Rapid Fire! WWII Don Cossack Regiment in 20mm.

The RF! Red Book includes the description of the Soviet Cavalry Regiment in p.59 (If it had shown ten pages later I would not dare to write it here, of course!). The Cossack cavalry squadrons were made years ago but all support units and carts were made after I saw an excellent article on Fb by Paul Seeman that really inspired me to finish this unit. 

The figures are Revell and are lively and easy to paint. I glued all horses legs with hot glue to its stand. If you don't do it they will stay 'in the air'and paint will eventually flake as they are very thin.

The engineer cart is Britannia with Atlantic horses from their Ancient Greek range. 

The horse tows for both 76,2mm inf. gun and 45mm AT gun were made from German Esci models with replaced barrels. The horse tows are scratch built. 

The Regimental HQ can be seen here with the three figure stand of the Engineer platoon. The HQ wagon is mostly made of Styrofoam but more on that later. 

The AA cart is another scratch built model using mostly Evergreen plastic card and metal wheels. 

The Tachankas MMG carts are also built in Evergreen plastic card using Esci and Atlantic horses.

The MMG's are Esci and the wheels are navigation wheels from the Airfix MkI WWI tank. They should have the double of the spokes but I was too lazy for that. 

 

Here is the lot minus the cavalry squadrons. 

The officer: - You go first, comrade!

The soldier on the left thinks - (you could f... yourself).

The one to the rear: - (Uff, I got out of this one!).

Two of the engineers are the ones from the Revell Cossack box and the officer comes from the same brand's box of infantry. The head is from the Esci French Napoleonic Grenadiers cut to shape to look like the the Koubanka. 

Plenty conversions here from Esci and Revell. 

The gun carts have the drivers made from the only Cossack torso that the Esci box provides. Legs and arms were modelled in GreeStuff and the original boots were then glued.

The Tachankas were the most complex to built but I tried to make the simplest version I could find in period photos. 

I used the front wheels of this Britannia wagon somewhere else and I had to use some Esci Napoleonic as close replacements.

The AA cart became a bit too big but after painting and mixed with the others it looks reasonable.

The AA quadruple Maxims were made from four Esci guns, plastic, metal wire and a base cut from a syringe cap.  

The HQ wagon was lucky to have some metal wheels I had around and its body is made of Styrofoam.  The Styrofoam was carefully marked with a pencil to give some relief. 

Next: Plenty of stuff in my head: maybe Barbarossa German and Soviets. Modern Iranians, Bussaco 1810 or some more French 1940. More aviation is another possibility as well as the WWII Japanese army.