Rapid Fire! NW Europe 1944-45 in 20mm - US Airborne and ground reinforcements.

The command group of Combat Command X of an US Armored Division meets in the middle of the Norman bocage. Fearful of a German incursion, the commander request all possible protection from the vicinity and so some Airborne 57mm AT guns and M8 HMCs shows up and make an impregnable ring of steel around him... What a bull###t story! Sorry, but nothing else came to my mind as an introduction.  

This time some additions to the US Armored Division and the Airborne Division. With the Dodge WC53 Carryall and the M8s HMC the Armored division is now complete and the Screaming Eagles finally got some AT protection and tows for the 105mm guns. 

The Carryall is a Matchbox die-cast model I found last month in a second hand toy fair. It looks to be in a smaller scale than the usual 1/64 of many die-cast cars and probably suits our 20mm size pretty well. New plastic wheels from Atlantic, antenna and covered engine (white paste) was added and it looks OK. 

And here it is together with some old metal US command figures, presumably SHQ, given by my friend Jorge Faria.  

The M8s are RTR and will be sent to the three mechanized infantry battalions and their assault gun platoons. The figures are Irregular Miniatures cut by the waist. I chose helmeted figures as for open topped vehicles.

The tiny M8 HMC become very colorful with plenty of markings. 

Half of the  US 57mm AT guns are PSC conversions (muzzle break erased, right side of front protection cut and shortened legs). The artillery men are converted Revell and SHQ figures ( these last ones with EverGreen first aid pads and pockets in the trousers). 

To the left you can see two SHQ 57mm guns and the two PSC to the left. 

Finally the Jeep tandem tows for the 105mm M1 guns were painted, as I had them built for years. The Jeeps are Frontline Wargaming attached to each other with the typical  'A' structure made of plastic card. The drivers are the usual plastic torsos with Milliput arms. To driver to the left is an old Airfix figure driving with his left hand and holding the Thompson with the right hand in a typical Cowboy style. 

Next: French 1940 or Brandywine 1777. 

21st Panzer Division in 20mm for Rapid Fire! rules, Normandy 1944

This is a big unit made along many years. It was built around many brands and around the opinions of different authors and fellow collectors and wargamers. I hope it can be useful to someone making the 21st PD or any of its sub units or Kampfgruppe.

If you want you can go to this Blog´s tag '21st Panzer Division' a see more posts on the issue with plenty of pictures and explanations.

Rapid Fire! Normandy 1944 in 20mm - The unarmoured Unic P107 of the 21st Panzer Division

Both 2nd battalions of 125th and 192nd PzGrenadier regiments meet at Carrefour-Courbé, not far from Caen under the protection of a self-propelled AA gun...

This group is intended to replace the mounts of the two Motorized battalions until now wrongly equipped with Frontline Wargaming Somuas. These ones on its turn will pull heavy weapons on the PzJager battalion or in the artillery battalions or be used as ammunition suppliers for several units of the 21st PD. 

The models are MiniGeneral 3d prints for the transport version of the P107 and Raventhorpe RTR for the AA version. 

The MiniGeneral P107 are detailed little pieces without any serious printing lines to be seen. I left side the front canvas cover supplied and finished them in the same way Don McHugh showed recently in a Fb post. 

The figures for the PzGrenadiers are from Caesar and the drivers and officers are mostly S&S. 

The P107 with a more Edvard Munch camouflage will go for the II/125th regiment. 

This will be the transport of the Grenadiers of the II/192nd regiment based on scheme I have in Batailles&Blindés magazine No39 related to everybody's favourite Panzer Division, the 21st. 

Now for my favourites, the ones that helped me solving the old question of medium mortars (8cm) for the German PzGrenadier companies. Since the 90s I have Alan Verwicht book on the 21st PD which mentions an annex of the Meldung for foreign weapons. He states that 64 X Gr.W. 8,14 of French making apparently can be found on that paper and they would be naturally distributed among the infantry (besides the Recce and Pioneer units) but this without absolute certainty. I remember reading this, making four stands of medium mortars - 1 per infantry battalion, later another for the Pioneers- and then forgetting the issue. The RF Normandy Battlegroups doesn't even mention them and Zetterling lists do the same and we may be tempted to exclude them but it would be very strange for the German infantry to exist without such weapon, the type responsible for the largest number of soldier's casualties in WW2. A few weeks ago when reading Martin Block information in the Axis Forum this author also places these mortars among the "subunits of the division". So it was time to have something to transport them and these unarmoured and covered Unic P107 are my way to do it. The model is the MiniGeneral model with a piece of RoofMate shaped and sanded in place as a cover for the cargo part.  By reading the same kind of threads its also possible that the German  8cm or the French 81,4mm (they could fire the same ammunition) was placed inside the SPW P107 of the two armoured battalions in the same style of the Sdkfz 251/2. 

Another Unic SPW 20mm AA was built alongside its infantry siblings. On the contrary of its metal version, this Raventhorpe RTR comes without trailer which was quickly built out of different types of styrene. 

The figures, with the exception of the driver which comes with the model, are plastics from different brands. You may recognize the pioneer from Revell without its spade, a DAK torso from Airfix aiming the gun and the famous DAK Airfix officer (Airfix Chinese copy) slightly bent with fire in order to look upwards. 

The crude trailer was disguised with plenty of stowage. The body was built from hard styrene foam so don't forget to cover it in PVA glue before priming. 

Now very few things are left to portray the 21st PD. Still missing are:

- 2x SPW Unic to carry the medium mortars in the Sdkfz 251/2 style. 

- 2x more SPW Unic with 20mm AA gun, like the one above. 

Unfortunatly, nothing else and unfortunately as this division  is for me the most interesting big unit of the entire NW campaign of 1944. 

Another nice aspect about modelling the 21st PD are its various vehicle camouflages making this unit something unique. 

The next captions were taken from the Magazine mentioned above and are a good guide for the 21st PD camouflages. 

The UE with rockets is an old idea. Don`t know really if its true and I would discount that one. 

 

Next: probably the D1 tanks for the 1940 French.

Rapid Fire! Market Garden in 20mm - Oddities and such (part 11) - More German wheels and guns for the new RF book

 

This week's finished items for OMG: On top, a Renault AHN will be used to complete Graebner's unit, on the left, a few more 20mm Flak 38, this time towed by Steyer heavy cars and on the right several 120mm mortars to equip both Heer and FJ. 

The Renault AHN is S&S and the figures came from both Valiant German boxes. Unfortunately only one of these Renaults was on the bridge on the 18th September 1944 and thus no more than one can be modelled. 

The uniforms were painted with a mixture of SS and Heer uniforms due to the volunteers that crewed this vehicle and other Ford and Opel LKW and PKW of Graebner's column. 

The MG42 firer originally had a MG15 but the beauties of hard modelling allows you to interchange many parts. The oil drums are clay cast pieces kindly sent to me by Reprimo Wargaming. 

Maybe I will build another truck with oil drums based on the trucks of the previous post (they are a reasonable match for the Fords used by the Germans) in order to have one that represents the eight or so Opel and Ford LKWs that tried to cross the bridge. They are fun to make and the variety of poses provided by Valiant is an appetizer for this extra model. The grassy base will be an eternal problem as the Arnhem bridge had very little of it...

A very different story with these Flak 38. The guns are Minigeneral and most of the crew figures are Revell engineers with new arms. The Sd.Ah.52 tailers are old Esci that came with the 20mm FlakVierling. They were leftovers as I used the gun tubes for something else. New wheels and mudguards had to be added. 

Some cases of 20mm ammo were placed on the new arms of the Revell figures as well as a new pair of binoculars in one of them. 

The stand gets a bit to long with gun and trailer but I think it results in an different and lively piece. 

Two Steyers to pull the Flak 38s from  Raventhorpe RTR range were built straight from the box, that is, painted! Only some foliage made of  two component paste was added. 

Also some badly needed 120mm mortars with Heer crew joined the German shelves. I already have some for the SS and LW infantry but none for the Heer. The crews are Valiant and a few more mortar shells were made of two component paste and placed in rifle armed figures. The shell cases were made of 3mm thick styrene. 

I tried to stick the models into my usual 4cm poker bases but some new 6cm bases had to be cut due to the size of the Valiant figures, true servers of the Nazi doctrine of racial superiority!! Even if big, they are lovely figures that allows a huge variety of poses and conversions. 

Finally one stand of FJ 120mm mortar was made with the Valiant weapon and converted Esci German paratroopers. 

Next: maybe a dive into France 1940 or more OMG. A return to Zululand is also in the horizon...

Rapid Fire! Market Garden in 20mm - Oddities and such (part 10) - A few Allied missing bits for the new RF book

This week a few more new models were added to the Allied side. The Armoured Cars and trailers came in recent parcels but the Jeeps were old models waiting to be built or repainted for years. The idea was to make the a Recce squadron for a British divisions at Garden and the first few Jeeps for the US 101st Airborne division. 

The AEC armoured car is a BPM 3d print as well as all trailers. The Staghound A/C is RTR Raventhorpe. The Jeeps are Airfix (the ones that comes with the LVT-4, grey colour), Fujimi (the green one with trailer) and Hasegawa (with the Browning MG). All models got plenty of extras as figures, stowage, jerrycans, windscreen covers, etc. 

The drivers are plastic Esci or Revell figures with arms from the spare box. 

 

These models were great fun to build. I used tissue paper for the windscreen covers and PVA to stick them. 

The MG armed Jeep got a Valiant Browning and the binoculars figure from Hasegawa bent with fire until it could man the MG. 

The final result gives a nice and different model. The helmets of the Hasegawa figures got the 1st aid kit for them to look like paratroopers. The US vehicles were painted GW Castellan Green. 

The RTR is easy to put together with only turret, gun and body as separate parts. The stowage is already modelled in its place so only a figure, an MG and a antenna were necessary as extras. 

The BPM AEC A/C was painted first with thick varnish before the grey primer and again this seems to cover most of the printing lines. Even so this technology is getting better and better and detail is also increasing. These British vehicles were painted Vallejo WW2 Russian Uniform. 

Next: more OMG or France 1940.

Rapid Fire! NW Europe 1944/45 - Mortain and Market Garden additions

On the 7th of August 1944 a large number of Panzer Grenadiers arrive at the Mortain-Le-Neufbourg train station coming from the north and aiming at Mortain. They will be shot to pieces by elements of the 30th US infantry division, a National Guard unit, which will be crucial defending the area and preventing the Germans from reaching Avranches. 

This is the what happened after the events of the previous picture. German Schimmwagens, 251 HT's and US jeeps, not counting the dead, littered the battlefield in some of the most known images of the battle of Mortain. At the very end of the picture, to the right, you can see the Mortain-le-Neufbourg train station.

                              

If you look closely at the BW picture this train station has a different roof from the original. This is an old plastic HO model from my late father's train collection that I decided to use as the Mortain train station. It is about the same size and has the same number and location of the main openings. I have never been to Mortain but nowadays thanks to WW2TV ( thanks Don McHugh for introducing it to me) you can watch an awesome show but also on episode 1 of the Mortain battle some very nice filming of today's train station where you can see the real colours of the building and even real bullet holes!

  

The model was repainted to the true colours of the Mortain train station and the base changed to a simpler and smaller one.

Second model of this week's list is this Raventhorpe RTR model of a Sdkfz 250 with a Breda 20mm type 35 autocannon. This vehicle was never close to Mortain as it belonged to the 12th PzSS Hitlerjugend but was made with all others and deserved a few pictures due to its originallity. 

The model very simple as usual with RTR with a very nice touch of having two crewmen inside the driving compartment, The Breda is a leftover from Altaya. 

I followed for this model the information of the Militaria Hors-de.Serie No87, in one of two volumes dedicated to the SS in Normandy. 

The vehicle belonged to the the 3rd company of the SS PzAufkl.Abt 12. 

In the same parcel from Raventhorpe arrived a few RTR Citroën Type 23. 

Even if they can be also used in the Normandy campaign I want them for the several German KG fighting the Market Garden operation. 

The SS figures are the excellent Caesar figures also used in the last few Umbau cars I´ve made. 

This lot was initially a group of Chinese cheap Die-cast construction trucks filled with cranes and other stuff that I found in a local magazine shop. My 3 YO kid is crazy about these things but it would be a pity to end in his hands as his main words after looking at them are "tira isto!" (take this thing out!).

 As usual with this kind of models they look slightly American and that convinced me to use them as the Dutch trucks. Dutch trucks of the 30s and 40s were heavily influenced by US designs from Ford and Chevrolet, and Colin mentions them transporting men of the 59th ID in the Market Garden campaign guide. Yes, the NEW ONE! As I was the first to receive it for being such a dedicated servant of  masters Colin and Richard!!!

...just kidding, I think the new book is still in the printers. Better not to play with serious things before someone gets a heart attack...

This time the Caesar seated soldier were painted as Heer Grenadiers.

The chassis of these cheap Die-casts were mated with other surplus cargo areas, all different for the sake of variety. 

The tyres were also changed and came from my Atlantic stash. 

Finally this funny and rare amphibious Trippel SG6 was built with the lot (800 to 1000 built, compared to 14.000 type 166 Schwimmwagens). 

The model is an old AMBN resin kit with the usual Caesar crew and converted driver. The camouflage is the pre-1943 and based on a surviving vehicle used in reenactements. Like this the model can survive in the 1941-43 Eastern Front were most were used. 

Next: the second battalion for the Screaming Eagles and some air support.