Reinforcements for North Africa

After the game last week, I broke out my North Africa aircraft. I had a quick game of Check Your Six to get the rules stuck in my head. As I reviewed my aircraft, I started thinking about what I would want to add to my aircraft.

First, I inventoried what I have.

Nation	Aircraft	Painted	Unpainted	Notes
Italy	Cr42	3	6	These were a pain to assemble
Italy	G50bis	6	3	These were simple to paint up.
Italy	SM79	1	7	I copied aircraft with no camo pattern.
Germany	Bf109e Trop	8	16	Simple pattern to paint. Slight megalomania as I wanted a complete Staffel of aircraft.
Germany	Ju87B Trop	3	5	3 of the unpainted really just need markings.
UK	Hurricane Mk1	8	4	Had wanted to do a squadron of these.
UK	Tomahawks	8	4	One of the unpainted has an accidental hole through it.
UK	Spitfire	0	8	These are for later in the war.

So, as you can see, I have a nice selection to start with. But I was lacking some aircraft for some scenarios that I wanted to do. Basically, not enough bombers. So, I went shopping. My Picoarmor order just came in. It is great.

Nation	Aircraft	Numbers	Notes
Italy	Br20	3	Nice clean castings.
Italy	Ba65	8	Neat little aircraft that did not fare well.
Germany	Bf110C	8	These should be fun.
Germany	Ju88A-1	3	Should be a nice little bomber.
UK	Martin Maryland	3	Nice bomber for the Brits
UK	Blenheim IV	3	This was an impulse buy.

I also placed an order with Tumbling Dice. I am waiting on some Blenheim Is, Caparoni 310s and some Hs126s. Now to take some time to paint them. I also checked and I only have 14 flight stands so the possibility of doing larger actions is unlikely.

Painting some DAK

I managed to get some painting done this morning. I only need to put on some matt varnish and base now. When complete I will have a DAK platoon with some support elements for Chain of Command.

The next step will be rebasing these and the existing miniatures that I have as they are all on FOW Biscuit bases. If I don't fall asleep, I should make some progress on this tonight.

A New Book

I just received my copy of Christopher Shores book "A History of the Mediterranean Air War 1940-1942 Volume 1". It is massive. Before I am too remiss, it was also authored by Giovanni Massimello with help from Russell Guest. It comes in at over 500 pages. This work is his long awaited update to "Fighters Over the Desert" that is long out of print. His previous book was a fantastic reference for either Check Your Six or Bag the Hun. This book promises even more. It is a day by day write up of the actions that took place. What is more, there is a summary of claims and actual losses for each day. I can't wait to read this.

If you are interested in the air war over North Africa, you should take a look at this one.

Sorting through the shelves

Welcomes
I have three new followers on the blog. Please welcome Sgt.Steiner. Actually, I thought you were a follower Sergeant.

Next up is Gerhardt Vikar and Phil.

I can't seem to find a blog listing for any of you gentlemen so please let me know if I am missing one and I will post a link for you.

Update! I found Phil's blog: http://riflemens.blogspot.com. I just signed up for this one recently. He had some wonderful animations on pictures of his miniatures for the New Year.

Sorting through the Shelves
The TooFatLardies blog showing their recent North African games has made me sort through the closet looking at my East African collection. I had painted a number of miniatures in 15mm to use for my East African Campaign book "Call this a Ruddy Picnic". I ended up doing all of my play testing in 6mm for the scenario book. What I did have was several Chain of Command sized forces.

The Italians
First up is a platoon of Italian Regular army troops. I had bought the deluxe Old Glory 50 count bags of Italians. Love these figures. They have the sun helmets and just have lots of character. After years of neglect, all of the bayonets were still in place and the paint jobs had held up. I was very happy.

The second platoon to be made will be some Italian Colonial troops. I can't remember the manufacturer of these minis. They are great but limited to 2 poses. I had begun the process of rebasing them several years ago and made it as far as gluing about 18 of them to US Pennies. The rest remain on their bases. I have a standard bearer figure that I think I actually modified from something else and a bugler. I have just enough of these guys to make the rifle sections. What I lack is the LMG. Since I am doing the East African theater, I should only need one LMG for the whole platoon. They were short on automatic weapons, if I am remembering this correctly. I have spare figures from the Italian Regulars to provide the LMG team here. The rifle sections are larger but this will not be a very flexible force.

Next are some Bersaglieri figures. I was given some Bersaglieri from Terry Haney a few years before he died. These are nicely painted and based figures. They are on the FOW bases but they are the plastic ones so not that big of a problem. These will probably be the last to get changed over.

Vehicles for my Italian army are few. I have two Lancia IZM Armored cars. One is painted and the other is not. I have two M13s and three M11s, none of which are painted. Then I have five L3/33s. My absolute favorite tank. I have two versions, the 20mm AT Gun armed one and the dual MG armed one. I have one of each type painted. I only had one staff car in my collection but that went to the Eastern Front and won't see service in Africa.

Then I found the troops that I really liked but had never done anything with. A small Bande of Colonial Cavalry. I have 17 figures in total including a standard bearer, an officer and a trumpeter. These unfortunately are not painted. They are likely to languish in such a state for a while yet. I really want to paint these up though. I think a squad of cavalry would be an interesting support option for a Chain of Command platoon.

The British
Having found such excitement with the bounty of painted Italians, I rushed over to my drawer of British troops only to take a look and think, "Oh yeah. That's right, I never painted these." I have a full company of British Regulars and a company of what was to be some territorial troops such as the Kings African Rifles. None of which are painted. I put together my needs for an infantry platoon and now they are at least undercoated. Among the treasures in this box was a single bagpiper figure that someone had given me from the TooFatLardies Yahoo group. This will definitely get some paint this go round.

Then there are the vehicles. Well, I have a bunch of them. I have five Mark VI tanks, five Daimler Dingos, six Marmon Herrington IIIs, three Humber LRCIIIs and two 2lbr Portees. All of these I received from Terry Haney (minus 2 of the Marmon Harringtons which are still in the unopened package - those are mine). But none of these seem to have a desert paint job. They seem to be too dark. I remembered having some cruiser tanks somewhere as well as the above but I just can't find them. If I remember, they were assembled but unpainted.

Given the forces Great Britain had available in 1940 East Africa, I won't need them. But still I want to find out what I did with them. All in all, much worse shape with more work to do here.

Working through the first batch Breathing new life into figures that never saw a gaming table, I have been busy trying to fix several things that I did not like. One, they were all on FOW biscuit bases and I wanted them on individual bases. I was very lucky in not removing a finger or two in that operation. Using a wide bladed exacto knife, I pried them off of their bases. Fortunately some were on actual FOW plastic bases and those I could bend and get them off. Others were on wooden bases that were slightly thicker. Those took some time to remove.

I am re-basing my Italian Regulars on US Pennies first. The LMG teams will go on a small FOW plastic base with the gunner and ammo carrier. I had more then enough of these for a platoon. I even had a spare LMG team that will be used elsewhere. I opened my package of pumice gel to use to base the figures and the thing had dried completely up. Unsure of what to try next, I grabbed a container of white glue and some sharp sand and mixed them up and covered the bases. It was looking good. Then I let them dry overnight. Well, that did not work as expected. The sand/glue mixture ended up with large holes in it. In many places the sand could barely be seen. I would need to patch this up.

Remembering that once upon a time, I had a milk carton of plaster in the cabinet somewhere I went on a search. Unable to find the plaster, I found some model railroad mountain making stuff. Thinking that had to be kind of like plaster, I went to work. Upon mixing it up, it had the consistency of cottage cheese. I made do and pressed this mess into the holes on the bases and left it to dry. I am dubious as to how well this would work.

As it turns out, not too bad. I definitely am not a huge fan of these bases but they are done. Pardon the photos. I took them quickly with my phone just to prove I did do something.

The Platoon leader:

The First Rifle Section:

The Second Rifle Section:

The Platoon Sergeant and LMG Groups:

Support Items:
These include an MMG Team, a 45mm Mortar team and 3 man Engineer Demolitions team.

The 45mm mortar is scratch built. It is not bad on the table but not the best job in the world. Old Glory did not have a light mortar team in any of the packs that I had purchased so I made this one up. The sharp eyed among you will spot the problem. I am lacking the four riflemen that are to accompany the LMG sections. Not sure how I managed to miss them. Also the MMG team should have two rifle men in support there as well. I will get that sorted out in short order. Hopefully I can get started on them tonight with the unpainted 65m Mountain Gun and 20mm AT Rifle team.

Western Desert Air Campaign

Thank you to all who have viewed and purchased this supplement.  I am making updates to the doc based on some of the feedback that I have received.  I will also update the doc for the Check Your 6 air combat rules with the next update.  When the updates are ready, I will notify everyone who purchased on how to get the updates - for free.

Thanks again and tell you friends if you liked it.

Bag the Hun - A North Africa Campaign Supplement

I have decided to go ahead and sell the supplement that I wrote for Bag the Hun in North Africa on my own. Rich is currently overwhelmed with IABSM3 and at least two other projects that I have submitted to him.

The supplement has orders of battle and scenarios for the following campaigns: Operation Battleaxe (June 14 – 18, 1941), Operation Crusader (November 18, 1941 to Jan 18, 1942), The Battle of Gazala (May 26 – June 21, 1942) and
The Second Battle of El Alamein (Oct 23 to Nov 5, 1942). It has a campaign system to recreate an ongoing air campaign. And historical scenarios for each of the above campaigns. Rosters of the men from each squadron are provided from the information available. In many cases, the only available information was from the published losses and victory lists.

What this does not have is Rich's editing and art. As such, it is at a discounted price from what it would be through the TFL's site.

The supplement is availible through my PayHip Store. The document is a 13 MB PDF file.