15mm WWII Russians

[Tom Dulski]

  The STUG looks great.

[Gunner Dunbar]

Hi guys 

I bought a thing, most people in hobby circles know me as a builder/collector of WWII ground vehicles and figures, and I haven’t built a plane in 35-40 years, but I have been playing with the idea of adding a couple of planes, 1 fighter and 1 ground attack aircraft to each of my projects, unfortunately this side of the hobby is a whole new knowledge and skill set, so I am on a steep learning curve.

I took a stock take of most of my aircraft kits, half bought over the last few years, the other half bought recently, they have mostly been impulse buys with my ground projects in the back of my mind, but without much research, I’ll undoubtedly pay for this later with planes that don’t quite match their ground units in time periods or AOs, so I’m going to have to be flexible in my accuracy expectations. I need to add more British and US aircraft, but I want to research them a bit more to get the right ones, I only want Brit planes for 1940, North Africa and the far east, and US planes for Normandy and the far east, I’m going to find it tough to gain the knowledge, then source the required decals and paint jobs for specific units, so I’ve decided to stick with the paint jobs/decals supplied in the kits, I’m also going to try and reduce the work load by painting the canopies rather than keeping them clear, which I’m sure in aviation modelling is  taboo but quite common in wargaming.

I’ve started building the first few kits, a mix of French and German, even though they have half the parts as a 1/72 AFV kit, they are taking me longer to put together, and they are a lot more fragile, I’m finding I’m breaking a lot of small parts with my clumsy fingers, I’m wondering if I should replace antennas and such with wire, some of the kits are only designed to be built with wheels down, I’m making all of mine in flight and stowing the wheels can take work, so far I’m less than pleased with my results, but I’ll press on and take pics once the construction is done.
https://gunnerswargamming.blogspot.com/2024/06/adding-planes-to-my-ground-projects.html

[carlos marighela]

I feel your pain. The modern trend of not supplying separate parts to model aircraft in flight is a constant source of irritation. Once upon a time Airfix, Matchbox and the like gave you separate parts for retracted undercart and covers. Now it involves faffing about building supports, fettling, at times cutting parts and often as not the addition of placcy card or heaps of filler.

I've farted around too many times trying to line up undercarriage panels with little or no support. Tip for the wise? Fill the wheel wells with putty to just under the thickness of the part and then glue it on to that. Makes you really appreciate aircrfat with fixed landing gear, although as these are often as not biplanes, then there's all the fun of the fair lining up upper and lower wings and rigging the buggers (something I think that can be safely ignored with gaming models).

If it all gets too much remember there's a nice little line of Easy Model plastic prebuilts in 1/72. Of course the undercart is fixed down but there's arguably less swearing and they are fairly cheap to boot. Sadly, I do things in a somewhat larger scale.

[Gunner Dunbar]

I feel your pain. The modern trend of not supplying separate parts to model aircraft in flight is a constant source of irritation. Once upon a time Airfix, Matchbox and the like gave you separate parts for retracted undercart and covers. Now it involves faffing about building supports, fettling, at times cutting parts and often as not the addition of placcy card or heaps of filler.

I've farted around too many times trying to line up undercarriage panels with little or no support. Tip for the wise? Fill the wheel wells with putty to just under the thickness of the part and then glue it on to that. Makes you really appreciate aircrfat with fixed landing gear, although as these are often as not biplanes, then there's all the fun of the fair lining up upper and lower wings and rigging the buggers (something I think that can be safely ignored with gaming models).

If it all gets too much remember there's a nice little line of Easy Model plastic prebuilts in 1/72. Of course the undercart is fixed down but there's arguably less swearing and they are fairly cheap to boot. Sadly, I do things in a somewhat larger scale.

I’m quite surprised by the wheel option, the last time I built planes was as a kid in the late 70s early 80s, and as you said I remember having the option, I’m not to fused about getting everything perfect when looking at the bottom of the plane, as long as it all looks flush and nothing sticks out when looking from the front/back, I have bought some clear rod to make flight stands, they will be about 9 inches off the table, and you won’t see the undercarriage.

[FriendlyNeighbourhoodNerd]

Building aircraft when coming from a background of wargaming and some armour models humbles a man.
While I do quite like planes (prefer a good tank or a little jeep, though), the three aircraft models that I have built I did not enjoy building. Too much precision required for my tastes (and skill, as well as patience). However I did gain a newfound respect for aircraft modellers.

Best of luck and have fun! I'm sure the results will be great.

[Gunner Dunbar]

Building aircraft when coming from a background of wargaming and some armour models humbles a man.
While I do quite like planes (prefer a good tank or a little jeep, though), the three aircraft models that I have built I did not enjoy building. Too much precision required for my tastes (and skill, as well as patience). However I did gain a newfound respect for aircraft modellers.

Best of luck and have fun! I'm sure the results will be great.

Yes, there is something different about it, I’m also not sure I enjoy it.

[Gunner Dunbar]

 Hi guys

A WIP update on the current 21st PD vehicles on the work bench, hand painted the halftracks camo added decals, chipping and painted tyres and tracks, next up I’ll do a filter, pin wash and dry brush.
https://gunnerswargamming.blogspot.com/2024/06/wip-pzgren-regt-125-halftracks.html

[Jemima Fawr]

Excellent!   

I've always maintained that Matisse must have been working in the 21. Panzer-Division paint shop.

[carlos marighela]

Quite possibly. You can detect the work of Mondrian in the British Berlin Brigade's camouflage schemes and I'm half convinced that Mark Rothko did the camo work for 1940 era French tanks.

Alas for posterity, Jackson Pollock never got his hands on a Sherman.

[Steve F]

Brassey's Book of Camouflage quotes a painter in the Great War describing his camouflage work as "his Kandinskys".

[Gunner Dunbar]

Hi guys

I need a break from the 21st PD project, so I’m going to reset by doing some vehicles for my Hungarian project, one of my major projects is Stalingrad, with sub projects being the Hungarians, Romanians and 24th Pz Div on the axis side, assault engineers, marines, and an armoured unit (yet to be decided) on the Soviet side.

So over the last couple of days I printed these for the Hungarian 1st armoured field division, this unit was equipped with 38ts, Pz IV F1s and Gs, and some Pz III Ms, all these tanks were panzer grey, except the PzIIIs, which were in German camo, which is good as I enjoy painting Panzer grey, the soft skins will be the Hungarian 3 tone camo, now I have to do a search to see how many Hungarian decals I have, I may need to source some more. For tank crews I’ll convert various Italian tankers, I have ABs and Orions Italian tankers to work with.

The PzIV is from nightsky miniatures, I opened some hatches using CAD, some of the Rabas and 38ts are from Wingham Graves, I added some tools to the Raba, and I opened the commanders hatch and replaced the running gear on the 38ts, one of the Rabas is from wargame3D, which is a nice model, but doesn’t have an option for the rear canvas to be down, Windhams is almost as good and they mix well if you adjust the dimensions a little. The Daimler Benz G5 is from thingyverse.
https://gunnerswargamming.blogspot.com/2024/06/wip1-hungarian-1st-armoured-field.html

[Freddy]

Nice project!
In the Uriv bridgehead battles (so the battles around the river Don in 1942) the Hungarian units were equipped with Pz38t-s and PzIVF1-s. They were panzer Grey with the octagonal Hungarian insignia and white numerals plus the Hungarian license number painted onto the front and the back of them. They also got 10 something PzIVF2-s got as field replacements, with German camo scheme but Hungarian license numbers.
PzIVG-s came later, in 1943-44.
The Hungarian usage of PzIII-s were very limited, in the Uriv battles they had some German Panzers with German markings and German crew, so essentially a German unit under Hungarian command, but for a very short time.

[Gunner Dunbar]

Nice project!
In the Uriv bridgehead battles (so the battles around the river Don in 1942) the Hungarian units were equipped with Pz38t-s and PzIVF1-s. They were panzer Grey with the octagonal Hungarian insignia and white numerals plus the Hungarian license number painted onto the front and the back of them. They also got 10 something PzIVF2-s got as field replacements, with German camo scheme but Hungarian license numbers.
PzIVG-s came later, in 1943-44.
The Hungarian usage of PzIII-s were very limited, in the Uriv battles they had some German Panzers with German markings and German crew, so essentially a German unit under Hungarian command, but for a very short time.

OK, so F2s not Gs? Cheers

[Freddy]

OK, so F2s not Gs? Cheers

Yes, but those were also rare. The majority were F1s.

[Gunner Dunbar]

Yes, but those were also rare. The majority were F1s.

Yes, only plan to do 1