LVTE-1 – the US Floating Armored Personnel Carrier

The LVTP-5 (Landing Vehicle, Tracked Personnel Model 5, colloquially known as the “Amtrac”) was a floating, lightly armored troop transport vehicle of the United States Marine Corps. It was widely used during the Vietnam War. The Philippines also used the LVTP-5 for a while. It was produced from 1951 to 1957, with a total of 1,124 vehicles of various configurations. Designed in 1951 as a successor to the still-in-use LVTs, that had been developed during World War II, the LVT-5, unlike its relatively open predecessors, was designed as a fully enclosed vehicle to improve protection for the soldiers it carried. The armor consisted of rolled steel plates, ranging in thickness from 6.4 to 15.9 mm, welded into a watertight hull. A large, hydraulically operated hatch at the front was sealed to the hull with thick rubber grommets. This hatch, spanning almost the entire width of the vehicle, allowed for rapid boarding and disembarkation of paratroopers. There was another large, opening hatch above the cargo compartment. The driver's seat was located at the front left, next to the hatch, while the commander sat on the right. Both had five M17 periscopes. Between the two driver's and commander's hatches, a 360° rotating dome turret housed a “Browning M1919” machine gun with 250 rounds of ammunition. Behind the cargo compartment was a 12-cylinder “Continental”  LV-1790-1 engine and a two-speed “Allison” CD-850-4 transmission. All maintenance, ventilation and exhaust ports were located on the top of the tank. The LVTP5 version was designed, based on the LVTE-1. A large, serrated, V-shaped bulldozer blade was mounted on the front of the combat vehicle, capable of clearing a 41 cm deep and 3.7 m wide road in a minefield. Foam-filled buoyancy tanks were attached to the tip of the blade, helping the LVTE1 maintain its position, while afloat. Hydraulically elevating rocket launchers were installed on both sides of the cargo compartment. The spent container of this cartridge simply burned up. Later production LVTE1s were powered by the “Continental” AVI-1790-8 12-cylinder gasoline engine with fuel injection. These combat vehicles are still used in the Chilean, Philippine, and Taiwanese armed forces, and in the US Army they were replaced by the LVTP5A1 in 1971. 

The model is large, quite complex, well designed and richly detailed, only without interior equipment, suitable even for modelers with little experience (but for those, who will join the ranks of experienced modelers tomorrow or the day after tomorrow). The model is beautifully and realistically painted, but it gives the impression, that it has been unused for a couple of years and has been rusting somewhere in a US military equipment dump. The tracks are only from separate tracks and are quite complex. There are no color reserves, the text manual is small and only general notes. The graphic manual is medium-sized, perfectly readable and very informative.