Bovington Tank Museum Part 1 - pre 1946

A quick photo tour of the outstanding Bovington Tank Museum. I took these pictures more than 2 years ago, so there might have been a few changes since then. The new WW1 halls weren't built then, so no pictures from there. This post is very picture heavy and covers pre-1946 tanks. I'll do another post on the more modern stuff.

If you ever get a chance to visit Bovington, I highly recommend it. If your tastes run to more simian pursuits, you can also swing by Monkey World which is nearby.

Some of the pictures are a bit blurry as the shiny surfaces of the tanks were foxing the autofocus on my normally rock solid camera-phone.

The view as you enter the main hall.....

King Tiger. A huge and imposing tank, even compared to modern giants like the Challenger and Abrahams.

Jagdpanther with a fine example of early ambush camo.

A9 cruiser tank with three turrets.

King Tiger with Henschel turret

Prototype Sherman tank - notice the three machine-guns mounted in the hull.

Concrete mobile pillbox.

Covenanteer. Only ever used in training as it's engine overheated rapidly.

Preying Mantis tank. Designed to fire over obstacles.

Jagdtiger SPG

Chafee

Panzer IV

Churchill AVRE with spigot mortar 

Crusader

Teeny tiny Italian L3/33 flame Tankett. The top of the tank was lower than my belt buckle.

Stuart

Centurion Mk1 driver Training Vehicle. The gun barrel is made of wood on this one.

Comet

The Black Prince - proposed upgrade to the Churchill with bigger engines, thicker armour and larger gun.

TOG 2 - a design by WW1 tank designers (The Old Gang - hence TOG) for a WW2 tank. It is the heaviest British tank ever built.

Australian Ram Tank

SEFOP-AP shot through a steel test plate.

Crusader

Panther

Tiger 131, the only one still running in the world as far as I know. It was captured in Tunisia after being disabled by a very lucky 6lb anti-tank gun shot jammed the turret. The shot didn't penetrate, but the heat of the impact spot-welded the turret ring to the hull, preventing it from turning.

Close up of the marks where the disabling  6lb solid shot skimmed the bottom of the barrel before hitting the gun mantlet and jamming the turret traverse ring, disabling the tank.

Grant

Cromwell

M4 Sherman

Vickers A1E1 Multi Turret Tank

15mm WW2 German Reinforced Rifle Platoon - fast and dirty paint up.

As part of our switch from Flames of War to Bolt Action MBB and I have started to collect some German troops. I've managed to do this bit by bit, picking up odds and ends of damaged blisters from bargain bins at various Salute and SELWG shows, plastic model kits from PSC and Zvezda and the few last bits from Peter Pig - mostly AT guns and crew.

In the spirit of my previous 15mm WW2 US Rifle Platoon Fast and Dirty Paint Up, I present my 15mm WW2 German Reinforced Rifle Platoon Paint up.

The paints I used for this were a mix of GW black undercoat, Tamiya XF-74 JGSDF Olive Drab, Tamiya XF-2 White and a selection of Vallejo Model (70.XXX) and Game (72,XXX) paints as shown below (excuse my crappy handwriting).

Check the paint codes below, I wrote some of them down wrong. It's XF-74, not XF-72, for instance.

I didn't have the equivalent Vallejo paint for the uniform base colour, Feldgrau, but after a little searching I found a recommendation for the Tamiya XF-74. The Tamiya website shows a very, very bright green colour for the XF-74 so I was initially sceptical. After I painted up a few test figures I was much more comfortable, though. The combination of a black base coat, heavy drybrush of XF-74 and then drybrush of XF-74/XF-2 mix as a highlight looked very good with a solid grey-green colour and not nearly as bright green as I had expected.

Black undercoat

XF-74 drybrush uniform base coat

Uniform highlight - 80/20 XF-74/XF2

Helmet, Gasmask holder and mess tin painted Heavy Charcoal (72.115)

Water bottle cover painted Beige Brown (70.875)

Camo cape and bread bag painted Brown Violet (70.887 - not 877 as indicated on chart above)

Rifle stocks and camo patches painted Flat Brown (70.984)

Ammo pouches and knapsack painted German Camo Black Brown (70.822)

Flesh painted with Flat Flesh (70.955)

Boots, Belts and Y-straps painted Black (70.950)

Any equipment, such as infantry mortars, ammo boxes, Panzerfausts was then painted with German Camo Orange Ochre. Mortar rounds were painted Cavalry Brown, as I'd read that German hi-explosive rounds were painted red somewhere. My Cavalry Brown is much more of a deep red than brown.

Once these steps were complete the figures got a generous wash with peat brown ink, allowing it to settle into the hollows but making sure it didn't pool anywhere. It's the same effect as you'd get from using one of the pre-made stains such as the Vallejo Washes, Army Painter strong/soft tone, a polyurethane wood stain any of the various recipes for "dip" using floor polish except much less sticky and smelly.  

Washed with Windsor and Newton Peat Brown ink

Completed platoon including Goliath, Panzershreks and support mortars and the materials and tools used.

The figures were then gently prized from the lolly sticks and based individually or in groups of 2-3 for the support weapons. For bases I used 2mm thick MDF circles in 20, 30 and 40mm diamter from Warbases

The figures still need to have their basing texture added and then be varnished, which I will do after I have painted the ATG's, IG's and various other bits that need to be based. AT the moment the ATG's are all loose, and I'm debating whether to base the motorbike teams, scout cars and Kubelwagens. I'm tempted to get a Kettenkrad and Schwimmwagen just for the lolz.

Here's the full platoon with an assortment of attachments. I have another 2 of the Zvezda Sdkf 251 halftracks to build, and a long barrelled PzIV on the way to me. The barrels on the Wiebelwind at the top right had to be replaced with brass rod as they were just too flimsy. I built up the muzzle brakes by dipping them into super-glue to get a blob on the end and then squirting it with accelerator to get it to dry fast, leaving behind a blob I could sand into shape easily.

15mm WW2 US Rifle Platoon - fast and dirty paint up.

I've had a Peter Pig WW2 US rifle platoon sat in bare lead for over three years now. Originally bought for Flames of War, my local gaming buddies decided we were done with this set of rules, for reasons I won't go into here, and switched to micro scales for Blitzkrieg Commander and either Bolt Action or Chain Of Command for skirmish. As a result I was left with a lot of unpainted, and now mostly un-needed lead.

I decided to paint them up to sell on. I'd recently picked up a set of Cote D'arms WW2 US paints for my NVL 15mm Scifi troops. These are the same formulation as the original Citadel paints, which was what I cut my painting teeth on, so I was keen to try them out.

I worked out basic equivalences between the colours and my usual GW paints (this was before I switched to Vallejo - I'm such a paint floozy) based on a colour chart in the old FOW US handbook.

The figures were all glued to strips of corrugated cardboard and undecorated GW Chaos Black. The aim was to get an entire company, 3 platoons of 9 stands of 4 men with command, HQ and bazooka stands too. Just under 130 figures in all. By far the most figures I'd painted in one go. With this in mind I decided that the painting standard would be gaming quality - base colours and a wash. I'd never used the "dip" method before, although I do have a tin of unopened Army Painter Strong Tone, but I had heard good results could be achieved with brown ink. I picked up a bottle of Windsor and Newton Peat Brown for this project.

Each figure was block painted with the base colours on a production line, so all the jackets were done first, then the trousers and so on. I grouped the poses together, facing the same way, and worked out a way to paint the figure efficiently with the first in a group, and just repeated the process as I went along. I painted the large areas first, so that I didn't have to be super-precise, as everything else would be painting on each successive colour would be covering up any mistakes I had already done.

Step 3 - (photos for steps 1 and 2 were just too dark to see). Field drab jackets, tan earth trousers already painted. Olive Green helmets, grenades and entrenching tool covers.

Pale sand leggings added

Camo Green webbing, knapsack and ammo pouches. The camo green initially looked far too bright, and I considered painting over, but it actually does blend in OK. I caught the back of the chap on the right's helmet and didn't notice until they were all based up and varnished.

Flesh - it's at this point that a figure starts to look like a little person and not a hunk of lead, in my opinion.

Beige Brown added for boots, wooden stocks on weapons, entrenching tool handle, pistol holsters and knife sheath. Metallic gunmetal for the rifle barrel, MG's and SMG's.

The Coat d'arms paints covered well and flowed nicely. The lighter colours required two coats, but that's probably to be expected on a black basecoat. I did discover that in a few places, such as the rifleman kneeling second from the left, I had put far too much glue on the cardboard and it had glooped over the edge of the figures stand.

I used a Humbrol metallic on these figures, as it was quite a nice pewter/gunmetal in the pot - sort of like a GW Leadbelcher before Leadbelcher was available - but discovered that it took AGES to dry. To avoid the ink diluting the metallic and causing my US troops to get a sparkly makeover, I left the figures to dry overnight.

Next day the figures got a generous wash of undiluted peat brown ink. As i discovered, with ink, a little goes a long way. One dip in the pot usually had enough ink to do 8 or 9 figures. I tried not to let it pool anywhere, but seep into the cracks and crevices on the figures.

Lots of little dudes.

The ink leave the figures with a gloss finish, but really makes the details pop, and adds a nice shadow effect. It also toned down the bright camo green and light sand colours and blended them in, so they looked like faded cloth rather than day-glo disco wear.

The figures were then based on standard FoW bases and Windsor and Newton coarse texture medium  was mixed with W&N Burnt Umber. the mix had some fine ground cork added to it and was then plastered onto the bases. Uncovered areas were touched up with W&N burnt umber, which was then lightly dry brushed with GW Bestial Brown and Dheneb Stone. Flock and small sections of static grass clumps were added and the whole thing was given two coats of GW Purity Seal, followed by Testors Dullcoat to take away the shine.

Each of the 3 platoons was differentiated by some detail on the base. One platoon had just flock and clumps, one had a small cork boulder added and one had a piece of clump foliage added. HQ squad got two small boulders.

I'm really pleased with how they came out. For four evenings work I'm very impressed at what I have achieved. It's slightly irritating that I didn't take the time to paint them whilst we were still playing Flames of War, but I'm going to use the same technique on the US airborne platoon I have for Bolt Action/Chain of Command.