Me-262s at Large

We got three games of CY6! in Saturday evening.  No, we didn't play long.  The games were just that short!  We played two games of a scenario I had read about somewhere (can't find the reference now) of two Me-262s attacking a lone B-17 protected by four P-51s.  In both games with the B-17, the Me-262s attacked as a pair head on and blew the B-17 out of the sky in a single pass.  They never rolled less than the 31+ column for damage.  Those four 30mm cannon are a lethal combination.  In both games, I flew the bomber, while Perry and Doug split the P-51s and Steve flew the Me-262s. 

The B-17 decaled up with the bling offered by Scale Specialties.

And in flight over Germany with some little friends for support

The last thing the B-17 crew saw two games in a row... 

The third game we played was the Heinz Baer scenario from the rulebook, pitting four P-47s against a single Me-262.  Here Steve continued with the Me-262 while Perry and Doug split the P-47s.  I sat this one out and just refereed. 

Steve's masterful handling of the Me-262 led to first blood when he got a point

blank shot and dropped one of the Thuds. 

 

Circling for position. 

The second Thunderbolt to go down... 

A close pass.  It wasn't long after this the third Thunderbolt hit the dirt and the

lone survivor ran for home. 

  

Steve's masterful handling of the Me-262 faithfully recreated the real life outcome in which Baer took down three of the P-47s while taking no damage himself.  The Thuds got a couple of shots off, but had no effect.  This also saw the inauguration of my home made flight stands.  It's a 1" length of plastic tube glued to a washer, with 1/4" doweling in 1" increments for the rods.  My fighters all have a nail head glued into the underside so I have a magnet on each rod to hold the plane.  The bombers are too big to be held by a magnet, so they have a 1/8" hole drilled in the bottom and I used a pencil sharpener to whittle down a set of dowels enough to fit into the hole and hold the plane up.  Worked like a charm, but some of the dowels are a little snug in the tube and the glue is a bit fragile.  We only had one catastrophe for the night, which wasn't bad.  Heck, I snapped one off just fitting the dowels in it!  





Sorry, Charlie, Albacore are Airplanes!

We finally played a game of Check Your 6! that I've had in the works for about three years.  The planes have been mostly painted for about two years, and I finished them up a year or so ago, but never got them decaled and sprayed until this past weekend.  This scenario is a historic battle in which two Fairey Fulmars escorted six Fairey Albacore in an attack on an Italian battleship (don't remember now which one - I'd have to dig out the source and look it up again).  On the way to their target, they were intercepted by two Ju-88s.  I remember historically, the Fulmars beat off the Ju-88s, but I don't recall the results of the attack on the battleship. 


Perry and I flew the Albacore, Perry's son, Calvin, flew the Fulmars, and Doug took us all on with the Ju-88s.  Here's what happened in our refight of the battle:


The Ju-88s immediately turned towards the British squadron, while the Brits focused on the ship.  In the first pass, the Fulmars overflew the Germans, but fortunately remained undamaged - no harm, no foul.

While the Fulmars repositioned, the Ju-88s flew through the first section of Albacore, but drew no damage again.

The Fulmars got first blood with an engine hit on a Ju-88, which left the table at that point.  The Albacore are just about in position.

The first section of Albacore line up to drop their torpedoes.  The second Ju-88 took airframe damage, but flew on, hoping to take out an Albacore or two.  

The Albacore lined up to drop torpedoes.  They were too high and too fast coming in and actually had to overfly the ship and turn back in to drop.

One took an engine hit and had to jettison his torpedo before the attack run.

The Ju-88 tried to finish him off, but missed. 

In this turn or the next, the last Ju-88 took his second damage and was lost to the sea. 

The final torpedo launch.

In the end, five of the six Albacore were able to launch and the battleship took three hits, which we determined was enough to slow her down but not enough to sink her.  One Ju-88 was shot down and one was forced off the board with engine damage.  I think three, and maybe four, of the Albacore were hit, all by AA fire from the ship.  Neither of the Fulmars were hit.  I think we miscounted the AA and the Axis should have actually had an additional shot each turn.  It was a fun game - low and slow, but with lots of action. 


The planes are by Tumbling Dice.  Pretty much all of my WWII planes are 1/300, but I wasn't about to buy and assemble six Albacore in 1/300, so I went with the 1/600 for this game, at least.  Decals are from Dom's, of course!  The ship is GHQ 1/2400.  Doug didn't have any Italian battleships, so we substituted a Brit.  Shhhh!  Some of you might ask about the game mat.  It's home-made - marine vinyl with hexes marked out with Sharpie. 

The HMPS in Norway

Had a small battle with an unusual force three or four weeks ago.  Here's the set-up:

Two HMPS trawlers (His Majesty's Patrol Service - made up of fishing trawlers converted for M/S and A/S work) are anchored on opposite sides of a narrow inlet in a fjord, when they are surprised by a Ju-52 fly across the inlet - almost directly on the line between the two trawlers.  In the few seconds they have, they open fire with their Lewis guns and are quite surprised to see the Ju-52 begin to smoke as it clears the second mountain range and disappears from sight.  They think nothing more of this, aside from gloating that it was their fire that hit the plane, but a short time later, a Norwegian fishing trawler sails up, hails the boats and announces that they saw a German transport crash and asks if the Brits would you like to investigate the wreckage.  The HMPS sends six armed men (five with rifles and one with a Lewis gun) from each trawler, all under the command of a lieutenant, on the Norwegian boat and it takes them to the site of the crash (on an island in the fjord), where they hope to capture the pilots, if they survived.  It chugs up to the shoreline near the plane, which, aside from having skidded some distance on its belly, appears to be amazingly intact. 

As they begin to disembark, all seems eerily quiet around the plane and they are disappointed, believing that the pilots must have died in the crash.  (This was a real event - described as closely as I can recall it.)

As the HMPS men get halfway up the beach, they see German heads disappearing from sight over the crest above them and begin firing. 

The Germans return fire with gusto and the British sailors, stalwart though they are, find themselves stonewalled, and eventually, they begin to get Out of the Fight results at an alarming rate as the firepower of the MG34 begins to tell.

As it is the British are outnumbered 3 to 2, but since the Germans completely misread the situation and set up two-thirds of their force on the plateau above, and only one-third on the crest, it looked like the sailors might have a chance.  Unfortunately, in the end, the British are almost wiped out to a man advancing towards the crest and trying to take down the German half-squad that they can see, while the Germans only lose most of the men on the crest.  The Germans had two more half-squads, plus the three aircrew (one of whom was wounded) from the Ju.

That's pretty much what happened in the real battle as well.  All of the sailors were captured or killed, except for two who jumped back onto the Norwegian trawler as it pulled away from the shore just after the fighting started.

In the pictures above, you might notice a couple of Germans in light brown coveralls - those are Peter Pig German aircrew.  The British Lieutenant, highlighted in the picture below the trawler, is a repurposed Peter Pig U-Boat officer.  The HMPS sailors are Eureka Early War US Marines.  I cut the American canteens off their heinies, but otherwise painted them up as is and they worked wonderfully as sailors in civilian clothes (the 'uniform' of the HMPS) and enough kit to get themselves in trouble with.  The Tante Ju is from Armaments in Miniature and the trawler is an HO scale resin model. 

A Hornisse in their Midst

A couple of weeks ago we played our first all out NUTS! game, based on a real situation that took place in Russia around 1943.  Three Hornets were helping defend a small village against Russian counterattacks.  If I remember correctly, the village had changed hands a couple of times and they had been fighting over it for a few days.  At the point where the Russians were finally going to overwhelm the German defenders, two of the Hornets pulled back, the third having been disabled.  They had knocked out several T-34s amongst the attackers.  Concerned that the Russians might be able to fix the Hornet, or have another one that they could use to cobble together one functional vehicle, the crew volunteered to sneak back into the village that night with satchel charges and completely put the Hornet out of action.  With a covering force of a squad of grenadiers, they snuck in and blew up the Hornet, while the covering force had been discovered and got involved in a firefight with the Russians. 

The village included half a dozen buildings and two knocked out T-34s. 

The Russians only knew to expect a counterattack so set up in a 360 defense around the village.  Just by chance, they set up a full squad in the yard where the German objective was located.

The Russian HMG was located in the back of a smashed church on the opposite side of the village.  It ended up not playing a role as the Russians didn't know what to expect and kept it in place even after the attack started expecting an additional attack from another direction.

Half of a Russian squad set up in a demolished building.

The Russians in the other half of the demolished building.

The Germans made a direct assault with one MG section and the Hornet crew against the wall. Most of the game was trading shots back and forth across the wall (see below).  They shot at each other without hitting anything for a long time.  Then the Russians got the idea to prep grenades.  The Germans beat them to it and one grenade cleared the wall. 

 That solved most of the Germans problem.  The Russian in the Hornet pulled a grenade but was shot before he could throw it, dropped it in his death throes and rolled a 2, destroying the Hornet in the resulting detonation of the vehicles ammo.  Game over.  Since the Germans then retreated, both sides accomlished victory conditions of sorts.  It was a fun game and we'll definitely be doing NUTS! again. 

Painting, Part I

I finished up the truck and 20mm AA guns.  This will be pretty easy since Perry wants them in early war gray.  First, I prime them with whatever's handy.  I used to mostly use Testor's gray primer, but it's hard to cover with some colors.  I can't tell you how many coats of white I had to put on to cover my AWI figures.  Flesh tends to be a problem with the gray primer as well.  I was out of Krylon flat black, which I also use to some extent, especially with aircraft and microarmor, but I had some Rustoleum brown so I used that.

Then I gave everything a good solid basecoat of Vallejo German Grey.

Even so, I find as I paint along that I often have to touch up spots I missed with the base color as I go.  After the base coat, I add some white to the German Grey and drybrush the equipment to lighten up the color and highlight the details on the model.  Couldn't get a good picture of this so we'll just move on.  I think you can see it to some extent in the last picture.

Since Perry likes the 'lived in' look that I give my vehicles, I dabbed some Vallejo Green Ochre in the wheel wells to look like dried, caked on mud.

I then painted the tires on the truck and the AA gun trailers Vallejo Black Grey, and the guns themselves Gunmetal Grey.

 

I then dabbed some Green Ochre on the wheels and chassis to simulate splatter.

Finally, I picked out the details on the truck, such as the seats, the driver, the tarps, Jerry can, and other stowage in various appropriate colors.  When finished, I sprayed them with a matte fixative.  I think I used Grumbacher Matte for artists, which seems to work pretty well.  I've used Krylon's clear matte and Testor's also.  The Testor's tends to be a little finicky.  I haven't had too much trouble, but I did have a batch of ACW I was painting for on commission turn white on me and I pretty much had to start over.  That was frustrating as all get out.

Next, I'll finish up the Sdkfz. 7/1 in the same way.  Perry and I tentatively talked about crews for the AA guns, as well, so I might have a Painting, Part III, showing how I do the figures. 

Models built...

Yesterday I started a small commission job for a friend of mine.  I had really envisioned the blog as just a place to put games played or items of interest, and I've been tempted to put up pics of minis I've painted, but just focused on the games.  But he asked if I could do a step-by-step of the models I'm doing for him so he could get an idea of how I do it since he has a pile of miniatures, but is pretty much a beginner when it comes to assembling and painting.  I'm going to do this as a two part series so we'll start with cleaning and assembling in this post, then do the painting in the next post.

He brought me a Krupp 4 x 2 Boxer, a package of 3 Flak 30 20mm AA guns, and an Sdkfz 7/1 - that's the real flashy one with the fold down sides and the quad 20 on the back (the Flak 38).  These were all by Quality Castings/Battle Honors sold by Old Glory 15s.  The Krupp and the 7/1 went together surprisingly easy (still working on the quad 20 for the 7/1).  The Flak 30s took me a little bit of time because there were no instructions (such as Old Glory 15s instructions are) and I had to study some on-line photos to make sure I had a handle on how to assemble them.  There were three Flak in the box and we decided to do one in travel position and two in firing position. 

First, we need a work area.  My work area is the last foot or so of the dining room table.  My computer and job search stuff occupies the adjacent one foot edge so it's handy for when I get frustrated and need a break. 



Second, we need our tools.  I have a couple of sets of hobby files, though the best ones I've found are the Xacto set.  I just can't afford it at the moment.  I also have a flush nipper, three different pairs of tweezers, single edged razor blades, a craft knife, superglue of one brand or another, toothpicks and miscellaneous other items. 



With this, we can get a start on cleaning and assembling the models.  First thing I do is use an appropriate file to clean flash and molding lines off the models as much as I can.  Sometimes you really have to look and poke and prod, because some of the stuff that needs to come off can look like it belongs there - until you start to paint it and you suddenly realize that you should have filed this or that bit off - and some of it can look like it should come off when it doesn't.  I always like to check out photos of the real thing so I have an idea of what belongs on the model and what doesn't.  I also try to fit the pieces together to see how well they go together and to see if I know where they go as well.

EDIT:  From a comment left for me on TMP, I should add here that after cleaning up the parts, you should check the fit of the parts to make sure they go together properly.  Sometimes you have to file a piece down a bit to fit properly.  Thanks for the suggestion, Marcus!

Here are the truck and AA guns cleaned and ready for assembly. 





I put the wheels on the undercarriage first (as can be seen above).  Turned out to be a mistake as the one wheel was too far to the inside for the cab to fit over it.  I actually had to break the wheel off (Shhhhh!  Don't tell Perry!) then glue it back on once the cab was in place.  The gun barrels went on the frames pretty easily.  One I glued all the way down for the travel position, the others, I tried to point skywards at various elevations within the limitations of the molding.  They don't look too bad and you get the idea that they are shooting upwards.

I didn't glue the guns down to the ground mount for the two in firing position, but I did glue down the one that goes on the trailer, but first I glued the ground mount to the trailer because it actually goes under the trailer.  After the glue dried, then I glued the mechanism to the ground mount.  With that the AA guns are actually done since on two of them there was only one thing to glue.

The cab and truck back went on pretty easily. They just glue down to the chassis. There is a slot in them that fits the chassis fairly well. 



After the cab and back were secure, I glued in the driver and the windshield and the Krupp was done.



Next we assemble the 7/1.  First thing is to clean the pieces. 



Then we assemble the halftrack body and the the gun platform. 



Once the two separate pieces are dried, I glued the platform to the back of the halftrack. 



Finally we add the details to the halftrack and assemble the gun.

Glue the two gun halves around the center console.  I keep trying to glue this so that the guns can elevate, but so far, I've been too heavy handed with the glue and always glue the guns to the console.

Then we glue the gun assembly to the floor plate.

Next, we add the gun shields and the ammo handlers' seats.









Voila!  We're done with assembly.  Next time we'll work on painting the models.

Desert Truck Battle

Yes, you read that correctly - we played a battle between trucks in the desert.  Specifically, it was a battle between T Patrol of the LRDG and the Italian equivalent, the Auto-Saharan Company, which took place on 31 January 1941 north of Bishara.  T Patrol found the well at Bishara destroyed and fresh tracks, so they headed north to hide in some low hills for a bit. 





Yes, I know not all LRDG trucks were pink, but I like the

look of them.  It's sort of the quintessential LRDG look.

Of course, my wife made fun of me while I was painting

them and the last thing Steve said after the game was,

"No more pink trucks!"

The Auto-Saharan Company spotted them and charged in to attack.  The LRDG had eleven trucks and 44 men, while the ASC had seven trucks, four of which were armed with the 20mm Breda, and 28 men. 

Two of the ASC trucks with the 20mm Breda.

About half of the LRDG trucks survived and escaped, with no losses for the Italians.   In an incredible story of survival, four of the LRDG men walked about 150 miles over nine days across the desert before being found, starting their march with only two gallons of water.  Along the way they found a two pound can of plum jam that had fallen off one of the trucks on the way in.

In the game, the Italians tried to sneak up on the LRDG from the north, sending three trucks up behind a hill to do some reconaissance, while the four Breda armed trucks tried to stick to the shadows of a low ridge to their right.  They were discovered and the fight went back and forth for some time.  In the end, both sides had one operable truck left, though I think the British had more surviving crews so they got the victory.  The Italians didn't call in their resources, including air support and a pair of AB-41 armored cars, all of which were used historically and probably would have guaranteed them the victory.  



Although this is a Ca.310, the ASC had dedicated air support

in the form of three Ca.309s, but try finding a 1/300 model

of the Ca.309.  Can't be done.  And yes, I realize that I don't

have decals on it.  I just finished painting it about an hour

before the game and I keep forgetting to order the Italian

decals from Dave at I-94.



We used a set of homebrew rules that I had been pondering for some time, but finally knocked together just a few hours before the game.  The basic concept worked all right so I have some work to do to round them out and do some playtesting.  All of the vehicles and dismounted crews (British and Italian infantrymen, respectively) were GHQ 1/285, and the aircraft, I believe, is a Scotia 1/300.