Rapid Fire! Market Garden in 20mm - Oddities and such (part 5) - The Sdkfz 251/21 Drillings of the 107 PzBgde.

More than 80km distance from Arnhem, on the 19th September some Sdkfz 251/21 Drillings of the 107 PzBgde managed to cross the pontoon bridge at Son over the Wilhelmina canal. This bridge was built by the British engineers after the destruction of the original one by the Germans on the initial stages of the Market Garden.   

All models are Hasegawa with converted 'castle' and triple-mount MG151 autocannon. 

Instead of concentrating the Drillings in the 4th company of the PzGrenBatt. 2107 like in the RF supplement I gave different company numbers as they were distributed along the three PzGren. companies. The numbers appear to have been big white and black (red?) painted on the sides and back of the HTs. 

In a picture all FOW followers will like you can see crew taken from different PSC sets. 

The pontoon bridge is Airfix. 

Returning to symbols, the one of the 107 PzBgde was painted yellow sand in a green field. I think there isn't certainty about this but its the opinion of some investigators. 

After the conversions the Hasegawa models looked like this. The castle was made of Evergreen as well as other smaller details; the triple-mount was carved from two layers of Multiexel expanded PVC and the 15mm autocannon are pin parts. 

The easily breakable parts were replaced with eternal plastic broom sticks.  The foliage is made of my trusty two component paste. 

Before priming my conversions always look like having been bought in the local Chinese shop but after aplying the primer power they look like Alby models! 

A big thank you to Alan Mcourbey, Don McHugh and Richard Baber for the information provided. 

Next: the Panthers of 107 PzBgde. 

Rapid Fire! Market Garden in 20mm - Oddities and such (part 4)

First of all, just because I placed a post yesterday, don´t think that I woke up during the night, and without eating or peeing the whole day made these six models, took pictures that I'm now posting. Its true the day was spent at home, just a small coffee nearby with family around 11.00, but the two white trams are done for years and the Umbaus were made in the last few days along other material like the British trucks. The modelling day's work was in fact the painting of the figures on the Umbaus, its basing  and the painting of the green tram. Of course the secret is avoiding the kitchen and other similar busy parts of the house and always eat in the dining room, varanda or outside. In the end you can help with the dishes and this is the moment you deserve a kiss.  

On the afternoon of 17th September another group of SS Germans using "requisitioned" Umbaus pass abandoned trams and enter Utrechtweg looking for British paratroopers. What they don't know is that nothing less than the commander of 1st Airborne, General Urquhart is hiding in the number 14 (the second house left of the St Elisabeth Hospital in the picture). 

This group of Umbau vehicles is my second after a few Matchbox conversions. Once again the "hard foliage" made of two component paste helps hiding the holes in the original fantasy models after taking out the strange stuff on them. 

The crew is this time from Caesar and very good they are. The set H099 has 12 different poses of perfect SS soldiers armed for late war and that includes Pzfausts and STG44s.

These are the original die-cast models bought in the supermaket from the Metal Machines range.  Wheels were replaced, windshield enlarged, engine, cargo holders and exhaust pipes carved out...

This is the looks of the Umbaus before priming. 

For the figures to seat correctly a few planks of Evergreen were added to the cargo area.

The trams are Ho scale from Atlas or Altaya. I bought and primed them years ago and lost track of its origin. I remember them being that first cheap sale of the collection so I bought three. 

They are vaguely similar to the longer trams of Arnhem. While the 71 and the 76 (this one is famous as it served Oosterbeek) were white there were others in more lively colours. I used green as in a cover of a Dragon 1/35th scale kit but I´ve seen also blue in a very nice diorama. As all original trams were destroyed by the bombardments I´m really not sure. 

This is a nice reconstitution of tram 76 in the Arnhem Open Air museum. 

 

Well,  it looks that Urquhart wasn't found and here goes the SS ready to nag someone else. Speaking of SS, I saw last night Operation Finale, a good movie about the capture of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. Try to see it and remember that even if the SS have nice camouflaged uniforms and the best weapons of the Reich they were a criminal organization responsible for some of the worst things that happened to mankind. 

If you want to see my Arnhem houses, most of them scratchbuilt, you can go here:

http://jpwargamingplace.blogspot.com/2012/07/rapid-fire-battle-of-arnhem-buildings.html

Next: Maybe three Sdkfz 263 from PSC.

Rapid Fire! Blitzkrieg in 20mm - Smialy(ish) Polish armoured train (or 'A walk into the Chinese shop')

 

 

Years ago I saw a scratch built model of the famous Polish armoured train Smialy in a wargames magazine that wet my apetite for trying something of the sort. Recently Adrian White showed a fantastic scratch built Smialy in a conversation on the Rapid Fire WW2 Wargames Rules FB page. Honestly I tryed to copy it but soon I noticed that in order to have something similar it would take a month's work. Just too much for me as there are plenty of stuff in the pipe line. Another option was to buy Fow's Smialy but being a 15mm model and at 150 Euro I decided to look in another direction.

 

In my local Chinese shop they had some 20mm-ish toy trains that I used for this conversion. Each set has a locomotive, a coal wagon and a coach. You need five of these sets in order to have Smialy but at 5 Euro each you are still far from Fow's price. And, as with all conversions, it will be my preeeeciousss....

 

 

The front and back Flat Railcars usually carried a small Tankette (FTFmodel) and they were transformed from two of the coaches.

 

 

The Artillery Wagons are made gluing two locomotives back to back. With four locomotives being used this way and another for the Armoured Engine all five locomotives of the five sets were used.

 

 

The Armoured Engine is made from a locomotive and the coal wagon glued to each other.

 

 

Plenty of camouflage nets were used to disguise the numerous flaws of the original models that are just originally intended as cheap toys.

 

 

The Assault Wagon is made from the junction of two coaches.

 

 

The aerials are metal pieces glued on the roof after drilling holes in that nasty plastic of these kind of toys. Here you have to call all your available patience.

 

 

 

The Artillery wagon has some old soft plastic Atlantic T-34 turrets carved out to look slightly as the original 100mm and 75mm gun turrets.

 

 

The gun tubes are from some old chinese models I had around suitably carved to shape.

 

 

The central turret is made from a 1/43rd rallye car wheel.

 

 

The full set measures almost one meter and now I'm ready to push back 4th Panzer Division at Mokra!!

 

 

Here you can see the two main components of the set: the Chinese models and Evergreen Plastic card.  

 

 

For the Flat Railcar you need to change the place of the wheels and glue some small walls to the sides besides bending the front ramp.

 

 

You can see here the seam of Liquid GreenStuff placed to disguise the junction of the two locomotives on each of the Artillery Wagons.

 

 

 

In all lower parts of the wagons a strip of 1 cm of plastic card was used as the protection of the wheel set.

 

 

More Liquid GreenStuff was used for the joint of the locomotive and coal wagon.

 

 

The ending parts of each of  the Artillery Wagons were true nightmares to convert to the proper shape and so I left them as they were and covered those parts with gauze.

 

 

Mg's were made from surplus Besa Mg's from the PSC A9 Cruiser tanks.  The metal aerials were drilled into the plastic and strenghtened with hot glue and super glue.

 

 

An old half tyre was used as the nose of the locomotive.

 

 

The wire for the aerials is true wire wrapped around each pole.

 

 

Total lenght; 95 cm.

 

 

The original wagons are like this and a lot of work is necessary only to take the adhesive paper out.

 

 

The content of the original box.  

  

And the box interestingly called 'Amry War'. I also think this is a good basis for conversions of ACW, Old West, African, or any other WWI or WW2 trains. You just need to be patient with this kind of plastic and use your imagination.   

 

Next: More Polish stuff, of course!

 

 

Rapid Fire! - France 1940 in 20mm - Bunkerknacker!

 

 

As many times happens, Colin and Richard are to blame for this one. The Bunkernacker ('Bufla') shows up with importace in the lists of 1st PD in the RF! Blitzkrieg Battlegroups book. I looked for a proper model to buy and could only find some very expensive die-cast models made in Germany and sold in Czech Republic (or made in Czech Republic and sold in Germany, something like that).

 

 

For this conversion I used  the Airfix model of the 88mm and tractor that was previously destined to be used by the German Condor Legion in the Spanish Civil war.

 

 

The only markings are the Kleist army group symbol, licence plates and the white Balkankreuz.

 

 

The crew are converted hard plastic Matchbox figures. The arms were carved out and Milliput arms were added with plastic 88mm shells included.

 

 

There is a 3mm gap between tracks and main hull that was eliminated with a seam of hot glue .

 

 

The hot glue also makes the model sturdier. If you don't do something like this there will be a big hole that can easily be seen from this angle. I left this one without the brown camouflage for a possible use in the Eastern Front.

 

 

 

The main reference books for this model were Panzerwaffe- The Campaigns in the West by Mark Healy and Case Yellow from Firefly Collection.

 

 

 

The Airfix parts are world wide recognisable sand colour with Evergreen plastic card

in white.

 

   

 

The mantlet has to be cut down to shape and some parts added.

 

 

The rear ammunition baskets were made in another hard styrene I had around.

 

 

All original engine parts should be built and all new structures are glued on top of the original ones. This helps a lot the building process.

 

 

The driver cabin is the biggest effort but as this is a sole child the end result is good enough for me.

 

 

These venerable Matchbox figures ended their artificial carreer in the artillery! The Milliput arms can be seen as well as the 88mm shells (in fact 50mm shells from PSC as the Omaha WN's ate all true 88mm shells I had. The difference is not big because the shells are 1/72nd scale and the figures are 1/76th scale which helps to mask the difference) .

 

 

Next: last S-Models H-39's I needed already arrived, but I'm also inclined to build the artillery group of the Portuguese Brigada Mecanizada for my splendidly humble 2008 series... I will leave it in Jesus hands but as Jesus is my middle name, its in my hands :).