jp wargaming place

This a wargaming place were you can see a growing collection of miniatures and terrain of many historical periods in 20mm (but also a few 10mm,15mm and 28mm) started when I was 10 yo. At the moment it has several tens of thousands of miniatures from foot figures to Destroyers. Occasionally there are some war movie critics and some travel to military sites. My family considers it the best wargaming site in the World even if it is the only one they know. More on @joaopeixoto5249 YouTube Channel.

Tuesday, 6 March 2018

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - A few more French and British motors, with some nudity.

Well, I hope to have caught your attention with the title. More on that a bit more ahead.

Not far from Bleuville, in fact in the same basement, a group of allied vehicles gathers in support of the next counter offensive...

The group is a mix bunch of Altaya and some die-cast trucks I found in a toy shop.

The trucks are generic but look a bit close to the vast panoply of different Renault, Citroën, Ford and Latil trucks (close to half a million) that equipped the French army in 1940.

Wait... on the left truck... is there a naked women...!?!?

Exactly! The French had such a different array of camouflages that even some nudes were cleverly conceiled on them. Of course the markings belong to the artillery! Maybe this vehicle will become a good objective marker...

What? Me? A pervert? What about this picture of the real thing?

As you can see I`m just historically accurate.

This picture is taken from the French book 'L'automobile sous l' uniforme' probably the best reference for soft skin vehicles of the French army in 1940 and with a reasonable quantity of information and pictures also about tanks.

I felt more comfortable about these models after reading this book as they are fair approaches to the many models available for the French many even requisitioned from the civilians. But not only the French got this treat. The variety of BEF trucks was also so big (many Bedford models O, OY, MC and Morris) that these are surely close to some of them. I'll use them for the artillery, train or even for some infantry if I can't find enough Bedfords 15 cwt trucks.

This was the original form of the trucks.

The main change was the replacement of the small wheels by some bigger and more 'military' chinese leftovers. Two of these were glued together to make one wheel. Then I glued some plastic canvas covers I had around and luckly they fit nicely.

Lastly the Altaya models. Only the left Char B1 bis is a repaint from the German version. The other Char B1bis was a 4 Euro buying from last weekend local 2nd hand market. It had no mantlet, antennae and central rail and all these parts had to be scratch built. It received a light coat of black ink and some sand drybrushing as well as the Panhard on the right and they are ready to defend France.

Next: More French 1940 stuff.