Attempt at 3d Modeling a historical Church

In working on the current Pint Sized campaign, I looked at the scenery for the town in question. In particular for the buildings that stand out the most in the battle. One in particular that caught my eye was the town church. It is not a particularly impressive structure. It looks more like a shoebox than a cathedral. But it did have a few unique features. The doorway was rather distinctive. So i took my hand at making just the doorway. I have a period picture of the church and the church still stands today so it can be seen in Google Maps Street View. This is a huge help. The buildings in the town in several instances extend out into the street itself. How this is not a terrible traffic hazard, I am not sure. The battle has a number of pictures of the town just after the battle. This is helpful but the Google Street view allows you to get a better understanding of the spacing that you loose with some of the historical images.

Historial Church as of December 1944:

Church Front Today:

After doing the entrance as 3d files. I think I will also model the windows. There are four windows per long side of the building. The building will be made outside of my printer as the printer is too small to handle the building, even though it is a small church. I am thinking of going with foam core for the building. The image taken of the church after the battle showed that it survived mostly intact but the stucco was pock marked on the walls and in many cases, the stone underneath can be seen. Since the town was shelled prior to the attack, I will probably try to model the damage on the church. The modern church has whitewashed walls with a white and black steeple. The roof appears to be tile. The town had mostly tile roofs so this makes sense. The historical image supports a white and black steeple. The steeple roof is black while the square building part appears to be brick.I can only guess at the building color. Possibly a brownish color.

Details modeled so far:

The back of the church is extended out (my geometry eludes me to describe the shape) to make the building a little more interesting. During the fighting, the steeple took fire from US forces thinking a sniper would be present in the building. It was also struck with something heavier than a rifle round to leave a large hole under the window on the front face of the church. The blinds covering the window in the steeple appear to have been replaced with smaller thinner ones compared to the period picture. I am unsure if the roof of the steeple has changed over the years as the picture of the church cuts that part off. I will base the steeple roof off of the modern building.

Back of Church:

I will mess with mocking up the building later today. I don't plan on modeling all of the buildings from the town. Just a few that stand out and seem important to me. So far my list has:

1) An MG bunker: Probably purchase the Sarissa one at some point.
2) The AT Gun Bunker: I may just look and see what is available.
3) The School House: Another building with pictures from the time and still stands in the city across from the Church.
These are just my first thoughts. The others I have some that seem similar enough to stand in.

Campaign for Orsha: June 22, 1944 - The set up

With my son's recent acquisition of a Soviet force of his very own, I decided to work on a campaign. I settled on the begining of Operation Bagration with the Soviet attack on the city of Orsha.

I am trying to come up with a creative campaign that will allow him to field his new troops and not involve too much work researching more than the hours I already have. I secured a 1:50,000 scale map of the town that dates to 1937. That should provide a nice basis for the campaign. I have cut away most of the map and made it our campaign area.

With this in mind, I will let him pick an avenue of attack. He will pick his forces and supports based on the map and the terrain shown. I will then pick forces representing the defensive line at that point. If it works out well, we should have some fun games of Chain of Command or possible What a Tanker if he just wants to run with his armor.

Hopefully, I'll get some pictures up of the games.