The Soviet VVS in WW2 for Rapid Fire! rules and in 20mm size

This group of Soviet aircraft covers the entire conflict from Barbarossa up to the Berlin offensive. The models are mostly plastics (Airfix, ICM, Italeri, Eastern Express, Gribovski, Revell and Encore) with many Die-Cast (Altaya and Luppa).

Next: the NVA infantry.

The Luftwaffe for Rapid Fire! rules and in 20mm size

This collection tried to get the basics of the German Luftwaffe for all WW2 periods. There are all major brands like Airfix (some from the 1957 originals) , Revell, Matchbox and several of the newer Altaya and Luppa die-casts. The darker Me262 is a Frog model from 1972 that I forgot to mention.

The Slovak Fast Brigade at Lipovec 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! - Part 7: The small cars, new unexpected airplanes and some artillery

 

Making the Slovak Fast Brigade is a funny project as you can´t find many types of vehicles or guns in one place something that forces to look everywhere from plastic, resin, scratch or 3d. In this post you can find a bit of all of them. 

These ones came from Poland (Martola Model Shop) from a 3d resin brand called EMP  which, among dozens of others, has (L to R) these Tatra T82 (instead of Tatra T27 as pointed in the RF! Blue book) with the  20mm oerlikon AA, the Tatra T-72  and the Tatra 57k. The models are true beauties with very easy to clean resin debris from the 3d printing process. The interior of the Tatra 82 is very complete but I prefer to close all windows with pieces of plastic card. I did the same on the other two vehicle´s windshields as they were very detailed but also fragile. The barrel of the 20mm Oerlikon broke  and had to be replaced by a drilled piece of plastic. 

These two, a Letov S-328 and an Avia-534 from KP were very kindly sent to me by the RF! expert Alan McCoubrey. These two are very handy, an extra Avia-534 is always good as the Fast brigade had around 36 of them (three squadrons). The Letov S-328 was also missing in my collection as the one I had was sent to Poland 1939 disguised and converted as a Polish  reconnaissance aircraft. The only change I made in these two was the markings that were hand painted and the two figures on the Letov which came from the Hasegawa Kawanishi H8K. 

The Tatra T82 was used as an AA mobile platform. Not sure it was used in this way in mid 1941 but there is visual confirmation of it around 1943 at least. The figures are Hat WW1 Ottomans with Esci British paratroopers heads which is (I realised that pretty late) the best  plastic heads for the Slovaks. 

This photo is from 1943 and it shows a 20mm AA gun on top of the Tatra T82 (caption says it)  and that is why our masters mention the 20mm AA being towed/carried on top of Tatra T27 and not T82...

The Tatra T-72 will go for the Mixed Reconnaissance Force HQ and the Tatra 57k will be carrying the observation team of the 11th Artillery Regiment.

One more FtF Praga RV was used to pull the 75mm mountain gun of the infantry battalion. This time I camouflaged the truck with the same colors used in the Slovak tanks as shown in Tank Power magazine No 471. 

The 75mm mountain gun was scratchbuilt from an Irregular Miniatures barrel and some Revell XVII century wheels.  The carriage came from an old Airfix 25pdr heated and twisted until in place. The shield and other small details were made in plastic card. 

The crew is again Hat Ottomans with Esci paratroopers heads. The netting on the helmets is no problem as its barely invisible after two coats of paint.  

Next: wether Vietnam or more Slovaks

Rapid Fire! Blitzkrieg in 20mm - Additional German bycicle fusiliers, artillery and staff cars for the 18th ID and 7th PD

The bycicles convinced me to add all other things: The bycicle Fusiliers are necessary for the OB of the 18th ID together with Staff cars and artillery limbers mentioned in the RF! Blitzkrieg battlegroups for May 1940; the 20mm Flak gun is the last piece missing for the Flak battalion of the 7th PD that wreaked havoc in the ranks of the Matildas in the Arras action.

The Cadillac 1941 from Matchbox is the closest I could find to the Opel Admiral and this photo made me buy the two toys in a local supermarket. 

The wheels were replaced by some better ones from Airfix and Matchbox as the original ones are generally what spoils these kind of models. Some 3d resin extra jerrycans were placed copying the original photo as they also help to disguise the different front of the Cadillac in relation to the Opel. 

So together with some ACE staff cars already made I´m more or less done with these kind of vehicles for the Panzer Grey period. 

The Hat box of german cyclists was once again (after the Slovaks) used to make these German fusiliers using BlueStuff as the matrix and two component resin as the filler and lost details with Milliput. The original resin heads, turned into blobs and were replaced by Esci DAK heads. 

Together with the resin contraptions a few more dismounted cyclists were made using old Atlantic, Airfix and Esci figures. 

"- Hey Hans, is it us overthere on those bikes?

- Of course not Helmut! You are on too much Pervitin!"

After another moment of fine poetry lets have a look at limbers. There were still three Revell limbers around without horses, wheels or figures that must have been used somewhere else. I coupled the limbers with Napoleonic horses, wheels of unknown origin (some are 3d printed) and figures from FtF. The horses had to have some Milliput extras as they were demoted from the fancy line cavalry to the hardships of horse artillery. 

Limbers on the wargames table or even on a shelf, like mostly my case, are always a nice sight. The card bases were strenghtened with super glue. 

In the end you have some reasonable looking limbers to pull guns from the 75mm caliber to 150mm. The harness was heavily transformed and reduced in lenght as I didn´t want the huge final model that Revell offers even if its the correct one. 

One more Zvezda 20mm Flak 38 was added and this one will be closer to the 7th PD assets as it concludes its Flak battalion. The standing figure to the right is FtF. 

Next: More Slovaks or reinforcements for the 1944 British airborne division. 

The Slovak Fast Brigade at Lipovec 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! - Part 6: The vz.37 anti tank guns and the Engineer Company

The vz.37 was the standard 37mm gun used by the Slovaks. In the Fast Brigade they existed in the infantry battalion, the tank battalion and in the Mixed Reconnaissance Force making a total of eight models (close to forty in real numbers).

 

I was a bit lazy and made four of them as they don´t have tank opposition in the Soviet side at least in our Blue Book scenario. For that I used the Hat surplus wheels of the IG75 and all the rest was made in plastic card. The figures were the usual WWI Ottomans with Airfix paratrooper´s heads.

 

A good thing about most of these figures is that they have the same type of harness as these ones in particular were manning the 08 MMGs. 

The gun became close to the original maybe a bit longer than it should specially in the tube. 

Three of the crewmen are laying down with a range finder. I´m not sure if this device was proper to these small anti-tank guns but I´m now short of artillerymen. 

As I also run out of ESCI Italians some Airfix figures were used for the Engineer Company. I found nothing on the appearence of these guys apart from the brown colar patches and so I followed the trend of Simon´s Soldiers French engineers with backpacks (in WWI German style, as infantry) and shovels for these too. 

The only different figure is the flamethrower who is made from an ESCI Afrika Korps torso as these guys here in this picture with an overall suit and no puttees. 

One more unit finished. Now still a few things to be done:

- Some staff cars (x3) and a motorcycle.  

- The last few Skoda (x3) and Praga trucks (x6) and the LT-35 tanks (x3).

- The AA guns (x2) and the mountain gun (x1). 

Next: more Slovaks 

The Slovak Fast Brigade at Lipovec 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! - Part 5: The vz.30 100mm artillery guns

 

These ones were a true challenge. After looking at the excellent Brushes and Bayonets blog

http://brushesandbayonets.blogspot.com/2019/12/fow-slovak-artillery-10cm-vz30-battery.html

that makes its fantastic stuff in 15mm, I decided to use the Hat industries box of Ottoman WWI artillery with four excellent 10.5cm field howitzer and plenty of figures that can easily be adapted to Slovak needs. I already made a box of these for my Gallipoli Turks and they are extremely useful as the basis for a number of armies and guns and that includes the artillerymen. 

The figures got British paratroopers heads from the old Airfix set. Another good source of Slovak helmets is the ESCI British paratrooper set as the helmets become bigger and with the correct shape. The only thing you need to to is to cut some camouflage cloth strips and use several layers of paint to eliminate the helmet´s net. You can see one of them kneeling in the top right corner. The figure holding the range finder (below the figure with ESCI head) was originally lazily laying down and was heated with a lighter and placed in a standing position. 

Here can be seen the most important changes on the guns: the shield, including the seat on the right side; the longer barrel and the cradle. The range finder figure is on the more distant vz.30 gun. 

The shield was made from plastic card and bent to shape in hot water (followed by cold water). A number of details are necessary on the shield as some vertical bars along the elevation opening, the vision port and the elevation blockade on top of the shield. 

The cradle is simply a block of polystyrene. The spade box was glued as if stuck on the ground already. 

Some ammunition boxes were added in the end and all was set. 

As you can see the Esci Paratrooper´s head (kneeling to the rear) works better than the Airfix head. The holes in the rubber wheels were simply painted as they looked too tricky to carve. 

A photo of the real thing. Not the easiest gun to scratchbuild as you can see. 

Next: More Slovaks, namely some AA and AT guns and also the engineers. If mail arrives in time there will be extra LT-35 tanks and Praga trucks. 

The Slovak Fast Brigade at Lipovec 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! - Part 4: second group of trucks and cyclists

 

The Skoda 6ST6-L (they could have given these things an easier name) were used to pull the vz.35 105mm guns but you can find them carrying infantry in period photos. You can solve this issue by ordering Wespe models from Romania which are excellent but these three would have been close to 100 euros PP included. After a blog conversation with Neil Patterson I went to convert three Opel Blitz from the stash and the result is reasonable. Maybe the fourth one necessary will be Wespe as I´m curious about the true size of this truck in 20mm size. 

Masters ordered us to have two companies of cyclists for the Lipovec scenarios and these had to be somehow converted as there are no Slovak cyclists anywhere for sale. Even Masters converted some Raventhorpe Germans for that effect. These will have the basis of the Hat German cyclists and were duplicated in resin. 

This is the drawing of the Skoda truck. The main changes in relation to the Opel Blitz are the cooling entries on the engine part, the six wheels for a tandem rear axle, the boxes on the chassis and the tilt size and shape. 

Here you can see the main transformations still before the increase of the tilt. The similarities between the two trucks are evident. 

The windshields were covered with plastic card as Airfix doesn´t provide clear plastic parts. 

The undercarriage became a bit messy (or Ronaldo if you prefer) as I used hot glue to level the wheels). 

A layer of Milliput was applied a few millimeters below the tilt to make it bigger than the Airfix one. The cargo bed on the Skoda is also smaller than the one on the Opel Blitz so everything goes well in terms of general dimensions. 

The cyclists are Hat Germans with ESCI Japanese heads. 

The cyclists were duplicated with BlueStuff and Araldite two component resin. 

Most of heads became a blob of indistinguishable shape and were replaced with heads from the British paratroopers Airfix set. Milliput was used to correct arms and hands as many were not printed in resin. Finally a piece of plastic was drilled on the rifle socket as these ones were taken out in order to duplicate the parts more easily. 

In the end you can have a merry bunch of Slovak cyclists were no two are alike. 

Next: More Slovaks as this is a challenging group. 

The Slovak Fast Brigade at Lipovec 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! - Part 3: first trucks and artillery (105mm vz.35)

 

While at the IWM I noticed the similarities between the Soviet 122mm M38 howitzer on the second floor and the hard to find Slovak gun 105mm vz.35 from which  two models are necessary for the Lipovec scenario. The last one clearly influenced the design of the Soviet gun as the vz.35 was one of the most modern guns in the world in that category in the 30s and influenced plenty of designs even up to the Cold War period. So two Zvezda copies of the 122mm M38 were hurriedly ordered from AliExpress as they became the basis for the Slovak guns. 

Most of the parts of the vz.35 gun barrel came from the Zvezda copy but the longer tube was taken from pieces of sprue. The gun tube of the vz.35 was particularly thick and it looks like a much larger calibre. The split trails are Russian 152mm Irregular Miniatures parts from the storage boxes and the wheels are Airfix from the Scammel model. I tried to get closer as much as possible to the real thing and thus a lot of small parts from different plastics were added a bit everywhere. 

If a gun can be elegant, this one is for sure. 

Broom bristles were added as the measuring rods and the ground anchors. 

The final result is quite nice with the addition of crew which helps to obscure the small faults and attracts attention :)  

This other picture helped to make the details on the right side of the gun. In fact, even if this gun was not very common, the Germans took plenty of pictures of them that you can find in the web, particularly the ones at the Atlantic Wall. 

This picture was taken before adding the last detail to the inner part of the shield and cutting the shield a bit more on all four sides. 

Far from perfect but looks the part. 

The crew came from Hat US WW1 bodies with Japanese and Marine heads. For the Slovaks you need M1 type of helmets but as flat as possible at the base. I got plenty of inspiration from a very good blog called 

http://brushesandbayonets.blogspot.com/

were you can find everything I´m also on the way of making for the Slovaks. 

Some ammunition boxes added and all was set. A straight line of blue helps to break visually the ondulating base of the M1 type of help and makes it look like the Slovak helmet. 

Two FtF Praga RV trucks were added and they will go to the infantry or smaller artillery tows as the vz.35 was towed by the larger Skoda 6ST6-L that I have no idea were to get. 

Next: depends on the mail, but more Slovaks or a return to AWI.