собаки-истребители танков

The Soviet army employed 40,000 dogs for military purposes during WWII. You'll often read that most of these dogs were anti-tank dogs (собаки-истребители танков; sobaki-istrebiteli tankov), but I'm skeptical about the accuracy of this statement.

I find it more likely that the majority of these dogs were used to haul supplies, as stretcher bearers, for search and rescue, or as guard dogs, while only a fraction were trained as anti-tank dogs, but it's difficult to find out factual information because most English language articles written about them are heavily biased for various reasons.

Soviet friendly narratives focus on the heroism of the dogs and the evil of the Nazis, while more typical Western narratives focus on the failures of the anti-tank dog program, and moralize about the treatment of these animals by the Soviets. Neither type of article give primary sources for their facts, so it is hard to figure out what is true and what is propaganda.

In any event, I picked up the SHQ Anti Tank Mine Dog! and Handler with PPSH (RT18) as a novelty.

SHQ miniatures are true 20mm figures, so they are definitely tiny when compared to 1/72 scale figures. However, I think the dog looks just fine (if not better) next to a 1/72 figure.

The only other model of this type that I know of is the TAS Models 1/72 anti-tank dog, but it is on the pricey side at €7.50. I may end up eventually getting the model because the dog is more typical of the type used by the Soviet military, but TAS Models do not seem to be readily available in the retail market.

Those Meddling Kids

Scooby Doo is a cartoon that has been around for the last 50 years, with the latest installment just released earlier last month. 

Elhiem makes a set of 1970's Style Teen/twentys Pesky Kids and Great Dane (HIP04) based on the characters, but name them after their incarnations as the Mysteries Five (from left to right) Kelly, Geoff, Linda, W.W., and Too Much.

Too Much has an elongated muzzle as in the cartoon. The character designer Iwao Takamoto intentionally gave Scooby a look that was almost the antithesis of an actual Great Dane. The flanks were a bit flat with angular edges, so I smoothed the lines down a bit before painting. The only thing that was missing was his collar. I would have added one, but I already primed the figure before I noticed it was missing.

I chose a darker color palette for painting because I wanted to replicate the saturated look from an old CRT television. Most pictures on the web show a much brighter palette, but that didn't seem to fit for a show with elements of mystery and the supernatural.

I think I was pretty faithful to the original look except with Daphne where I swapped the colors of her stockings and dress trim because I thought it looked better that way.

The Mystery Machine that the kids drive around in is a van of indeterminate type.

Matchbox has a 1/74 4X4 Chevy Van that is decked out as the Mystery Machine. The model is based on their '75 Chevy Van, which I wrote about in a previous post.

The first thing I wanted to do was to replace the oversized wheels and undercarriage with the ones from a regular van.

I took apart both vans using the standard technique of diecast car customizers.

These vans only have a single post in front, and are held by a pair of hooks in the back. The normal van comes with a nice interior, whereas the 4X4 only has the undercarriage.

I think the hooks are slightly different for the two models because I couldn't get the normal van body to fit on the 4X4 undercarriage.

I'm still trying to find a spare tire to mount on the front of the model.

Mad Max

For reasons long forgotten, two mighty warrior tribes went to war and touched off a blaze which engulfed them all. Without fuel they were nothing. They'd built a house of straw. The thundering machines sputtered and stopped. Their leaders talked and talked and talked, but nothing could stem the avalanche. Their world crumbled. Cities exploded. A whirlwind of looting, a firestorm of fear. Men began to feed on men. On the roads it was a white-line nightmare. Only those mobile enough to scavenge, brutal enough to pillage would survive. The gangs took over the highways, ready to wage war for a tank of juice. And in this maelstrom of decay, ordinary men were battered and smashed.

– The Road Warrior

I think that the Stranger and the dog Max (Warlands ABGWL021) produced by Aberant Game is the only expy of Max Rockatansky in the 20mm world.

The Stranger is true 20mm, while the dog is enormously oversized.

To bring Max up to size, I lengthened both his torso and his legs. I felt the torso (or perhaps the jacket) looked too short, and needed modification to look proportional.

While I was at it, I fixed his hair a bit, added a leg brace, and switched the boot knife on his left to the right.

The right sleeve of Max's jacket is missing in the movie, but it would have been too much effort to modify the miniature. I'll just say he's wearing a long sleeved shirt under the jacket like he did in Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome.

I probably should have smoothed out the sculpted eyes of the figure, but since I didn't, I had to paint them. Because of this, he is somewhat bug-eyed in close-up.

Max accompanied by a 15mm dog from Peter Pig.

Old Blood and Guts

There he sat, big as life even at that distance. His hair was silver, his face was pink, his collar and shoulders glittered with more stars than I could count, his fingers sparkled with rings, and an incredible mass of ribbons started around desktop level and spread upward in a flood over his chest to the very top of his shoulder, as if preparing to march down his back too. His face was rugged, with an odd, strangely shapeless outline; his eyes were pale, almost colorless, with a choleric bulge. His small, compressed mouth was sharply downturned at the corners, with a lower lip which suggested a pouting child as much as the no-nonsense martinet. It was a welcome, rather human touch. Beside him, lying in a big chair, was Willie, the bull terrier. If ever a dog was suited to his master this one was. Willie had his beloved boss’s expression and lacked only the ribbons and stars. I stood in that door staring into the four meanest eyes I’d ever seen.

– Bill Mauldin

George S. Patton Jr. was a colorful and controversial military figure who was considered a central figure in the development of American armored warfare doctrine during, and between both world wars.

His peers in the North African Campaign included Montgomery and Rommel, but unlike the later two who have likenesses in plastic, metal, and probably resin, you'd be hard pressed to find a figure representing Patton at all.

I only know of one metal 20mm figure from Sgt Major Miniatures in the General Patton set (GUTS).

The figure is wearing a B-3 bomber jacket, and has a pair of Colt SSAs at his hips. The stars on his helmet are overscale, but can be easily removed if so desired.

A 15mm figure in the General George S. Patton set (Flames of War US885) from Battlefront Miniatures also exists, but the set is only useful because it comes with a figure of Willie which is more suitable for 1/72 scale than 15mm.

I increased the size of the figure a bit to bring it in line with Patton's actual height.

Patton had his flaws (some pretty spectacular ones at that), but I think he was a lot more complex than what detractors or conspiracy theorists make him out to be.

Document everything, leave nothing to chance...
because one day, some cockroach will crawl up
out of the latrine and deny all this ever happened.
God damn them!

Marche!

I don't remember anything like this in the book,
but I admit it's been a long time since I've read it.

Dogsleds have held a fascination for me ever since reading Call of the Wild and White Fang way back in high school.

1/72 sets that include dogsleds are made by Nikolai and BUM, but both are rather pricey and not particularly easy to find.

However, I recently ordered some huskys produced by Mick Yarrow Miniatures as part of his 15mm Warriors of the Late Ice Age line (Inuit 11), and they look to be perfectly sized for 1/72 huskys (and at £2.20 for 8 dogs, the price is eminently reasonable).

The huskys come in two poses, and can probably also double for a number of other types of sled dogs if you are not too picky.

I used some Siberian Husky color profiles created by Sedillo-Kennels on DeviantArt as painting guides.

M.Y. Miniatures also has some dogsled team sets - Sledge and 3 team with cannon balls (Inuit 102), and Sledge and 3 team with light cannon (Inuit 103), which seem perfectly fine as smaller Inuit sleds.

Obviously we have moved beyond the stone age with these sets, and the sleds are appropriately built to more modern standards out of wood instead of whalebone and antlers.

I'm trying to figure out how to do the basing on these right now. I'd like to have the dogs and sleds separable from the tug lines so that they can be used in a number of different hitch patterns.

A nice explanation of the various hitch styles and their strengths and weaknesses can be found at the Old School Alaskan blog.

Traditional fan hitch

Single file hitch

Gangline hitch - dual hitch lead dogs

Gangline hitch - single lead dog

Blink Dogs

"These brown and yellowish creatures are as intelligent as normal humans and have a fairly complex language consisting of barks, yaps, whines, and growls. They are also able to use a limited form of teleportation (the blink)."

– Advanced D&D Monster Manual

The Blink Dog has often been described as a monster that is unique to D&D, but I know I'm not the only one who has observed the high degree of similarity between the Blink Dog and the Jeep.

The Jeep (despite its odd appearance), is described as a magical dog with the ability to disappear from one place and appear in another. Jeeps were yellowish with brown spots, intelligent, and spoke in a language consisting of "jeeps". Both the Blink Dog and the Jeep have been described as "African dogs".

I always pictured Blink Dogs as the terrier-like dogs from the Trampier illustration in the Dungeon Masters Guide, rather than the badger-headed Tom Wham Blink Dog from the Monster Manual, or the lynx-eared versions from D&D 3.5.

There have been a few Blink Dog miniatures, typically described as Wink Dogs (I'm guessing due to legal reasons), but the only ones that I have are Grenadier Blinc Dogs (Monster Manuscript Vol.I 1501, MM6).

Of the various miniatures, these are the ones that I think look closest to how I envision a Blink Dog, but even so, I saw Blink Dogs as being rather small, like Jeeps, rather than 3' at the shoulder.

Because of this, I decided to use 15mm dogs from Peter Pig as Blink Dogs. The first two dogs come from their PBI line (Range 8 #526), while the dog with handler is from The Men of Company B line (Range 1 #55).

I modified the tails, and made some other alterations so that the dogs would all be a little different from each other. I used Kneadatite to make the small tuft at the end of the tail for one of the dogs, but it was rather time consuming to get it to stick to the tail and look right, so on other dogs I just put a blob of CA glue on the end of the tail.

Here are some of the dogs painted up. They look a bit like dog-headed lion cubs because of the spots and the tail, but I think they turned out pretty nicely.