Skip to main content

Y ddraig goch: The 53rd Welsh Division, part 1

I sort of teased my latest project in my previous post by showing an unfinished Sherman Firefly. I have since blacklined the details to make them stand out a bit more and also added some more weathering.

The Firefly, together with a second Sherman armed with a 75 mm cannon and a Ram Kangaroo armoured personnel carrier, will be part of a late-war British army themed around the liberation of 's-Hertogenbosch by the 53rd Welsh Division in October 1944. 

Sherman Firefly
Sherman IC Firefly (Rubicon Models)

The Sherman IC Firefly is made by Rubicon Models, while the Sherman V is by Warlord Games. The dimensions of both vehicles are very similar and both kits can be used alongside each other without any problems. The Sherman V is slightly longer than the IC, but that is accurate considering that the hull of the Sherman V was lengthened to fit the Chrystler multibank engine. 

There are some stylistic differences between both kits, however. For one, the crew figures of the Rubicon kit are considerably smaller. And secondly, the details on the Warlord Games Sherman are definitely a bit more exaggerated and cartoony than on the Rubicon one. I had a similar experience with my two German Sd.Kfz. 251 halftracks, so perhaps this is true across the board.

Sherman tank
Sherman V (Warlord Games)

Like the 1/35 scale Firefly that I built earlier, the two Shermans once again have the markings of the 2nd Armoured Regiment (white 52 on red square) of 33rd Armoured Brigade (‘hour glass’ of green and black triangle).

The 1st Canadian Armoured Carrier Squadron, founded just prior to the liberation of 's-Hertogenbosch, provided Ram Kangaroo transports for the Welsh troops. Warlord Games has a nice resin and metal kit of a Ram Kangaroo, which comes with a single British infantry sprue. To get the chaps to fit into the hull simply cut off their legs at the knee! 

When the Kangaroo arrived, I found that Warlord Games had very kindly sent me an extra sprue free of charge. This actually came in very handy, because together with the late-war British and Commonwealth infantry box I now have enough minis to assemble an officer, three 10-man squads and a two-man PIAT team.

Ram Kangaroo
Ram Kangaroo (Warlord Games)

Just so you know, I did not accidentally misalign the allied star on the side. This is actually based on a historical photograph of a Kangaroo transporting Welsh troops just outside of 's-Hertogenbosch. I read somewhere that this was apparently fairly common and was done by the Canadian troops, who did not enjoy having to paint 'American' symbols onto their vehicles.

53rd Welsh Division Ram Kangaroo

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

More simple Warhammer 40k terrain: craters and rubble piles

Time for some more simple 40k scenery: craters and rubble piles. Both are pretty easy projects and pretty quick too, if unlike me you plan out your work a little so you don’t need to continuously correct your mistakes along the way! For the craters, I started with two old writeable dvd’s. I first closed off the central holes with mdf miniature bases. I then broke off semi-triangular wedges of cork from a pan coaster and hotglued these to the dvds, forming circles (see the picture below). I then applied wall filler to the craters to hide the mdf circles covering the central holes and to add some texture to the cork. I then glued smaller bits of cork in between the larger wedges and added coffee grounds for texture. After this step I noticed that the cork wedges didn’t look very natural. Tapering them off made them look a lot better (picture below). I then gave everything a coat of black paint:  I still thought the craters didn’t look quite right, though. They were a bit too uniform ...
2 comments
Read more

Space Wolves killteam

  Time for my second 100 pt. kill team, this time featuring the ever popular sci-fi Vikings known as Space Wolves. It’s a nice little group of three Intercessors and three Reivers. The new Primaris models are massive compared to the old Tactical Space Marines and to make them look even more impressive I based hem on bits of cork painted to look like rocks.   The models were primed in Citadel Fenrisian grey. After this, I painted most of the details apart from the faces of the two tough guys that are too cool to wear helmets. I then gave everything a black wash and added (a bit crudely) the odd edge highlight. I then painted the faces following a pretty simple process of applying a base skin colour, washing with brown and then highlighting with a lighter skin tone. Finally, I drybrushed the rocks with dark grey, then light grey and finally very gently with white. As a finishing touch I added two layers of AK Snow Sprinkles for a nice half-melted snow look.   I took my...
Post a Comment
Read more

Gloomhaven characters

Back in the winter of 2020/2021, my wife and I played a lot of Gloomhaven. After several months of playing multiple games a week we put it away for a while, but recently we picked it back up again.  Gloomhaven is probably one of the best tabletop games I’ve played. The only downside in my mind is that it can easily take you 15 minutes to set up a scenario, especially if you don’t invest in some aftermarket box inserts to organise the literally thousands of tiles, tokens, cards and standees. But once you’ve set everything up, the game plays really well. Plus, I really like that it is a cooperative game in which the players need to work together to get through a scenario.   Anyway, the game comes with 18 plastic ‘heroic’ 28 mm or 32 mm scale miniatures. The monochrome grey plastic really stands out against the beautifully colourful floor tiles, so obviously these had to be painted... The plastic is a bit softer than your average model kit, but a lot harder than the soft plas...
Post a Comment
Read more