"More guns: we need more guns!"

 

It was whilst sorting out the organisation of my WW2 Red Army - the Prizrak Front comprising 6th Shock and 71st Armies - that the underrepresentation of the artillery arm impressed itself upon my mind. So I have undertaken at least partially to redress that deficiency by adding six more pieces - which turned out to be seven.

We begin with these three cardboard, balsa and toothpick items. I had intended to build just two more, but discovered that I had begun another many years before - the one on the right - but had never got around to assembling it. Never mind, no doubt the extra gun will find employment... These represent 76.2mm (3-inch) field guns, of which I now have nine.

This is a later model 76.2mm fellow, on its base ready to be flocked.

Below are some of the pieces destined to become 122mm L22 medium howitzers. The wheels for these have been taken from toy Army Men vehicles. I'll be using the same for the two 57mm Anti-tank guns when I get around to building them. I'll probably redo the gun assembly.

Almost all my Soviet artillery are home made scratch-builds, though some have incorporated leftover bits from actual kitsets. The exception is a metal 122mm howitzer, sent me years ago by a fellow blogger.

This one (above pic) is a 152mm piece built up from the Airfix 5.5-inch howitzer. The gun barrel with the 'shark-gill' muzzle brake has replaced the original, and the gun shield has been added. I gather that the piece often had extra wheels alongside those shown here, but apparently this was not invariably the case. My other three 152s have the longer gun barrel.  

Not counting anti-tank guns, I will have 9 x 76.2mm, 4 x 122mm, 4 x 152mm towed artillery. In my present project, I'm thinking of 1 stand represents up to 24 pieces, with each strength point representing 6. So a standard artillery 'stand', will have 4 strength points maximum, but a piece that represents a lesser number might have 1-3 SPs instead. 

If this works, the whole will represent 408 artillery pieces carried by the Prizrak Front. The anti-tank guns will add 200 more, and we haven't added the assault guns.

One can never have too much artillery...