Rapid Fire! Desert war 1940-43 in 20mm - Numbers for the British 8th Army

A British Task Force prepares the defence of the oasis of Ras-al-Boris. This time the force defending Ras-al-Boris is prepared against any kind of injury, virus or desease suffered by the British and some proper medical measures were taken as you can see by the Ambulance Jeep.

The M-7 Priest SPG Regiment got its 4th vehicle. Again an Altaya repainted model. 

The 25pdr and Morris tow is the 6th and last for the towed 25pdr Regiment. Altaya repainted and soft plastic crew. Only the seated crewman is a hard plastic figure from PSC.

This is the 3rd 6prd Portee so a full Motor battalion is complete but still far from the necessary eight for an Anti-tank Regiment. Again repainted Altaya with a soft plastic crew from Esci, Airfix and Matchbox.

This part will be longer while I will try to show how you can take advantage of the leftovers of the PSC box of M3A1 Light Tanks built for Ozereika.

I found on the web an award winning 1/35th scale M3 painted in this kind of blue and just copied it. 

All symbols were hand painted (that can easily be seen 😕).

At the moment a complete M3 Honey battalion of 10 models is done. 

As told in the previous a total of six models can be made from the PSC box, three of them directly from the sprues an another three with a few extra parts.The 30.cal Browning is made of 8 small parts stuck and drilled together. 

The driver's plate is easy to make. Not so much for the gun and I was lucky to have kept 3 mantlets from Hasegawa's M3 models. The gun itself is metal tubing with a cover of drilled plastic in its thicker part. 

The bottom part of the chassis is Styrofoam with a few plastic parts added. You can use superglue on the Styrofoam to glue whatever you want if you apply a generous coat of PVA glue before. 

But the funniest part of these builds was this small Matchbox Jeep converted to an ambulance. Two stretchers from Airfix were added as well as a scratch built intravenous infusion system. 

Next: whether the motorcycles of the QVR for the 1940 BEF, some soviet gliders and planes or the Naval infantry for Ozereika. 

American War of Independence - Will McNally's rules - Modelling AWIArtillery

The PSR site is a normal way for us to find useful information on our beloved plastic figures. It also help us save some unuseful buyings like in my opinion with AWI artillery. This is the case of the IMEX artillery, the only company that produces plastic boxes on the subject. The IMEX  figures shown in the PSR site are absolute beauties but the problem comes with the artillery pieces themselves. They are small and without the usual side box between barrel and wheel. Besides no limber or news about it in the future.


So the solution came from the old 7YW Austrian box of artillery. Plenty of poses (15!!!), good barrels and carriages, plenty of horses and riders, everything you need to portray AWI artillery. Of course the uniform is Austrian but it can be adapted easily to all beligerants of this war.The rest is some imagination and a few hours of work.

What you loose from not using the IMEX items are the figures who are real AWI figures while these ones are designed (and well) to the 7 YW which happened in the previous decade. So the uniforms are not the exact ones but they can be changed with a proper paint job.

The Airfix and Esci French or British  Napoleonic artillery will also be useful as you will see.

  

The 3pdr is made from Airfix French  guncarriages, Revell barrel and styrene stowage boxes.

The 5.5 inch Howitzer barrel  comes from ESCI on a Revell carriage. I didn't completely plugged the wheels into the axis as the gun would be too narrow.

 The 6 pdr are a marriage between Esci and Revell.

The Hessian 4 pdr are the original Revell models without the two connections at the end of the carriage which were typical of the Austrian Flying artillery of the 7YW.

The limbers for the 3/4 pdr are Airfix carriages turned upside down and glued to the horse. The pintle was cut from the part that enters the unecessary wheel.

This time wheels were necessary. The 6 pdr limbers  are again made from Airfix parts that all of us over 30 YO will recognize.

Don't forget to search the Web for good information. Can't remember the site of this page, as I Google for images sometimes and loose track of their origin, but you can see (Left  to Right) the French 4 pdr; the American 6 pdr; the British 6 pdr and the 3 pdr. Also some limbers at the bottom right. 

6 pdr and 7.7cm FG found in Figueira da Foz

The beautiful beach city of Figueira da Foz kept hidden from my eyes two old artillery pieces, one from WWI and another from WWII.

They are located near the Monument to António Gonçalves Curado, the first  Portuguese soldier killed in WWI (no, don't feel ashamed by not knowing it, I also didn't till I read it on the monument).

This memorial is close to the Guarda Nacional Republicana  (Republican Guard) barracks  in Figueira da Foz.

It's a place visitors and tourists rarely go, and that's why after coming to this city hundreds of times I never bumped into it.

 

This is a Krupp 7.7-cm FK 16, similar to its  older brother FK 96 but with a longer barrel. 

The Germans made this caliber bigger than the French 75mm or Russian 76 so they could use their ammunition if captured but not the other way around.

The other one is a British 6 pdr. This finding would have been very useful when I scratchbuilt the airborne version for my WWII 1st airborne division. 

The sights are still in very good condition and all detail can still be seen.