S-Boat References

S-38b with 40mm Flak 28 Bofors (right)

Needless to say, I have a lot of books on coastal forces from autobiographies, to historical studies and technical reference sources. Possibly the best technical reference book that I own is the Squadron Signal Schnellboot in Action book in the Warships series. This is a fantastic little paperback aimed at scale modellers, with numerous photographs, line drawings and colour profiles, together with plenty of informational sections on different variants, armament, deck layout, armour and other very useful details. If you are looking for one book to get hold of as a guide to modelling and painting WW2 Kreigsmarine schnellboot, then this one is highly recommended, as it is way ahead of the comparable Osprey title, although a bit more expensive and harder to track down.

Cruel Seas Conversions

S-38b Cut and Shut Conversion

S-100 and S-38b

40mm Bofors (10mm Pendraken)

That will put the wind up the wavy navy!

I decided to postpone my What a Tanker! plans for the moment, so that I can concentrate instead on the Cruel Seas project that I was supposed to be doing anyway! I have seven plastic S-100 E Boats to assemble and paint as the 5th S-Boot Flotilla c1944, so have started to separate them from the sprues and clean them up ready for painting. 

Two of these should really be S-38b class boats, so I've also experimented with a cut and shut conversion, using the bow section of a damaged S-100 model, mated to the stern section of the S-38 class model from the same sprue. This worked well but I will now need to add a gun platform for a 40mm Bofors, for which I have a 10mm Pendraken model. 

This is overscale but I will be cutting it down to size so that it looks right, even if it isn't exactly the right size. I'll aim to get the whole lot painted and glued together by the end of the month, together with a Vorpostenboot model from the Kriegsmarine starter set. I'm really looking forward to doing something naval for a change, so will get cracking!

What a Tanker! Russian Tanks Finished

Pegasus KV-2 and KV-1

Italeri T34/76

I've now added some decals and a bit of weathering to the KV-1 and KV-2, together with the two T34/76 tanks, so this bit of the What a Tanker! project has now been completed. I may return to the Russian Front later but for the moment I'm going to concentrate on some US tanks and tank destroyers for the Ardennes. It's ironic that there doesn't seem to be much interest in WAT! at the local club but I'm happy just tinkering away with the plastic tank kits regardless, so I'm not overly bothered (although I really should be moving on to other things rather than making more tank kits!)

What a Tanker! Russian Armour Update

I had a bit of time yesterday, in between painting my daughter's bedroom, walking the dog, helping with homework and doing the weekly shopping, so thought I'd blitz the Russian tanks for What a Tanker!, leaving the lone Panzer IV Ausf F/G for a rainy day. This turned out to be a very productive painting session, which included the tracks, exhausts, stowage, machine guns and tools, as well as the headlights on the KV's. I have now glued the hulls to the tracks, so all I need to do to finish them off is add the decals and some weathering, then spray seal everything with matt varnish, which means the workbench will be free for the US tanks. Crack on!

Vacform Church Ruin Kit

This is the most straightforward of the three second hand vacform building kits that I found at a car boot sale a while back, so I'm going to have a go at cutting out the parts and assembling it over the next couple of days, just to see how to go about it. I'll use a textured laser cut base with some additional rubble, timbers and other clutter to bed it down, once I know what the footprint is like.

If all goes according to plan, it will be a useful start to the Ardennes terrain for What a Tanker! and could also be re-used for 15mm, as it's fairly scale neutral. I also have some ideas for the basing some fir trees on skirmish bases, with a removable disc base for each tree, which would make storage easier and allow tanks to drive into the woods. 

What a Tanker! West Front Terrain

I'm  not going to get very far with this?

With the imminent arrival of some US tanks and tank destroyers to the workbench, once I've finished the last of the Russian and German tanks, I've realised that I will need to have some winterised terrain for the Ardennes, Rhineland and Reichswald. I don't really have anything to hand apart from some cheap vacform kits that I got at a car boot sale last year, an old Airfix Forward Command Post and a few loose bottle brush fir trees that I had in the scenery box, so I need to add some new terrain to provide intervening obstacles and ambush cover.

I wonder how easy it will be to make these?

I've been looking around for something 'off the shelf' but most commercial buildings and wall sets are too expensive, so I think I will have to rely on scratch building some suitable shelled and battle damaged houses, together with some other rural clutter. I will also need some roads or tracks, although they don't make any difference when it comes to movement. I'm sure I can come up with something that looks half decent, given a bit of time and lots of cardboard, filler and PVA? I'll also keep a look out for any good laser cut mdf buildings, as the ones I've seen aren't that great.

US Tank Destroyers

It's Friday so I've been paid and can splash out on some more models for What a Tanker!, adding a couple more Armourfast kits to the pile of plastic on the workbench. I thought it would be cool to add a couple of tank destroyers for my late war American Battle of the Bulge project, so have ordered a box of M36 Jacksons and a box of M18 Hellcats.

These will need quite a lot of work to tart up, as the basic models are just that, fairly basic. I'll add some crew figures from somewhere, together with some side racks from plastic strip and the usual stowage. I think they won't look too bad? In the meantime, I need to finish the tanks on the workbench this weekend.

Find, Fix and Strike

I thought I'd have a look at these new WW2 fast play naval rules by David Manley, based on the same mechanics as his other Long Face Games naval rules. I have a number of different rules that I could use for WW2 games and a French fleet in 1/3000 scale, so it's a potential alternative to Victory at Sea, for example, which is okay but not perfect. 

I like the mechanics that David has developed for his naval rules and especially the inclusion of a campaign system that makes it possible to link games together in a narrative, without the need for loads of paperwork. This is really useful as I will be playing mostly solo games, so it makes it relatively straightforward for just one person to manage.

I just need to sort out my as yet unpainted Italian fleet and I'll be able to try them out for a 'what if?' 1940 clash in the Mediterranean. It also reminds me that I have some ironclads and pre-dreadnoughts that deserve some attention at some point this year, especially the former as they've been staring at me from the shelf above the workbench for far too long!

PaK-40 Anti-Tank Gun for What a Tanker!

There are no rules for anti tank guns in What a Tanker!, which is a bit of an oversight but one which has stirred up quite  a lot of ideas for rules that could be worked into the system to cater for their use. I thought I might try some of these out, so looked around for a cheap anti-tank gun model in 1/72nd scale that I could use for the Russian Front. 

The best one I could find, that would be both sturdy enough for wargaming but still cheap enough to deploy in small numbers, was this Zvezda PaK 40. It comes with a set of gunners and is supposedly snap together but I'll be using glue to stick all the bits firmly in place. This should make it more durable and easier to pick up without the worry of bits snapping off.

I'm thinking of giving it a LOW PROFILE, a TANK DESTROYER ability to aim better and a SMALL size to reflect the fact it is a relatively compact target to hit? Other than that the only real issue is the DRIVE dice but I'm sure that can be used just to traverse or to manhandle the gun forward and backward by 1D6 or similar? 

What a Tanker! Club Clash

We had three very enjoyable back to back games of What a Tanker! at the club this evening, with a bit of head scratching to start with but some fast paced action from game number two onwards. In the first clash, two Mark IV's clashed with two T34/76, ending in a draw and a stalemate, with one Soviet and one German tank destroyed. The second game was a rematch with two Panthers against an SU-100 and a T34/85, which ended with both of the Panthers brewed up for no loss. The final game was a three on one with a Jagdpanther versus three Lend Lease Shermans, producing the biggest surprise of the evening when the first shot from one of the Sherman M4A2(76) penetrated the side armour and blew up the big cat before it even had a chance to fire back. Ka Boom!