Rapid Fire! Operation Barbarossa and beyond in 20mm - One more group of early Russian armour and artillery

 

21st June, 1941. In Soviet occupied Poland at a place called Zbigniew Boniek Wiatrak (wiatrak means windmill) a large mixed group of artillery and tanks receives orders to prepare for  engaging a possible threat coming from German occupied Poland. 

All vehicles are MiniGeneral 3d prints and the 203mm B4 artillery pieces are Altaya diecasts. 

The MiniGeneral Voroshilovets got a canvas cover made of BlueBoard and small paper windows. 

The Altaya B4 howitzers were repainted to conform with the Voroshilovets tractors. The crew is mostly Italeri with a few Esci and Revell. 

Officer - Comrade girl! Can you please take your (beautiful by the way) ass out of here! And take  your Call Center with you! We need to deploy our guns here! - He said in a very angry tone. 

Radio girl - Wait a moment Comrade. I'm finishing my conversation with Comrade Stalin...

Officer - Suuuure... Comrade supreme.... I'll bring you a chair!

You need a battery of two of these guns at Corps level. I already have two from Irregular Miniatures but like this I can use this new battery for the second Corps of my Kursk OB. 

One of the T-34/40 got a crewman (Orion modern Russian Federal forces box), a radio antenna and a new turret hatch. All of them got the side boxes seen many times in the early versions of the T-34. 

The Orion figure is particularly good for the open hatch of the T-34. Originally he is pouring a drink from a glass but here he became intolerant to Vodka. Some of these PLA models have very distinctive printing lines and some Vallejo putty had to be placed and then sanded in order to hide them. 

The T-34/40 group with their distinctive low velocity L-11 76,2mm guns. The first group of six  T-34/40 I made years ago were conversions from the Matchbox model. This group's camouflage is in conformity with that older group. 

I added a second T-28 model 1934 to the collection and made this one a command version by adding a leftover antenna from a Diecast T-26, another Orion figure and an open hatch. 

The camouflage is close to another BPM model I have of the T-28 model 1934. The number 69 was added simply because the tank commander was in love, so I was told. 

The other two T-28s are the rare 1940 model of which only some 12 were made. 

I remember once reading an article in an old Military Modelling magazine about making a T-60 from plastic card. Never had the courage to do it! 

A sole T-38 with 20mm gun came as a gift from Pedro Pato, the MiniGeneral CEO (also designer, printer, seller, advertiser, etc). MiniGeneral has enough employees so no recruiting is necessary :)

Finally my first few BT-5 were added to the Barbarossa models. This group was very close to be transferred to the SCW as it was this exact model the most used by the Republicans. 

Present in most of today's pictures is this nice vac-formed Polish windmill from Remi which I found in the middle of some boxes and that was produced in the early nineties. Its an easy build and a most needed one as I have very few structures for the Eastern Front. 

Next: France 1940, Arnhem 44 or Epic ACW.