559. Schwere Panzerjäger Abteilung Wirbelwinds

The last month or so has been fairly busy with little time for actually working on my own miniature projects, but for the past week or so I've been able to start getting caught up a bit.  The Jagdpanthers detailed last month are ready for priming.  Also ready for priming are the Wirbelwind anti-aircraft tanks that will (hopefully) keep marauding fighter-bombers away from the big kitties.  The Battlefront Wirbelwind (GE165) is a very nice miniature on its own, but given that many Wirbelwind were converted from older Panzer IV hulls, there is a lot of room for variety.  Duske, Greenland, and Terlisten's Nuts and Bolts covering the Flakpanzer IV also contains a wealth of information and inspiration as well, not just for the Wirbelwind, but for the Ostwind as well.

Given I'm planning a unit of three  vehicles, I wanted to provide it with some variety.  As I mentioned before, the actual miniature itself is fairly nice, so I started with one just out of the box.  The model goes together nicely with the standard amount of clean-up on the tracks and the Flakvierling.

The Nuts and Bolts work also shows some that have deleted the vision ports on the front sides of the hull, but retain the single muffler/exhaust layout.  Figuring this would be simple enough to do, I just removed the ports, sanded the areas flat, and added a weld line for the front plate.

 

 

Finally is the one where I need my head examined.  I wanted to have at least one Wirbelwind with zimmerit.  Rather than use the hull from the Wirbelwind (which had some casting issues) I confiscated a hull from a Panzer IV H to use as the basis.  Unfortunately the Panzer IV H miniature doesn't have zimmerit on the hull sides.  To correct this, I removed the details from the right side and left side of the hull (except for the spare wheel bracket, which appears on several Wirbelwind).  I used miliput to not only fill the slots for the schurtzen (which do not appear on the Wirbelwind) but for the zimmerit as well. I textured the miliput with a modified Trumpeter 1/72nd scale zimmerit tool, and the results were fairly striking.

I also added zimmerit to the front and rear fenders using miliput as well.  On the entire model, I had to replace many of the molded in details with scratch-built styrene copies.  This includes the vision ports, jack block, and a few other minor details.  I took the bins from the defective Wirbelwind miniature and added them directly to the Ausf H hull.  The end result is a fairly convincing early production variant

The miniatures are now ready for priming.  You'll note I've left the heads off of the crew - the guns themselves are also not permanently affixed yet either.  I want to paint both of those separately before I glue them in place.  I'm also working on several "updated" Sturmgeschutz III Ausf G for this army (I'll need a total of six), so watch this space for the insanity on that particular project.

559. Schwere Panzerjäger Abteilung Jagdpanthers

While waiting on some decals to finish a couple of other projects I'm working on (namely my 150. Panzerbrigade and my 761st Tank Battalion), I decided to go ahead and start working on some Jagdpanthers for my 559. Schwere Panzerjäger Abteilung.  I'm using a mix of the Jagdpanther Platoon Box [GBX41] as well as the single Jagdpanther (with ruined building) [GBX22].  As I really love the tracks on the new Panther sprue - I had several lying around and decided to use mostly plastic components for the Jagdpanthers. 

I've always loved the Jagdpanther tank destroyer, and the 559. list from Bridge by Bridge is nice because you can round out the very expensive Jagdpanthers with less costly Stug III assault guns.  The downside is, like most of the German Market Garden lists, there is no recon option.  However, you get enough tubes and some decent artillery, infantry, and anti-aircraft options.

As always I'm keenly interested in the modeling aspects of the unit.  Research data on the 559. is scarce, but as they were the second unit equipped with the Jagdpanther, the few pictures show that they were all the early version with the monobloc gun barrel.  Unfortunately while Battlefront's Jagdpanther does a good job of representing most aspects of the early model, their gun barrel is the later two-part version.  However, with the new plastic barrel removing the sleeve and narrowing the barrel slightly is child's play, enabling an accurate rendering of the unit's vehicles.

As for the rest of the plastic parts, so far it is a bit of a mixed bag.  The spare track links are a bit larger than their metal equivalents.  As I mentioned before, the tracks are marvelous, but you generally have to sand down the plastic backing to get them to fit on any panther hull designed for the white metal tracks.  One interesting thing I found out recently is that the GBX22 SKU is now provided with all plastic parts.  Battlefront has also modified the hull slightly to accept the plastic tracks.

 

 

The other downside is that the plastic hatches for the Jagdpanther are way too small:

 

The old metal ones also gapped a bit, but they were better:

 

 

I'll likely try and use metal hatches - and if all else fails, I have punches the right size and can make them out of styrene. 

I'm hoping to get these done in the next week or two and off to the painting bench as the markings for this unit are fairly simple.  I plan on dressing up the Stug III hulls with zimmerit as well, but that will be a future blog entry.

Battlefront's Plastic M113 Platoon - First Look

Battlefront has recently released a new boxed set featuring the Viet Nam era M113, VUSBX07.  This is the first of the new promised plastic tanks and armor from Battlefront for Flames of War.  Experiences with the early tanks in the Open Fire set have generally been fairly negative.  Both the Sherman and the Stug have assembly problems, and there are numerous inaccuracies in the models.  I was therefore anxious to see how Battlefront responded with a more mainstream plastic release as they are facing stiff competition from the likes of Plastic Soldier Company and Zvezda in the 1/100th scale armor market.

Out of the box the pieces look infinitely crisper than what we've seen from Battlefront in the past.  You'll likely want to print out the assembly guide on the Battlefront website as the directions are sparse (essentially a color coded picture on the back).  I'll start with the downside, because quite frankly there isn't much downside to these miniatures.  There are some annoying ejector pin marks on the hull top and front, but fortunately they're in places that are fairly easy to fix.  I use Mr. Surfacer 1200 followed by a simple sanding to even them out.  I accidently left one unfilled and it showed up prominently once primed.  I fill them because they'll stand out once I run a wash over them in places that should be smooth on the actual vehicle. 

The suspension looks fairly good, they've even managed to drop the mold line nicely into the track pattern so it needs little clean up.  They've also cleverly used the wheel hubs for the ejector pins, though this makes the center hub of each roadwheel over-large and slightly wrong in shape, but that's a detail so minor that even this rivet counter is going to prime and paint right over it.  You'll also need to drill out the barrels in the guns, mortars, and recoilless rifle.  However, since the parts are plastic and not white metal, drilling them out is child's play.  Oh yeah, and the photo on the front of the box is of the old resin and metal version, not the current plastic one...

Thus endeth the VERY minor nits I can pick about this kit.  The rest is absolutely spectacular.  The detailing on the plastic parts is incredible.  The molding is crisp and there's little to no slip on the parts.  All hatches can be opened up or closed at the builder's discretion.  Did I mention the detailing is superb?  Construction so far has been a breeze - the fit of the parts is absolutely excellent.  You'll need to be careful as some are fragile.  There are also a lot of parts, but there were a lot of parts to the old resin and white-metal versions as well.  The fact that this is a plastic kit means that super-detailing and conversion will also be easier (if you want to get exotic with your miniatures).  Another nice feature is that most of the variants you can make under the current rules are included (there are a few that you need to hit up special order for the appropriate turrets). 

Finally there's the price.  The box will run you $35 (US) for a box of four, so that works out to roughly $8.75/vehicle.  Still to the high end by plastic standards, but far less than what you paid previously for the sets.  For example an ACAV box ran about $50, or $12.50/vehicle.  Given that the quality of the plastic is, quite frankly, better than the old resin and metal and the ease of assembly is greater the kit is a strong value for the money.  I haven't been this impressed with a release in quite some time. 

Bottom line - the M113 is an absolutely beautiful release.  The pricing is extremely competitive given the quality of the kit.  I've played with some of the PSC and Zvezda kits in the past and by and large, the new M113 surpasses what they have to offer at this point in terms of quality.  I'm honestly now looking for places do dump my old un-built resin versions because I simply have no further use for them.  If this is a sign of things to come from Battlefront - bring it on!

761st Tank Battalion - Part 1 - Stuart Conversions

So one Flames of War army I've been dying to do for ages is the 761st Tank Battalion, and while there is no perfect list for them at this point, the Tank Company list from Blood, Guts, & Glory (FW220) is a reasonable approximation - as long as you don't take a bunch of mechanized support.  At this point I'm working to assemble enough 76mm M4A3 tanks to form the core of the force.  However, as an aside I wanted to have a few of Dog Company's "Mosquito Fleet" of M5A1 Stuart tanks as well.  Part 1 of my 761st Tank Battalion coverage will detail the Light Tank Platoon.

Unfortunately the 761st didn't get the photographic coverage many other units received, so any picture has to be poured over for as many details as one can glean out of it.  It's clear that the unit had both mid and late production M5A1 Stuarts.  The Battlefront US005 Stuart tank is an excellent representation of a mid-production M5A1, but lacks the characteristic turret machine gun shield seen in the late production models.  So, as seems to be normal with my armies, "some conversion" would be required to accurately represent the unit.

Since at this point I'm only planning one platoon of M5A1s, I decided to go with two "mid" and three "late" versions.  Photographs show a fair amount of stowage on several of the vehicles, so I'm adding some to many of the vehicles.  The first Stuart (shown below) is pretty much "out of the box" with only some extra stowage added. The shovel was slightly mis-cast, but as I wanted at least one vehicle with some extra bags, this one became it.

 

As the 761st was the first African-American armored unit to see combat in the US Army, I want to have more hatches open than I'd typically have to show off the crew.  The next Stuart is another "mid" variant, but this one will have a crewman in the open hatch.  I've substantially thinned the hatch and added detail for the other side of the periscope and hinges to it.

 

The next Stuart is the first of the "late" variants with the gun shield added.  The complex curvature of the shield was a pain in the butt to get right the first time, but the end effect is fairly solid.  The conversion also required sanding off the details on the right side of the turret.  I'm waiting until after priming to add the machine gun to ensure the front puttied area doesn't require additional fill or sanding (which would be complicated by the machine gun).  I'll likely add some stowage to this vehicle, but that's on the "to do" list.

 

Next is another late variant - this one has one turret hatch open - I had trouble getting the hatch to thin properly, so I simply replaced it with styrene and added hinge detail.

 

Last, but not least, is my command vehicle.  I've already started to add some stowage to this vehicle.  As with the vehicle above, the commander's hatch is detailed with hinges and periscope detail. 

 

So what started out as a quick set of conversions, quickly absorbed several hours.  Overall I'm pleased with how well the construction went on the miniatures.  For an older cast, the quality is good, though I did need to sand some of the rough texture off of some of the flat areas.

Next - Shermans!

Musings on Sherman Variants

So I've been building a metric crapton of Shermans lately as a part of several armies (US and Soviet) and see several gaps in the existing Battlefront range - most of which I think would be easy for them to close at this point.  I like the fact that we have the M4A3, M4A3 (late), and M4A3E8 variants as discrete offerings.  Unfortunately we don't have quite the same options for the M4A2 or the other Sherman variants.  Fortunately, Battlefront already produces most of the required components, so it should be easy for them to fill the gaps if they have the will to do it.

You could, for example, create a late 75mm M4A2 by combining the M4A2 76mm hull with an M4A3 (late) 75mm turret.  You could also create the late 76mm M4A2 by combining the current M4A2 76mm miniature with the M4A3E8 76mm gun with muzzle brake.  Given that there are already multiple track systems available in the online store it seems like it should be easy for Battlefront to offer the hulls, turrets, and guns separately or simply create "package deal" for specific models only available through Special Order.

I don't hold out a lot of hope that I'm ever going to see any direct vision slot hulls, so I'm resorting to conversion and casting to go that route for my Kasserine Pass army.  However, I'm working on an emcha army and want to model some of the very late M4A2 76mm with the muzzle brake, and would love to just be able to pick up the guns separately from Battlefront.

The 761st Tank Battalion

If you look carefully at the US941 American Decals set from Battlefront,  among all of the various generic names, there are a few in a very unique script.  One of them is "Counter Attack" the other is "Cool Studs Inc."  Given how unique these decals are, one would rightly assume that they belong to specific vehicles.  In this case, both vehicles belong to the historic 761st Tank Battalion - the first African American tank unit to see combat.  While a few other African-American units from World War II, such as the Tuskegee Airmen, have gained great fame, fewer know about the exploits of the 761st, or Black Panthers as they called themselves.

Part of the problem is the dearth of really solid reference works on the Battalion.  Probably the best book is Wilson's The 761st Black Panther Tank Battalion in World War II.  His account doesn't diminish any of the prejudice or bigotry encountered by the battalion, but at the same time it doesn't minimize the positive contributions of others in the command chain.  Overall I found his account perhaps the most refreshingly honest and balanced of any modern work I've read on the Battalion.

Unfortunately as with most books on the Battalion, there are several instances where many technical details provided in the text are incorrect.  For example, Wilson incorrectly identifies M4A3(76)W tanks as M4A3E8 tanks (which had a different suspension than the earlier model, but the same gun).  Granted, the layman would view this as a nit-picky error, but for historians, war gamers, model builders, and the like the error is significant.  This gaffe isn't isolated as errors like this crop up frequently throughout the entire work detracting from an otherwise excellent history.  With a little additional research into the actual equipment used by the battalion, Wilson could have authored perhaps the ultimate work on this Battalion.  Maybe he'll release a revised edition at some point, but I doubt it.

I'm hoping to do a 761st Army at some point, but none of the current Battlefront lists are perfect fits for it.  As an armored battalion, the unit was frequently parceled out as infantry support.  Given the current lists one could probably build up an infantry list and use the 761st in support (in either 76mm Sherman or Stuart tanks). 

Regardless, I plan to build up miniatures detailing this amazing unit.  The hurdles they had to overcome to even reach combat were overwhelming, and their performance in the field was nothing short of amazing.  Kudos to Battlefront for remembering to include decals for the vehicles in their standard decal set.

Confessions of a Compulsive Modeler

Anyone who's seen my 653rd Schwere Panzerjäger conversions knows I'm a sucker for visually unique armies.  Part of the reason I play German forces so frequently is the wide range of crazy vehicles they fielded during World War II.  Truth be told, the sickness started long before I found Flames of War because you see I'm also a model builder.  I brought that world over with me to miniatures wargaming.  The net effect is I finish fewer armies than I'd like, and most are never "out of the box."  That also means I probably don't have the best "tournament winning" army - but dang it I look GOOD losing. 

As Battlefront enters the "home stretch" in World War II, I'm lining up the list of "stuff I'd like to do" in 15mm using Battlefront miniatures as a starting point.  Right now the list is fairly extensive and will likely take me years to complete, but the end result should be very satisfying.

Given the release of the Jagdtiger list, I really want to convert a couple to the Porsche suspension version to add character to the 653rd list.  The miniature as depicted works great for the 512th, but the 653rd had more variety.  This is at the top of my list, but the conversion is non-trivial as the Porsche suspension version needs not only new running gear, but zimmerit on the hull as well.

With the re-release of the mid-war monsters, there are several minis I'd like to build from the Tiger (P) - including an updated Tiger (P) late, another Bergetiger (P), and both versions of the VK 4502 which I could run as a proxy for Tiger II's.

With the release of the non-zimmerited Tiger II, I'd also like to do an E-50 and E-75.  Yes, I know Heer 46 has them - they're not accurate based on my drawings.  The Forged in Battle ones are better, but still have some issues on the front hull.  Of course, once those are done - I'd like to do an E-10 and E-25, but those would be far more hard core scratchbuilds.

On a less exotic front, Battlefront has provided a very nice final production Panther G without zimmerit.  They have also given us a very nice initial production Panther G with zimmerit.  Unfortunately there are a lot of units that fielded vehicles without zimmerit, but lacking many of the "final production" features.  I'm hoping to make up a few of these as well which will involve some mantlet sculpting, rear deck changes, and exhaust modifications.  Once I have that together, I'll likely make an F with Schmalturm as well.

... and somewhere in all of this I'm going to finish up my Flakpanzer T34 and 39H OP.

So that's my "vision" - anyone else have "big plans" they want to share???  Confession is good for the soul, I'm told.