Rapid Fire! Western Desert 1940-43 - Italian Light artillery

 

Taking advantage of the shadow provided by Ras-al-Schillaci two groups of Italian Deport 75mm guns prepare to fire on the British lines. From now on all Italian related posts will have famous footballer's names, I mean, famous but not as famous as Ronaldo, or Figo or the many stars made in Sporting Clube de Portugal, obviously.

The models are from five brands: BPM3d prints for the TL-37s, Airfix for the drivers, Hat for the Deport 75mm guns,  and Esci and Italeri for the gun crews. 

Stupidly I ruined all eight wheels priovided in the Hat set by trying to fill the spaces in between the spokes with GreenStuff in order to have rubber tyres. So I had to use these MiniGeneral extras that Pedro Pato nicely offered me, with the same size and number of spokes.

The Esci Alpini got its helmet feather carved out and at least one of the arms replaced with two component paste. Also some artillery shells were placed in the hands of half of the crews. 

Painting was quite straightforward and as usual I kept the diversity of colours in the uniforms and equipment to a minimum to save time. In fact the Italian used a mix of European and tropical uniforms together with captured items and a big variety of headdress from the M33 steel helmet, Bustinas to Colonial helmets among others. 

In this Napoleonic style picture you can see the variety of poses you get from just a few figures when you use new arms. 

Well this part was tricky. I wanted to place something else close the guns. At first I thought about the ammunition carriers but then decided by something easier like these 'Carellos Elasticos' intended at saving the old WW1 gun wheels from extra damage. Also due to my inability to make proper rubber tyres I had to go this way. Thanks to FB and particularly to 'Friends who like Rapid Fire WW2' a number of wargamers came with plenty of information that helped a lot. A big thank you to Sally Gardner, Richard Baber, Ian Armstrong and Robert Rycharski for all the information.  

The parts used were the old carriages of the Russian Maxim HMG from Atlantic. These were obviously too big for 20mm size and while the figures are quite nice the guns have  a toyish look only good for these kind of conversions or for a bigger scale. These wheels have six instead of seven spokes but are a close call.  

Again a group participating in Benito's anniversary. These TL-37 with the trolleys are also useful to tow the Italian 100mm/17 guns which used exactly the same composition.

Next: Pz Lehr Grenadiers; France 1940 or a few more Italian bombers.