Wargaming trip my a### !!! Obviously I had to endure with Regent street, Buckingham palace, Lego Store, Horizon 22, Big Ben, Buckingham palace and that sort of things due to family demands. Well, in the end these were not that bad as London is such a fantastic city.
Let´start with the bad news. I found two places I wanted to visit, closed for good. First I walked a lot to get to Dark Sphere and found it closed. It was one of the last few wargames shops opened in London and that must have shut its doors very recently. The other one was nice bookstore nearby, Ian Allan Bookstore, turned into an hairdresser or something like that, both not far from the Imperial War Museum. This is the state of the art of wargaming and related items sellers.
Bad news are over, as the weather and the city were both fantastic. The Imperial War Museum is a very nice place for information on both world wars and some more recent conflicts. I took interest only in stuff that wasn´t modelled by me somehow or on details for future projects.
Its the case of these four French WW1 small figurines representing (L to R) Chasseur Alpin, 1916 (with the new bleu horizon trousers); a Zouave (mostly linked with Algeria), a Senegalese tirailleur, 1916 and a Spahi cavalryman.
The Sherman present had an interesting piece of equipment attached to the turret which looks like a camouflage net but with Hessian tape attached. It will be these colors I´ll use if I take on any more late British tanks again.
A Romanian infantryman in WW2, an army from which I have nothing and need some for the Ozereika landings. I always found interesting the usage of the same helmet both by the Dutch and the Romanians but had no idea that the Dutch sold up to 1942, which means even during occupation, this helmet to the Romanian army. I have the Hat Romanians that instead of puttees have the gaiters which is a good thing for modelling purposes as you can use a wide range of WW1 and WW2 type of uniforms (belted jacket and puttees) with Romanian/Dutch helmets, both from Hat or Zvezda.
Maybe I´ll use this simple summer approach for my future Japanese infantry as plenty of them are necessary. I was thinking about a more colorful uniform in two tones but I think I´ll stick to this one.
My Tarawa project can only be completed with the Marines 2nd Division. It will be based on the Revell figures and seeing the uniform makes it more desirable.
The camouflaged uniform used by many 2nd Division Marines, almost for the first time in the war. I think I will leave it aside as I have to paint plenty of them and that would be time consuming. The helmet needs to be camouflaged though.
Looking at this 122mm M-38 Soviet howitzer made some light on how to make the Slovak 105mm vz.35. I was wandering as how to do it but after looking at this one we cam conclude that the similarities are obvious and probably the Slovak gun - the most modern 105mm gun of its age(1937) - must have influenced the design of the Soviet one, one year later. Thus while on England I ordered from Aliexpress two cheap Russian guns like this one, copies from Zvezda, and after arrival, obviously, they will have their barrels increased and with a few more changes they will look like the Slovak gun I show you below (photo from the Web).
... and everything thanks to the Imperial War Museum.
The famous Reichtag fallen nazi eagle. Still in the position where it should always have been.
The RAF Museum is quite nice but I was in a rush to go to Hannants from where I took a few of plastics, as I´m afraid to carry metal and we were only with back packs and metal is not very friendly to border police.
The Victoria & Albert Museum is also an attraction point for modellers and wargamers as it portrays a nice collection, among others, of samurai costumes. These ones showed me the way into darker armour that will make painting easier (the problem of samurai armies) as I can use my black primer as the first color.
Some more ideas.
Getting back to easy black.
The view of the HMS Belfast from Horizon 22. Not that I´m thinking about making it... but we never know as it participated in the D-Day landings. Damn! Wish it didn´t!!
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This was the kind of weather we caught at London during carnival´s week. I didn´t go inside the Belfast as I´m not a navy guy and only use these things if they bomb the coast. Rain looks to be back while I write these lines as London returns to normality :)
Next: aircraft and tanks for the Slovaks 1941
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