Finished: 15mm Polish Cromwell #1 Troop

Hi folks,

Hobby time has been pretty limited of late, with little Alexander requiring a fair amount of time. Not that he does anything but sleep, but most of the time he just complains loudly and frequently if not asleep on me or Amy. My normal hobby time in the evening has taken a hit due to this. 

Still, I am permitted to duck away for an hour here and there in order to keep my hand in (and decompress a little, now that I am also back at work). 

The goal since the start of February was to make some progress on my first Cromwell troop, which paid off this weekend with the finishing touches done. 

These are 15mm Plastic Soldier Company models, painted up as tanks from No.1 troop, C Squadron, 10 Pulk Strzelcow Konnych, 1st Polish Armoured Division. As per the previous tanks, I'm assembling the unit to look as it may have done on 8th August 1944. 

Decals have been applied for the above unit. This caused me a massive headache - at the start of the project I cut out all the decals I would need and had them in a small ziplock back on my desk. I used these decals for the Stuarts back at the end of January. However, the bag has now vanished, and I can't find it anywhere. At this stage, I think in my sleep addled state I binned it by accident. As such, I had to cut out new ones (thankfully I had spares of the relevant unit markings). However, the loss was not good for my mental health as I go into a full obsessive OCD mode. Even now, writing about it, I'm fighting the urge to compulsively search locations I have already checked 5 or 6 times. 

The tanks are mounted on the 60mm by 40mm MDF bases that I plan to move all my large vehicles to. Aerials added using fishing line, with the command vehicle having two. No magnets required for the turrets, due to the PSC design of them having a 'pin' that connects to the hull. 

The tanks were painted using a pretty basic technique. Basecoat Russian Uniform (Vallejo 70.924) green, wash with a black wash (I'm no longer using my magic wash for this, as it stops the drybrush paint adhering very well), drybrush (with Mig Ammo Medium Green drybrush paint) and then tidy with the basecoat on the flat panels. Tools, tracks, etc then painted, washed and highlighted. I'm not spending a lot of time on the tracks now, as I hit them with the Tamiya weathering products after they have been varnished. This weathering powder never looks as good on the photos as it does in the flesh. 

Painting plan progress so far:

The AA platoon is back on the drawing board, as these don't seem to be in stock anywhere at the moment. 

Onto the next troop!

Unknown Teddy

Hi folks,

Just over six weeks into this fatherhood thing now - all is well and the wee man is getting bigger every day. Looking forward to the cholic stage being over!

A week or two after Alexander arrived, we received a rather large (and adorable) teddy in the post, via an ebay seller. Unfortunately there was no name attached to the package, and the only clue to who the sender may be came from the fact the parcel was addressed to my online 'nom de guerre', suggesting it was a blog or Facebook follower.  

A big thank you to whoever sent this, and apologies for not trying to find out sooner - I'm not sure where the time goes at the moment (I seem to spend a lot of it being a pillow for young Alexander to sleep on). 

Finished: 15mm Polish Stuart VIs

Hi folks,

Alongside the Ram OP tank, I also recently completed another element of my Polish Cromwell project. 

These are a trio of Stuart VI (M5A1) tanks from the HQ Squadron of 10 Pulk Strzelcow Konnych (10th Polish Mounted Rifles), 1st Polish Armoured Division. While not part of A squadron, these HQ squadron vehicles were assigned out as required. All of my armoured squadrons have Stuarts attached for recce purposes, so I'm building quite a collection of variants of these little tanks. 

As such, these tanks have been marked up with the HQ squadron diamond on the front hull. Other decals are the 1st Polish Armoured Division markings and the regimental markings, as well as the bridge classification weights and allied recognition stars. I've still to figure out crew figures, but each vehicle will have one and the command vehicle will have two. Two aerials also mark out the command vehicle. 

Stowage was limited to a single bogey on the front hull, again based on these vehicles being so new to combat and the Poles having a reputation for being so neat. Later pictures from the NWE campaign show the Poles as having the same, if not more, levels of track links, tarps, boxes and jerry cans as everyone else. 

Each tank has a .30cal turret mounted MG. Something I didn't realises prior to working on these models was that the odd armoured shape on the side of the turret was actually in place to protect the MG, which could be dropped down into the compartment so as not to be damaged by shell fire, etc. 

These models being completed (bar the crew figures) adds yet more green to the painting progress chart.