Rapid Fire! rules - Bir Hakeim 1942 (part 3) - First set of fortifications

 

Unfortunately I still don´t have a good reference book from where I can get somecomplete images of the French defences at Bir Hakeim. Fortunately, the Web gives some help and you can make Bir Hakeim  as if you are building a puzzle. My initial idea was to make larger pieces of terrain integrating trenches, walls and revetments but instead I´m making individual pieces, due to the lack of  information. Later it can be put together in a correct way when more information is available. The only good thing about not having precise information is that you have to go generic in many of the terrain features allowing it to be used in other scenarios. 

The Turkish fort was built in blue board, as most of the stuff you can see in this post. There are some nice images from Google Earth that you can use for the generic shape. I kept it on the small size for not to dwarf other terrain features. 

Small pebbles help a lot in this kind of terrain where most of the features were neglected and ruined. 

Th small wall at the top is my imagination but some sort of walls must have existed on top of it around May 1942.  

There is a set of walls around the fort and the curved one was built  specifically for it. 

This view from the fort shows what I tried to achieve. 

In this after the battle photo you can see the the Turkish Fort at the top left corner and the famous house (blockhouse?) that shows up as soon as you google "Bir Hakeim" (not the Parisian station). 

Again Blue Board for this one. The 4cm thick board was sliced into parts a bit thicker than 1cm in order to make the walls. In fact you can have this kind of size in DIY stores but I just used what I have at hand. 

After painting the house with ochre colors I applied some hypothetical diluted white paint on parts of the structure. 

This type of trench can have some 1/2 battalion inside and some eight are necessary for the entire four battalion´s defence. 

The 4 cm thick blue board was reduced to around 3 cm and divided in three parts for better and easier carving.  

After texturing the piece with a mix of cat litter and fine sand the two component paste sand bags were applied. When everything is dry the sand bags got some super glue for extra resistance. Don´t do it on the blue board directy as the blue board will melt.

This set of resin walls and sand bags was given to me by my friend Mário Laranja and will be used in many places of the Bir Hakeim compound including the Roman water cisterns. 

The exception is the curved  wall on top that will be part of the Turkish Fort complex. 

Next: More Bir Hakeim or the 3rd US PIR for the 1944 campaigns.