Decals for 11th Armoured Division - 15mm

In the course of making my 4 KSLI Carrier Platoon vehicles, I had to order some more decals and ended up ordering from both Plastic Soldier Co. and Skytrex so I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to do a mini-review and comparison. Battlefront Miniatures also make decals for 11th Armoured Div. but, as far as I can see, these are only available bundled with their own models so not a general-purpose solution and I have no experience of them.

Soon after I started with 15mm Second World War models, Skytex launched their 'Command Decision' range of vehicles with complimentary transfers. The latter were of a type that were placed direct on the model and dampened on the reverse to release them. Later they released some more conventional waterslide decals. I ordered some of these and have been using them ever since.

Second World War British vehicle markings is a complex area. Given that I just wanted to give a reasonably plausible appearance to Wargames pieces, I've not made a great study of it, referring to online sources and 'D-Day to Berlin' by Terence Wise. 

Skytrex offer individual sheets for different divisional emblems, arms of service signs, allied stars and the squadron symbols for armoured units, giving the great advantage of flexibility. The detail and print resolution is good and I've had no problems with adhesion or getting them to conform to the model surface, albeit I have always used Microset and Microsol to help with these.

Plastic Soldier, by contrast, offer a pack containing "4 sheets with divisional insignia, arm of service markings, bridge signs and tactical markings.  Enough decals for at least 50 vehicles". 50 seems a bit optimistic to me - for a start there are 77 divisional symbols and with two per vehicle... 

Again the print quality was very good. A few significant differences to Skytrex were apparent. 

• The divisional signs are somewhat larger and, I think, oversize, to the extent that they are larger than the mudguards on their Universal Carriers.
• The arm of service markers don't include the infantry brigade - green background with a white 60, 61, 62, 63 or the engineers.
• The armoured squadron markings  are somewhat smaller than Skytrex - I don't know if one is correct or they just varied in real life.
• Obviously with smaller multi-purpose sheets there are fewer duplicates. For example there are only enough armoured squadron symbols for 5 vehicles from the same squadron and 10 from the same regiment - if you are playing a set of rules at a higher formation level with just a few vehicles per sub-unit that is great but would be a problem as you get closer to 1:1 representations.
• The set includes bridge classification signs - Skytrex don't offer these and, as far as I can see, nobody else does separately to buying a pack of vehicles. They aren't easy to paint freehand with acceptable results so this is a big plus. Unfortunately the weight options don't include all the necessary options, for example: 5 for Lloyd Carriers. Again there are quite small numbers - only enough for five Shermans and M10s, for example.

This last image shows the size difference between Skytex and PSC squadron markings. It also shows Skytrex's Allied Stars - something missing from the PSC pack.

It is disappointing that there are no vehicle numbers or names available at this scale from either source. 

I think there are plusses and minuses for both suppliers and, to depict all vehicle markings you would need to use both makes and/or do some hand painting. 

One last point: Skytrex currently charge £5 to ship decals so make sure you work out all the different sheets you might need and order them in one go - and don't do as I did and keep thinking of additional ones!

4 KSLI Carrier Platoon - Part 1

The British Army in the Normandy Campaign 1944. © IWM (B 5990)

The Carrier Platoon was a unique feature of British infantry battalions of the Second World War, combining high mobility and firepower. Although classed as a platoon, everything about it was more generously specified than for a regular rifle platoon. By the time of the Normandy landings, it comprised more than sixty people and was commanded by a Captain with four sections, each led by a Sergeant. Equipment included thirteen Bren Guns, four 2" Mortars, four PIATs, a No.18 Radio and, most importantly, thirteen Universal Carriers. That's more machine guns and support weapons than a contemporary infantry company.

Quartermaster Section - Carrier Platoon 1944

Bayonet Strength - British Infantry Battalion from 19 May 1943

Although these references state one No. 18 Radio for the Platoon HQ, there are multiple occasions in an account of carrier platoon operations 'From Normandy to Holland' under the BBC's People's War archive where a section leader recalls using the radio, including one where he writes: "I radioed my Platoon HQ", so it isn't just that he happened to have the platoons sole radio. That each section would have been equipped with a radio, by this stage of the war, makes a lot of sense as it would have permitted more dispersed operations whilst maintaining communication. Interestingly the same account often describes the section operating independently or being attached to an infantry company to provide extra fire support.

Although I have bought multiple Universal Carriers of different makes, I have held off from making a table-top version until now because I was unable to find satisfactory figures for the crew. Most of my Second World War figures are from Peter Pig but, although I bought a few of their vehicles, I never found them satisfactory - a bit too bulky and lacking in detail - so I have mostly used Skytrex and latterly Plastic Soldier Co. I actually bought eight Skytrex Universal Carriers and a pack of crew. Unfortunately the Carriers are huge and the crew figures are just normal infantry snipped off just below the waist. They have considerable flash and are lacking in detail as well as legs. I tried several times to put them together but the results just never looked right. Peter Pig offer Universal Carriers with integral crew moulded in but these look extremely blobby and soft on detail. There would also be a problem getting variety in the platoon.

I was pleased then to get a box of Plastic Soldier Co. Universal Carriers. The box has no fewer than nine carriers, each with eleven potential crew figures. The box picture even has an encouraging picture of an 11 Armoured Division, Motor Battalion carrier with the crew wearing camouflaged helmets and armed with rifles and a Bren gun. Problem solved! Sadly not - the crew figures bore no relationship to the box art. Apart from those firing the 50 cal, Vickers machine gun or mortar, they are unarmed and look very relaxed - more like they are going for a ride in the country than into battle. There are no rifles or Sten guns included and the helmets are early war and free of netting and scrim. Most peculiarly the provided Bren gun bipod is too wide to fit through the firing port and there isn't enough space lengthways between the gunner and port. So they languished in the stash for a long time as I painted other things. Now however, I have all the other elements that I need for an 'O' Group British Infantry Battalion, I can't put this off any longer.

In 'O' Group, the Carrier Platoon is represented by a normal 3-section infantry platoon plus a PIAT section with three carriers provided as transport. This seems to me to be selling the unit rather short in terms of strength and firepower but I will use this as a start and see how we get on. I can imagine adding a fourth section and applying the close range firepower bonus that is used for German Panzer Grenadiers - three Brens and 2" mortar v two MG42s seems reasonable - and close combat disadvantage to reflect the smaller number of riflemen.

For the dismounted platoon, I will be using Peter Pig figures but with prone and kneeling poses to distinguish it from the normal platoons. I will also include a 2" Mortar or PIAT on the section bases.

For the mounted platoon, I'm mostly using the Plastic Soldier Co. figures but with Peter Pig late war British heads and some heavy modifications to the poses, including cutting and re-attaching hands and arms. In one case I've swapped the upper body for a Skytrex figure with a Sten and also using a Peter Pig seated figure and one of their light order riflemen. 

As I mentioned there are no rifles or Sten guns included. Scratch building SMLEs seemed a bit too ambitious so I made a couple of rather basic looking Stens from brass tube and wire and a bit of plastic. This is easier than it sounds and only requires five pieces and two soldiered joints - the magazine at right angles to a length of tube and the shoulder rest at right angles to a length of 0.5 mm rod to represent the barrel and butt. 

I also made some stowage with blocks of plastic under superglue-soaked tissue then a jerry can or wooden crate or ammo box glued on top. On the right is a spare No.18 radio set from making my battalion HQ.

In the interest of getting an 'O' Group Carrier Platoon on the table as soon as possible, I decided to just complete three carriers as a priority then get the dismounted troops done with empty carriers and a fourth mounted one to follow later.

One thing that caused me some delay was the decals for the arm of service signs. I belatedly realised that the sheets I had from Skytrex didn't include the infantry brigade signs. Rather than doing the obvious and ordering the sheet that did, I ordered the full 11th Armoured Division decal pack from Plastic Soldier, only to find that this also lacked the arm of service signs for the infantry brigade so I ordered again from Skytrex. 

Skytrex don't offer bridge signs, so these are done by hand. After a bit of trial and error, I cut the tip off a cocktail stick and used that to dab a bit of white paint on at a time to make a circle of the correct diameter then repeated the process with yellow over the top - yellow just doesn't cover well enough on its own. The numbers were added with a 0.1mm Staedtler pigment ink pen.

So far the models are free-standing. I generally don't like bases for vehicles but I'm undecided on these - they are very small and magnetic bases would solve the problem of transporting them without risking damage and they could also go in the same box as the rest of the battalion.

Despite what I wrote earlier about these definitely not being little proto-IFVs, the chap with the 50 cal doesn't seem to have got the memo. One question this picture raises is how the bullets are supposed to get from the closed ammunition box into the gun - must do something about that!

This shows one of the scratch-built Sten guns, carefully positioned so you can't see that it has no trigger. Even so, from what I've read about their tendency for accidental discharge when knocked, if I was the chap sitting opposite, I would be nervous.

Second German company complete for Normandy 1944

I have just completed another six bases of German infantry, allowing me to field two companies of Germans to my latest standard of painting and basing, including having at least one figure with Panzerfausts in each unit. All the figures are Peter Pig Late War Germans in 15mm. One NCO is an old figure that was posed throwing a grenade but all the others are from the current range.

I had already painted the company HQ, 3 infantry bases and a tripod mounted MG42. which until now I had been using with 6 bases of 'old' German infantry for 'O' Group. 

To complete a full usable 'O' Group battalion I just need another company HQ, MMG base and a battalion HQ. The latter is the biggest modelling obstacle. Should I give the commander a horse, a stolen Citroen, a field kitchen - at least he could have a hot bratwurst - or should I be really generous and give him a Kubelwagen?

Next on my jobs list though is a Carrier Platoon for the British.

Rivers

I've spent ages with these river sections half-complete, trying to find an acceptable colour for the water.

Looking online one can find a variety of approaches to represent rivers on the Wargames table and all have their problems. The 'gold standard', I suppose, is sculpted terrain boards with rivers cut into the surface below 'ground level', the river bed realistically modelled (and coloured) then filled with clear or translucent resin, relying mainly on reflection to give a realistic water effect. As well as the usual terrain board problems of storage and lack of flexibility, this has the additional issues of dealing with resin and getting the levels to match. 

The alternative is having something to lay on top of the table - with the first obvious problem that rivers are not usually elevated above the surrounding countryside! 

The next issue is colour - with no depth of resin, you have to make a conscious choice of colour for the water. Every child knows that water is blue - except, of course, it isn't and the apparent colour depends on the viewing angle, what is being reflected, water depth and anything suspended in the water so it can be a medium blue, pale blue or grey from reflections of the sky; milky white from glacial sediment; dark green from reflected trees; pea green from algae or dark brown/green/grey from a clear view of the river bed. One thing real rivers don't look like is off-white with a light fitting in the middle so a perfectly reflective surface that just mirrors my dining room ceiling won't do.

In the end, and after a number of false starts, I went with the child's image of a blue river and mixed up a medium greenish blue from cheap craft paints. I wanted to fade this into my base earth colour at the edges and, after trying to do this by brushing and blending, gave up and used my air brush - in fact the household emulsion and cheap craft paints seemed to airbrush more reliably than the model paints I normally use!

To try to hide the fact that the river is sitting above table level, I made the banks quite wide with  a shallow angle leading up to the river banks. I built up the level with foamboard that I cut to give a fairly steep river bank and gentle lead-in angle, smoothed it off with repair plaster then finished with my usual figure and scenery basing process. 

At some point I'll have a go at a more Normandy-specific river - something narrow, shallow and with heavily vegetated banks. Maybe even take a 1km section of a real river and try to duplicate that but for now these will do. 

Bocage Hedges

No Normandy Wargames table seems complete without bocage hedges, even if much of the fighting by British and Canadian forces wasn't in the bocage. 

Many years ago I bought a roll of rubberised horsehair, about 2" thick, which I cut up and attached 'leaves' to. This has served as my bocage hedges ever since, even though they lacked the built up banks and took up a lot of table space. I always intended to make something better but have only just got round to it.

The first question then is what the ideal wargames bocage hedge should look like. An online search shows a wide variety of model hedges, some more satisfying looking than others.

The online Encyclopédie du débarquement et de la bataille de Normandie makes the important point that: "The very nature of the hedges in 1944 is not the same as it is today, physiologically as well as utilitarian. At the time of the Normandy landing, the hedges are on average five meters tall, a smaller height than today. Particularly well maintained, they have an economic role predominant in the region, which has largely disappeared these days. Indeed, if the hedges serve to delimit the properties and retain the flow of water, they also serve to keep the cows or the horses. Providing non-negligible food supplements thanks to the presence of numerous apple and pear trees ... this vegetable mass bordered mostly by nettles and brambles.

I suppose this shouldn't be a surprise - field hedges today in England are no-longer as carefully (and labour-intensively) maintained as they used to be because the job of keeping stock in or out is done by fences. The implication is that we can't rely on modern photographs to show how Normandy hedges would have appeared in 1944. I therefore spent a lot of time looking for contemporary photographs.

A regular theme in these photographs was the number of trees growing in the hedges, as in this aerial view.

This diagram of a cross-section through a hedge seems to crop up on several Wargames scenery blog posts so I hope the originator won't mind me also reproducing it here. I kept the banks of my bocage hedges within this size range,

In summary then, I decided to  make my banks 25mm wide and 12mm high (though with some sections a little higher and undulating. I'm also assuming that the hedge is hiding the highest central portion of the bank) with steep sides. The hedges would add another 25 - 35mm, so a bit less in total than the average 5m in scale terms. I would also include numerous trees along the hedge sections and try to strike a balance between making them look solid and well tended enough to be effective barriers to livestock but slightly irregular - field hedges rather than an exercise in topiary at a National Trust property!

I made the banks on an MDF structure, with a base cut from 2mm sheet (the whole lot came from one 50p remnant from a local builder's merchant) and strips of narrower MDF cut from thicker pieces. I tried to make the edges of the base and the top layer slightly irregular to give a more natural look. The banks were filled in with repair plaster, with PVA applied to the dry MDF to help with adhesion. 

Once the plaster was dry, I smoothed off any obvious lumps and applied my usual basing techniques. Initially I tried applying the static grass with my new electro-static applicator but that actually looked worse than just putting it on by hand as it made the 'grass' grow out at a perfect 90° from the banks rather than vertically. I think I'll save the applicator for more horizontal surfaces! I've made a variety of straight lengths, L and T-sections. 

On a recent trip to Skye, I walked past an area with lots of uprooted heather where the leaves and flowers had come off, leaving a rather tree-like skeleton so I picked a few up for possible later scenic use. These produced some sections that were good as they were but others were a bit lacking in branches so I added these with twisted wire. I wish I'd picked much more as this was nothing like enough and I supplemented the numbers with bits of twig from the garden, again with added wire branches. I covered the wire with a couple of coats of flexible filler before painting - it didn't need to be perfect as it was mostly covered by the horsehair.

I still had some of the 2" thick rubberised horse hair left over from my earlier hedges and bought some 1" thick sheet from a local upholsterer - about 4' x 1' for £10. The 2" thick type proved much better as it was easier to get a more natural, irregular look, without pulling it to pieces and losing all cohesion.

After cutting the sheet to an approximate size, I sprayed it black and stuck it to the top of the banks with tacky glue. I tried various methods of holding it in place whilst the glue set but the best was to thread short (3 or 4") lengths of florists wire through the hedge and fold it around the underside of the bank - this held it firmly without squashing the upper parts of the hedges. It also made it possible to get some bits to overlap down the sides of the banks. Once the glue was set, I pulled and cut the horsehair to a final shape and dry-brushed it brown.

The foliage was the cork granules that I'd coloured with acrylic paint - half with Hooker's Green and half with paler Chromium Green. I did some tress or lengths of hedge with one, some the other and some with a mix to try to get variety - where I used the mix, I applied the Chromium Green from the top as a highlight. 

Another question was what to do about gates. John Boadle of the Hand-Built History blog had pointed out that I couldn't just assume these would look like the typical English country 5-bar gate, so I spent some time 'driving around' Normandy in Google Street View and looking for contemporary photographs or art work. I wasn't able to find as many contemporary references as I would have liked but a common theme of Northern French wooden gates seems to be a high vertical post on the hinge-side of the gate and more vertical strips of wood than we normally see on UK gates. I was also struck that a lot of field openings appeared to have no gate at all.

This is a modern photograph but variations on this theme (some with 4 or 5 horizontal pieces, fewer vertical stakes or an offset V rather than simple diagonal brace) cropped up in street view, old paintings and even a sketch in the Imperial War Museum collection from the first world war.

So far, I have scratch built 5 different gates out of plastic strip. With the aid of a simple jig, this was nothing like as fiddly as one might expect and I plan to do a few more, and some gate-free but muddy openings, but this will do for now. 

I'm very pleased with how the trees have turned out - better, I think than than the commercial bottle-brush trees I currently use for my woods - so I guess replacing those with the twig and horsehair method (or possibly wire armatures) has to go on my jobs to do list. Not too near the top though - I have neglected the figure painting side of things for too long as it is!

So that's my first 22 feet of bocage. I will make some more gateways and field openings and some curved sections, possible double pieces with a road curve running between them but the latter will have to wait for another project to make some new metalled roads. I also plan to make some non-bocage hedges using the same horsehair and cork granules method.

German Pak 40 and field fortification.

These have been a lot of work and cost just to put two guns on the table!

I already had a Peter Pig Pak 40 painted to my older style and basing scheme but wanted at least two guns with tows and, whilst I was placing an order with PSC in their sale saw that they had a box of 4 guns that could be assembled as Pak 40 or Pak 38 along with the appealingly eccentric looking Raupenschlepper tractors for considerably less than it would have cost for another Peter Pig gun, a bag of crew and a couple of Sd.Kfz. 10s from Skytrex so I added them to the order without much thought. I later realised that the Raupenschlepper wasn't much used in Normandy and the supplied crews were rather flat so I ended up buying a bag of Peter Pig gun crew anyway and, later, a couple of Sd.Kfz. 10s off Ebay. The PSC Pak 40s are very nice but I'm not sure what I'll do with the Raupenschlepper tractors or the spare couple of sprues.

Another issue was what size base to use, as none of my existing sizes were suitable - the usual squad base at 30x50 fitted lengthways but would have required a very narrow trail leg angle. I initially tried 50mm square but that had a lot of empty space and had a knock-on effect for the emplacement so I eventually settled on 40 wide by 50 deep as a compromise.

I thought it would be nice to have some dug in emplacements for the guns. This brings up the usual problem for more modern periods of not being able to dig in to a plywood table so we are left with trying to create a terrain piece to place on top of the table that gives some sense of an excavated position.

I started with 2mm mdf, made the inner-face of the dugout from card and built up the front from layers of mdf, glued together. I had the front corners of my dugout overlap the gun bases slightly which took a bit of fiddling about to get right.

I added some detail of posts and planks from plasticard and plastic rod then smoothed the outer slopes with repair plaster.

I used my usual basing scheme and added bushes from rubberised horse hair, sprayed black, dry-brushed with browns and with the 'leaves' made from cork granules coloured with green acrylic paint. On the latter point, a big thank you to John Boadle of the excellent Hand Built History blog for kindly giving me a big milk carton full of cork granules and explaining the process he uses for trees and hedges.

The Pak 40 bases fit in well - as I mentioned, the front edge and corners disappear under the "wooden" bank reinforcements.

Next on the table is a project to make new hedges and I'll use the same cork granules, in a couple of different colour mixes, for those so the idea is that these will match in. I'm also going to do some smaller dug-in positions for machine guns and the British 6 pdr guns. These will be of a more hastily prepared design, as a contrast to these which have obviously been prepared some time in advance of the battle.

Basing scheme

  

After a comment asking about what basing recipe I used, I thought it might be interesting to do a more detailed step by step post on basing.

I first used this scheme for my Italian Wars French army and the idea was to give a sense of Southern European ground - slightly sun-bleached rocky soil with patches of different grasses. I also think a paler basing scheme makes the figures stand out better. I used the same scheme for my terrain and that rather committed me to keep using it for other armies. Not a bad choice for my Late Romans to inherit but maybe less suitable for Normandy! 

Another objective was to be a reasonable match for my table. I bought my terrain mat some years ago from Antenocitis Workshop. It was called “Mat O War” and is a sort of very stiff synthetic felt - no chance of getting it to drape over hills! They told me they got them from Ireland and that it was made by compressing (presumably with some heat) the type of fibres used for static grass. They did two versions, a pale sand and the multi-tone green that I bought. The bad news is that I don't think it is available any more - in fact the Antenocities website no-longer seems to exist. 

The mat was an exact (as far as I can tell) match for their “DECORPLUS 2mm Gamer Grass Mix” and I originally used that for basing - the Kallistra static grass I use now is brighter, a single colour and more green so I dry brush a bit of yellow ochre to tone it down so the figure bases and scenery still match fairly well with the mat. 

As a final step, in preparing the figures for basing, I paint the cast figure's base with my base earth colour. This means I don't have to texture and paint right up to their feet when they are glued to the element base so makes the process a little easier.

My bases are 2mm laser cut MDF from Minibits or WarBases with self-adhesive 0.8mm magnetic sheet from Magnetic Displays. I stick the MDF base on the whole magnetic sheet, cut it off with a bit of excess then trim the magnetic sheet more closely with a sharp knife before sanding the edges to give a more or less seamless finish. Recently I've also been giving the underside a dusting of Halfords white primer to give a nice clean base for the unit name labels - also, for those without labels, it makes them less prone to sliding off hills.

I attach the figures with neat PVA adhesive. When that is dry, I fill in around the bases with a water-based filler. A coating of watered down PVA helps this adhere and I use a wet (old) brush to push the filler into place.

Next I paint the base with slightly diluted PVA, add a few small bits of rock and rounded sand grains (around 1mm) then sprinkle with fine sand, shaking off the excess immediately. When the PVA is dry, I brush off the bits that haven't fully adhered. I take particular care that there is nothing stuck around the edges.

Originally I used Humbrol Dark Earth as the base colour but I wanted to use the same mix for scenery and that would have been rather expensive so I bought a big tub of discontinued brown emulsion from B&Q. The colour isn't much like the Humbrol but that doesn't seem to matter to the final look. Being water based, it doesn't wet the textured surface as well as enamel paint diluted with white spirit so I usually need to do some touching up once the first coat is dry. There are usually a few bits of sand stuck by the emulsion around the edges so I remove those at this stage.

Dry brush acrylic yellow ochre, fairly heavily then more lightly with yellow ochre + white. Around the edges, I try to get an effect of vertical streaks rather than a simple dry-brushing and finish them off with some pale olive green - a match pot of emulsion. I find this helps the bases disappear into the terrain cloth and disguises the height of the base somewhat.

The larger rocks are painted with Vallejo London Grey then dry-brushed with Pale Grey. No real logic to this but it makes them stand out nicely. Although I try to be as neat as possible with all this, invariable a stray bit of basing paint gets on one or two figures, requiring some touching up.

The tufts are MiniNature 737-22 and the static grass is "Spring Meadow Flock" from Kallistra. As mentioned above, I dry brush over the Kallistra grass with yellow ochre to tone it down a bit.