The USAAF and the RAF in mid/late WW2 for Rapid Fire! rules and in 20mm ...

This one shows the Allied aircraft for both the Pacific and European fronts. Its another collection that mixes decades old models with an Avro Lancaster finished last night. The usual plastic brands are acompanied by Luppa and Altaya die-casts. This post concludes the WW2 aircraft from the major participants as smaller countries like Poland and Slovakia have their aircraft shown while showing the rest of the army.

Rapid Fire! 20mm - The 6th and last paratrooper battalion of the British Airborne Division

 

This post concludes the two Paratrooper brigades of a British Airborne Division. Now I still have to make the larger Airlanding Brigade as each has three battalions of four companies instead of three. Most probably I´ll only make one one of its battalions as the biggest British paratrooper gathering was the action of the 1st Division at Oosterbeek/Arnhem were the division was already depleted of maybe some 10% to 15% of its strenght. So you can discard two of its battalions from the original 6 paratrooper´s battalions, 3 airlanding battalions, 1 engineer and 1 of glider pilots and R.A.S.C.

As usual I used the Airfix, Esci and Revell figures with a few leftovers from SHQ. The Airfix figures were useful for conversions for the support weapons (Vickers MMG and 3" mortar) and some Esci were also used (2" mortar and 6pdr AT guns). 

The 6 pdr guns were scratchbuilt and only the barrels and wheels are original PSC. All other pieces were made from several types of plastic all superglued at the end. The figures are SHQ, and Esci and Airfix conversions. 

This is an example of a scratchbuilt stand. None of the three mentioned British paratroopers plastic brands (nor any of the newer in the market) has the Vickers MMG and this one was made by heating the arms of those strange Airfix figure with open arms looking like Jesus Christ at the cross and the Airfix 8th Army Vickers with added water cooling system and ammo box made from Evergreen plastic card. 

Next: a British Glider battalion 

Rapid Fire! 20mm - The British Airborne Division Hamilcar and Tetrarchs

Both an Hamilcar glider and a company of Tetrarchs were still missing in my British Airborne division. I looked for an Hamilcar and found three producers: a 3d printed version; the one from Planet Models in resin and a Vacuum formed kit from Contrail with metal parts also. The problem was the price as they range from 90 to 140 euros not counting P&P and the usual excruciating time of wait and customs procedures and pay if coming from the UK. There is also the Britannia model now by Grubby tanks and that one is much cheaper at around 20/25 euros. The problem with Britannia (besides nowadays time and customs) is  that this one would have to go along with my Horsas from Italeri making the Hamilcar much smaller as Britannia gliders are reduced versions of the real things. So I decided making my own as I only intend to have one. The Tetrarchs were easier as they are resin 3d prints coming from Italy but this same file can be printed in other places. 

The Tetrarchs came from Assymetrical Wargaming (Italy) a place were you can also get the excellent Simon Soldiers 20mm figures in continental Europe together with many other fine brands. They only needed a few stowage, antennas and a figure for the command tank. 

 The Command tank got a sliding hatch and an Airfix figure with headphones made from heated sprue. 

The tank colors and symbols were challenging as I knew nothing about it. After reading many internet articles it can be concluded that green+black was the most probable choice as it was used in mid 44 by most of British vehicles. For the symbols I opted in true recce style for the 41 in a blue over green square instead of the red 85.  

The Hamilcar was great fun to carve from a large block of BlueBoard but it  became too tall, maybe by 1cm which is noticeable in this scale. My problem is that I scratchbuild my stuff without much of a proper planning. This way generally works for houses and other structures but its not that good for machinery. I looked for the size of the Hamilcar (only around 1 meter longer than the Horsa, also a big glider) and went for it straight away trusting in pictures for the other measurements. 

The wings are one of the most difficult parts to make as they are going in an oblique way into the fuselage and stick to the cockpit support. So some extra sheets of card with resin were placed to try to give that effect. 

The way the Hamilcar landed  allowed for the wheels to be at belly level. 

The big front door became open as these big planes would be stranded in the battlefield in this form for a long period of time before being retrieved. 

Again too tall...

The overall appearance is reasonable but a German buff can say its a Me 321... 

The extra pieces of card with resin on the wings got sanded in order to break those strange structures. 

The painting was straight forward with large parts of black which helps hiding the flaws and with a style as close as possible to my Horsas. 

All markings were hand painted and go along with a rustic build :) 

There you go: a cheap and entertaining way for you to have an Hamilcar glider to carry Tetrarchs for D-Day, Bren carriers and 17 pdrs for Arnhem and M22 Locusts for Operation Varsity. 

Next: More British Airborne bits as June is approaching. 

Rapid Fire! Italeri 1/72nd scale MKI Horsas

 

These three were on the stash for a long time. The original idea was to have three to MKI standards, one per battalion, in order to transport the men of the Glider Regiment of an Airborne division and three other to MKII standards for the transport of heavy material like jeeps and 6 pdr AT guns. Like these the transport for figures is done. In fact, I was tempted to have the Britannia resin shorter versions instead to these much bigger ones. In the end I prefered these as they are more realistic. The models were quickly assembled without seats and cockpit details which makes the assembly pretty straight forward. The absence of the landing gear in two of the three models also helps as finding the right balance for them is probably the most time consuming part of building these Italeri models. 

So, one in pristine landing condition was built and painted ...

Another one so, so ...

And another one in very bad shape...

Plenty of scattered pieces from the landing gear were liberally spread throughout the base. 

Obviously these scattered pieces should be hundred of meters to the beggining place of the (crash) landing but the basing doesn´t allow it :) 

Due to the rush on making a 28mm Perry stand with Napoleon on it, and only when finishing the last Horsa I then realised that all fuselages were glued in the oposite way which makes the wings being placed some 2/3 cm to the front of the glider. 'Experienced modeller', sure... 

Some sprue plastic pieces were glued inside the broken wings for it to look like broken structures. 

Next:  a video on the 28mm French waterloo army or the German figures for Omaha. 

The Arnhem/Oosterbeek houses for Rapid Fire! rules in 20mm size

This is a group of the most famous houses of the Arnhem/Oosterbeek battles in September 1944 between the British 1st Airborne and the defending/counter-attacking Germans. Most of them are scratchbuilt in heavy duty card and wood for the bases. The biggest help came from the Then and Now two big volumes on the battle were you can see many of these buildings in period photos but also from the two great RF! supplements on Market Garden. Movies like A Bridge too far and Theirs is the Glory made the rest. In the Netherlands there is a RF wargamer called Ludwig that also made this and much more covering the entire area. If you look for him in RF related articles you can find plenty of his tasty pictures. Obviously if you don´t want to scratchbuild these structures you can go resin or nowadays 3d prints were all this material is also available.

Rapid Fire! Market garden in 20mm - Oddities and such (part 13) - Last few models for the Germans

This post is about the last few German vehicles and figures still missing for the new Market Garden RF! book. It´s again a bit nostalgic post as it marks the end of a project started many years ago with the first OMG book and with a few converted Char B1bis into German flamethrowers. Here there are also some extra guns and vehicles that  will be used in other 1943-45 campaigns. 

The vehicles are 3d prints in resin (Sdkfz 11s) and PLA (RSO). The guns are S-Models for the SIG 33, Resin prints for the Zis-3 and a scratch for the 75mm IG37.

These are the two Soviet Zis-3 for the FJ Regiment von Hoffman, part of KG Walther. 

The guns were printed by my friend Mário Laranja and the figures are converted Esci and Revell FJ. 

One of these Sig33 150mm guns will go to the SS Infantry gun Training Battalion of the SS Mattusch KG part of Von Tettau 'Division'.  By having a pair of these they can also become, for instance,  the 13th companies of each of the Regiments of PzGrenadiers of the 12th SS in Normandy.

The S-Model guns are crewed by converted PSC figures from the Support Weapons box. 

Again more PSC and an Esci figure to crew this IG37.

This one was made from a multitude of origins:

- trailer from a shortened Zvezda 75mm gun;

- plastic wheels;

- barrel from an old Esci 25PDR gun;

- muffler from a piece of carved plastic;

- shield cut to shape from a metal part of a Lorraine 75mm SP from Skytrex that came surplus by mistake. 

Another Revell command group for the FJ. 

A few more Sdkfz 11, tows of 75mm/ 105mm guns in late campaigns. 

The models are resin prints made in one (!) piece. Well, it has a separate steering wheel...

The RSO is a PLA MiniGeneral print, for SS Eberwein KG, very nice and sturdy. I have a number of them already with snow in the bases for a  1944/45 VG division but as everybody knows "It never snows in September".  A trick I´m nowadays using in 3d prints is to spray them with varnish before priming them. Somehow the printing lines get much more disguised. 

Next: More HG division fore Sicily 1943.

Rapid Fire! Market garden in 20mm - Oddities and such (part 12) - Mielke Panzer Company

Mielke Panzer company was part of Kampfgruppe Knaust and consisted of two PzIV (one Ausf G and one Ausf H) and six PzIII (Ausf F, G, H and M) on its arrival at Arnhem on the 18th of September 1944. This tank company came from Bielefeld and from the Panzer school of Pz Regiment 11, 6th PD. 

Masters Colin and Richard mention one PzIV and one PzIII on both RF! OMG supplements. Perfectly logical and balanced but, due to being tired of making PzIV, I used two PzIII for this company. Besides, using PzIII in late 1944 makes another distinguishable German unit due to the relative rarity of this tank by then.

The final push  for making this company was the excellent post from Mike´s Research Blog you can find here: 

https://mikesresearch.com/2018/08/26/panzer-kompanie-mielke/

I used for these models the inevitable Concord book by Marcel Zwarts on the German Armour at Arnhem, The Squadron Signal book on the PzIII and some nice photos Piers Brand kindly  sent to me of his own Mielke Panzer Company.

I used an Armourfast kit for the PzIII Ausf. F(or G?...) and  a PSC for the PzIII Ausf. M. 

The pictures I found of the short gunned 50mm PzIII doesnt help much about finding the exact variant. Some mention Ausf F, others Ausf G. In fact the external differences between the two variants are very small: different driver's vision slot cover; signal port  in the Ausf F and different sliding covers in the turret cuppola. 

The kit is a bit incomplete so a few extra parts were added: rear engine cover and air vents...

...antenna resting place, several types of stowage...

... escape hatches on the hull (not used in later models), torsion bars, several tools including a Jack. The engine covers were also wrongly added as they were only present in the Ausf H model (the good news is that Mielke's Company also had the Ausf H so...).  

Armourfast models are nice and cheap. Its true that they are a bit on the undetailed side but with some work they can be turned into a nice piece. 

By having a few extra PzIII painted in the three colour scheme you can also beef up your forces for Kursk 1943, Sicily or Italy 43/44. 

The Ausf M was built straight from the PSC box, only with a pair of new lights on the fenders. The ones on the hull had to be carved out. 

The PSC model is far more complete than the Armourfast. 

I used plenty of extra tracks for protection. Not sure if these tanks had so many has they belonged to a Panzer school. 

This Panhard 178 A/C has nothing to do with Mielke's Panzer company and it belonged (or not...) to the 'Frundsberg' 10th SS Pz Recce battalion.

The model is a 3d print from MiniGeneral. This time some paste - Vallejo plastic putty - had to be placed all over some boring printing lines as this model is already a bit old in Pedro Pato´s catalogue. Even so its a very nice and simple to assemble model.

The usual extras - foliage, antennas and crew- and it was done. I chose the plain Dark Yellow colour after consulting the RF! FB groups were you can always have help from people who know what they are talking about. The figures and some of the stowage came from the PSC German Stowage Set were you get three sprues with dozens of useful pieces. 

Next: Tigers for Pz Lehr or France 1940.