20mm Rapid Fire! Panzer III Auf G/H additions to the DAK

Latest additions to the Afrika Korps, namely some PSC Pz III Auf G.

They are marked as for the 21PD. My 15PD is virtually finished and now its time for the other half of the DAK panzer divisions.

The kits from PSC are a joy to build and also pretty accurate. I only placed an antennae, stowage, some sand bags at the front, extra tracks for protection and - unfortunately but for the sake of history- a nazi flag at the rear.

When printing flags I prefer a low quality print as the colours will tone down and will suit better the smaller scale.

Rapid Fire! 1/72nd scale 21st PD Panzer-pionier Bataillon 220

And now, only now, 21st PD for Normandy is done. The pioneers are Valiant and a few Revell with Valiant heads.

The pics were taken in BleuVille somewhere near Caen...he,he... 

 

 

These are the Retrokit Somua MCG S307(f) (available by Milan Vins of Czech republic).

 Convoy Citroen with SHQ bridges, ESCI and SHQ crew.

Skytrex Laffly with a driver with Airfix body (the one in the SDKFZ 7) and Valiant head. The command stand is Valiant.

 

Mine searcher with Revell body and Valiant head.

 

Friend's gift part 3 - Rapid Fire! More DAK vehicles revamped

These are the latest vehicles Jorge Faria gave me and the ones that will fit the Afrika Korps. Once again they were repainted, details and crew added  and some of them heavily transformed.

From back to front:
Sdkfz 251's, Sdkfz 69´s, Sdkdz 222´s, Sdkfz 250´s, Kubelwagens, BMW R-75 and Kettenkrad.

The 251/7 was altered with some valiant crew and stowage besides basing and a new paint job.

Jorge Faria gave me two 250´s. One of them was the 250/9 with a turreted 20mm gun, the same as in the 222´s. That turret went to an Airfix 222 (left)  you can see in the first photo, which allow for that kit to have an open turret.

 That one became the above obscure 75mm IG SP of which no photo is available, at least up to the moment, authorities say. The gun was made in Evergreen rod and tubing, following a Britannia model I have. Plastic crew, antennae, etc were also added.

The other one was armed with a French 25mm AT gun made in Evergreen. This one was easier as there is some photographic evidence of the vehicle.

The palm trees are an hommage to PC who was very sad and could not sleep for some days after seeing  last post with a completely bare landscape.

Friend's gift part 2 - Rapid Fire! DAK vehicles revamped

These are the first few vehicles from Jorge Faria collection given to me a few weeks ago.

They were repainted with diluted colours over mostly original Panzer Grey. Like this you can duplicate the real painting of german mid-war AFV´s that were initially painted Panzer Grey and then other colours were applied.

Thick card bases and details were added. These details include stowage, jerrycans, antennae and crew.

For now a few PzII, PzIII, PzIV, StugIIIC, a PzI Cmdo, Sdkfz 231, Sdkfz 11 and a Opel Blitz can be added to the DAK. The main idea is to make the 3 main divisions: 15PD; 21PD and 90Light division, as well as Ramcke brigade, mainly around El Alamein but with the possibiltity of wargaming all the desert campaigns.

Most of the heavier vehicles are already made, with many PzIII still missing. The main fault up to the moment are the infantry battalions of which I could only make 3.

Sdkfz 231 and PzI Cmdo with lots of small details added and conversions. If you slice a piece of Evergreen rod in oblique direction you can have a nice support for antennae as you can see in the Sdkfz 231. The PzI crewman is a ESCI figure with Valiant head. The crewman in the 8 wheeled vehicle is one of the drivers of the ESCI King Tiger. They were glued to the top of the vehicles and hatches were made out of Evergreen.

The Stug III C. I replaced the very thin short 75mm gun with one from the Airfix PzIV. You need only one in RF! terms as only a handfull of them were used in the desert. This one is a Nitto/Fujimi kit with a crewman from ESCI.

Pineapple Miniatures 1/35th scale 21st Portuguese line infantry, Buçaco1810

2nd batch ready. These A Call to Arms Belgium figures are some of their first and not as good as some of their latest releases or Hat figures. But they are easy to paint and make good Portuguese infantry if you don't get too demanding.

Pineapple Miniatures moves to 1/32nd scale

This is the 1st batch of 1/32nd scale soldiers to be sold at the military museum of Buçaco.

They are Hat French light Infantry and they portray the probable uniform of the many light infantry regiments of Reynier corps.

Hey, stop the car engine, don't rush to buy the last dioramas of 1/72nd scale soldiers, I will do more but for the moment the larger scale is the most wanted, specially for kids.

Friend's gift

Jorge Faria had a plan to defend Tarawa: Plunging hundreds of tanks and artillery pieces in the low tide and thus stoping US marines from taking the island. It was simple, even without ammo the defenders could save the island simply by stoping Lcvp's and Amtracs with tons of metal. Many of them didn't even existed in 1943 and many also were US made... Strange...

Well... easter almonds always made me delirious...

Not everyone can say that one day he received around 200 kits as a gift from a friend.

I already can say that. Some 2 weeks ago I went to Maia, Porto, to the house of Jorge Faria ( see in the web 0 Brigadeiro or Brigada Tripeira) and brought all this, along with many figures, as a gift.

Everything was already carefully wrapped inside shoe boxes and the trunk of my car quickly became full.

These are beautiful plastic and metal kits from many brands carefully built and painted along many years by JF.

The defensive plan...

The Panther area...

The Stug area...

 

The..a lot of things area...

 

 

The Chaffee area...

~

The T-34 area...

The Sherman area...

 

 

The M-3 area...

 

 

The Churchill area...

 

For the ease of display, the photos are divided into "areas", but as you can see there  are many more models than those in the "area" title.

 

One again, a big THANKS FOR ALL THOSE TANKS to JF! They will keep me busy for many delightful moments.

And now dear JMM and PC it's your turn to invite me to your house... Or to pass here and drop your unattended kits.

Corunna military museum

Last week spent a few hours in the Corunna military museum in Galicia, Spain while on a tour with my pupils. It's a very lovely and diversified museum with several floors, a nice shop, dioramas, true weapons, everything very well presented in a classical, sober style.

8 pdr french Gribeauval gun system.

Oerlikon 20mm(?). No! to the right! The girl on the left is Maria, one of the pupils.

They also have some super 1/35th dioramas on the War of Independence, as they call to the French Napoleonic Wars in Spain. The one above was inspired on a painting by Àlvarez Cueto.

The dioramas are filled with conversions from the Italeri; Hat; ESCI, etc boxes.

The coastal forts dioramas are something...

Battle of Corunna (Elvina) 1809 in 42mm. Awesome!...

As the previous Pope, Cardinal Ratzinger, was part of an AA unit in the last days of the Reich, I felt entitled to be more or less the same, temporarily of course, next to an 88mm gun probably left by the Condor Legion.

20mm LCI(L) are Combat Models

This post is mainly for those ("those" are in fact Service Ration Distribution ...) who asked which company made the LCI (L) from last post . After some diving into old FSM magazines I found they are Combat Models Vacuformed kits. They are old kits from the USA, some 15-20 years old or so. The adress is, or was, 400 3rd street, West Easton, PA 18042.

There are some words about it in  

http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/msg.mv?id=158494

20mm Rapid Fire! LCI(L) Vacuformed kits

Some years ago I saw in Fine Scale Modeller magazine Combat Models, an USA Vacuform small company who produced the LCI(L) in 1/72nd scale. The kits were quite nice but details and many parts had to be build by hand. Later I saw in the same magazine a fellow company who produced all the missing parts, both metal and photo-etched, for the same vacuum kits.

The problem was the price of these metal and photo-etched parts that would double the price of the vacuum kits themselves.

I opted for the cheapest solution and made those parts in Evergreen plastic.



These two were used by the american army on Omaha Beach, 6th June, 1944.

 

The majority of the figures are Britannia, as well as the Oerlikon 20mm cannon.

String and nails were used all over, as well Evergreen doors, steps,  windows, tubing, etc.

The rubber boats are resin copy casts from the Airfix boat that comes along their Marine 1/76th scale box.

The green explosions at the back are in reality my mother´s plants...

The wooden base was painted blue and transparent silicone was applyed. After drying it was drybrushed with a mixture of PVA and gloss white acrylic.