Sunday, 15 December 2024

Rapid Fire! Dieppe 1942 in 20mm (part 4) - The Dieppe castle

 


The Dieppe castle is a dominating feature on the battlefield looking east from the top of the cliffs at Western Headland. Its made of flint and sandstone and its reconstruction dates the XIV century. While impressive you can pass well without it as the nearest heavy German defences were placed below the castle in some nearby houses, but it also housed the fire control  of several artillery batteries, hence the reason for this model ( Stab II./ Gren.Rgt. 935 and Stab H.K.A.R 1252 artillery). There were also some MG nests in the openings of the near tower. 


I left plenty of structures out of the model like the bastion facing the beach and the round wall with ramp leading to the main entrance, together with the Ruffin barracks. This was an obvious compromise as the structure is too big to be placed in a normal table. 


The side facing the beach. 


And the original one. Again, the old part of the castle was considerably reduced in the number of adjacent structures. 


This is the side you most see when looking for Dieppe castle in the web. 


This old picture of the same side is precious as shows a somewhat old look to the castle and not the pristine one of today as it houses a museum. 


The side of the bridge. 



The real one. In order to shrink the castle some of its parts ended up in a different position. 


The castle was made from wood Christmas houses together with water pipes and even some pieces of toilet paper support. The large number of windows was covered with cardboard.  


This is a simple sketch made as I was gluing each part to another. 


This kind of cheap Christmas houses can be found a bit everywhere and they were the base for this model. 



At one euro each and after using some 6 or 7 of these you have a reasonable cheap model.  



The conic roofs were made from some 50 years old kind of lego parts from a castle. Some arches of the same set were also used for the bridge. 

Next: the Dieppe gates ( I also plan the casino but need more information on it)  or more Angolans for Cuito Cuanavale. 

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