Bordurian Tank (The Calculus Affair)

The Calculus Affair (French: L’Affaire Tournesol) is the eighteenth volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by the Belgian cartoonist Hergé. It was serialised weekly in Belgium’s Tintin magazine from December 1954 to February 1956 before being published in a single volume by Casterman in 1956. The story follows the attempts of the young reporter Tintin, his dog Snowy, and his friend Captain Haddock to rescue their friend Professor Calculus, a scientist who has developed a machine capable of destroying objects with sound waves, from kidnapping attempts by the competing European countries of Borduria and Syldavia.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

What can I say about The Calculus Affair? The story certainly does have a bit of everything, adventure, intrigue, mystery, science.

Much like what I said earlier about King Ottokar’s Sceptre, The Calculus Affair is one of those stories that sort of grows on you every time you read it.  I don’t really remember it much as a kid.  That could either be that my school library somehow missed having that particular Tintin story on the shelf, or it could just be that the kidnapping plot was a bit over my head at the time.

Regardless, the conflict between Syldavia and Borduria is one of the main driving forces in the Tintin universe, and The Calculus Affair falls right in the “sweet spot” of Hergé’s career in terms of the quality of his work.  It is much more complex, both in terms of plot and theme than his earlier adventures, and it hasn’t run out of steam and seem to be going through the motions in the way the final couple of adventures seem to be.

It also has some great vehicles to chose from as subjects for my Tintin project.

Now, given it’s prominence in the story as part of the sequence reflected on the cover, the Bordurian Tank was my go-to selection.  However, I also have some plans to build out the Bell 47-D helicopter that Tintin and Haddock commandeer as well as the blue and white Beechcraft Bonaza that the kidnappers use to make off with poor Prof. Calculus.

So it wasn’t really a question of whether or not I was going to build a tank… it was a question of which tank.

Unlike most of the vehicles that appear in Hergé’s (especially later) Tintin adventures, the Bordurian tank is not representative of a real-world counterpart.  I’ve read some speculation that that was Hergé’s way of slipping in some commentary on the cold war given that while Syldavian and Bordurian might not be real countries, there’s definitely a feel of “two sides of the Iron Curtain” about them.  Whatever the case though, the Bordurian tank demonstrates characteristics of several types of tanks.

Since I’m not really that well acquainted with tanks (this being my first actual tank build!) it was a challenge for me to decide what kit to use as the base.  I hummed and hawed for a bit, until I stumbled across the blog of a fellow scale model builder and Tintin enthusiast known as arnoldpassions.  Although not strictly 1/72 scale, Arnold has a Tintin build project of his own and has built some epic results – including a Bordurian tank based off the body of a M-24 Chaffee.

That was all the direction I needed.  A quick scan of the shelf of the local hobby shop turned up a very nice Hasegawa offering of a 1/72 Chaffee.  I also followed Arnold’s lead by getting my hands on an M-24 from Trumpeter and through the magic of kitbashing transplanted the engine grates.  Don’t worry though, I also plan to do what he did and turn the M-24 into Tintin’s Lunar tank.

The build:

The build itself was relatively intensive.  The first thing that needed to be done was remove the various hatches  – including grafting the main access hatch from one side of the turret to the other.  That caused me a bit of trouble, but luckily I happened across a low-cost solution after finding a Matchbox Chaffee at a model show in Seoul.  It might have been 1/76 scale, but the hatch fit perfectly.

There was also significant major surgery to both lengthen and expand the turret itself, remove one of the main drive wheels and re-space the axels.  I also had to cut a new drivers viewport into the front of the main body and then blend in the M-24 grates into the rear.  Finally I had to expand the side skirts and then add back in some of the details – including adding exposed mufflers and pipes to the back end.

There was a lot of cutting, puttying, sanding and repeating involved, but in the end I think I was able to capture the basics of the shape and look.  Once that was all done I was able to paint it  grey/blue, mask and paint some red circles and then print and apply some homemade decals with the Bordurian military markings.

All in all, I’m pretty happy with the result, but please feel free to tell me what you think.