Sherman M4A4 Restoration Part 13: Finishing off

The finishing touches are of course all the stowage, markings and such. I enjoy making the vehicle as complete as possible and the challenge of finding all of the correct stowage items makes it an ongoing task.

The British Army published very comprehensive stowage charts and lists, what today would be known as CES. Finding these items 60 years on is interesting to say the least. Some things are almost impossible to find and I resorted to making them. Things like stowage bins and particularly the 4″ bomb throwers on the side of the turret. These used a .303 balistite blank to project a smoke bomb and were fitted to early Shermans before the 2″ bomb thrower became a standard fit in the turret.

The stowage bins consisted of a turret bin for greatcoats and blankets, the rear bin for mainly track tools and the box for the ‘First aid box, small’.
These were all copied from original boxes, except the turret bin which was partly interpolated from the existing mountings and partly from photographs.

There is a lot in a tank, some of which can be seen in the following pics. Since these were taken, I have managed to fill a few more of the obvious gaps. The 75mm rounds are all wooden projectiles in original cases. The total compliment is 97 rounds but not all are readily visible so I will restrict it to about 35.

As an illustration as to the difficulties of finding some parts, the Sherman has two 4lb extinguishers fitted internally. They are a distinctive Kidde design with a pistol grip and are very hard to find now, when you do, they can be very expensive. I found my first one in Australia and had to post it home as I couldn’t get it on an aircraft and the second came from the USA via ebay. The seller woudn’t post it out of the US so it had to go to my sister who then sent it DHL, the US post office refusing to send it!

Finally, she made her first rally, Debach 2004. Driving around the remaining perimeter tracks made all the hard work worthwhile.

Adrian Barrell, Suffolk, England.