Box artwork for the Tamiya Willys Jeep, the lid shows a painting of. small four wheel utility with a soldier sitting at the wheel. The rest of the box has the title and manufacturer information.

This is a build review for the Tamiya 1/35 scale Willys Jeep, plus the history behind a UK based jeep in WW2. Most build reviews start with a lengthy history of the vehicle type and there are many sites on which you can read about the general history easily. I’m more interested in telling you about building a model of one specific Jeep. The one nugget I will give you is that Jeep, as many of you will know, is a general use name based on the GPW designation. In fact, in US Army documentation, it’s referred to as Truck, 1/4 ton, 4×4 mainly because there were a number of manufacturers who built to that specification.

Being a historian and model maker is always an interesting mix. I’m rarely interested I’m building a generic model and far more interested in building specific things that have meaning in relation to my research.

Quick links

Researching the Washington Hall jeep model
The Tamiya jeep build review
Forget all that and just show me the finished model

The historical research bit

This is a model of a specific Truck, 1/4 ton, 4×4 Willys MB GPW based at Washington Hall in 1944. You can see more about the place in the article about my book on Washington Hall. First, the questions. What kind of Jeep is it? When is the photograph from? What unit does it belong to? Is there anything different or unusual about it? Most of these questions are answered combined, below.

What type of Jeep is it?

It was obvious that the Jeep was either a Willys or a Ford, based on what I could see in the picture. Looking at the partial hood number, 20 is always present as the designator for this type of vehicle and we can only see 343 after that although there are three numbers after this because you can see the end of the last one. I found several great websites that give ranges of production numbers. I was able to narrow it down to a Willys and from 1943MB.com’s Jeep serial lookup , I was able to see that other 343 prefix Willys MBs were delivered in June 1944.

Here I could have taken a shortcut. My good friend, prolific model maker and jeep-owning friend Peter took one look at the picture and said ‘1944’. This was just from the wood and canvas bonnet rests. An expert is worth several hours of research!

Who, where and when

This also partially answers when is the photograph from, after mid-1944. Actually, the unit shown on the Jeep also gives away that this photo is from 1944. The United States Strategic Air Forces (USSTAF) was established in February 1944 as a combined replacement for a number of other Air Forces’ headquarters. This included the “mighty Eighth” here in the UK. The bumper markings are distinctly non-standard (you can read a summary in my article on US Army bumper markings) and show USSTAF and 94SCRD. This was the 94th Station Complement Squadron that was know to be at Washington Hall up until its closure in 1945. There’s a great PDF on the transition to USSTAF and Carl A. Spaatz over on the US Department of Defense website. Actually, it’s a biography of Carl A. Spaatz, but it’s very good on all things Army Air Forces.

An embroidered sleeve patch in the shape of a shield. The upper part had golden wings on a blue background with white stars. The lower part has the letters USSTAF in red on a white background. A white star with a red centre circle sits across both parts of the badge. This is the organisation the Jeep belonged to.

An original USSTAF sleeve patch as worn by units both ant Washington Hall and at Burtonwood.

What can the photo tell us about the jeep?

So to the Jeep itself. A couple of interesting things to note. Firstly is the extra light on the right wing / fender. This is a red light used by military police vehicles. There’s some information about them, but not much. I did find some useful information on these red MP lights fitted to jeeps on the G503 forum. The extra sign board underneath the windshield is interesting. Usually the wording was just stencilled directly on, but this has been hand sign-written. There was a team at the Base Air Depot at Burtonwood doing nothing but signwriting for local AAF units. This isn’t a combat unit so the usual array of weaponry and extras that jeeps are often festooned with wasn’t present.

Building the Tamiya Jeep

The Tamiya Willys Jeep hails from 1997. It’s everything that this would imply, usual great Tamiya part and fit quality, but not up to the detail standard of a modern kit such as the Meng example.

Part 1: Basic construction

Construction of the jeep revealed nothing out of the ordinary and I made the decision to keep it broken down into major sub-assemblies for painting. I dry fitted the components together and, as expected, they went together very well. Here it’s in good company with some of ICM’s figures for the same project. More on why I left the bumper off later. Couple of things to note, there are no hood and windshield catches, something that Tamiya could have moulded in but haven’t. The pedals are a little crude and the folded Jeep canopy under the passenger front seat didn’t seem to have a great fit.

Part 2: Detailing the jeep

I’d already made the decision not to buy the Eduard photo-etch for this project. I like their detailing sets but I wanted a quick project. That was until I broke the wing mirror getting it off sprue! Luckily, this Jeep didn’t have its mirror fitted (true, not just a model maker’s excuse!) but I needed to make a mount. This is the white plasticard piece on the picture below. It’s a bit overscale, but I’m not going to do more than that. Making that mount led me to thinking that the tool holders weren’t great. Using thin brass wire, strips of Tamiya masking tape and a buckle from an old 1/72 Airwaves aircraft seat photo-etch set, I made it look a bit better by adding eyelets and straps. You can also see the buckle ring on the dashboard for the driver’s safety strap. I never did get around to making those straps!

Time for the MP light. I couldn’t find an aftermarket version and even the very well-equipped Meng Jeep didn’t have one. Time to make one!

I looked at various bits in the spares box, but nothing was suitable. I then found this great video on how to make scale fresnel lenses by Dave’s Model Workshop over on YouTube. Once I’d got a lens I was happy with, it was the just a matter of using some plasticard and spare etch framing to build a reasonable looking MP light. Luckily they have a flat rather than domed back.

Part 3: Priming, pre-shading and painting

I primed the Jeep by airbrushing Vallejo black primer. People seem to have problems with this great primer, I mix it around 60-40 primer to Vallejo thinners. I adjust this up to 50-50 depending on how it’s flowing. I usually pre-shade or mottle aircraft panels, but here I tried the same technique I used on the figures, black primer with white highlights.

It turns out that while this works well for a well-weathered Jeep under combat conditions, it’s a little too harsh for a mid-1944 Jeep that ferried military police around a replacement depot in Chorley, Lancashire, England. Never mind, lesson learned for Jeep number two.

Olive drab – a tricky subject

Colour, scale colour and specific colours of military vehicles and aircraft are a problem we’ve all encountered. I would have reached for the trusty Tamiya XF-62 Olive Drab for this one, but I found mine had dried up. Luckily, I’d bought a range of Olive Drabs to try previously from one of my favourite model shops here in the north-west, Widnes Model Centre. I opted for the Vallejo Model Air US Olive Drab (71.043) and airbrushed it carefully over the base coats. I wasn’t entirely happy with the resulting colour, and after a bit of research discovered an article by the mighty Steven Zaloga on Olive Drab for models. TL/DR, his choice is XF-62 with a few drops of dark yellow. The Vallejo is a little grey and a little light according to Zaloga. I’d concur, but I still like it enough not to respray it. Either way, I get great results airbrushing Vallejo Model Air or Tamiya thinned with their proprietary thinners.

Part 4: Detail painting

I mixed up some standard Vallejo colours from their US Infantry set and put a slight colour glaze over the seat covers just to make a bit of difference. You see the real thing in every shade from Olive Drab through to tan. What’s the real colour? I don’t know, but I’m basing it broadly on Peter’s Jeep (with a bit of artistic licence) and that’s good enough for me as his is one the most meticulous restorations I’ve seen. I did a glaze over the jerrican too, again for a bit of difference.

The red lights and reflectors are just hand painted Vallejo. I tried a couple of things out on the tools. The wood is easier than it looks. Painted in Tamiya dark yellow (deck tan makes a good base too), brown oil paint was applied thinly over the acrylic and a stiff brush dragged along a couple of times to produce the appearance of grain. I think it works pretty well. The metal parts started out life as Vallejo Metal Color gunmetal brush painted on (yes, it actually works!). It was a little too metallic, so I added Tamiya NATO black from the back forward leaving a bit of gunmetal showing around the edges as wear. It’s not bad, but there are simpler ways of doing it!

Part 5: Decals

From the start I knew this was going to be a mix of kit and custom printed decals. I glossed the vehicle using thin coats of thinned Vallejo gloss varnish. I always use proprietary Vallejo thinner to do this, it gives really good results.

Tamiya Jeep decals

The Jeep serial is partly obscured so I worked out that could make 20343xx7 from kit decals. There’s no way of making it entirely accurate, so I just picked the easiest numbers to complete it. I knew the stars would be best coming from the kit, too. The kit decals look like they have really thick carrier film, but with a good application of MicroSol and MicroSet, they settled flat and well.

The front of a model jeep showing a large white star and a number on the bonnet.

Custom decals

The remaining decals that are needed to reproduce the Washington Hall Jeep are:

Hand signwritten ‘Military Police’ sign
USSTAF and 94SCRD front bumper decals
As above, but smaller for rear bumperettes.
Jeep shipping stencil

I’ve been making custom decals for many years. Code 3 truck decals for Corgi wagons, many 1/72 aircraft decals. All sorts of projects. This was in the good old days of my trusty Konica Minolta colour laser. Sadly, after a number of years, this ran out of toner with no good or affordable replacement cartridges. The old story for many printers!

I replaced it after some research (and balancing decal with real life needs, like wireless access) with a Brother LED ‘laser’. I’d had a trusty black and white Brother laser for years which gave great service on decal paper, so why not? A quick explanation before I show you why not. I should say, in fairness, that the Brother colour LED is light years ahead of the old Konica in functionality and as a general / business printer is superb.

Laser decal paper comes in two forms, clear and white. Colour toner is transparent and so will not show up well on clear unless it’s on a white paint job. Without some very specialist kit, you can’t print white toner. This means anything with white lettering needs to be printed on white decal paper with a colour matched background. Not ideal, but doable with patience and experimentation. The example below is black on clear decal stock from the new Brother printer. Despite the supposed high resolution of the printer, my old Konica would have got that small stencil fully readable under a magnifying glass.

The side of a bare metal aircraft cockpit and wing. The side of the fuselage shows large code letters FY. — Previous self-made decals with the LED printer.

Self-printed decals

You know what is coming next, of course. LED printers do not have the resolution or colour saturation of laser printers when working at very small scales. The outcome is shown below. What isn’t obvious is the diagonal striping of the block colour:

Two rectangles of olive green painted plastic. Both have poorly printed lettering on them. — The result of using an LED printer for colour decals

That’s the worst outcome I’ve ever had with my own decals. Even my usual trick of undercutting the edge of the decal to leave a solid colour border didn’t work.

The next job will be to strip them off. I almost gave up on the project there and then, but then I found a company doing what I wanted to do back in 2016, printing short run white and coloured decals on clear paper. Actually, my plan was more grandiose than that but, given that they’re doing it and I’m not, their approach has worked much better!

Custom white waterslide decals

I’m pleased that I took the chance in outsourcing the decals. I found custom water slide decals by Phoxy Design online, their offering seemed to fit the bill.

After some reworking of the artwork (they give detailed instructions on the website on what you need to submit), I submitted it online and within a day I’d got the despatch notice. Commendably speedy service! When I got the decals, I realised my mistake which was to pack the trial A7 sheet so full of decals it made it awkward to remove them. Top tip, give yourself some space! They’re cost effective enough to do that.

Using the custom decals

I’m really impressed with the quality and resolution of the decals form Phoxy Design. Like my own, they are on a single sheet of transfer backing and need to be cut out carefully. This is where over-packing the sheet was an issue as I usually undercut around the decal to make the edge thinner. Ignore the edges, they’ll look fine with a coat of varnish over them.

Front view of a jeep showing various lettering and a large star in a circle on the bonnet. — Military Police sign and the unit bumper markings. The latter are that misaligned on the real vehicle!

Rear of model jeep showing small white lettering — Tiny unit stencils on the rear bumperettes.

Side of a model jeep showing the white lettering of a shipping data stencil. — Tiny unit stencils on the rear bumperettes.

Project saved thanks to Phoxy Design!

Part 6: Weathering

Weathering is the part of the modelling process I like the least. Taking all that work and putting grot over the top is daunting to say the least! I’ve not built a vehicle in a long time, so I’m well out of practice.

Weathering plan

I’ve found real benefit in having a plan for what I want the weathering to do. I have a decent photo to base the weathering on and know that it was mostly light weathering on the vehicle body. There is distinct mud in the tyre treads and small lumps can be seen around the edges of the wheel wells and lower body. This is consistent with a Jeep used at a replacement depot but that had been off the paved road at some point.

Basic washes

My first thought was to carefully airbrush light weathering on the model. My friend and superb model maker Carl suggested that a light acrylic wash would achieve pretty much what I was looking for without the risk of spraying or the hassle of hairspray and water. How right he was! Ten parts water, one part Tamiya buff and two parts Tamiya X-20a thinner seemed to do the job well.

The Jeep with a light wash of much-thinned Tamiya buff.

The wheels needed a thicker wash, I then cleaned the excess off. You can see on the front wheel where I accidentally cleaned the paint off the tyre! Cue a pot of Tamiya rubber black and a trusty paintbrush. The wheels were a bit more weathered than I wanted them, so a dry brush of rubber black from the centre rim out toned that down a bit. Likewise a dry brush around the treads again helped to tone it down.

I also tried out a new product, Vallejo’s thick mud. I stippled this with a stiff brush lightly into the wheel arches, around the bumper and on the lower superstructure to try and match what I could make out in the picture. Works well, with more time I would have put more wash over this or do the mud first then the wash.

Rusty exhaust

In the harsh light of the photo, this doesn’t look overly rusty. I used an old technique of sprinkling bicarbonate of soda over superglue. Works reasonably well for texture. I then used Vallejo pigments to stain the white bicarb. This was finished off with a very pale wash of Vallejo Red Leather to bind it all together. I’m fairly happy with the result, being my first rusty exhaust in a while.

Bringing it all together

I sprayed a few coats of thinned Vallejo matt varnish over the Jeep. Just enough to matt things down but enough to keep a slight sheen on the paintwork that you get on real vehicles.

The weathered jeep showing the remains of the blue masking fluid on the seats

By now you will have noticed the remains of the blue masking fluid on the seats. I did get this off, eventually! Much patience and gentle working with white-tac (Blutac is a bit oily) and a stiff brush got it all off eventually, but not without some light damage to the surface. This was a strong reminder, don’t leave seats in the vehicle when glossing for decals and weathering!

The sharper-eyed readers amongst you will have noticed that the steering wheel hasn’t been fitted. The next job is the conversion of the crew figure from wearing combat uniform and a helmet to wearing a soft garrison cap and ‘Ike’ jacket. The Ike was a much shorter version of the four-pocket uniform jacket designed for the M1944 equipment changes. I don’t want to fit the steering wheel until the crew figure is ready!

Go back to quick links

Finished vehicle

With the addition of some Tamiya Clear Red to the military police light, that’s the model completed. My lack of care cutting out the decals did come back to bite me with the washes, but I’ll chalk that up to experience and I’m still delighted with how well they came out.