Lend Lease Bantam

Another post in quick succession!  I’ll park this here as it is part modelling, part review and part new accession.

One of the other new things I got from BPM was a Bantam Blitz jeep … and that has been shipped off to the Red Army (seen above with some other Lend Lease vehicles, somewhere in Ukraine …

First things first … it is a very neat little model, hugely inexpensive and is nicely cast.

(Butlers Bantam Jeep model stripped of its printing web but otherwise ‘out of the box’)

My only criticism is the solid windscreen.  I wasn’t disappointed, as it were, as the website pictures are clear enough … just it would have been nicer with the frame only, otherwise clear.

So (and here’s the modelling bit) I decided to remove the solid centre.

Technically simple … I drilled (pin vice) a series of holes, joined them up, then smoothed the edges to make it look nice and convincing.  Job done.

Actually, it wasn’t quite that straightforward – although the plastic seems hard enough to ‘model’ it is a bit brittle and (although I have done this detailing on the Gaz truck) on this model, it tended to fracture along the printing striations.  I broke it and had to stick it back together (hence you see filler in the picture below).

No matter – a sharper knife and a bit of bracing behind the screen would have prevented the problem (but you can file that observation under wise after the event)

I put a driver in from my junk box.  With a Battlefront head.

(Butler’s Printed Models: Bantam Jeep detailed up and painted by Yesthatphil)

The shape of the grille and bonnet are excellent , and the angles on the mudguard seem to be exactly right.

This is an excellent variation on the standard Willys jeep.

Nearly 50,000 jeeps were supplied to the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War … the majority were Willys MBs but many of the first shipments were Bantams, and the Bantam had a significant influence on the look of the home built variant, the Gaz-64 and 67.

Useful as a recce vehiclw, Staff car or as a tow for light equipment such as the 45mm AT/light gun.

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Extra Heavy

Apologies for what has been quite a big hiatus on this blog during the long lockdown.  I haven’t disappeared … just there has been a lot going on and that, what projects I have been working on that are relevant to this blog have been longer term rather than quick-hit types.

That said, this is one of those ‘pocket projects’: some bigger guns.  Or ‘a’ bigger gun, anyway (at the scale I’m using, a single model will represent the battery) … I’ve had a go at scratchbuilding e.g. the 21cm before (and had planned to dismantle it for casting) but, although I had tried my best with the elusive issue of scale, in the end it still seemed on the small side.

When Butlers released a Big Bertha for their WWI range, I wondered what it would look like a scale down (i.e. I ordered a 12mm scale BB to test out as a 210mm to 305mm equipment for 15mm scale) … I’m more than happy with the result.  It looks how I expected a siege howitzer/mortar to look in this scale.

(the Big Bertha model as pictured in the Butler’s online catalogue)

As I suspected, the gun shield was easy to remove with a model saw.  After some experiment I also removed the front gantry and glued this in position on the ‘deployed gun’ base (it would have been folded away for transit anyway, and positioning it on the base actually works very well).  That’s pretty much it for modelling challenges.  I left the rear gantry in the ‘up’ position, which is a little incongruous in the transit mode – but I think you can almost get away with that (wargame modelling always has to allow a certain level of compromise).

(the battery deployed)

So this is a battery of older style 21cm ‘mortars’ or maybe a Skoda 305mm.  The Germans made good use of both, and other captured equipment.  For a Morser 16, I really should fair in the recuperators on top of the barrel (but then I might lose its generic quality – please feel free to comment on that *wink*).

(battery in transit)

The vehicle is towed by a repurposed French tractor and the crew have a central European look to them.  They are Axis, for sure.

So, the model is Butler Printed Models, the wheels on the scratch built limber/bogey are Skytrex spares.  The tractor is QRF and the gun crew Peter Piggies with headswaps.

As for the model itself, I am very pleased.  The barrel has come out very smooth, and the 3D printing striations are not very prominent at all on this one.  The dry brush finish does bring them out just a touch in photos, but just to the eye, they don’t show.  Seriously – that’s picky old me, saying it.  It is a great model, either of the intended super-gun in 12mm, or as an ‘extra-heavy’ piece in 15mm.

City blocks in Stalingrad, Rostov or Sevastopol are right to be alarmed at this addition to the Wehrmacht artillery park.

 

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