Fixer Uppers

Just this last week I received a further infusion of stuff for my WW2 and more modern projects.  On old friend, Glenn, was divesting himself of some (mostly) Airfix odds and ends, some of which came my way via Brian.  Truth to tell, it was a bit of a jumble (no less welcome for all that), plenty of kitty litter (I'll explain anon) and other bits-n-pieces.

1.  Part of the kitty litter, a rather nice Leopard I tank.  Keeping the basic camo pattern, I repainted the brown as a lighter, yellower colour, and bordered the colour edges a darker green (I thought).  The ink wash over all rather darkened the whole thing.  To do: weathering, especially traffic dust; tracks.  These are very loose, so I'll probably glue them and try for the drape effect between the return wheels.

 2.  More kitty litter: Panthers, Tigers ... oh, and a StuG.  The guns of the panthers need replacing so are getting cotton buds fitted over a toothpick inserted in a hole drilled into the front mantlet.  That should keep them firmly in place.  The Stug will be transformed into a StuH 42, with a 10.5cm haubitze.  These tanks needed road wheels refitted as well (thanks Brian or Glenn for ensuring all the 'bits' were there!).   

 3. PxKpfw IV:  I already had one short of road wheels (the green one) so I reckon one of these will have to be cannibalised.  I suspect it will be the green guy that will suffer what happens to a white member of the crow family: dismembership.

 4.  Artillery.  I thought I got only bits of the 5.5-inch, but in fact it was all there ... in bits.  I haven't glued the gun on yet, but the rest is there.  I'm still toying with replacing the gun barrel with that of the short Soviet 152mm gun with the shark-gill muzzle brake... The thing would need extra wheels adjacent to the existing ones, though...  The other is  ROCO gun, by the look, but have no idea what it is a model of.  A German 15.0 cm piece maybe?  At any rate, it will probably fetch up in my 'modern' Imagi-Nation of Tchagai.  The extra gun barrel will form the basis of a scatchbuild of a similar weapon.

 5. Anti-air and Anti-tank:  A rather nice 8.8cm FlaK 18 (the shield was included but I forgot to include it in the picture.  The loose 'leg' will have to be glued into place owing to a missing 'bit', although, as I have another one of these also with a missing leg, some cannibalizing might be in order.  The other two little guns are from an Eidai kit.  They seem to me very small for 50mm Anti-tank, but I'm wondering if they might be acceptable as 28mm taper-bore weapons.  Any advice on this?  At least one I acquired years ago of these got a change of shield and fetched up in my Russian Army as 45mm Anti-tank...

 6. Trucks - transports or technicals?
I couldn't resist seeing what one of these handy looking lorries would look like mounting an anti-aircraft gun. The temptation is strong, but I have a feeling that we might instead be looking at a mobile rocket battery with these two  vehicles.  What sort of rockets?  Good question...

 It might turn out to be a small rocket company with a platoon of SAM and a platoon of Saggers, or something.  The white truck need a windscreen frame repair...

 7. Light transport.  Little work required here, just some wheels re-attached, a schwimmwagen outboard drive glued on and the kubelwagen is wanting a new windscreen.   The lead motorcycle turns out not to be German, so will fetch up as a badly needed SMG m/c platoon in my Red Army.

8.  A very heavily munted Matador truck.  The cab and tray have been reglued back on, and a broken front axle repaired.  It will probably have to be reinforced somehow.  One of the rear leaf-suspension assemblies has gone the way of journeyers to the New World (i.e. 'west'), so the remaining one will probably be removed, and the both replaced with a cruder but sturdier wooden arrangement with a wire axle driven through it and the wheels put on.  Prime mover for the 5.5-inch, perhaps?  Very likely.  The Tchagai army, post WW2, will no doubt have a acquired a battery of those fellows...

9.  A M16(?) half-track in pretty good condition, give or take the wobbly off-side front wheel.  The left front wheel did have to be re-glued, as normal.  The thing with these sorts of vehicles is the fragility of the front axles in particular.  Certain Japanese kit manufacturers solved that problem with wire axles, which had for wargamers the essential virtue of robustness.

10.  My very first Churchill, excepting the Matchbox bridge-laying chappy I got second hand a zillion years back.  Fortunately all 7 detached road wheels came with it.  The trick will be to get them back on...

 11.  Non-historical Armoured car.  Airfix aficionados will recognize this vehicle.  Nearly 40 years ago, not knowing better, I bought 3 of these new.  Since then I have acquired at least as many more.  What to do with them?  Actually, they can be rebuilt (if you're not too finicky) as SdKfz 231 or 233 types, with 20mm turrets or 75L24 guns mounted in an open fighting compartment.  The guns and their shields can be built (scratch-building trails and wheels) as PaK40 anti-tank guns, or as 7.5 cm field artillery.  I made a couple of the latter years ago, then changed my mind and remade them into PaK38s - not a good decision as it happened.  They are now Pak40s again, with cotton-bud gun-barrels.

 Such a pity, though.  The vehicle as designed has such a cute menace about it...

12.  Panther, panther... a bit of work needed to re-attach road wheels and redo the guns.  The guns will be cut to length, and muzzle brakes attached.  The muzzle-brake characteristic of the Panther I find difficult to scratch-build well.  It will be my usual method: carved from the ink reservoir (emptied) of a ball-point pen.  You shove one end into a pencil sharpener and give it a few twists.  Then just in from the 'sharpened bit' you carve a couple of square slots diametrically opposite each other.  A couple of mm beyond these 'slots', cut square through the barrel.  Taking the slots as being on either 'side', trim a sliver from that circular end top and bottom.  There's your muzzle brake.  It won't win modelling prizes, but it will look the part.

 12.  Tiger, tiger... These were fine, but for the horrible tracks.  A few road wheels needed sorting, but they were little problem.  The near vehicle's track is much shorter than required simply because the thing bust when I tried my usual trick of stapling the ends together (with a bloody munted stapler, be it noted; my own good one has  disappeared, done a bunk, vanished into the sunset {i.e. gone west}).  I think this bloke will have to be mounted on a base, and the gap disguised by landscaping (a strategically placed clump of grass, foliage or rock, maybe).   Each of these tanks will also receive a turret bin.  Tony...?!

 13.  StuG III or StuH 42?  I'll have to fetch a missing road wheel from somewhere, otherwise this Airfix StuG III vehicle was reasonably intact.  Looks as though a return wheel has gone where the young man was told to go (yep: west) as well.    The gun was, as usual, broken off.  Again, 'I outs wi' me hand drill, knocks a hole in the gun mantlet, eh, and shoved in a bit of toof pick.'  A short, carefully calculated (20mm) length of cotton bud forms the barrel of a 10.5 howitzer.  Again, my pen reservoir muzzle brake will complete the model of a StuH 42.

Plenty to go on with, then!  It took an evening or two to get these vehicles in their present condition. Another evening or two should see the repairs completed (I hope) and then we can start with the repainting.