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Captured Kübelwagen

I’m very fortunate to have two WW2 museums within an hour’s drive from my home, and another two if I add another 15 minutes. I recently visited Bevrijdende Vleugels (Liberating Wings) in Best, a slightly goofy-named but quite nice museum commemorating Operation Market Garden and the liberation of the Eindhoven area in September 1944.

Captured Kübelwagen

Part of the museum’s exhibit, which includes several aircraft and army vehicles, was this interesting looking display and accompanying historical photograph. It is a German Kübelwagen captured by members of PAN (Partizanen Actie Nederland). PAN was a group of resistance fighters operating in the Eindhoven area, unaffiliated to the Landelijke Knokploegen (roughly: National Fight Groups). It was created in March 1944 by merging two independent local resistance groups and was aimed at sabotage and armed resistance.

Captured Kübelwagen
The exhibition piece

I must admit that I haven’t done a ton of research, so I’m not sure how much sabotaging and fighting PAN actually did. I did come across a story, though, of an armed robbery of a distribution office in Bladel. The guards were locked in the safe and a total of 30,000 food stamps were stolen, which could then be distributed under the local population. I also found a picture online of a PAN-member acting as a guide to the liberating British troops. With the liberation of Eindhoven on 24 September 1944, PAN was disbanded.

Inspired by this display I got the urge to build a little captured Kübelwagen for myself. Having looked at perhaps getting a little British army for Bolt Action at some point, I decided to go the 28mm route. Perhaps a captured Kübelwagen and some Dutch resistance fighters could somehow be attached to a British force?

Anyway, I bought the Kübelwagen kit from Rubicon Models, together with three French Resistance fighters from Warlord Games. I didn’t have any spare Dutch helmets for the driver, so I just used the figure that came in the box. The figure has two head options, one with helmet and one with the cap as worn by the Deutsche Afrikakorps. I figured that the helmet would look too obviously German, so I settled on the cap. I did shorten the brim a little and shaved off the eagle insignia. I did the same for the chest insignia.

I wanted the Kübelwagen to match the vehicles of my early war German army, but looking through my old posts I found that I had never bothered to write down the actual colours that I used... Luckily I don’t have that many different types of grey paint. Through a process of elimination I figured that I must have used Vallejo neutral grey 70.992 for the metalwork and Vallejo refractive green 70.890 for any fabric. At this stage, I also painted the three Warlord Games minis.

As with my other German vehicles, I painted on the base colours and then covered everything in Army Painter light tone Quickshade. As usual, at this point the vehicle looked absolutely dreadful. But this will soon be remedied. Allowing for two days of drying time, I then carefully painted over the quickshade with the original base colours, taking care to leave some of the Quickshade visible around the panel lines and rivets.

Captured Kübelwagen
The finished Kübelwagen

At this stage, something odd always seems to happen. The Vallejo neutral grey painted over the quickshade always seems to have a slightly lighter, slightly more bluish hue than the neutral grey painted over the bare plastic or over a primer. Perhaps this is the quickshade slightly showing through the paint - but I think this is unlikely - or perhaps it’s just a trick of the eye, the grey reading differently next to the areas of quickshade that are left uncovered. In any case, I always quite like the result.

After this, I painted the little details. The shovel handle was painted Vallejo flat earth 70.983. For the Dutch flags I used Vallejo white 70.951 (but any white will do), Citadel Mephiston red and Altdorf Guard blue. The coveralls of the driver member were painted Vallejo medium blue 70.963, with a bright orange armband. Original resistance armbands often had the word Oranje (Orange) written on them, but that’s not happening at this scale.Then it was only a matter of applying the decals to the Kübelwagen and giving everything two coats of matte lacquer. I think it all turned out pretty nice!

Resistance fighters
Warlord Games French resistance repurposed as PAN-members.
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