted hinges and a geared jack to hold it open. It provides good forward visibility, but the tank relies on the commander for all-round awareness.

Schneider built custom sixteen-wheel tank overland transport wagons for the FA, but these could only be used on high-quality roads. For long-distance travel by road or rail, the drive wheel and suspension assemblies could be removed (without removing the track), enabling the 10' wide hull to be transported by rail. Reassembling the vehicle took several hours, but could (Schieder claimed) be accomplished without specialized equipment. The FA was usually supported by a pair of heavy trucks (usually American surplus Mack ACs).

Criticism

• The driver's visibility was very poor. The driver could not have a top hatch or even a periscope due to the turret mantlet design. The heavy armoured hatch had a nasty habit of slamming shut if the jack was not carefully locked, which could crush a wayward limb or stun the driver. The hatch was designed to remain in place even if the hinges are damaged, which was some comfort.
• The top speed was, allegedly, 8mph with a following wind, but 5mph was far more likely.
• The commander's cupola was designed to be large enough to contain two crew members (to facilitate the passing of ammo for the Hotchkiss gun). While this made the space very comfortable for the commander, it meant rotating the cupola took considerable effort. The hatch also had a geared jack and spring system.
• The electric turret traverse system was reliable, but painfully slow.
• The caterpillar suspension provided a very rough ride. The tank had to stop to fire its main gun with any accuracy.
• The turret was not particularly well balanced, and only contained eight shells in a ready rack behind and below the loader. With a well-trained secondary loader, the tank could still achieve a reasonable fire rate.  
• The length of the linkages between the transmission and the driver meant changing gear required a great deal of effort. Luckily, in most situations, rapid gear changes were not required.

Praise

• The tank's height, though a liability in some respects, gave the commander an unparalleled view of the battlefield. The main gun's elevation and depression were also exceptional.
• The radio, once insulated from the tank's rattling, was very reliable, if limited in range. The internal communication system allowed for excellent crew coordination.
• The main gun was sensibly feared. Reports of an armour-piercing round passing straight through a Char 2C "from prow to stern" or reducing a Renault FT to "fragments and dust" were typical.
• The design of the tank emphasized reliability and simplicity. The rear had large hatches for engine access, and the large turret doors meant the gun could be removed on rails and replaced with ease. A simple field workshop could complete all but the most intensive repairs.
• The hull was waterproof and gasproof. With its high body, the tank could easily ford streams up to 6' deep. The vehicle had excellent, possibly excessive, ground clearance.
• Excellent temperature control. Hot water from the main radiator could be diverted into a radiator pipe in the fighting compartment. Electric fans could pull cool air into the fighting compartment from the rear.
• The large armoured fuel tanks (2x 550L, to the left and right of the radiator) could be supplemented by additional external fuel drums. The tank could even be refuelled on the move, provided the refuelling vehicle had a pump and a hose.

To Do

• Reposition the current tools (as they'll be knocked off when the tank goes over bumps).
• Add the rest of the radiator louvres.
• Add stowage, lights, a horn, exhausts, air intakes, tow hooks, etc.
• Add a side hatch to empty the dust collectors.
• Add a springloaded trench rail under the engine compartment.
• Add bolts, rivets, etc.
• More stowage.

Kit List

• Treads, chassis, engine: 1/25 Caterpillar DH8 kit from AMT.
• Interior details and gun: 1/35 Jadgpanther Interior kit from RFM. Great for greebling and scratchbuilding, if you're into that sort of thing.
• Turret, turret ring: 1/16 Renault FT kit from Takom.
• Crew: Leftover figures from the bits box. I think they're from a 1/35 scale Karl-Gerät kit by Trumpeter.

I made the cast armour texture using Tamiya putty, thin modelling cement, and a paintbrush. Rolled armour texture used a similar method, but with a lighter coat, streaking, and some sanding.

Tank Scratchbuild: The Caterpillar Crawl

With a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; Ishmael quietly take to the ship; I go to the hobby store and buy a stack of scale model kits.

Good Intentions

The original plan was to build a dieselpunk tank kitbash, something like Miyazaki's Akuyaku #1. As I sketched out a few ideas, I realized that the project would be a great way to put actual tank design into practice. Instead of a model that was merely aesthetic, I could make a tank that was as functional as possible. Not good by any means, but functional. The sort of thing that could, in the '30s and '40s, get funding for a prototype.

The Caterpillar Crawl

 I started with the venerable 1/25 Caterpillar DH8 kit from AMT.

Since I'm converting it to a 1/35 tank, this means the final result will be ~30' long, which is long but not "you have made a terrible mistake" long. Caterpillar created the D9 by scaling up the D8, so scaling it up again should be fine. 

Bolting armour to a bulldozer, sticking some machine guns through a few holes, and calling it a tank is a time-honoured tradition. The most famous (or infamous) is the Bob Semple tank out of New Zealand, but there are other examples.

Bob Semple Tank (left), Disston Tractor Tank (right).

A bulldozer is not a great platform for a tank. It has a simple linear powertrain. The radiator, engine, torque converter, transmission, and differential are all in a front-to-back straight line. There's no room for a driver or turret near the front of the vehicle. The Bob Semple Tank had a front machine gunner lying on a mattress on top of the engine, which is obviously a bad plan.

The engine of a bulldozer also sticks slightly forward of the treads, meaning the tank cannot climb steep obstacles without smashing the radiator into them first. The suspension creates a very rough ride and the engine isn't designed for speed.

How can a bulldozer be converted into a "proper" tank? 

Screenshot from this video. The front of the bulldozer is to the left.

D8K brochure (pdf)

Reverse The Bulldozer?

An easy option, but this type of suspension doesn't work in reverse. When moving forward, each arm of the track can rise over a rock, pivoting vertically around the final drive and horizontally around the sway bar. In reverse, if you crunch into a rock, and all the force is transmitted to the drive sprocket, final drive, and differential.

Reverse the bulldozer and add more track in front of the drive sprocket?

The drive sprocket has to be at the end of a loop of track. It can't be in the middle. Otherwise, any slackness in the track, or going over a ditch, would disconnect the drive sprocket from the track. A high-drive system, like the modern D9s, has a sort of triangular loop of track, but dramatically increases the height of the vehicle.

Move the engine and rearrange the drivetrain?

This is the solution I chose. Instead of mounting the engine at the front of the vehicle, I moved it to the back. It's connected by a universal joint to the transmission, which then loops backwards to the differential and final drives.

Front is still to the left.

The transmission is under the radiator fan. The engine connects to it by a universal joint (currently disconnected). Then the transmission connects to the differential (the black and white plastic bit, from an old truck kit) and to the final drives (the yellow bulges between the chassis and the chrome drive sprockets).

Doctrine and Design

Why would anyone pick a caterpillar chassis as the basis of a tank?

The three traditional factors in tank design are Mobility, Armour, and Firepower. You need to balance all three to get a successful tank.

There are other major factors that the traditional triangle leaves out.

• Feasibility. Can you actually manufacture this tank in sufficient numbers to make a difference? How complicated is it?
  
• Reliability. Once in the field, can the tank actually perform its function without breaking down? Can an inexperienced crew maintain it? Is it over-engineered?
  

Caterpillar-type bulldozers are cheap, commonly available, and legendarily reliable. You can park one in a muddy field for twenty years and start it up again with some fresh oil, fuel, and a new battery. You can repair major structural components in the field without disassembling the entire vehicle. New parts can be manufactured from stock or scrap. A scaled-up tractor would retain these features.

In doctrine, an infantry tank was a relatively slow but heavily armoured tank designed to support the advance of massed infantry. 

I'm not really interested in the alternative history aspect of this project, but some sort of justification seems necessary. What if a nation's doctrine stressed the idea of a continuous attack? That, after a breakthrough was achieved, the attacking force must continue a methodical attack, without giving the enemy time to respond. An attack designed to overwhelm the decision-making powers of its leaders. Amphetamines for everyone.

A highly reliable tank might form part of that doctrine. A cruising speed of 6 miles per hour isn't much, but 6 miles per hour, day and night, rain or shine, might be appealing.

Original instructions. Model kits have come a long way since 1972, but the loss of functional labels (what each part does) is a bit sad.

Engine Alterations and Detailing

Ideally, this tank would use a more compact engine. The six-cylinder turbocharged engine in the DH8, scaled up, is basically a marine diesel engine. A V6 engine would be half the length. A radial engine, even a hideously complex radial engine, would be even shorter.

Still, the point is to use as much of the original kit as possible, so the huge inline six stays, with a few additions and changes. It's a very old kit, so the level of detail isn't great.

The right side of the engine (the left side of the vehicle) features new fuel injector lines and cables.

The left side (right side of the vehicle) features a re-positioned alternator, the start of the radiator fan drive, and a rearranged air filtration system. 

Originally, the air system was mounted above the engine, but I moved it to the side to reduce the height. It should still function; there are some later-model caterpillar engines with similar adjustments. 

I replaced the original paper canister air filter with a pair of scratchbuilt combined air-oil separators and cyclone dust collectors. 

Paper air filters are very efficient, but when they clog, they prevent air from entering the engine. This isn't a problem for a construction bulldozer. You can always open the filter, bang out the dust, and replace it. In the middle of a battle, leaving the tank to clean the air filter is not wise.

Oil-air separators continue to let air pass even after the oil becomes saturated with dust. This reduces the lifespan of the engine, but increases the lifespan of the crew.

The air intake and exhaust are not attached yet.

Finding a position for the radiator was difficult.

Back of the tank? It's a huge vulnerability. Armoured louvres are still weaker than actual armour, even if you angle them.

Front of the tank? As David Fletcher says, "If you're designing a tank at home, don't for heaven's sake put the radiator at a different place than the engine. It's just not meant to go there."

On either side of the engine? Could work, but since I'm aiming for simplicity, one large fan and one large radiator seemed best.

Above the engine? Could work, but increases the vehicle's height, and you'd need to remove and drain the radiator before working on the engine. 

Above the torque converter (further back from its current position?) Could work, but then you can't lift the engine and torque converter combination straight up to repair or replace it.

In the end, I put it at an angle above the transmission. This wastes a bit of space, but the fan can be driven by belt from the engine, and pulls air through the entire engine bay, which is nice. 

To Do

• Add steering clutch and brake assemblies to the differential.
• Add a trench-crossing rail below the engine, probably with some sort of shock absorber.
• Convert the drive sprockets to include modular sprocket rim segments. Instead of removing the entire wheel, you can just replace a worn segment. Handy!
  
• Build a turret.
• Build a fighting compartment.
• Convert 1/35 figurines for the inside of the compartment, because if you're fully detailing a tank, it makes sense to add crew.
  
• Add weld lines where steel plates are welded, and rivets/bolts where they are joined. Most of the construction so far is welded. 

If any readers are tank experts (internet or real life), or have experience with heavy construction vehicles, feel free to leave notes in the comments.