LAST EDITED ON May-23-04 AT 00:09 AM (CDT) Oops! Forgot to say that the Master tank was either local to your kit's former owner, or out of production after a short while. I never saw one and I started hanging around hobby shops from 1952 onward.
The first, OTS legal Squaw was smaller than the later one, but I would have to say that my opinion is that the difference was much less than the numbers named above -- more like 325 vs. 350 or so. Anyway, the guy who now refers to himself as "Veco Joe" was a draftsman and graphics artist for Gil Henry in the early 50's period (Joe Wagner). If his name appeared anywhere on the plans or paperwork in any kits that Veco produced back then, I overlooked it (but, hey, that was a long time ago and the only "old" Veco plans that I think that I still have are from kits of the early to mid-1960's).
So it kinda surprised me when Joe claimed full responsibility for the post-1951 Brave/ Chief/ Papoose/ Squaw/ Tomahawk/ Tom-Tom/ Warrior. I still have no idea whether Bob Palmer ever backed him up on that, but AFAIK, Gil Henry has been off the mortal coil for many years now, and he might not have agreed with Wagner (he might've claimed those honors himslef, for all I know).
All of the first series of Veco kits were upgraded over the 1953/1955 period, and later on Veco continued to follow a policy of upgrades to their better-selling kits every few years, somewhat the way that SIG would do it in later years. There were three kits of the Thunderbird, I believe, as an example, but that was the only one I know of that went through that many iterations.
There were also some occasional changes just in the plans themselves, I'm pretty sure. It is my recollection that at one time I had two slightly different versions of the (Wagner) Chief's plan set, one of which was more or less pre-1960, and another one post-1960.
.
Kiwi
