Emhar's 1/35 Mk.IV Tadpole
by Eugene Sautin

The Germans dug wider trenches to thwart the new British Mk.IV tanks, so in 1917 trail modifications to improve trench crossing ability began. The “Tadpole tail” extended the rear of the tank by about 9 feet. These trails were tried on both Mk.IV and Mk.V tanks. Angle iron cross-braces were fixed between the “tails” to improve rigidity. On one experimental version these provided support for a steel plate on which a forward-firing Stokes Mortar was placed. Many “Tadpoles” were planned. Initial conversion trails were carried out in England and tail assemblies were sent to France. Problems with the conversion were not overcome by the end of the war and the “Tadpoles” were not used in action.
 

Click on the picture for an enlarged version!

EMHAR makes a tadpole variant of the Mk IV male (cannon version). Even though tadpole extension was mainly built for the Mk V, the testing tanks were the Mk IV variant. The kit is basically a Mk IV male with an extra spruce of parts for the tail, and more tracks. The kit also comes with a mortar on the back of the tank!

The directions provided with the kit are very good. The kit consists of four spruces: one for the tracks, two for the tank, one for the tadpole “tail”. The plastic is of first rate quality, and the detail is sharp. Since none of the tadpoles seen service no decals are provided. There is a bit of flash, but those parts are not visible when the model is completed. Assembling the tank is pretty straight-forward, but care must be given to assembling the tracks. EMHAR supplies you with about the double amount of tracks you would need for a regular Mk IV. The directions don’t tell you how much you actually need for the tadpole, so measuring and cutting the track pieces is required. You will need to use superglue to glue the tracks, nothing else works. The tracks and the plastic take paint very well, and this tank can be airbrushed with either drape olive green, (standard color for Mk series) or the factory painted gun grey. In fact the instructions recommend it to be painted gun grey. The machine guns are the Lewis kind, but you can scratch build the Hotchkiss type. The cannons, machine guns and the Stokes Mortar can be painted with mat black first, and then gun grey.

Since this variant never seen action, weathering is optional, but can still be done if you really want to. The rails for the un-ditching gear are in the box, but the instructions don’t say to put them, mainly because all the testing tanks didn’t have the rails. The exhaust pipe also needs to shortened. If building this straight out of the box, you could easily finish one in a couple of nights.

There are however some problems with the kit. All the problems that the Mk.IV male had are obviously in this kit as well. First, the sponsons are at the 90 degree angle, when they should be at a slight angle, so they could be pushed inside the hull, when being transported. The turret roof is too thin, making the gun mount a bit too high.

The biggest problems with this kit in the 1/35 scale are the dimension problems. The tail is too long, in the kit, while the sponsons are disproportional to the body, this can’t be fixed without scratch building 90% of the tank, so you probably have to let it go. This would not be a big problem in the 1/72 scale, but the 1/35 makes its quite visible. The “box” to the rear (gasoline tank), is turned the wrong way around, in the assembly directions at least, but this can be easily fixed. You need the part with the hatch to point upwards, and the hinges inwards. Unlike the regular EMHAR MK.IV, this kit has the appliqué armor sheet, on the back to cover the gasoline tank.

You are able to buy this it from most well-stocked firms, including Hannants and Jadar.
 

This kit is the only tadpole item on the market in any scale, so it’s quite worth the extra money. The kit is good, but it has some problems mentioned above. If you fix the sponsons, you should get a nice tadpole variant. While the dimension problem is major, it still doesn’t jump to the eye, unless you grab a ruler, but it would be next to impossible to fix the problem.