Rapid Fire! 20mm - WWII German field artillery

In my opinion the Revell German artillery set is one of the best achieved models ever.

In a small box you find an artillery limber pulled by six horses and two 105 howitzers, besides many artillery men in very realistic poses  and small parts like ammo boxes, shells and such. 

I'm showing you these because I've just stolen two horses from each set in order to have more horses for the Luftwaffe artillery.

 

With only four horses these stands ocupy less space on the table (shelves, on my case) and are faithful to the Rapid Fire! OB's. 

Rapid Fire! 20mm - 16. Luftwaffe Field Division, Normandy 44, part 3: The 2nd and 3rd battalions with those loooonger camouflage smocks already painted.

Here they are. The Liquid GreenStuff of GW turned out quite well on the soft plastic figures in order to produce longer smocks.

You can enlarge the pictures if you want as I didn't make this post directly from the phone but used the PC.

The Blue on the Luftwaffe uniform is Vallejo 816. The base of the smock is Vallejo 119 and the camouflage effects are achieved with diluted Vallejo 086 (green)  and GW  Mournfang Brown (yes, I agree, why does GW can't find normal decent names for their paint range?...). The right side Esci figure got an Evergreen radio on his back.

 

The longer smock was equally applied on Esci, Airfix copies (as they are bigger), Atlantic or Revell.

A small Luftwaffe wing was painted on the right upper part of the smock and on the left side of the helmet.

 

If carefully placed together the plastic minis go quite well with the five SHQ figures you can see in the bottom part of the Picture.

 

 

I built and painted two more Russian76,2 Zis from the Italeri double box. The crew is a mixture of SHQ and soft plastic figures with an old Esci hard plastic long range finder figure (the guy standing on the left).

 

The lot together living happily in the Normandy country side. Before operation Charnwood that is...

 

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm - 16. Luftwaffe Field Division, Normandy 44, part 2: A way to make those loooonger camouflage smocks.

After some head scratching on how to make the Luftwaffe longer smock on ordinary plastic 20mm figures I finally got to this way:

GW Liquid Greenstuff was applied in thick quantities with a brush ( as it tends to shrink) on the lower part of the infantry coat. An opening was then carved when dry for this coat not to look like the grenadiers or SS smock. 

Two more battalions are ready to be painted. 16.Lw FD is quite Vorwaerts!!!.

Rapid Fire! 20mm - 16. Luftwaffe Field Division, Normandy 44, part 1.

One more German division on the way: this time I'm doing one of the partner division of the 21st PD in the Caen area, the 16.Lw FD.  

What strikes me about this unit is the blue uniforms with long camouflage smocks which makes them probably  the most colourful unit in Normandy. 

  

Here is the first battalion. They are mostly SHQ metal with a few Airfix and Esci plastics. The Pak 75/97 on the left corner is SHQ.

SHQ is one of the few brands to produce Luftwaffe infantry. The next battalions will have also a few SHQ but will be mostly made of plastic and I will ignore the 2mm less length of the camouflage smock or maybe I try a solution with thin strips of paper card... Let's see. 

Zis 76,2mm from Irregular Miniatures manned by Revell artillery men from their horse towed 105mm artillery set. 

Pak 50mm and crew from SHQ. 

Pak 75mm from Esci again with SHQ crew.

I'm not sure about 88's in the 16. Lw FD but just in case here goes a battery from Hasegawa. 

The Sturmgeschutze company is from Airfix and Altaya.

It's still missing: the 122mm Russian howitzers batteries; the 20mm AA guns; the 75 IG (all these will be Zvezda from their small boxes); 5 infantry battalions and one bycicle battalion. 

Horse tows for all the artillery will be challenging as I will scratchbuild all of them. 

So stay tuned on the best wargaming blog of the Travessa Moura e Sá. 

Rapid Fire! 20mm - latest DAK additions

An ESCI Opel Blitz for the grenadiers of 15PD and  a few S-Model Kettenkrad for a 90% finished Ramcke brigade. The crew are German paratroopers torsos and Luftwaffe personnel with Greenstuff arms.  

Rapid Fire! 20mm - 4th DAK infantry battalion - El Alamein 1942

Last Afrika Korps infantry battalion. 

This DAK infantry comes from every possible plastic origin.

You can find the old and beautiful Airfix MG runner, the even older Airfix 28mm Pz B, Revell, Esci, Matchbox, 'chinese' Airfix, Hat (from the PAK 76,2mm set) and even some lovely if a little inaccurate Atlantic, all living happily in their barracks even close to their British foes which only in our devious minds are enemies.

The tripods for the heavy MG's and the bipod for the mortar are Evergreen and the barrels come from surplus tank MG's.

I'm two battalions of infantry and 8 AFV's short of presenting you my whole DAK. This will have both the full 15th and 21st Pz division and most of the assets of the 90th Leichte and Ariete divisions. 

The main thing that will be still missing are many of the soft skin vehicles a problem which I hope to solve with some boxes of Pegasus Opel Blitz and a parcel from Frontline Wargaming. Regarding Italian soft skins, particularly towing vehicles the problem will continue a little bit like in real life...

Rapid Fire! 20mm - Painted Sdkfz 223 conversion from Airfix Sdkfz 222

Here it is the scratchbuilt 223 after the usual GW Tausept Ochre painting. 

The accompanying Airfix Kubelwagen was built at the same time  as the  Sdkfz 223. It's a straight from the box model with just a small change in the rear passenger who has an Airfix body glued to Esci seated legs. 

Rapid Fire! 20mm - Sdkfz 223 conversion from Airfix Sdkfz 222

Tired of the wrong turret of Airfix Sdkfz 222?

Tired of not having the Sdkfz 223?

Tired of not seeing Sporting as national champion? 

If you are, follow me in the next few pictures and comments. 

The turret was discarded and replaced by a smaller one taken from an undentyfied part I found on the  spare box. I´m not sure but I think it belonged to a ring from a Panther turret.

The antennae was built in Evergreen and wire. The vertical tubing is far more thicker than the original but as a wargame piece that is necessary to avoid self destruction. 

Don't forget a figure (this one is from PSC), some extra Jerrycans and tarpaulins and all the few white and black extras a little bit all over, in order to have a convincing model:
-Triangular disks on the wheels.
- Hatches in the turret.
- Visors in the turret ring.
- MG 38.

Rapid Fire! 20mm - Pz Sfl II for Rommel's Kampfstaffel, El Alamein1942, part 3

Normal DAK painting on a special vehicle. I'm sure the measurements are not 100% correct but even so it was a great fun to scratchbuilt. 

'Hey is it a 20mm AA gun ? ... ' 'No! its the antennae...!

I'm sure Rommel feels much safer now with this powerful bodyguard! May be he even can try harder on  Hitler's assassination...

Rapid Fire! 20mm - Pz Sfl II for Rommel's Kampfstaffel, El Alamein 1942, part 2

Now for the complete model. 

The Pz Sfl II in the probably  best picture of this machine (from 5 or 6 available). There are no exact measures for this vehicle which gives some freedom of construction. You can also use the measurements for Hkp 902 chassis used on other more well known German AFV's. 

The model turned out like this. There is an extra road wheel taken from a surplus model and glued to this one in order to have a total of seven.

The jerrycans are home made and you can see how to manufacture them in this fantastic blog ( it's not me who say it it's the crowd out there !) from two posts ago. 

The crew are the PSC (many!) surplus models of the Marder II. 

The gun tube was taken from a broken  Esci 7,5cm PAK  with an Evergreen sleeve added. 

The usual GW GreenStuff was used for bedrolls.
 

The gun mantlet is a piece of carved hard styrofoam. 

Small details like shovels and such were taken out from an Esci Sdkfz 251 veteran of many battles cannibalised for parts.

Next: painting the Pz Sfl II.