Rapid Fire! Western Desert 1940-43 - Italian Light artillery

 

Taking advantage of the shadow provided by Ras-al-Schillaci two groups of Italian Deport 75mm guns prepare to fire on the British lines. From now on all Italian related posts will have famous footballer's names, I mean, famous but not as famous as Ronaldo, or Figo or the many stars made in Sporting Clube de Portugal, obviously.

The models are from five brands: BPM3d prints for the TL-37s, Airfix for the drivers, Hat for the Deport 75mm guns,  and Esci and Italeri for the gun crews. 

Stupidly I ruined all eight wheels priovided in the Hat set by trying to fill the spaces in between the spokes with GreenStuff in order to have rubber tyres. So I had to use these MiniGeneral extras that Pedro Pato nicely offered me, with the same size and number of spokes.

The Esci Alpini got its helmet feather carved out and at least one of the arms replaced with two component paste. Also some artillery shells were placed in the hands of half of the crews. 

Painting was quite straightforward and as usual I kept the diversity of colours in the uniforms and equipment to a minimum to save time. In fact the Italian used a mix of European and tropical uniforms together with captured items and a big variety of headdress from the M33 steel helmet, Bustinas to Colonial helmets among others. 

In this Napoleonic style picture you can see the variety of poses you get from just a few figures when you use new arms. 

Well this part was tricky. I wanted to place something else close the guns. At first I thought about the ammunition carriers but then decided by something easier like these 'Carellos Elasticos' intended at saving the old WW1 gun wheels from extra damage. Also due to my inability to make proper rubber tyres I had to go this way. Thanks to FB and particularly to 'Friends who like Rapid Fire WW2' a number of wargamers came with plenty of information that helped a lot. A big thank you to Sally Gardner, Richard Baber, Ian Armstrong and Robert Rycharski for all the information.  

The parts used were the old carriages of the Russian Maxim HMG from Atlantic. These were obviously too big for 20mm size and while the figures are quite nice the guns have  a toyish look only good for these kind of conversions or for a bigger scale. These wheels have six instead of seven spokes but are a close call.  

Again a group participating in Benito's anniversary. These TL-37 with the trolleys are also useful to tow the Italian 100mm/17 guns which used exactly the same composition.

Next: Pz Lehr Grenadiers; France 1940 or a few more Italian bombers.

Rapid Fire!/ Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 5) - The attached 20th Infantry Brigade

The 5th Iraqi MD had an attached unit, the 20th Infantry Brigade, for its operations around Khafji. Sometimes this brigade shows in some sources to be a Mechanized unit but there is very little information on this one to be sure. I bet more on being a purely infantry unit as the 5th MD already had seven battalions of mechanized infantry and simple infantry seems more natural to be attached in order to have the departing lines for the Khafji operations protected and to occupy the territory that was to be (briefly) conquered. Everything about this unit in these photos is purely speculative and based simply on the material and vehicles that normally are present in an Iraqi Infantry Brigade of the 80's or 90's. 

I used nine BTR-60PB for the transport of the three battalions. Six are metal Skytrex (left, on the picture) and three are Altaya (right). The Altaya model is much more accurate as its a recent model  but the overall dimensions of the two are pretty similar. 

I was too lazy to convert the BTR-60 to the R-137/140 command-staff vehicles that the Iraqi also had so I used three BTR-152 I had at hand. 

This one is from BPM. The printing lines shows on the top part close to the HMG but the rest is fairly Ok. 

This one is ICM with Hasegawa crew. 

This Zil-157 is also from ICM. I just added a scratch built Zu 23-2 for this unit to have some AA protection. 

A better shot of the scratch built Zu 23-2 with Atlantic crew. I used green camouflage in this brigade as many Iraqi vehicles still had this scheme in 1991 left from the Iran-Iraq war.

Next: Gulf War US Marines reinforcements. 

Rapid Fire! Russian Contemporary Wars in 20mm - Georgian Dana SPG Independent Artillery Brigade

The Georgian Independent Artillery Brigade splits in two in the vicinity of Zhinvali during the invasion of South Ossetia in August 2008. 

The models are the new BPM Dana SPG. BPM is making better and better models. True there is a little bit of printing lines but they are getting less visible  with each model they produce. Each takes five minutes to deal with the extra plastic printing material and one minute to glue the gun to the turret with the hull being the third separate part.

I just added the mirrors, antenna, crewmen and a Dskh also from BPM with a few extras as a longer barrel, aiming point and ammo box.

The crew is either German PSC with the cap slighly carved out or copies of Irregular Miniatures Russian WWII paratroopers.

Next: More Somua for France 1940 . Another batch arrived in 5 days. CTT is back in all its glory so praised be the lord!