Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - 11eme Cuirassiers 5th company and a few more bits

The 5th company of the 11eme Cuirassiers deploys close to the Meuse in a place called Mur de Pierre in an atempt to prevent the German advance. The 60mm mortar of the command company also joins and a very famous French tank, maybe the most famous, came all the way from Stonne to help with its tracks still dripping blood from crushed Germans...

 The Hotchkiss Mg's and crew are Lancer Miniatures and horse holders and MG carts Mle 1911 M.38 are scratch built items.  

The MG cart is built in Evergreen plastics, the MG is Irregular Miniatures, horses are Airfix British Napoleonics and the driver is Hat. The wheels are copies of Airfix 88mm gun wheels that as they are 1/76th scale fit closely this (pretentiously) 1/72nd model.

The 25mm AT gun is again Lancer Miniatures with Hat crew. The 1937 cart is also scratch built.

This cart has a Revell horse pulled by a Caesar figure with another one from Hat. The cart is Evergreen with the curved poles taken from surplus Matchbox Corvette parts.

The 60mm mortar and crew are Lancer Miniatures with horse holder from Caesar and horses from Hat. The boxes to transport the 60mm mortar and ammunition came from ESCI.

All my horses receive this treatment in order to stay firm in its bases. A blob of hot glue is placed vertically for the legs in the air for them to glue properly. Then if you mask the glue with static grass no one will notice what you did unless that anoying friend who always can notice if you changed socks.

Finally the famous Char B1bis Eure who destroyed 14 German Panzers in one sole action. Its a Lancer Miniature with a Skytrex Cpt Billote.

Next: More British and French tanks for 1940.

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - 11th Cuirassier regiment of the 5eme DLC and a scratch built rare little tank.

                                                                                   

With the Germans crossing the Meuse River the three horse squadrons of a cavalry regiment of the 5eme DLC moves into contact. 

The figures are the WW1 Hat French  cavalry with a few  changes.  

Many horses are ESCI from the Napoleonic Scots Grey box. I used all horses in a standing position for the limbers and horse holders of the next post. Specially the ESCI horses had all legs 'in the air' so they needed to get stuck to the base with hot glue. This procedure makes the stands quite compact and paint stays much better.

 Also made are these three OP for the artillery. I used horses in the standing position and one officer per stand.

The command stand. Only the officer came directly from the box. The cornet has a new arm and the standard bearer carries a printed flag.

 

All cavalrymen had the lance carved out of its right arm. Then the arm had to be bent with a lighter (see the black dot on the elbow area) for the figure to grab the reins with both hands.

An arm of a Hat British cornet was used for this figure. All ESCI horses also had new equipment made out of two component paste.

The OP officers have arms from PSC German figures from the Pz38t box.

As you can see these horses really need to stay properly glued to its base and hot glue is a good way to avoid all those legs  in the air.

I also built a AMR35 ZT3. As only one is necessary per division I scratch built it in plastic card.

The command figure is from Lancer Miniatures.

The AMR 35 ZT2/3/4 was a rare thing and only some four existed per GRDI.

 The camouflage is based on the Minitracks version on its site. But 25 euros (PP included) for a model 5 cm long made me scratch build this one.

 Still in the factory.

The rivets were not a big sucess. Here they are not yet trimmed but even so I should have not atempted to reproduce them. They look as if a bird... you know...

The cuppola is a blob of two component paste modelled into shape.

The rough begginings.

I reproduced the tracks of the AMR35 from an AMC35 from Skytrex with Bluestuff and then with GW Greenstuff . After copying the tracks I cut out one of the wheels as the AMR only has four of them .

The original AMC35 from Skytrex that kindly let its tracks to be copied.

Next: Support squadron and horse holders for this Cavalry Regiment. Probably also a few other models that came from Lancer Miniatures will be included in the next post.

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - Reinforcements for the DI and DCR

 French reinforcements deploy in the road juncture of Vielle Église not far from Stonne and pretty close to Hannut. Well its just some 150km away from each other but doesn't look like that in the picture, right?.

They are Lancer Miniatures with the exception the three Citröen cars.  

These two Renault R-35 are going to the battalion of tanks of the  DI. I have two other from old Skytrex and, obviously, they are the same models with these two having resin hulls. I painted the turrets with a different camouflage from the hull as French tanks  were painted at factory and different parts of the tanks were also produced in different factories.

The camouflage is based on Militaria hors-serie No 98 Tonnerre sur la Ligne Weygand.

These three Citröen Traction Avant started as destroyed vehicles and parts of resin and plaster home-moulded barricades a friend of mine from Germany sent me years ago. The vehicles were half buried side ways in debris and had no right side wheels. So a tricky process of carving them out of the rubble started to give them a new living look.  

  

The camouflage was based on several pictures of L'Automobile sous l'uniforme book. Two of them will go to the artillery (red triangle on white field) and another to an infantry battalion command company (yellow rectangle on white field).

Here is the rebuilding process: new wheels had to be made from two component paste, also lights and bumpers were scratch built. A lot of resin and plaster had to be taken out from the undercarriage but the result became reasonable. In the end some sanding was necessary as well as the usage of static grass to conceal some faults.

The APX 47mm AT guns have Revell and Irregular Miniatures crew. The Revell minis were born as Chauchat firers and were transformed into artillerymen.

The same happenned to the 25mm AT guns crew. I left the UE Chenillettes plain green this time as something plain green in the French army of 1940 is something different for sure!

The changes on the figures were the carving out of the Chauchat and the making of some (big) hands made of two component paste. Then the smallest rounds of ammunition I had in the spare box were used for the 25mm gun crews and some a bit larger for the 47mm gun crews. Finally some rifles were glued on the back of all crew.

Finally I painted the two last Somua MCG5 for the towing of the 105mm Schneider artillery pieces of the DCR. Same camouflage as on the other one for the sake of unit uniformity.

Next: Most probably French cavalry for 1940