Off To France

If we don't get snowed in overnight, we'll be off to France for the holidays tomorrow morning. As a result, they'll be a bit of a news blackout for a couple of days. I'm taking some of my old boardgames with me and the Valiant figures to base up, so I should be able to post some progress reports over the next ten days or so. I'm not looking forward to the ten hour journey though :O(

Rapid Fire 5th Battalion DCLI [2]

After a bit of research and some helpful replies to my posts on TMP, I've decided to modify the ToE for the 5th Battalion DCLI  to incorporate the unorthadox and unique reconnaisance platoon that was created by Colonel Taylor in July 1944.

Apparently, a hand picked group of experienced riflemen was selected from the three (later four) companies of the battalion to create a heavily armed jeep mounted Scout Platoon, attached to the standard HQ platoon as extra firepower when not being deployed. In game terms this will equate to three figures and a jeep, with the companies reduced accordingly to seven figures rather than eight.

Simple but effective.

I'm also going to add an attached HMG platoon and carrier from the MG Company to provide a bit of fire support, as this was standard practice at the time. Finally, I may add the battalion motor pool of a 15cwt truck and two three tonners but, as this is unlikely to end up on the table, I may just leave it until later.

One Year On...

It's the first birthday for the Jim's Wargames Workshop blog. I've achieved about half of what I set out to do this year and most of that has been at right angles to what I originally intended but, nonetheless, it's been a quite productive year in wargaming terms. I now have to sit down and think about the next twelve months!

Thanks for sticking with it despite the ups and downs.

Sherman Tanks

I re-discovered this site yesterday whilst looking for information on the 8th Armoured Brigade and it's three Sherman equipped regiments. It's a really useful site and very well worth a look if you're trying to find your way through the multivarious types of Sherman used by the British in North West Europe and elsewhere.

http://www.172shermans.com/index.htm

I now have enough HAT armoufast Sherman M4's, M4A2's and Fireflys to build two or three squadrons of tanks for the 4/7th Dragoon Guards, although they might not be entirely accurate. I'm going to do quite a lot of covering up with camo netting, stowage and other gubbins, so the rivet counters won't be too upset.

There are some excellent photos of  the sort of stowage I'm going to try to model here:

http://www.network54.com/Forum/47208/thread/1167036218/A+Review+of+Stowage+Patterns+on+the+glacis+of+27+Armd+Bde+Shermans+(looong)

Operation Bodenplatte [2]

I've added a few extras to the Luftwaffe fighters for this project, with four Bf109K's and four FW190A8's from Mark at Raiden Miniatures. This will complete the German contingent for the moment as it's more than enough to be going on with when added to the FW190D's and Bf109G's that I already have on the shelf.

The FW190's are hefty looking models with surprisingly deep panel scribing compared to other Raiden models. They should paint up well though, as will Bf109K's which are less obviously lined. A nice touch on the latter is that the ventral drop tank has a pre-drilled hole for it to be located into, with the hole for the stand positioned slightly further back then usual.

I also ordered a single Westland Whirlwind which appeared in the Raiden catalogue a while back. I had some quite nice Scotia ones already which put me off getting the Raiden version, a long with the rather odd looking cannon and machine gun barrels that that appeared to be far too long. However, I'm glad I did get one as the model is very nicely sculpted and the armament doesn't look wrong at all, even in such a small scale.

Digital Rulebooks

It looks like the wife's given me the dreaded lurgy, which is a pain in the arse as she's now feeling fine. Anyway, I'm not, so the rest of the week looks like being a washout as far as painting is concerned. To cheer myself up I downloaded a copy of the Rapid Fire! rulebook from Wargames Vault for a little over a fiver, as I had a discount voucher and the rules were reduced anyway.

I have a hard copy which is being borrowed over Xmas by one of the guys at the club but I can now print off bits that I need as a when, which is the great thing about .pdf's. I can also stick it on a memory stick and take it with me to France with no hassle. I'm hoping one day to get one of those palmtop thingies so I can have all my digital copies of rules and journals in one place. In the meantime, it's still handy to have them on the laptop. 

Valiant 6 pounder A/T gun and crew

I just spotted this over on TMP and followed it up to the Valiant site. If they're going to release this set on it's own, I'll be snapping up one for the A/T support of the 5th DCLI Support Company. I would go for the special offer deal and get one free but I can't think of a use for five boxes of figures, even if I split them with the chaps at the club. Oh well. I'll just have to wait...

Revell / Matchbox Churchill AVRE

I was lucky enough to find an unmade kit of one of these in a charity shop yesterday for £2.00. It was bagged up complete and was obviously an unwanted birthday present of some sort. It's a lovely kit and matches well with the Raventhorpe resin Churchills that I already have, despite being 1/76th scale. I'll add it to the kit pile and may well put it together as a 79th Armoured Division 'bunker busting' AVRE for the Rhineland at some point in the future, although I'll leave off the bridge as it's a bit on the big side.

Operation Bodenplatte [1]

With only a week to go until I leave for France, I've decided not to start on the Rapid Fire! clean up and basing but to take the figures with me to sort out over there. I can't take any painting equipment with me but am able to take some tools, glue and figures to assemble, ready for painting in the New Year. This seems like a sensible way to go about things to me.

However, I have a week until we depart for Brittany so will try to squeeze in a little bit of painting in the mean time. I'm going to try to paint up a small selection of late war Luftwaffe fighters and fighter bombers for Operation Bodenplatte. They shouldn't take too long as there's no tricky camouflage to do and mottle pattern is relatively easy to replicate. I'll give it a go and see how far I get.

The painting is by Nicholas Trudgian...very cool!

Rapid Fire Reading...and Google Earth

I've finished re-reading Infantry Colonel by George Taylor over the last couple of evenings. Although the proof reading leaves something to be desired, the book really gives a very effective impression of the nature of the campaign in North West Europe and, in particular, the latter stages of the advance into Germany in late 1944 and early 1945.

I was reminded by the recent wintery weather of how awful it must have been to have fought through the Rhineland in December 1944. The assault on the hamlet of Hoven during Operation Clipper seems to have been especially gruelling for the 5th DCLI, with driving sleet, heavy bombardment by mortars and 88's and open swathes of windswept farmland to cross in the face of concentrated MG42 fire.

I thought I'd have a look a Hoven using Google Earth to see the lie of the land, compared to a 1944 aerial photograph from the excellent website of the Worcestershire Regiment. As you can see it looks pretty insignificant now but was a real tough nut to crack at the time. The key feature is The Gap which is now overgrown by woodland but was an open area of churned up no mans  land swept by machine guns and mortar fire in 1944.

It really makes you stop and think.

(The photos aren't aligned and are to a different scale, so you'll need to match them up with a bit of lateral thinking and cross-referencing with the terrain)