Hi folks,
I've gotten myself into that odd situation (for me at least) where I have multiple units being painted together. This has led to a break in things getting finished, followed by a load of units completed simultaneously.
This weekend I finished off another oddball unit - one that I've thought about for a while but only recently had cause to build. Anyone who regularly follows will know I like to have limbered versions of my various guns (with 6-pdrs, 17-pdrs and Pak40s all having limbered models in my collection). During our recent Gold Beach game, some of the arriving reinforcements consisted of 40mm Bofors armed Crusader AA tanks towing limbered 40mm Bofors guns.
I managed to jury rig tanks for this purpose (and have since converted some, which should be finished soon), but I could only proxy the limbered 40mm with a limbered 17-pdr. I had a load of spare 40mm Bofors parts in my bits box and a blister of two guns in my lead pile. I managed to find another two of the metal blisters online - giving me enough parts to build six guns in the limbered configuration. Which was lucky, as the online bought packs were old, partially unsealed and missing a lot of bits.
The old metal Battlefront kits came with axles and wheels. I'm not sure about the placement of the axles as the guns sit a bit higher than I think they should - but these were supposed to be more base decoration that use I think.
I found some parts to make gun cradles (handles from German drop canister trolley parts), tow bars (cut down 75mm gun barrels), seats (upturned Sherman tank bogeys) and seat backs (bits of plastic cut from a blister pack). If I'd had more skill I'd have boxed in the ammo feed, as per historical photos. Instead, I went with just painting the ammo black.
The result is something that's 'close enough' for me. At 15mm scale, my skills wouldn't stretch much further. And these are models which are unlikely to see the table often - they were just a cool idea bodged together. Something I don't think many others will have in their collections.
These sit nicely behind my previously completed transports for this unit.
Nicely done
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