Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, the Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 6) - Iraqi III Corps support for both 5th MD and 3rd AD

Normally an Iraqi Corps artillery brigade has three battalions of towed guns. In Able Archer rules the 18 tubes of a battalion can be represented by 3/4 models (one represents five) so you have here a total of six battalions as the III Corps received extra battalions to support the Khafji operations. 

These are 85mm AA guns from Irregular Miniatures with metal Skytrex and Airfix converted gunners. 

These BM-21 Grad are Modelism kits and are a very accurate depiction of the real thing. 

The 152mm D-1s guns and crew are Irregular Miniatures. 

The 152mm D-20s are also Irregular Miniatures. 

These 122mm D-30s guns and crews are Skytrex. 

The 152mm M43/37 and crews are Irregular Miniatures and have shields and gun suspensions made in plastic. 

The 85mm AT gun D-44 and crew are more Irregular Miniatures. 

 

The closest PT-76 is a repainted Altaya and the other one is Skytrex both for a Corps reconnaissance unit.

This is the last big post on the subject as the material of the Iraqi Army is somehow covered. 

What do I have for the Iraqi RF!/Able Archer:

- the 3rd Saladin Armoured  Division;

- the 5th Mohammed Al-Kasim Mechanized Division.

- the Corps support. 

What can be done with all this:
- Any Iraqi Republican Guard unit due to the big number of T-72 and BMP-1 present in the 3rd AD.
- Any Iraqi unit equipped with T-62 due to their numbers also in the 3rd AD.
- Any Iraqi unit equipped with T-55/59/69 due to their numbers of the 5th MD.
- Any Iraqi Infantry unit due to the numbers of BTR-60 and OT-64 in both 20th Infantry Brigade and 5th MD.

What is still missing:
- Straight Flush control and radar vehicles for the SAM-6  batteries (I'll go BPM for these).
- Three more K-63 for the missing battalion of the 5th MD (probably S&S models).
- Command BTR-50PU for the Recce battalion of the 5th MD (one ACE model on the table but not a big will to build it).
- Towing trucks for the Corps artillery (not easy these ones).
- A few BMP-2 for the Republican Guard as I only have one and also a few AMX 10P for the same units (probably BPM)
- Two more infantry battalions (have five for the 3rd Saladin but need a total of seven for the 5th MD; need to find Arab modern Infantry, hoping to be Caesar).
- A few Mig-21/23/27/29 plastic kits boxed/semi-built, Die-cast on the shelves to be finished or repainted. 

Next: The painted infantry of the 15e RDP 1940.

 

Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, the Gulf War in 20mm - Marines reinforcements for Khafji

With the last flow of material to the Iraqi Army we could still think that Saddam could win the 1991 war. In order to balance that I needed to get some reinforcements for my Marines in the Khafji sector. The issue was simple as all these five models  are Die-cast (Altaya and Armour) and just needed a few brush strokes.  

This is the Altaya LAV-25. It was necessary a full repaint as it carried the ETO colour scheme. 

Much better than the Altaya version you can see on the right the Armour model. Not only its much more detailed as it carries the turret MG. The usual stowage treatment and basing was applied and the Marines have some transport. In the future I'll go for the BPM range of LAV-25 which already covers all variants for the 1991 Gulf War. 

Finally another Altaya Cobra AH-1S joins the Marines. 

Next: Wether the infantry for the French 1940 15e RDP or the Iraqi assets from the III Corps. 

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!/ Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 4) - Reconnaissance and Artillery

Both the Reconnaissance Battalion and the Artillery Regiment of the 5th Iraqi MD are still incomplete. The Recce battalion is still missing the BTR-50PU and the artillery has even bigger problem as main source indicates 2S1's as the SPG of the regiment. The problem is that such allocation of 2S1 SPG's is unlikely as Iraq received 50 of them and the 3rd Saladin AD seems to have collected all of them. Once again as both the 5th MD and the 3rd AD operated in the same area there may be a understandable mistake here. Nevertheless I keep without knowing which kind of SPG did this regiment had - if any. 

Regarding what is already in the shelves ready for a fight against the glass, the Recce Battalion has three of the BPM Panhard AML. I just added the optical range finder and some crew. 

May be one day I make a few of them for the Portuguese wars in Africa...

The artillery is the Soviet M-46 130mm. I used some parts of the Irregular Miniatures Really Useful Guns range and scratch built the rest with plastic card and tubing. The wheels are from a 1/43 scale rally car.  The figures are Skytrex WWII Americans turned into Middle Easterners. 

Finally the S-60 AA guns are in fact 37mm WWII Soviet guns (Irregular Miniatures again). The overall difference is some as the S-60 has a shield and is slightly bigger  but if one day I find them I'll send these 37mm to the infantry as Iraq had over 250 of them. 

The crew of this AA gun is the Airfix Bofors crew with new heads. 

Next: more 5th MD and its Artillery Corps support or the attached 20th Infantry Brigade.  

Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 3) - The 26th Armoured Brigade

The 26th Armoured Brigade approaches Khafji with its three tank regiments in front and its mechanized battalion to the rear. This brigade has a total of 21 T-55 based tanks (12 are T-59/69 conversions) all but one being Altaya Die-casts. 

This is the converted Altaya T-55 turned into a T-69 (an easy external difference to distinguish from the T-59 are the headlights, covered here in the T-69 and the same as the original T-55 in the T-59). 

The Chinese T-59/69 in Iraqi service had stowage racks around the turret. 

The stowage racks are very difficult to do, specially when you need them for plenty models, so I used one big piece of two component paste and modelled it accordingly. Then a careful painting tried to disguise the imperfections.  

Comparing the original Altaya in Polish colours and the final conversion. 

The changes were: 

- Hull side protections made in Evergreen plastic card.

- Fume launchers in Evergreen tubing.

- Headlights and turret Laser Range Finder in plastic foam.

- Air conditioning ventilator and stowage racks in turret made out of two component paste. 

Another Ace command 'Enigma' T-55 for one of the tank regiments. 

The Mechanized Battalion of the 26th Brigade was equipped with MTLB APC's. The two models to the right are Cromwell and the one to the left is BPM.

Next: Recce Battalion and artillery of the 5th MD . 

Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 1) - The 15th Mechanized Brigade

Here the 5th Armoured Regiment (T-59 tanks) enter triumphantly the Saudi border city of Khafji on the night of 29th of January and passes under the famous city arch. The T-59 are Cromwell models and the command 'Enigma' tank is Ace. 

The 'Enigma' Ace model is not the easiest model, which is the usual with this brand, but the final result is quite good and the model is quite sturdy. 

The resin T-59 from Cromwell is very well done, easy to build and quite detailed. The figures are metal Skytrex. 

Up to now a total of 10 K-63 APC are the three Mechanized Battalions of the 15th Brigade. The ideal number is 12 though (4 in each battalion, 1 per company, plus a command version) so still two command K-63 (YW701) to go. The infantry are the usual Esci conversions with many Irregular Miniatures figures. 

Half of the K-63 are resin Red Star models with Skytrex metal HMG. The YW701  also got a DSKH 12,7mm from Skytrex. 

The other half are my own builds. I copied the Red Star measures and duplicated them in Evergreen plastic card. Its not complicated mainly because of the straight lines of the K-63. The HMG's are also scratch built. The top grill is made of some plastic pieces I had around and the hatches are two component paste.

The more difficult are the wheels. As you can see on the JP model (JP its me...) on the right I made the wheel with cut down cylinders from plastic tubing. Then I filled them with two component paste and finally an even small cylinder right in the middle. It was a repetitive procedure but it paid off in the end. On the left you have another Red Star model as comparison. 

Next: Iraqi 20th Mechanized Brigade, 5th Mechanized Division. 

Rapid Fire! / Able Archer - Iraqi Navy 1991 in 20mm - The Patrol Boats of the Khafji operation

On the night of 29th January 1991 the Iraqi navy tried one of its two daring and courageous sea raids of the war. For that the Iraqis used 17 'small Patrol Boats' from which infantry was landed in Saudi Arabian territory in order to support the attack of the III Corps at Khafji. I could never find any information about exactly what these PB's were. Recently I found these pictures in the web: 

They came under a Google search for the Iraqi Swari Patrol Boats and they were referring  to an abandoned Iraqi PB at Ras Al-Ard, Kuwait in 1991. I'm not sure that these kind of PB's were the ones on the 29th of January raid but as I have no more information I had a go at scratch building a couple of them. 

The P6 Torpedo Boat that goes along the two PB's on the first picture already had its article two years ago. If you want to visit it you can go to: 

http://jpwargamingplace.blogspot.com/2016/04/iraqi-p-6-torpedo-boat-kuwait-1991.html

The PB's are apparently indigenous designs but not even that I'm really sure. I used Blue Foam to get the basic shape of the boats and some card for the driver/troop compartment. The figures are Modern Esci figures, the ones holding a MG42. I used two of them as drivers with GreenStuff arms and four others as firers of the BPM ZU-23-2. The original pictures clearly shows the 14,5mm Soviet HMG instead but I didn't had them at hand. 

The boats were painted as close as I could to the photos of the real thing which includes a red triangle on the deck. So may be the raid was made by Republican Guard units? Never find any confirmation. Its just a thought. 

I made the troop compartment large enough for some six/eight figures each. 

The usual anchor chain was added as well a small Iraqi flag. 

The sea was made of a mixture of hot glue and and some ready to use plaster  I had around. 

This raid finished very badly for the Iraqis as the PB force was completely destroyed at sea by RAF Jaguars. Maybe due to the level of destruction this force suffered there aren't many details available about the 'Khafji Patrol Boat Raid' (as I call it...). 

Next: More France 1940. 

Rapid Fire! 1/72nd scale American Airforce Gulf War 1991

 

At the same time of the building of the Iraqi Airforce I also built the American Airforce for the 1990-91 Gulf War. So most of these models are over 20 years old and are all plastic kits. The era of Die-cast 1/72nd  was still a bit far and model kits still ruled our options. Later I'll show you my newer Altaya US aircraft with the addition of home made pilots.

 

 

This F-14 (Airfix) sports the old fashioned stars of the USN still used by a few squadrons in the Gulf and that were being replaced by the low visibility ones.

 

 

The F-15 was the Coalition deadlier aircraft in air-to-air combat with 36 kills according to US sources. On the left you have a F-15E Strike Eagle and on the right a F-15C. Both are Airfix.

 

 

Here is a F-4G Phantom Wild Weasel. The model started as a F-4E (Airfix) and I scratchbuilt the extra equipment of this SAM destroyer.

 

 

On the left a Grumman EA-6B Prowler (Italeri) and on the right an A-6 Intruder (Hasegawa) that made its last important missions in this war and was being slowly phased out.

 

 

This big F-111F Aardvark is an ESCI model. You have to place the variable geometry wings like in the picture because its the only way  for the bombs to go on the correct position. The Gulf war made the model companies to produce hundreds of new models and some with big design mistakes.

 

 

The F-16C on the left is Airfix and the one on the right is Hasegawa. They were used mostly on air-to-ground attacks.

 

 

Two F-18 Hornets of the USN (Hasegawa). The one on  the right has Canadian markings.

 

 

The AV-8B Harrier (Airfix) from the Marine Corps.

 

 

This OV-10 Bronco (Hasegawa) saw the end of its carrier in the Gulf War.

 

 

Hard to explain why you need this thing for wargames. The F-117 (ESCI) is nonetheless a must have model for this war.

 

 

Two A-10 Thunderbolt (Academy). They were credited with the destruction of 4000 tanks, AFV and artillery pieces during the Gulf War.

 

 

Two AH-64 Apache (also Academy).

 

 

Boeing 107 Sea Knights (Airfix).

 

 

Finally a sole AH-1W Super Cobra (Hasegawa). With the addition of the Altaya die-casts this American Airforce will grow with some 10 more models.

 

Next I'll show you the British aircraft of the Gulf as they are built and painted for a long time.