WiP: Sherman Horde! 1st Polish Armoured WiP

Hi folks,

So with the German Heer force tidied off for now I decided it was time to swing back to painting Allied Armour.

I had purchased a load of 2nd hand Sherman V's (M4A4's) over the last few months from a couple of different sources. Most were 'painted' and all were the Open Fire old style Shermans. These models are a pain to build, and have not been built well. I ended up taking some of them back to constituent bits in order to try and get some useful models out of them. After stripping, cleaning up, etc. I ended up with 18 useable tanks. Thankfully I only need 16 for the list and have the correct quota of Firefly's. However, these rebuilt tanks still needed work.

Pictures of the collection post rebuilding hulls and before me stripping crap off the others. 

So, a lot of badly placed stowage removed, squinty and badly placed gun barrels removed and replaced, and then a load of plastic putty used to try and fill in some of the gaps.

Some of the hulls were so badly damaged/built that I had to look to using something to cover the damage. I had thought of using camo netting, but in the end went with sandbags. A little against the look of the rest of the force, which I'll talk about in a bit. 

Once the basic cleanup and fixing was done, I moved onto stowage.

Looking at pictures of the Poles in Normandy, their tanks were pretty neat and tidy looking. One comment that stood out to me was that the Poles were apparently renowned for the tidiness of the stowage on their tanks and vehicles. I tried to replicate this look throughout the force - being a bit less random and a bit more structured with my placement of stowage, while still trying to have a little variety. I used the Peter Pig track links a lot, a mix of running gear wheels and a lot of Battlefront Sherman Stowage (I think from some of the box sets?).

I also had to replace a lot of turret hatches, as they were squinty...! The hatches were not square with the sides of the turret. Holes were drilled for radio aerials. .50 cals had to be added to the command vehicles, as the pictures I had of Poles show the command vehicles seemed to have turret MG's - I used some PSC bits I had left in order to make the guns look a bit more interesting. Blanket bins/radio boxes have been added to the rear of all turrets. Stowage added to the rear deck. All commanders were removed (to be replaced with better models later). Clipped down large canvas rolls from the plastic kits have been added to the rear of all the tanks as all the Polish Shermans seemed to have the Firefly style storage bin at the rear of the tank.

The whole lot looks like this:

On top of these 18 Sherman V's, I have 3 x Sherman I's and a Sherman IC Firefly to finish off my 144RAC force. Plus 3 x Sherman II's I have spare - may as well paint them, tempted to make one of these into a Sherman I Hybrid for the missing HQ tank in my 144RAC list. Plus a single Sherman V that I am building as a arty spotter tank. That is 26 Shermans... I may be a while!

The plan is to spray most of these with the Soviet Green spray I have, then drybrush them up with Russian Uniform. The 144RAC tanks I will probably hand paint just to keep the style of the other tanks in the army. I may also mix up some of the floor polish/ink solution I have been meaning to try instead of army painter dip.

Lots to do - and I have Crusader AA tanks and a Sherman ARV mk 1 to do as well! Not to mention 16 Cromwells... Oh dear!

15mm Stowage Comparison - Peter Pig, Battlefront, Skytrex

Hi folks,

I thought I should take the time to actually do a little comparison of the various 15mm stowage suppliers I use. I've posted pictures of the parts individually in the past, but thought it might be useful to see the parts together.

These models come from three separate suppliers, and only refer to western allied kits (although some of the parts are pretty interchangeable)

The model makers I am comparing are:

Peter Pig - specifically their Sherman Stowage Basic Pack's

Skytrex - specifically their  CD SP1 General Stowage Pack and CD SP12 Sherman Tracks & Road Wheels Pack

Battlefront -  Specifically US Stowage US670

Starting with Battlefront's offerings, this pack is billed as US stowage but would be suitable for any Western Allied vehicles. It includes some bedding rolls, Sherman road wheels, Jerry cans, track links and both a US and Tommy helmet and a few boxes. the pack contains 6 strips of each of the two types. From my perspective, the offerings from Battlefront are good and add some great variety. However, the casting isn't great and will need a lot of cleaning up in some cases. I paid £6.47 on ebay for this pack.

Next up, Peter Pig. The Peter Pig packs are a lot smaller and fairly limited in scope, containing 3 large cloth rolls, 3 strips of Sherman tracks, 2 Sherman road wheels and 2 strips of connected boxes. These packs cost £3 each. They require fairly little prep to use, not needing much in the way of cleaning up.

Then we have Skytrex. The Skytrex packs are larger than the other offerings, but a bit costlier and p+p is also quite steep. However, they do contain a lot of different bits. There is a pack of stowage that only includes the canvas rolls, jerry cans and boxes, and leaves out the 'camo net' style rolls. My experience of the Skytrex models is that they require fairly little in the way of cleaning up. 

Both of these packs cost £10, although there are smaller, cheaper, packs available. P+P is about £5 within the UK.

So how do these various offerings compare?

Peter Pig (left) with Battlefront (right)

Mix of all makes

Battlefront on left, Skytrex on the right.

Rear view of the various tracks. Peter Pig on the left with their flat backing, Battlefront at the top and the other offerings are Skytrex.

Front view of the various Sherman tracks.

Small Skytrex barrels and Jerry Cans on the left, beside Battlefront versions.

Battlefront offerings in the centre, surrounded by Skytrex and with a few Peter Pig Sherman road wheels in the center.

Skytrex Jerry Cans and Crates beside the Battlefront offerings.

As you can see, size wise they are all fairly interchangeable with minimal drift in scales. The Skytrex and Battlefront versions give you some decent variations while also providing the bulk you need to detail a lot of different vehicles. The Peter Pig offering is pretty limited in numbers - useful if you are only doing one or two tanks, but you need quite a few packs to do a lot of vehicles and there is not much variation with only the Sherman tracks and road wheels alongside the 3 connected boxes and the large canvas roll.

There are some other options, which I do use from time to time. One is to use greenstuff/miliput to make your own. Doing canvas style rolls is fairly easy and can be done with a little practice. Another is to use small strips of material, tinfoil, etc.

I also carefully strip any stowage on plastic sprues, such as the plastic Open Fire Shermans and StuGs, plastic half tracks, etc. I do try to be careful with mixing these in when I am detailing my models, as I don't want every vehicle being identical (or looking like every other Sherman out there!).

Another version which isn't on the market yet is the Plastic Soldier Company stowage sprue. PSC are working on a British 15mm Stowage kit, similar in scope to the German one. No news as to when this will be released, but they did reply to an email from me recently stating that one was in the pipeline. Another new addition is 'Flames of War Bling' which is an Ebay store selling 3d printed bits and bobs for FoW. They include crates, barrels and tools.

So there you go, a very quick and dirty comparison between all the various stowage options I use on my Flames of War vehicles. If you know of a producer I haven't mentioned, please let me know in comments! I hope you found this blog entry useful! Apologies for the lighting in the photographs.

6MMRPC: Finished! Sherman I's and Firefly

This week at home has allowed me to get the Sherman Tank's I was working on last weekend finished. I'm getting to the point that there isn't much left on my shelf ready to get finished off.

This batch consists of 3 Sherman I's and a Firefly - the troop leaders of 1st, 2nd and 3rd troop. The Firefly is that of the 1st troop.

The 3 Sherman I's are Battlefront resin and metal kits, while the Firefly is a plastic kit (from the Open Fire box). I'm not too sure about the Firefly as the barrel seems to be overly thick and chunky looking.

Stowage comes from Battlefront plastic kits, Skytrex and Peter Pig. Decals are from Doms Decals and I-94. Crew figures are Battlefront and Skytrex.

Next up... another 4 Shermans! Another 2 weeks working away from home, so I will be back to just what I can do at the weekend - and it looks like I have a game next Saturday (hopefully).

Painting Chart so far this challenge:

Peter Pig and Skytrex 15mm Medic model comparison

Hi Guys n Gals!

While I didn't think about it at the time, I think I may have accidentally expended one of of my #6MMRPC Joker card purchases on these guys!

I picked up a pack of Peter Pig 15mm WW2 Brit Medics. These were to go along with the ones I had purchased from Skytrex earlier this year. These will form part of my Battlegroup Overlord medical group. I also ordered some of the Peter Pig generic WW2 dead. These will be part of the Aid Post as well.

So - as per requests previously, I took some pictures of these models compared to each other and compared to a Battlefront FoW mini.

Skytrex stretcher bearer on the left, Battlefront mini in the middle, Peter Pig medic on the right.

Peter Pig Medic minis

The Peter Pig minis have some really nice sculpts. They also seem to be more in scale with the FoW mini and have some really nice poses. One in kneeling, applying first aid. One is standing, opening a bandage, one is moving with a pack under his arm and the other arm in the air.

In total the Peter Pig pack contained 8 mini's. My pack was broken down into 3 kneeling, 3 standing and 2 moving.

Peter Pig medics

The Skytrex pack came with 2 stretchers and 4 stretcher bearers. One mini giving a firemans lift to a injured soldier. It also included 4 injured soldiers in 4 different poses.

Skytrex Brit Medics and injured soldiers

The injured soldiers have some decent poses and should be useful as well.

Scale wise, the Skytrex models seem a little smaller (as you can see from the stretcher bearer in the first pic). However, I mixed and matched a little:

Peter Pig medic with Skytrex wounded soldier.

As part of the purchase, I also picked up some Generic WW2 Dead from Peter Pig:

These are decent - though I'm not sure about the guy that has been blasted in half...

I also (the actual reason for my order) got a couple of packs of Peter Pigs Sherman Stowage. These are nice, but not as good value as the Skytrex packs. The selection of items is a little bit limited, although the casts are nice.

And just as a little add on: