Monday, 25 March 2024

Great War Spearhead II - Gallipoli 1915 in 20mm (part 12): Turkish reinforcements for all arms



In this group photo you see two of the three available boxes from Hat (cavalry and artillery) and a Made In Macau vintage staff car. The artillery box is an amazing offer as it contains artillery (105mm FH 98/09 models with crew), snipers, HMGs (MG08), bomb boys, officers and cavalry. 


The snipers were placed in the usual 4cm poker disks. In order to disguise the sheen of the barrel I painted the rifles sand in order to imitate the cloth in which many sniper rifles are covered with.  


Colonel Mustafa Kemal, CO of the 19th Infantry Division, and later of the whole Turkish army at Gallipoli, came from one of the extras in the cavalry box. In fact the Hat cavalry box gives 15 figures and 12 horses and it's easy to use other horses for the extras. Kemal used both horse and car to move around Gallipoli. Yes, there are two blue dots for the eyes but they are barely visible. 


A Vauxhall Prince Henry 1914 from a lot of eight I bought in our local flea market became the Staff car of the army. 


The figures came from the artillery box and include a German advisor. The driver is converted from the crawling Japanese from Atlantic. As the knife is on the mouth it became a very typical Turkish moustache of those days. 


The diecast used is quite close to the one used by Colonel Mustafa Kamal (later, president of Turkye, more known as Atatürk - father of Turks) at Gallipoli during 1915.  


The Bomb Boys  are an interesting addition inspired probably in a famous Osprey plate. These kids served replacing their fathers and here all have the rank of sergeant. 


The Artillerymen are using the old white uniform that could still be seen at Gallipoli. 


The 08s have a third figure from the rangefinder figure on the artillery box (bottom row) and from the laying down Esci British Colonial figure (top row). 


The cavalry is a straight out the box simple painting with two extra horses from Italeri. 

Next: The New Zealand Brigade at Gallipoli or more Desert WW2. 

6 comments:

  1. Love the Gallipoli collection mate

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  2. Thanks AI, its a very interesting campaign in fact, from the days were courage was completely blind.

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  3. Great figures and painting! I'm on the cusp of painting Zvezda's RCW figures, and would love to know your process for preparing/priming/painting soft plastic figures. Thanks, Mark

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    1. Hi Pan. First you wash the whole sprue in soapy water (i use kitchen´s detergent but any soap will do) ; then you prime, I paint the figures in black acrylic + white glue, 50% each with paint brush (this will help secure the next paints and strenghten the plastic) ; finally you paint what you want. Hope it helps.

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  4. It does, as I've always been afraid of the white glue primer. I thought it would obscure detail, but seems to not have done so on your figures. I assume you dry brush the main colors, allowing shadows to remain? Your figures also seem to have some sort of overcoat. If so, what do you use?
    thanks!!

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    1. If you don´t trust white glue, add a bit of water. But as 50% of the primer is black acrylic you want need water. As you say, I dry brush main colors allowing some black to be seen. The finish is some cheap gloss acrylic aplied with brush I find in DIY shops here in Portugal .

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