River Mission - British Deetail

Here we have a couple of Tommies on a scouting mission down the river. They must have heard some sounds that got them alerted. Luckily, the high river bank affords them some protection. Hopefully it is just a false alarm, otherwise that bren gunner is going to be busy!

These two guys along with their raft were manufactured by Britains Deetail in the 70's. Other rafting teams that I am aware of have been produced by Matchbox (Commandos), Revell (Combat Engineers) and Marx (GIs). Unfortunately these rafts are always small enough that they can only hold a couple guys, and you can't really use them to mount any significant amphibious assault. Not even a small raid, unless you had quite a few of them. Anyhow, I still think they are pretty cool. They make a nice display piece and are a good collector's item.

Britains Deetail raft with British Infantry

German Jagdpanzern in a Traffic Jam

A German supply convoy has run into a tank destroyer column and must wait its turn to use the road. On the positive side, at least they are not driving on mud! The tank destroyer column has a variety of self-propelled guns, an 8-ton truck towing an 88mm gun, and couple of anti-aircraft guns to give it some protection. The supply convoy in addition to the 3-ton Opel blitz trucks, and Maultier (a half-tracked truck), has some panzer grenadiers on half-tracks and a couple of pak 40s in tow in case it needs to defend itself. Lastly, they also have a motorcycle scout who is eager to go!

These are a combination of Forces of Valor and 21st Century vehicles. When 21st Century Toys first started manufacturing realistic, factory-painted plastic vehicles around 10 years ago, I thought those vehicles were the best thing there was, except of course for high-end manufacturers like Minichamps. Compared to anything that came before in the plastic segment, they were head and shoulders above the competition. And then came along Forces of Valor with even more realistic vehicles in die cast metal for only a slightly higher price. 21st Century tried to stay in the game, coming out with their on line of [partly] die cast vehicles, but unfortunately for all of us in the hobby they did not survive and now Forces of Valor can set their prices unchallenged. And even they have substantially slowed down in their production of new models. Hopefully at some point we'll see once again some healthy competition and new models in this segment of the market that not long ago seemed to be thriving.

The big picture




88 Being towed by 8-Ton Truck



View of tank destroyer column from the front



Supply column waiting its turn



Lead elements, supply column




Where the rubber (or the track?) meets the road

 

Lead elements, tank destroyer column

Click here to see pictures of a German column being ambushed.



Maxim Machine Gun - Atlantic Russian Infantry

This is a nice machine gun that I picked up with the Atlantic Soviet Infantry set. The gun is a bit oversized and the pose of the figure firing it could be better, but it is still a good find. It is the only one of its kind among all the Soviet Infantry sets that I am aware of. If you watched Enemy at the Gates, you might remember that this MG is used by the NKVD troops to fire on the retreating conscripts after they are sent on a suicidal frontal assault against the German lines. This picture from the movie shows its actual size. Even though in reality it was not as large as the one in the Atlantic set, from what I have read in a Soviet soldier's memoir, it was still a very heavy weapon to carry or drag around. Unfortunately in the heat of the battle they had to change positions often to avoid the inevitable return fire once their firing position was spotted, and apparently the only way to do it without getting hit was to attach a rope to it and crawl on the ground pulling it behind. I bet that's when they were glad it had wheels!

Below is a side view showing a bit more detail.

Click here to see pictures of Soviet Infantry in Action.

Click here to see pictures of a Soviet Anti-Tank Gun.

So what do you do with them?

Some people simply collect them. Some people use them for war-gaming. Some people like to build scenes or dioramas with them. Some people like to play with them. I've actually done all the above. When I got into toy soldiers as a child and my favorite game was to knock them over with marbles. Sounds simple, but if you've played that way against an actual opponent, you know that it is a game that requires very good aiming and it can get pretty challenging if you play it a good distance apart, and if you add the extra element of  fortifications and terrain cover. Every year or two I still battle it out this way with my old man and on a good day I can manage to only lose by a small margin. As a grown up I realized that I wanted to explore the tactical side that war-gaming provides so I've also tried that a bit as well. Unfortunately, even after developing a set of custom rules, I still find that sometimes these games move at a very slow pace, and you are always facing a trade off between quick, simple rules and more realistic rules that result in a slower game. So I am still looking forward to the day that I can play a quick, yet realistic war-game. War-gaming led me to building dioramas and trying to setup realistic scenes. That's convenient when I don't have someone to battle with, in which case I just fire away with my camera. Most of the time however, my troops are tucked away in their shelves and I am content knowing that they are there waiting for the next opportunity to do their duty. Speaking of opportunities, I am always on the look out for what would be a good scene. The pictures below were taken a winter some years back. The pictures are not great but they illustrate the point. Of course, after the pictures were snapped I happlily proceeded to unleash a snowball barrage. I am glad to report that after the snow melted, all casualties were retrieved. How about you? What do you do with them?

As an example of the scenes that I some times setup, here are some pictures of British and Waffen SS troops in action.

German Siege Artillery

Today I got this interesting piece of equipment. It is called the Karl Mortar. It is a 54cm caliber tracked artillery piece used by Germany primarily as a siege weapon against well fortified positions such as Sevastopol or Brest-Litovsk. It is something in between a self-propelled gun and its bigger cousins the 80 cm Gustav and Dora rail-mounted guns. The Karl Mortars afforded greater mobility and minimum assembly time, while the latter provided longer range and greater caliber/destructive power. These guns followed in the tradition of WWI's Big Bertha, and were WWII's bunker busting technology, conceived in the shadow of the Maginot Line. Only 7 Karl Mortars were built during the war, and some people question whether they were worth the resources that they diverted, not only in research and materials, but also when it comes to setting up manufacturing facilities to only produce a handful of them, along with their ammunition. Then to operate them, in the case of the 80cm guns, dedicated rail lines had to be installed to bring them to their firing positions, cranes had to be used to load the ammunition, and two battallions of flak were assigned to guard them. But setting aside the cost-effectiveness, these must have been some fearsome weapons if you were on the receiving end of them.

Dragon Karl Mortar - Loki

This model, manufactured by Dragon (in 1:35) is called 'Loki'. Here I've used some 1:32 Forces of Valor figures to operate it. Despite the difference in scale I think they still look acceptable. Loki is firing from a prepared position to afford it some protection as you can imagine that the enemy is desperately trying to neutralize it with some aggressive artillery counter-fire.

Dragon Karl Mortar - Thor

This is Loki's brother 'Thor'. Note that the gun can be elevated from the horizontal position up to a 45 degree angle approximately. These mortars also come with one piece of ammo, which is as big as a man. No wonder they had to be loaded with a crane.

Click here to see some pictures of the Trench System where Loki is displayed.

Click here to see a post about normal mortars

Click here to see a post about German 88s