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Recently I bough a Plastic Soldier Company US army deal, 15 Shermans, 5 Stuarts, and an Armored Rifle Platoon of 5 halftracks and their infantry. I am very happy with the whole deal because it was uncannily close to what I wanted for Flames of War, and they threw in an extra bazooka team to make it perfect.

Anyway back to the problem. I have worked out what I want to do with my Shermans and started a thread on the Dakka Dakka website:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/544068.page

The M5 Stuart sprue sold has three options



They contradict the box art which shows the 'early' hull and 'late' turret:


Now I do know that there was a lot of chop and change, which I used to my advantage when researching the M4A1. However I have not been able to find adequate info support on the M5A1.

I suspect that I should be able to chop and change hulls for variety because tanks did chop and change. However did light tanks chop and change, building an M4 frankentank from bits of other M4s would be a priority, but would rebuilding an M5 have the same resource dedication, light tanks were AFAIK not highly valued and were being phased down.

In addition I cannot source when the production types of M5A1 hit the front lines, I am not interested in modelling up tanks that were only available in any numbers in 1945, its the reason I have the M10 Wolverine and not the M18 Hellcat as my planned Tank destroyer.
Likewise I don't want tanks phased out in '43. While I am keeping my army generic rather than specific, I don't want to paint myself into too many corners, so I am looking for a Normandy list for authenticity which if it can serve as '43 and '45 then so much the better, though I think the main authenticity problem will be stowage.

Please help me choose which hull types to use for a squadron of five M5A1s for the Normandy campaign, with plausible variation because plastic kits can get boring fast.
Also if someone could explain to me what is on the outside of the M5 Stuart, the things that look like radiators, and the late turret protrusion which looks like an MG shield.

The sheet metal on the side of the turret is to protect the MG mount, the box on the back of the hull is a large storage box replacing the pioneer tools.

http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/US/M5_stuart.php

This may be of some help.

For Normandy, you can use a mix of the mid and early since most of them would have been pulled from the desert and Italy. That's what I did. Also I believe the track guards could be removed by the crew

 mashguy wrote:
For Normandy, you can use a mix of the mid and early since most of them would have been pulled from the desert and Italy. That's what I did. Also I believe the track guards could be removed by the crew

Late should be viable as well. That's a hedgerow cutter on the front of the Late model, which would be something that was used in Normandy.

In any event, Stuarts wouldn't be in production for much longer. The first M24s saw combat a mere six months later.

The M3/5 was in production into 1945 and stayed in service till after the war. M24s were not widely available. The first 34 arrived in a combat unit in November 44. The Chaffee was slow to reach widespread use, by the end of the war in Europe the Stuart was still far more common.

In Normandy, the M5 and M5A1 were both seen and even M3A3s, the Cullin Prong though would not be seen until late July/August after it was developed.

If you have a specific unit, then work off that.

The first M5A1 were built in 1942, but didnt see combat till the following year. The M5 made its debut at Casablanca. No tanks from Italy or North Africa were transported to use in Normandy. While troops transferred, the vehicles were generally left behind for other units rather than waste valuable space. For D-Day, vast numbers of vehicles were shipped direct fir the US and huge vehicle laagers were assembled for units to draw from.