RF! in 20mm - A little known armoured encounter somewhere in nowadays Pakistan, the battle of Al-Lie

 

A little known armoured battle of WW2 happened in Pakistan (some sources say it was Afghanistan) at a place called Al-Lie, between several units of armoured vehicles of Japan, Germany, Slovakia on one side and USA and USSR on the other:

- The Japanese got lost in the jungle looking for the body of Yamamoto and ended up a bit to the west;

- The Slovaks found the Eastern Front too dangerous and a task force derived a bit more to the south east looking for more peaceful areas;

-The Germans had to be in control of everything Axis;

- The Soviets, without radios on their tanks, got lost and now were too scared to return because of NKVD thinking they were deserters;

- The US simply had to be everywhere even if it was not their damn business!!

Two conclusions are known about Al-Lie battle, no one survived to tell the story and it didn´t happen. 

After this BS story what really made me making this bunch was the fact of having these models sitting for too long on the cue and all were WW2 bits for continuing a number of armies. 

The one waiting for longer, maybe 10 years, and already built (given by JF or JMM) was this Esci late KV-1 that will go the winterized Soviets. 

This Mig T-28 is one of the oldest model kits of this tank, dating from the mid 90s. I found it in one of the last model shops in Lisbon, the Casa Antunes. 

The model is a piece of hell to be built as it is made in resin and lots of photo-etched parts and thus made for standing in a shelf and not wargaming. But as I´m a shelf wargamer everything will be OK. 

Two more T-35 monster by S-Models. Only four to reach the 10 mark as ordered by Master Colin and Richard in its supplement for Russian units 41-42. In fact the 8th Mechanized Corps used them at Dubno, which is my target for Barbarossa. The last four will not have the aerials as they only existed in the command tank of the company. 

This "Long Tom" and HST is a second one to be built and is the consequence of an exchange made years ago between a full Altaya collection and some miniature racing cars. A Matchbox figure and a base was added, a quick glass paint and sand color drybrush and its ready to go. 

Some 10 days ago or so I received a nice parcel from a Spanish wargamer friend, JZ, which had plenty of very helpful bits and pieces. Among them there was this Horch 830 radio car of the early war period, probably by the extict BUM and copied from the Wespe model. The aerials were added and a few more details also. 

Not sure about this aerial arrangement but it looks nice to me. 

Also from JZ came all these that went for the Japanese. The Sumida Type 92 armored car is resin a copy of the Skytrex one I already have. I painted it with the same SNLF colors. The truck to the left pretends to be a Nissan 80 but it started as...

... a firemen truck. Here it already got some plastic side pannels to look more like a cargo truck...

...and here it got new wheels and a tarpaulin. 

These diecast pickups started like this but here you can already see the final arrangement with hot glue on the windshields, new wheels and cargo to disguise the strange stuff on the back.

Three more Praga trucks from FtF going to the Slovak Fast brigade. 

And three more Slovac LT-35 to conclude the armour of the same brigade.

Next: another video on the Iraqi 1991 army

Able Archer/ RFR rules - Vietnam in 20mm (part 13) - Reinforcements for the 11th ACR and some more aircraft

 

Some 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR) elements advance in the middle of My Blue province when they are surprised by a low flight of some friendly aircraft, that could well have been some Migs... Well, this event was not registred in the unit´s history and its presented here first hand. 

Each squadron of the 11th ACR had three rifle squads (one per troop) transported in M-113 A1. I read that even these ones could also have the ACAV version but the regiment will end up with nine of these so three of the more plain A1 version looks OK. I´m not sure about placing a simple shield in front of the 12,5mm gun but I still couldn´t find a photo of them like this, the ACAV version being the more common. All models are quick build S-Model.

The figures are left-to-right, Skytrex and Airfix modern fighter pilots which suit the US cavalry tank helmet pretty well. 

Each troop also had a M-106 mortar carrier. I used again the S-Model for this conversion using a M-106 from Esci as a template. Bits of different types of plastic were used and even the mortar base came from a Revell 7YW Austrian artillery wheel. 

The crew is Esci and the M-16 rifles were cut until looking like a 107mm mortar shell. Later, the rifle part/shells were smoothed with a bit of  thick acrylic paint. 

As the mortar base was very brittle (old Revell style) I placed a jerrycan covering the damaged part. 

The floor of the M-106 (light sand part) was also raised so the figures and mortar could sit correctly. 

The Cadillac V-100, mostly used by the Military Police, are very old Corgi Juniors toys. The size is around 20mm as I have a number of Saudi V-150 in 1/87th scale that are smaller. 

The resin figures are surplus from the 3d printed PBR boat and the metal figure is Skytrex. 

The Huey Gunship is Revell. 

The Mohawk is the old Hasegawa model. One of these slow moving aircraft managed to put down a Mig-17 with its rockets, something that was kept as a secret up to 2007, as the army didn´t want USAF to know about this feat and force the Army to disarm its Mohawk as putting down Migs was a USAF exclusive. 

This A-4 Skyhawk F is the old Frog in Israeli colors. All these three aircraft got new star and stripes decals from the decals left-over box and all other symbols were hand painted. This one looks particularly bad as the symbold are painted on top of the grey primer as its (just by chance) the same color and painting style of another Skyhawk C from Altaya that I showed you before. 

Next: Guadalcanal models or a video on Bodrum, Gettysburg or Tarawa. 

Crete 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! rules: the German paratroopers

This is another old wish, being able to have a consistent force of German Fallschirmjäger for the beggining of the war. Masters Colin and Richard released sometime ago the great supplement Crete- the Airborne assault with all the information you need for the beggining of the battle, namely the arrival of the Sturm Regiment and many of the 7th Flieger division units. Later, hopefully, we can see this extended to include the Gebirgsjäger actions, which were the true victors of the battle. This group started decades ago with the Italeri Ju-52s, a sole Frontline Wargaming DFS 230 and more recently the Preiser Pioneers. In the last few months I managed to build all the rest, with the inspiration on the book: all artillery and support weapons were scratchbuilt in Evergreen plastics (the 50/81/105mm mortars, IG75mm, PAK 36s, Do Gerat rocket launcher, 75mm Geb. G 36 and the MMGs 34. The exceptions to this were the 20mm Flak gun (3d MiniGeneral), the BMW combo(Fujimi) and the Kettenkraftrad (S-models). All figures manning the support weapons and the artillery are all converted from the Airfix and Revell Fallschimjägers. All figures in the "rifle" companies suffered no conversion. The funniest thing to do was to copy in wood and BlueFoam the Frontline wargaming DFS 230, producing like this three more gliders. An excellent article on the tricky FJ artillery for Crete can be found at: https://arnhemjim.blogspot.com/2011/0

Crete 1941 in 20mm for Rapid Fire! Part 6: The Kettenkrads, side-cars and the last containers

This is the last post for the Germans as I´m leaving Crete for now but will come back for the Tavronitis river bed, Greek infantry and other details. The Kettenkrads are S-models from China via Aliexpress that arrived with the houses at the end of the post and the side-cars are very old Fujimi. The containers are the last 14 necessary for the biggest scenario which totals 23. 

The Kettenkrad were used to pull the 75mmGeb.G 36 as you can see in this picture. 

The guns, and probably the tractors, were also camouflaged (mud or paint?). 

These two will go for the Carentan booklet scenarios. The beautiful cart is a resin 3d print that comes with the kit. 

All FJ for the Carentan scenarios are made too. 

These are for Crete and you also need one of each.

In fact only the BMW is necessary for the scenarios in the Crete booklet but a Kettenkrad is a nice addition for the artillery. 

The crews are conversions from Airfix and Revell, some with GreenStuff legs and reattached plastic feet. 

I always tend to place some Hulk kind of arms in the figures... 

The Fujimi side-car figures got Airfix heads. 

After taking the previous pictures I noticed the blue scarfs were missing but now they are done. 

I found the last Revell container after a lot of search in many boxes. I had 5 boxes of Revell FJ with a total of 10 containers so this last one had to be somewhere. The other containers are scratchbuilt and copied from the Revell in terms of size but closed as it makes its build much easier. 

The containers are made from pieces of wood from a Chinese shop, both cylindrical and cuboid shaped. The pegs are small pieces of broomstick plastic. 

The wooden 3d printed houses are two beauties of between 6 to 8 euros. The bigger house can go to Northern europe while the smallest is another addition to my Russian village. The painting is made mostly with diluted acrylics and drybrush so the nice printed detail can be seen. 

They can be open and that roof is crying to be used by Frost men at Arnhem...

These are incredible nice 1/72 models and very cheap. I only had a Dutch bridge from this Fisherman brand and I´ll surely add more to my different periods.

Next: Mid-war German infantry  

The Soviet Mechanized Tank Corps, Dubno 1941, for Rapid Fire! rules and ...

This is an incomplete Russian Mechanized Tank Corps (MTC) for the beginning of the German invasion of USSR (Operation Barbarossa). The Russian Mechanized Tank Corps was hastily created after the reports showing the success of the Panzer Divisions in the west. The problem was that it was too large and, coupled with the problems of Stalin´s purge on Soviet officers, subsequent problems of command and control, lack of radios and mechanical breakdowns, it became an unwieldy mass of force. Even so there were already the T-34 and KV-I and II in its ranks and this made the Mechanized Tank Corps a powerful opponent to the Panzer Division (even if at Dubno, for instance these modern tanks were less than 15% of the more than 3000 Soviet tanks in six MTCs ). The MTC is also an opportunity to field in the same armored unit vehicles like the BT-7 and the T-26, and the big ones like the T-28 and the T-35. They were fragile and old machines in the battlefield but become great miniatures on the table or shelves.

The models are Fabbri, Esci, Matchbox, S-models, MiniGeneral, Fujimi and 3d resin prints, including some conversions, mostly turning a group of T-34/41 into the 1940 model.

When I mention a converted T-26 at the beginning of the video I forget to mention that its based on Polish 7TP as both shared the basis of the Vickers 6-ton chassis.

The British in the Desert 1940-43, for Rapid Fire! rules and in 20mm size

This time there is no particular division but different pools of models that enables you to play most of the actions described on both RF Western Desert supplements and in the many PDFs available in the RF site. The models are mostly plastics (Airfix, PSC, Fujimi, Hasegawa, S-Models, Matchbox, Revell and Esci), die-cast (Altaya), 3d prints (Minigeneral) and resin (Frontline Wargaming). The model of Monty's Caravan ( a british truck with an Italian body) is Matchbox and not Airfix and I said on the video.

Rapid Fire! Western Desert 1940-43 in 20mm - Reinforcements for Operation Compass

 

A group of tanks and portees arrive at Der-el-boris-on-the-run where a solo battery of the 68th Medium Regiment Royal Artillery, part of the 4th Indian Division, is keeping the Italians at bay. 

The valiant defenders are made of 6'' howitzers from MiniGeneral 3d prints and converted Airfix figures.

The A13 MkI are S-Models and have the symbols of the 7th AD. Only 65 of these were made and most were lost in France. I couldn´t find much information on this precise model in service with the 7th AD in the desert but I´m trusting the information on the fist RF guide on the NA campaign. I also found some information of these tanks in Cyprus so not really sure if 10 of them (2 tank models) were used by this division in the desert. 

These 2pdr portees are more of a way to use the leftovers of a previous order than anything else. Even so the 2pdr portees are an absolute must for desert early war.  After Brexit getting the nice ones from Britannia/ Grubby models became more difficult so I scratch built this group. 

I caught the generic shape of the Chevrolets WA/WB by using three more the Chinese group of 10 models that came in a pack from Aliexpress with the two first being used for the Italian Fiat Autocannone shown around April. 

The guns used are MiniGeneral 3d prints after two good coats of varnish in order to deal with the nasty printing lines. The crew are a mix of AB, Revell and Airfix. 

They became a fit of the fatty side but are close to the original. 

Now a bit on how the whole group was made. The 6'' Howitzers are originally WW1 models. I used some 3d rubber wheels thickened with Milliput for the approximate size.  

You can recognize the artillerymen as the old Chinese copies of the excellent Airfix 8th Army figures. The arms were taken out and replaced with GreenStuff ones some of them carrying with a 6'' grenade. 

The S-Models A13 MkI had a few extras you can see here: a converted head from Valiant, stowage, smoke dischargers, antenna, etc. 

The portees had to have the original (Dodge?) truck reduced to almost half of the length and heavily cut a bit everywhere. Then the miraculous Evergreen plastic card and Milliput did the rest. 

A few extras for a more desert look and they were done. An important detail was to cut the height of the original wheels making them look as if slightly sunk in sand. This detail is important as the original wheels make the trucks too tall for this effect. 

Next: maybe a video on Mortain Germans, Kursk Soviets or British in the desert.