Tag: 8th Army

Back with a Western Desert post this week, with some more progress on the Allied side after dabbling in some Axis infantry last time around. This time with some armoured support for the commonwealth infantry I’ve painted so far, the famed Queen of the Desert: the Matilda Infantry Tank or rather three of them!

These are the Warlord Games plastic Matilda kits, more specifically their “Tank Troop” set for the Matilda which has three included for some tank heavy games. Usually a good way to get a bit of savings over buying three of the individual kit which is no bad thing. I painted these in the colours of the 42nd Royal Tank Regiment, probably the most famous desert Matildas, with model kits usually coming with the decals for “Phantom”. This kit came with enough decals for three named Matildas, Phantom included. I’m not sure if the other two are made up or historical names, I couldn’t find much (any!) info on them.

The 42nd RTR colours speak to me for a multitude of reasons, not least of which being that it’s just a nice scheme! There is some nostalgia there for me too, as the three bands (white/red/white) present on the 42nd’s tanks seem to be the inspiration (I’m guessing here, could be very wrong!) for a lot of the similarly banded markings that were made for Imperial Guard tanks in early editions of Warhammer 40,000 which I gazed at for many hours in the pages of White Dwarf magazine.

Some of you may be familiar with the rather eccentric camouflage scheme visible on tanks early (circa 1941) in the desert war, the infamous Caunter scheme! I say infamous because it clearly has started a vigorous debate on the colours used in its application, the most famous of which is the sky blue middle section visible in so many books/museums/model kit box arts. Reading up on the scheme was a rollercoaster ride to say the least! It seems that the ever-present blue paint is in fact not accurate and rather the result of a museum painting their Matilda incorrectly followed by a great number of copies of said mistake! More recent research seems to point towards the Caunter scheme making use of much more subtle colours indeed, and model paint companies have created sets that match the latest information. I elected to buy Vallejo’s attempt at this more “correct” Caunter colours, but I believe AK Interactive also make a set that’s supposed to be accurate.

With the problem of the colours to use solved (or solved enough for my standards! I’m sure there are some strong opinions on which of AK or Vallejo (or neither!) are accurate), now came the issue of application. As you can see from the photo above, the scheme makes use of some rather strange geometric shapes, with long straight lines right across some rather intense details. My first thought was to try to mask these and apply the colours with the airbrush.

I got as far as masking all of the dark green sections on the bodies of all three tanks before throwing in the towel, there were so many gaps under the tape, there would have been overspray all over the place! I’m sure masking is a solid option at larger scales, but for 1/56 (28mm) I’m not sure the effort is worth it. Clearly then, I was going to have to hand paint the scheme…

I did this by carefully sketching out the shapes using dilute paint, before filling them in and repeating the process 3-4times to ensure good coverage. The Vallejo Caunter set is made up of airbrush paints so quite dilute already, which made the process longer but did mean even with 3-4 coats I had a nice smooth finish at the end. Understanding where the patterns go was a battle in itself, and I used a mix of references: photos from the era, the Warlord Games painted Matildas on the box cover, and other modeller’s attempts at Caunter on Matildas.

You can see the dark green done on all three tanks in the photo above.

I followed the same process for the silver grey sections.

This was followed by a pass of chipping, first by sponging on the base coat colour of Portland Stone back over the dark green and silver grey sections, followed by painted on chips with Vallejo German Grey. This gave me two levels of chipping for a bit more realism.

I then basecoated in the rest of the kit around the tank, tracks etc.

This was followed by an all over gloss varnish, then decal application, then chipping of said decals to blend them in. The models were then re-glossed all over and hit with some simple oil washes for some shading and some dusty streaks and rust spots for added interest. I then added dry pigments to the tracks and bottom and sides of the tanks, followed by a pass of matt varnish and they were ready for photos! This is all pretty standard historical modelling, but I don’t think I’ve shown process shots for it on the blog before, so hopefully it’s interesting to look at!

I really enjoyed painting these models, and glad I’ve gotten them painted after putting them off for a long time as I was dreading painting the Caunter scheme. Sometimes you just have to jump in and go for it! As is currently planned I only have two more vehicles to paint in the scheme: two universal carriers, but who knows, models are constantly adding themselves to this project! Regardless, I now know how I paint Caunter, which means no more worrying about how I might go about it.

To break up painting basic infantry I decided to put together and paint my 8th army engineer section this week.

I wanted them to stand out from the infantry sections and therefore did a bit of research and found some great reference photos of royal engineers in the North African desert, with the ever present Polish metal detector. Now as far as I can tell 1941 is too early for the detector to have made its way to North Africa (most sources point to 1942), so it’s a bit anachronistic to include one here, but sometimes the rule of cool trumps accuracy!

From a painting perspective, again nothing new, these are done the same way my infantry were painted.

More interesting perhaps is modelling of the engineer with the detector I did using bits of wire and some plastic card.

Warlord games makes a model of en engineer with a detector, but he’s done up in late war uniform and uses a later mark of detector. So I decided to make my own. Not the most skilful job, but I enjoyed myself and I think it looks fine on the table!

Update on the master list:

1940-42 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (British)

– 2nd Lieutenant – 2 Extra men

– Artillery Forward Observer

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 5-Man Royal Engineers Section – LMG, Anti-tank grenades

– Machine Gun Team

– Medium Mortar Team

– Field Artillery (25pdr)

– Bren Carrier – Pintle-Mounted LMG

– Matilda II

1940-42 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (Australian)

– 2nd Lieutenant – 1 Extra man

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 5-Man Infantry Section – LMG, Anti-tank grenades

– Bren Carrier – Pintle-Mounted LMG

– Matilda II

– Matilda II

Back with a continuation of the 1941 North Africa project, this time with more of the same!

There isn’t too much to discuss from a painting standpoint, these were done in exactly the same manner as my previous post.

I built the Bren team prone for a bit of variety.

I was pretty happy with how some of the eyes on these turned out so here’s a look at that!

There will be plenty more where these came from, I have a whole lot more infantry to paint for this army as you might expect (and plenty more on the German side when I get to them!). This leads me to talk about what I’ve got planned for this army. As I mentioned last time, this army was partly inspired by my Great Grandfather having been part of 8th army in WW2, hence building these as British (the Warlord kits provide a ton of different heads for troops from all over the empire). I also plan on adding some Australian troops to the army as a nod to where I live now.

Here’s my planned army list with the currently painted models crossed out in red:

1940-42 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (British)

– 2nd Lieutenant – 2 Extra men

– Artillery Forward Observer

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 10-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 5-Man Royal Engineers Section – LMG, Anti-tank grenades

– Machine Gun Team

– Medium Mortar Team

– Field Artillery (25pdr)

– Bren Carrier – Pintle-Mounted LMG

– Matilda II

1940-42 Commonwealth Infantry Brigade (Australian)

– 2nd Lieutenant – 1 Extra man

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 8-Man Infantry Section – LMG, SMG

– 5-Man Infantry Section – LMG, Anti-tank grenades

– Bren Carrier – Pintle-Mounted LMG

– Matilda II

– Matilda II

As you can see I still have a lot to do! This was never intended as a short project, and should take me quite a while to get through.

Hi all, it’s been a little while since the last post on the blog (almost 3 weeks!). Most of that delay has been because of preparations for this new project I’ve embarked on. This new project (if you’ve read the title you know!) is for some more WWII action, this time in North Africa early-ish in the war.

It’s become clear to me that finishing my 2ème DB army did not in fact cure me of the want to paint more models of the period, and in fact made me keen to move on to the next theatre instead! So why North Africa, and why 1941? There are a couple of answers to these questions so here we go.

North Africa has always been one of those theatres that drew my attention, my first model kit way back when was a spitfire in desert camo and clearly that made an impression on my younger self. Fast forward a few years and I started playing the first Battlefield game (Battlefield 1942) and spent hours playing the El Alamein and Tobruk maps, which wound up being some of my favourites of the game. When my friends and I decided to start playing Bolt Action we settled on late war Europe as the primary theatre we would all put armies together for, but North Africa was also well into the running and I was always keen to do something there.

What sealed the deal was series of conversations I had with my Dad and his Mum not long after finishing the 2ème DB models, which revealed to me that one of his Grandfathers had fought in North Africa and Italy as part of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment). Once I learned that I went on a good old internet scour looking for any information I could find on what the Buffs had gotten up to during the war. By extension that meant reading a lot about the North African campaign in general and well there was no saving me from painting armies for that campaign after that!

That tackles the North Africa part, but why 1941? That answer is a lot simpler, I wanted to paint early war tanks!

So here we are with the first models done for the project: some British infantrymen. I wanted to start with these as my Great-Grandfather was an infantryman and it therefore seemed right to start here. They’re not modelled after any regiment in particular although they could definitely stand in for the Buffs! These are Warlord Games’ 8th Army Infantry Plastics.

Painting-wise these were relatively simple, they’re mostly one colour after all! I created a record of the paints I used, as usual mostly so I remember how I did things down the track, but if it helps someone with their models then that’s always a nice bonus!

I broke away from my usual black base rims for these, but I really wanted to communicate that sun-drenched look and the bright rims really contributed to that I think. They’re painted in Vallejo Iraqi sand.

The reason this post isn’t called 1941 8th Army in North Africa is that as part of this project I plan on painting two armies: an 8th Army force, and their opponents the Afrika Korps (Sorry Italians! I’m sure I’ll get around to painting some). So look forward to seeing some of these painted up too in the near future!

Anyway this should keep me busy for a while! I have a lot more models to get done for this project, including many more British infantry, some Australian infantry (as a nod to where I now live), german infantry, trucks, tanks, artillery etc.