Rapid Fire! Western Desert 1940-43 in 20mm - Reinforcements for Operation Compass

 

A group of tanks and portees arrive at Der-el-boris-on-the-run where a solo battery of the 68th Medium Regiment Royal Artillery, part of the 4th Indian Division, is keeping the Italians at bay. 

The valiant defenders are made of 6'' howitzers from MiniGeneral 3d prints and converted Airfix figures.

The A13 MkI are S-Models and have the symbols of the 7th AD. Only 65 of these were made and most were lost in France. I couldn´t find much information on this precise model in service with the 7th AD in the desert but I´m trusting the information on the fist RF guide on the NA campaign. I also found some information of these tanks in Cyprus so not really sure if 10 of them (2 tank models) were used by this division in the desert. 

These 2pdr portees are more of a way to use the leftovers of a previous order than anything else. Even so the 2pdr portees are an absolute must for desert early war.  After Brexit getting the nice ones from Britannia/ Grubby models became more difficult so I scratch built this group. 

I caught the generic shape of the Chevrolets WA/WB by using three more the Chinese group of 10 models that came in a pack from Aliexpress with the two first being used for the Italian Fiat Autocannone shown around April. 

The guns used are MiniGeneral 3d prints after two good coats of varnish in order to deal with the nasty printing lines. The crew are a mix of AB, Revell and Airfix. 

They became a fit of the fatty side but are close to the original. 

Now a bit on how the whole group was made. The 6'' Howitzers are originally WW1 models. I used some 3d rubber wheels thickened with Milliput for the approximate size.  

You can recognize the artillerymen as the old Chinese copies of the excellent Airfix 8th Army figures. The arms were taken out and replaced with GreenStuff ones some of them carrying with a 6'' grenade. 

The S-Models A13 MkI had a few extras you can see here: a converted head from Valiant, stowage, smoke dischargers, antenna, etc. 

The portees had to have the original (Dodge?) truck reduced to almost half of the length and heavily cut a bit everywhere. Then the miraculous Evergreen plastic card and Milliput did the rest. 

A few extras for a more desert look and they were done. An important detail was to cut the height of the original wheels making them look as if slightly sunk in sand. This detail is important as the original wheels make the trucks too tall for this effect. 

Next: maybe a video on Mortain Germans, Kursk Soviets or British in the desert.