Misc: Current Armour, on the go...

Oldies and newbies.

With a nice kind of symmetry, here's a bunch of older models, and my current crop. Amongst the older ones, the first WWII mini-military model I made on returning to these ol' hobbies, the 1/76 Airfix Panther, in late-war 'ambush' type camo'. This remains one of very few completed models, thus far. The vast bulk of my kits require varying degrees of painting/finishing.

The latest bits of building, today and yesterday, were the rear bins on the newer Airfix Panther, and a second go at the mortar crane/winch, on the B&P Sturmtiger. Whilst I was at it, I also changed the Sturmtiger's upper casemate access hatch handles to wire ones. Looks nicer, methinks.

Rear stowage bins on ye olde Panther, one open.

I really took my time and had a look at a load of ref for the second attempt at the winch. And I think it's come out okay. Nicer, indeed, than the one on the ACM Sturmtiger. I also roughed up the 'fenders' a little, and added some dings and hits to give the ol' beast a more worn in look. I'm looking forward to painting the Sturmtigers. I think I'll go for one of those late war funky three colour disc camo' patterns.

Winch deployed inboard this time.

Suitably chunky for this rather oversize model.

From behind...

Kit Build/Review; 1/72 Forces of Valor Pz III ausf N

This is my second kit from this company (the first was a King Tiger), and I like it. I bought it 'cause I wanted to build a knocked out tank. So I had a look through several of my Panzer Wrecks titles. I was somewhat surprised how few Pz IIIs there are in the editions of the Panzer Wrecks series I happen to have.

The main bits.

Strange how they have the commander figure on the track sprue!

More bitzenbobz...

Very nice finely moulded running gear!

And the last bits, inc. instructaloids.

A contender for the most paltry decal sheet ever?

Prepping parts for the running gear.

So I wound up using images of Pz IVs, instead. The kit has schurzen, on both turret and body. I noticed many tanks lose their body armour, and yet retain the turret armour. Numerous wrecked Pz IV in the books I was referring to are in this state: schurzen up top, but not below. 

I also wanted to create battle damage, and this kit, quite chunky, presented some challenges in doing that. I also wanted numerous hatches open. Again, not always easy, with this kit. For example, the styrene behind the turret side hatches is very thick. So instead I had the schurzen open, instead. 

A combo of mine damage and a shell penetration ...

... have upset this side.

This side is mostly unscathed.

The wheels as supplied are mostly on two pairs of large strips, to make construction easier. Sometimes I would go with this type of arrangement. But in this instance I knew I wasn't going to go with it, for two reasons: first, the joining parts would be all too visible, and detract form the realism o' the resulting model; second, as a battle-damaged tank, I want the wheels all wobbly and out of alignment.

Turret cupola surgery.

The bulk is built.

Getting into detailing some battle damage.

The commander's hatch is designed to be open. But I didn't want to use the commander figure. The tank is going to be empty/abandoned. I sawed off the 'bucket' below the cupola. I also modelled the storage bin at the back of the turret open, and put some crew gear in it.

Battle damage wise, this tank drove over a mine, throwing off the track. Once immobilised, it's been hit low in the hull, rught where the mine blew up, more or less. There's a shell penetration in the lower forward hull, which has blow a return roller off, and some bent fenders and schurzen, and a few smaller caliber penetrations in the turret armour. The return roller that's been knocked out of position has also come apart, and some of the wheels near the point of the two impacts are knocked out of alignment.

Starting to add stowage.

Turret bin open...

Some growage of stowage. Plus opening turret schurzen.

Poor scribing this side.

Track sag.

Track sag is always a nice touch. but it's not always easy to achieve, and depends to quite a large degree on the type of track the kit uses. This kit has tracks of the better than average but won't glue with model glue variety. I had to glue them using Gorilla Glue superglue gel. The tracks are decent enough looking, detail wise. And I'm pleased with the overall effect.

Much more drastic track sag.

Adding some detail/interest to the rear engine deck.

I really want to start finishing some of my models. This one is intended to be a diorama. But hopefully also one I can still deploy on a wargame table, if desired. Most of my builds thus far have been with mid to late war stuff in mind. But this is finished in earlier war dark grey. I'm hoping I might learn to get better at single colour paint jobs. At present it's just blocked in. Weathering and shading are yet to be begun.

Started work on a base.

Halford's grey basecoat.

Revell dunkelgrau, decals, and a little blocking in of colours.

I don't think I'll be buying the Revell dunkelgrau spray can I used on this again. It took most of the rather small can to do this one model. And at about £5 a can, or thereabouts, that's simply too much. I don't know if I'll regret it, but I decided to put the decals on - using transfers from my spares box - at this stage. I'll work on shading and weathering over and around them, being careful not to obscure them altogether.

I'll end this post for now with a few more pics of the tank as she looks at close of play today. There's still a long ways to go. But at least I'm further on with her than with most models I post, where I more or less stop once construction is complete. I must get better at finishing stuff!

I'm quite pleased with progress so far.

Markings make such a difference!

The open hatches add some interest.

I like this view from the rear, with added suff, and open turret bin.

Just need to work on making the paint job more interesting!

To conclude, I really like the two Forces of Valor models I've built so far. They're less than half the price of certain other brands; Dragon, for example, have long been very expensive. But more recently, and rather depressingly, Revell kit prices at my local shop have gone up to similarly over-inflated levels. These FoV kits are, currently, cheaper than those hoary ol' Airfix 'vintage classics'!!! And they build into really quite good models, esp. with a bit of effort. It's a shame the range is, at present, really rather limited.

Misc: Tank Museum Tank Chats, Pz III, Inspiration, etc.

On my workbench at present I have a couple of PSC Pz III models. I decided they needed doing as they were out of their box (one having been built some while back), just generally getting in the way. Rather than keep moving them around, I thought why not build the buggers?

After a late night sesh gluin' them together, I dug out all my similar looking models from my display shelving. I have what I believe is an old Fujimi kit, which I've built with lots of open hatches, partly on account of it having pretty cool internal detailing (rare in this scale), the rest are far more basic Armourfast or PSC kits. What I realised was that I can't actually tell, at a glance, which are Pz III or IV, let alone which variants each might be.

My production line of Pz III, Pz IV and sundry other tanks.

Quite by accident, whilst relaxing watching some snooker on YouTube, I saw a link to a Tank Museum Tank Chat on the Pz III (see above). Even more serendipitously, I'd chosen to do mine as Ausf L, which happens to be the very version curator David Willey stands in front of in the Bovington museum, whilst delivering his superb sermon. 

Willey says in the Tank Chat that the Pz III and IV were so similar, many wonder why the Germans bothered making two different tanks that were so alike. That made me feel a little less like a dunce for not knowing which is which. I decided to go through all my models and work out what was what. Turns out I only have two Pz IV, the rest being various Pz III variants.

I started working on a spare turret. Drilled out the turret hole.

Also cut out the doors, and fabricated new ones, to have open.

The PSC kits are great 'cause they have beacoup de bits, allowing you to build numerous variants. These can go in the spares box, for potential use in other builds. It was too late to use them in these builds, as I've already made these models. But I've decided to prepare a turret in a manner akin to the Bovington Pz III, Ausf L, only with numerous hatches open.

Hatches glued on, MG42 and commander at the ready.

In the picture above the two strange circles with sticks attached are two layers of plastic card glued together, and then stuck on the end of a thick bit of sprue. I can then chuck these up in a drill, and sand them into circular cupola components, by running the drill in one hand, and applying sandpaper to the discs with the other. They actually started out square. I cut them down a bit with the trusty scalpel. But, as shown above, they've already been sanded to close to the final size.

Also visible are an MG42 and mount. I had to remove the bipod stand from the front of the MG barrel. A second unaltered MG42 is visible above, as is the cupola MG-mount. The tanks own internal MGs were MG34s. Pictured below are some of the cupola components, such as the circular bit I crafted from a double layer of plastic card, using a drill and sandpaper. I also cut away the ring on the open cupola/hatch component from the kit (an unedited version is shown nearby for comparison).

No spare/complete cupolas, so I had to partially scratch-build one.

Fabricating the bottom of the turret, with a paper template.

Everything thus far glued together. 

I've enjoyed making this new Pz III turret. It'll await another model of the tank itself. I still need to add the little triangular plates at the lower front of the turret. And I may also want to further sand down the flammpanzer barrel that I've already sanded down a fair bit to turn it into an ordinary 50mm gun.

This post is also about inspiration and information. As well as David Willey's excellent video on the Pz III, I also watched and thoroughly enjoyed a similar presentation by Lindybiege, also filmed in front of the Bovington Pz III, Ausf L. Both these videos informed and inspired me, re the modelling work I've been engaged in.

Thanks to the videos and other research for these Pz III models I now also know an easy way to tell if a tank's a Pz III or IV at a glance: the Pz III has six sets of road wheels, and the Pz IV eight. And to finish, a final thought re my turret conversion... the commander figure is a bit Wallace-ish, as in a Wallace and Gromit, with his fat arms and oversized mitts. I may attempt to slim him down a little bit.

But that's all for tonight... time for bed!

Book Review: Arras, Counter Attack, 1940 - Tim Saunders

I've just finished reading this book, which I thoroughly enjoyed. 

Reeling from the speed of the German advance, French and English command and control was, by mid-May 1940 coming apart at the seams. As a consequence, what was intitially supposed to be the northern part of an Allied pincer movement, aimed at cutting through the corridor the Panzers had so rapidly opened up, became instead an ill-starred and half-baked operation, ultimately more about defence and retreat than the supposed or intended attack.

Tim Saunders, ex-military himself, has written an engaging account of this doomed action. Chapters 1-4 set the scene, starting with reflections on WWI and the birth of tank warfare, and the development of these ideas in the interwar years, and showing how, despite Britain and France having lead tank development early on, they were to be outpaced by Germany, when Hitler rode roughshod over the Versailles treaty, characters like Guderian championing a new form of all-arms warfare, spearheaded by tanks and mobile armoured troops, that would come be known as Blitzkrieg.

The caption of this pic says it shows 7th Pz Div, France, 1940.

Rommel and staff, France, 1940.

This photo was allegedly taken by Rommel himself, near Arras.

Further scene setting is developed in chapters concerning the planning of of Fall Gelb, the invasion of France, and the constitution and depolyoment of the BEF in France, along with the Allied plan, to strike East into Belgium, that wound up playing directly into the German's 'Sickle-Cut' strategy. Chapters then cover the new Allied plans, ostensibly to now attack south instead, and meet a northward attack by French forces. But these plans, over ambitious to begin with, were subject to constant revision, as the French will to attack evaporated, and even as the BEF forces deployed for the attack itself.

I'll leave my synopsis of the contents there, saying only that the following chapters follow the action of May 21st, the actual Arras Counter Attack, confused and fragmented as that is, with admirable clarity. And the evolving story is liberally peppered with quotes from primary sources on both sides, albeit weighted somewht more to the British perspective. I read another review on Amazon UK in which the reviewer calls into question the authenticity of 'Gun Buster', a source Saunders quotes at some length and on numerous occcasions. On the German side he quotes Rommel a lot, but in this instance acknowledging Rommel's own talent for self-publicity and exaggeration.

The BEF relied heavily on 'Carriers' like these.

An abandoned Matilda Mk I, France, 1940.

More abandoned Allied materiel, Matilda Mk II.

At this point I'll note some of the good and bad points of the book structurally: the background and the action itself are well structured. And one thing very worthy of note to commend this book is the excellent deployment of maps [1] and photographs [2] in conjunction with the text. Other useful inclusions are, in the several Appendices, the OOB for the 7th Pz Div, the Battlefield tour stuff, for those wishing to visit the scenes of these actions, and the analyses of the Operation as a whole, and its influence in Hitler's 'Halt Order'. But there are no OOB for the BEF or other Allied troops, nor a glossary, bibliography, or notes on sources.

So, compared with some writing on WWII, this is a bit patchy from the scholarly apparatus point of view. But, for me, as someone with very limited knowledge of this aspect of the war, this was a fascinating and compelling read. A glossary, bibliography, and notes on sources would all improve the book. But in its favour, its use of maps and photographs help make it more vivid and easier to follow than many other books in the military history camp.

Overall I'd definitely recommend this to those with an interest in the period. 

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NOTES:

Having also recently read about a similar instance of attack as constantly shifting rearguard action in Jeffrey Plowman's Greece, 1941, quite how 'we'* won the war, getting off to such a shaky and badly managed start, is a mystery. As Saunders observes on p.101: 'all-arms tactics were almost non-existent in the British Army of 1940.' He also notes that this remained true even as late save the Normandy campaign, post D-Day!

* Well, with the combined weight of industry and numbers that first Russia, then the U.S., and not forgetting our own ability to draw on the manpower resources of the Commonwealth, that 'we' becomes significantly larger, and the outcome less mysterious.

[1] Although having said this, the maps are not standardised, and seem to have been lifted from a number of uncredited sources. And in a few instances there is the amusing typo whereby the settlement Warlus is rendered as Walrus!

[2] These photos appear, by and large, at pertinent points in relation to the text, and really help illuminate it. Occasionally however they might have benefitted from clearer descriptions, as for example when an SdKfz 222 from the Africa Korps is shown. It's better than no pic' of the vehicle. But the fact it's a photo from an altogether different theatre should probably be noted, even if only in passing.