Cold War Dutch, part 2: DAF YP-408

I’ve been thinking of getting an armoured personnel carrier for my Cold War Dutch troops. Various options were open to me, including the tracked AMX-PRI (APC variant of the French AMX-13) or the YPR-765 (based on the American M-113), but in the end I settled on the blocky biscuit tin on wheels that is the YP-408.

The YP-408 was built by the Dutch DAF company and had eight wheels, of which the front two and rear four were powered. It had a crew of two, could carry up to eight infantrymen in the back and was armed with a Browning .50 cal on the top. The name is not just a random bunch of letters and numbers, but refers to the type and class of the vehicle: Y = military vehicle, P = armoured vehicle, (pantserwagen), 4 = carrying capacity in tonnes, 0 = serial number, 8 = number of wheels. It was produced from 1959 to 1968 and remained in Dutch service until 1989. When the former Dutch colony of Suriname became independent in 1975, a number of vehicles were given to that country. In the early 1990’s several vehicles were also given to Portugal for air base security.

As with the Dutch miniatures, there is of course no company that sells 28mm scale kits of such a niche vehicle. Luckily for me, though, Butler's Printed Models offer 3d printed versions of the YP-408 in a variety of scales. Having no experience with 3d printed miniatures, I decided to buy a test piece. The staff at Butler's Printed Models were kind enough to remove most of the support material, so I only needed to do a little bit of cleanup.

(Sorry for the white on white picture). As you can see, there are quite noticeable artefacts from the 3d printing process. I sanded off most of the texture on the sloped frontal armour plates, but in most places details and sticky-out bits made it impossible to remove this texture. After painting, however, the print lines are much less noticeable.

Here it is with its olive drab base coat and the wheels painted. The model seemed a little bit small in comparison to my figures, so I mounted it on a base for some added height. I only applied texture to the base after finishing the model, which made painting and sealing a right pain. Something to keep in mind for next time...

And here it is all painted up and weathered. I love the mixed signals that these Dutch military vehicles are sending. Designer 1: We want the vehicle to be difficult to spot, so let’s give it a low profile and paint it green! Designer 2: It also needs to be road legal, though, so let’s add two bright yellow licence plates and yellow and red reflectors all over the vehicle!

Painting the markings, flags and licence plates was a fiddly job but really fun to do. I’m quite happy with the end result. So much so, that I immediately ordered two other (different) vehicles, that will feature in a future post!