Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - The transport vehicles of the Dragons Portés of the 5e DLC (Part 2)

The two battalions of Chasseurs Portés of the 15e RDP (5e DLC) pass in the hamlet of Deux Maisons with orders to delay the German advance in the Ardennes. 

The P-19's of the support company of the first battalion include in the center a Portee 25mm that didn't exist in the 5e DLC but that in this form is absolutely irresistible. To the left the EWM P-19 mortar version had the boxes behind the driver unified with two component paste and some door handlers glued on their side. The P-19 MG version on the right had the boxes dealt on the same way. 

The standard P-19's for the Fusiliers were built with no changes. 

The Command version had two extra EWM figures on the back, one manning a radio and the other holding the FM mle 24, and an Irregular Miniatures officer preparing to leave the vehicle. 

I bought another five cheap Chinese Die-casts for the second battalion of the 15th RDP. 

You can see here what I did with the first batch: 

http://jpwargamingplace.blogspot.com/2018/03/rapid-fire-france-1940-in-20mm-few-more.html

This time they are intended to pass as the GMC ACK 353 that was in service in this regiment as these models are very close to the American trucks. I looked for models of this US truck but I could only find the six wheeled GMC. As these toys are far from perfect they suffered some changes namely the insertion of two replacement wheels behind the driver and double wheels on the rear set. 

The extra replacement wheels also allowed for the displacement of the cargo structure to the rear making the vehicle a bit longer as a true GMC ACK 353. 

The double set of wheels you need to correctly portray the GMC ACK 353. 

This picture in GBM is one of the few that confirms the usage of this vehicle by the 15e RDP. 82 of these US trucks are known to have joined the regiment but they are not enough to equip the two battalions. Based on this information I made the two battalions equipped differently, one with P-19 and the other with the US trucks. 

Next: French Army command post. 

Rapid Fire! France 1940 in 20mm - The transport vehicles of the Dragons Portés of the 5e DLC (Part1)

These P19 HT are from EWM and are intended to be the transport for the 1st battalion of the 15th Motorised Dragoon Regiment (of course I could say this unit's name in French but I don't want to impress you that much). 

EWM produces two conversions of the P19, the fusilier vehicle and the staff vehicle. In the GBM magazine, the main source for France 1940 equipment, none of these staff vehicle shows up, so I will use six standard P19 for the whole battalion with four conversions. 

Starting with the support squadron, one of the P19 was used to carry the Hotchkiss 25mm AT gun. In fact the 5e DLC didn't convert any of their P19's to the Portee version and kept on towing the AT guns. The problem is that after looking at their pictures you just have to have one of them!

A plastic card structure was built for the gun and I tried to insert a Lancer 25mm gun inside but it just didn't fit. So I decided to scratch build one. I used a very old EKO 1/87th German 37mm gun as base and made the double mantlet out of Evergreen plastic card. The wheels came from some Chinese toys I had around as they are almost invisible inside the vehicle and will be covered by the crew. 

Then some rectangular hard foam structures were added to the sides to serve as the descending beams for the gun and also the rear part of the gun and supporting structure was added. 

Finally some Hat artillerymen were added as well as the driver. Also plastic card doors were glued in order to have the P19B version were these changes were made. 

The P19 Voiture Mitrailleuse (See? What do you say about my French, hmm?) has some changes from the original. The two boxes behind the driver were united with two paste component and an Hotchkiss MG was added. For the MG I used a 37mm gun leftover from an S-Model French tank as a starting point, changed the barrel, drilled a hole for the handler and used a bit of GreenStuff for the bumper in the middle of the gun. 

The MG firer is again the same Caesar figure with new arms I used with the Laffly S20's.  The door handlers to access the other MG parts are now already in position but skipped the photograph. 

This is the mortar version. Basically the same as the MG version with connected boxes and door handlers to access the mortar and ammunition. 

The command vehicle of the battalion could  very well be a Laffly S20 but I want to concentrate those on the DLM. Another normal P19 was used, a radio and doors were added as the P19B was used mostly in the command sections, some wire made the canvas armature and an Irregular Miniature French officer became the unit's commander. 

Another addition was the exhaust added with GreenSuff to the right front side in all vehicles.  

A few drivers had to be copied in GreenStuff as sometimes EWM forgets some parts. Well, nothing that we can't live without, besides EWM makes a great job on covering the first few years of the war and many other periods. By the way they just realeased  Ardennes 44 German Infantry and they look great. 

Next: whether the infantry figures for the Dragons Portés, the vehicles for its 2nd battalion or the start of the Iraqi 5th Mech. Division for the 1991 Gulf War. 

Rapid Fire!/ Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 4) - Reconnaissance and Artillery

Both the Reconnaissance Battalion and the Artillery Regiment of the 5th Iraqi MD are still incomplete. The Recce battalion is still missing the BTR-50PU and the artillery has even bigger problem as main source indicates 2S1's as the SPG of the regiment. The problem is that such allocation of 2S1 SPG's is unlikely as Iraq received 50 of them and the 3rd Saladin AD seems to have collected all of them. Once again as both the 5th MD and the 3rd AD operated in the same area there may be a understandable mistake here. Nevertheless I keep without knowing which kind of SPG did this regiment had - if any. 

Regarding what is already in the shelves ready for a fight against the glass, the Recce Battalion has three of the BPM Panhard AML. I just added the optical range finder and some crew. 

May be one day I make a few of them for the Portuguese wars in Africa...

The artillery is the Soviet M-46 130mm. I used some parts of the Irregular Miniatures Really Useful Guns range and scratch built the rest with plastic card and tubing. The wheels are from a 1/43 scale rally car.  The figures are Skytrex WWII Americans turned into Middle Easterners. 

Finally the S-60 AA guns are in fact 37mm WWII Soviet guns (Irregular Miniatures again). The overall difference is some as the S-60 has a shield and is slightly bigger  but if one day I find them I'll send these 37mm to the infantry as Iraq had over 250 of them. 

The crew of this AA gun is the Airfix Bofors crew with new heads. 

Next: more 5th MD and its Artillery Corps support or the attached 20th Infantry Brigade.  

Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 3) - The 26th Armoured Brigade

The 26th Armoured Brigade approaches Khafji with its three tank regiments in front and its mechanized battalion to the rear. This brigade has a total of 21 T-55 based tanks (12 are T-59/69 conversions) all but one being Altaya Die-casts. 

This is the converted Altaya T-55 turned into a T-69 (an easy external difference to distinguish from the T-59 are the headlights, covered here in the T-69 and the same as the original T-55 in the T-59). 

The Chinese T-59/69 in Iraqi service had stowage racks around the turret. 

The stowage racks are very difficult to do, specially when you need them for plenty models, so I used one big piece of two component paste and modelled it accordingly. Then a careful painting tried to disguise the imperfections.  

Comparing the original Altaya in Polish colours and the final conversion. 

The changes were: 

- Hull side protections made in Evergreen plastic card.

- Fume launchers in Evergreen tubing.

- Headlights and turret Laser Range Finder in plastic foam.

- Air conditioning ventilator and stowage racks in turret made out of two component paste. 

Another Ace command 'Enigma' T-55 for one of the tank regiments. 

The Mechanized Battalion of the 26th Brigade was equipped with MTLB APC's. The two models to the right are Cromwell and the one to the left is BPM.

Next: Recce Battalion and artillery of the 5th MD . 

Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 2) - The 20th Mechanized Brigade

The 20th Iraqi Mechanized Brigade gathers around a wadi in southern Kuwait to support the attack on Khafji on the 29th January 1991.

The Armoured battalion of this brigade (the 10th Armoured Regiment) was built around the Hobby Master Die-cast excellent T-55. A very important detail is this model is its metal gun barrel which makes it long lasting. I only added a few crewmen and  repainted a few parts including the main symbol of this Regiment, the red bore evacuator. 

The only non-Hobby Master model in this regiment is this Ace T-55.

The command tank of the regiment is another Ace 'Enigma' T-55, this time with two Skytrex figures. These command tanks had no markings whatsoever which led to some confusion along the years. 

Now problems begin. I couldn't find any certainty about the APC's that the three mechanized battalions of the 20th Brigade had. One source says BMP-1, but I think this is due to the proximity of the 3rd Saladin AD. A picture shows a K-63 with a unit's rectangle that may have been from this brigade. To add to the confusion, the 5h MD had during the Iran-Iraq war plenty OT-64 Skot. So I like to think that each of the three battalions had one of these APC's as its main vehicle. 

So I placed in the 2nd Battalion the OT-64 from BPM, which is one of their best models, simple and with very few printing lines. One of them was converted to a command version. 

The other three are normal OT-64. Maybe even they were  never in the OB of the 5th MD as some sources say this division was fully tracked in its APC's but I like to think the opposite. 

The 1st Battalion is equipped with K-63. This time I had no patience  to build my own 'JP models' and used three S&S models. They are the same length as the Red Star and my copies but a bit wider. As S&S are more recent they probably made it closer to the real vehicle.  

The infantry are my usual Esci conversions with Modern Russian and Vietcong bodies and WWII US heads. 

The support weapons are a mixture of WWII US figures and Skytrex metals. The mortar crew includes a conversion of a Matchbox British paratrooper. 

Next: the 26th Armoured Brigade, 5th Iraqi MD. 

Rapid Fire!/Able Archer, The Gulf War in 20mm - The Iraqi 5th Mechanized Division Mohammed Ibn Al-Kasim (Part 1) - The 15th Mechanized Brigade

Here the 5th Armoured Regiment (T-59 tanks) enter triumphantly the Saudi border city of Khafji on the night of 29th of January and passes under the famous city arch. The T-59 are Cromwell models and the command 'Enigma' tank is Ace. 

The 'Enigma' Ace model is not the easiest model, which is the usual with this brand, but the final result is quite good and the model is quite sturdy. 

The resin T-59 from Cromwell is very well done, easy to build and quite detailed. The figures are metal Skytrex. 

Up to now a total of 10 K-63 APC are the three Mechanized Battalions of the 15th Brigade. The ideal number is 12 though (4 in each battalion, 1 per company, plus a command version) so still two command K-63 (YW701) to go. The infantry are the usual Esci conversions with many Irregular Miniatures figures. 

Half of the K-63 are resin Red Star models with Skytrex metal HMG. The YW701  also got a DSKH 12,7mm from Skytrex. 

The other half are my own builds. I copied the Red Star measures and duplicated them in Evergreen plastic card. Its not complicated mainly because of the straight lines of the K-63. The HMG's are also scratch built. The top grill is made of some plastic pieces I had around and the hatches are two component paste.

The more difficult are the wheels. As you can see on the JP model (JP its me...) on the right I made the wheel with cut down cylinders from plastic tubing. Then I filled them with two component paste and finally an even small cylinder right in the middle. It was a repetitive procedure but it paid off in the end. On the left you have another Red Star model as comparison. 

Next: Iraqi 20th Mechanized Brigade, 5th Mechanized Division. 

Rapid Fire! / Able Archer - Iraqi Navy 1991 in 20mm - The Patrol Boats of the Khafji operation

On the night of 29th January 1991 the Iraqi navy tried one of its two daring and courageous sea raids of the war. For that the Iraqis used 17 'small Patrol Boats' from which infantry was landed in Saudi Arabian territory in order to support the attack of the III Corps at Khafji. I could never find any information about exactly what these PB's were. Recently I found these pictures in the web: 

They came under a Google search for the Iraqi Swari Patrol Boats and they were referring  to an abandoned Iraqi PB at Ras Al-Ard, Kuwait in 1991. I'm not sure that these kind of PB's were the ones on the 29th of January raid but as I have no more information I had a go at scratch building a couple of them. 

The P6 Torpedo Boat that goes along the two PB's on the first picture already had its article two years ago. If you want to visit it you can go to: 

http://jpwargamingplace.blogspot.com/2016/04/iraqi-p-6-torpedo-boat-kuwait-1991.html

The PB's are apparently indigenous designs but not even that I'm really sure. I used Blue Foam to get the basic shape of the boats and some card for the driver/troop compartment. The figures are Modern Esci figures, the ones holding a MG42. I used two of them as drivers with GreenStuff arms and four others as firers of the BPM ZU-23-2. The original pictures clearly shows the 14,5mm Soviet HMG instead but I didn't had them at hand. 

The boats were painted as close as I could to the photos of the real thing which includes a red triangle on the deck. So may be the raid was made by Republican Guard units? Never find any confirmation. Its just a thought. 

I made the troop compartment large enough for some six/eight figures each. 

The usual anchor chain was added as well a small Iraqi flag. 

The sea was made of a mixture of hot glue and and some ready to use plaster  I had around. 

This raid finished very badly for the Iraqis as the PB force was completely destroyed at sea by RAF Jaguars. Maybe due to the level of destruction this force suffered there aren't many details available about the 'Khafji Patrol Boat Raid' (as I call it...). 

Next: More France 1940.