Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 3 – WWII Swedish planes

Sweden made quite a few planes during WWII

B-18 or SAAB 18. Designed during the war, but delivered from October -45. 119 made and this one made an emergency landing on ice. The ice broke after a couple of days and the plane sunk. It was rescued in 1979, after 33 years on the bottom of the sea, and has been restored since then.

B17 or SAAB 17. Bomber and reconnaissance, in service from 1941. 322 made and could take 900 kg bombs.

Sorry about the quality of this photo

 Note the retractable wheels

J22 or FFVS J22. Around 200 made, and in service from 1943.

A Bofors 40mm AA-gun, with some planes in the background

More to come...

Welcome follower Martin with the very nice blogs Dropship Horizon, about 15mm SF gaming, and Fire Broadside!, one of the sites I gave the Liebster Award.

Preparing for Flemcon

Madly painting the last italian big men for tomorrows game at Flemcon. They will probably be ready tomorrow morning. Why did I completely forget them on the painting table?

We will play Operation Supercharge, or the WWII equivalent Charge of the Light Brigade, in 6mm.

Also Dux Gondorianum and maybe some WWWII.

Hope to see some of you there!

Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 2 – more foreign planes

Some other foreign WWII-planes

B4 or Hawker Hart. Some were used in early war, and four were sent to the Finnish Winter War. This one is painted as one such.

J8 or Gloster Gladiator. Bought from the UK before the war. 12 served during the Winter War, and this one is painted as one of those.

S14 or Fieseler Fi 156 Storch. Two bought in 38, and another six German ones emergency landed during the war and was used afterwards.

B3 or Junkers Ju 86. Bought before WWII, and this is the only surviving Ju 86 in the world. Too bad I didn’t take more pictures of it.

S6 or Fokker CV-E. 14 bought from Holland in the late 20:s, and a further 35 were licence-built in Sweden.

J9 or Seversky Republic EP-1. 60 bought in 1940 from the USA.

J26 or P51D Mustang – around 100 surplus planes bought after the war, and 93 of them sold in 1953 to Israel, the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. This plane was sold to Israel but bought back in -66.

More to come....

Liebster Blog Award for me?

I saw this Liebster Blog Award thingie the first time during the weekend, and I was more than surprised when Smillie from Painting Diary gave the award to me. Very pleasantly surprised I must say. Thanks a lot Smillie!

So, what is this award then? Well, it is essentially a way of saying “Hey, here’s a blog I like! Check it out!”

There are rules:

- Copy and paste the award on your blog linking it to the blogger who has given it to you.

- Pass the award to your top 5 favourite blogs with less than 200 followers by leaving a comment on one of their posts to notify them that they have won the award and listing them on your own blog.

- Sit back and bask in that warm fuzzy feeling that comes with knowing that you have just made someone's day!

- There is no obligation to pass this on to anyone else but it is nice if you do.

Bloody difficult to only point at just five good blogs, of all I follow. So many good ones.

Anyway, these are my five awardees:

Learning by doing by friend Thomas. A lot about Too Fat Lardies’ games and what our group plays with - WWII, dux Brittaniarum and more.

Figurfanatikern by the minis fanatic Laffe. Also in the group and also a proud owner of a big plastics and metal mountain. Fantasy, SF and WWII.

Gaming with Too Fat Lardies is a Spanish site about just that. Good taste as they have found THE gaming rules company.

Jacksarge’s Wargames Ramblings – a lot of WWII stuff, and all very well painted. Lots of inspiration there, and some good tips.

Fire Broadside! - lots of SF and Infinity. Well worth a visit!

Go check them out, and make their day.

Flygvapenmuseum – Swedish Air Force Museum – part 1 – Italian planes

On a business trip to Linköping i had the fortune to have two hours  to spend before my trip home, so I jumped into a taxi and drove to Flygvapenmuseum, the Swedish Air Force Museum.

I had never visited it before, so it was a real treat. A great museum if you are at all interested in aeroplanes, and a must if you happen to be near. I give it a 5 out of 5 rating.

I took photos like mad, and will show some of them the next couple of days. Hope you enjoy.

In this part some Italian planes that served in the Swedish Airforce during WWII. We bought quite a few Italian planes, as those were essentially the only things for sale in 1939-40.

First off is the J11 (J = jakt = fighter), or Fiat C.R.42 Falco. One of only two preserved in the world, it seems.  60 saw service during the war.

J20 or Reggiane RE 2000. 60 bought from Italy.

B16/S16 (S = spaning = reconnaissance, B = bomber) or Caproni CA313. 54 bought, and not popular at all due to rotten quality. This is a full scale model with some original parts, made for a TV-film.

More to come.

More 28mm Kobolds from Otherworld

A bunch of Kobolds from Otherworld.

First is a couple of fierce females from the Kobold Tribal Pack, dressed in their finest. Really nice figures, and I like the orange dresses and whitish aprons. Wouldn’t like to be between them and their cooking pot, especially not if I was a prisoner.

Next their kiddies, from the same pack. Noisy lot.

The males are from the Kobold Warriors II pack.

Colours used:

Skin, kiddies – Vallejo Panzer Aces 303 Yellowish Rust

Skin, females – 301 Light Rust

Skin, males – Humbrol Rust or 302 Dark Rust.

Dresses and shield – Citadel Blazing Orange

Wicker shields – Vallejo Panzer Aces 310 Old Wood

Wood – Vallejo 843 Cork Brown

Horns and teeth – Bone White

Washed with Devlan Mud, or Black wash for the dark rust.

See the commanders in an earlier post.

Infinity O-12 podcast

I found a new-ish podcast called Infinity O-12.

My Infinity project is stumbling along. I love the figures, but they compete with fantasy figures, 20 + 6 mm WWII and the odd modern zombie.Now I must concentrate on the Infinity-figures I have, and do some serious painting, so that I can at least get some game going and try the rules.

At the moment I’ve completed the Haqqislam starter box, I have some more Haqqislam figures on the painting table, more or less painted, and an Aleph starter box waiting to be built and painted.

So what I really needed was some inspiration, and that I found in this podcast.

It’s bi-weekly, about two hours long, and filled with good tips on rules, factions and what not.

If you have any interest in Infinity then you should check this out. Highly recommended!

To the painting table...

German Big Men in 20mm for IABSM

The first batch of new big men for I Aint Been Shot Mom. The idea is to represent a level 1 man with one figure, a level 2 with two, etc up to four men for the highest ranking Big Men.

I have already converted some old figures into level 1 Big Men, simply by placing them on square bases, as opposed to circular ones for ordinary men.

These guys are newly painted.

First of the level 2 Big Men. Figures from Caesar German Army

Another level 2. Airfix German Infantry and Revell German Infantry 

A level 3 Big Man. Figures from Airfix Reconnaissance Set, unknown and Ceasar German Army.

Level 4 Big Man. The officer is a metal one I got from friend Daniel, and he was part of a group build. Great figure. Periscope from Revell German Armoured Infantry. The man with rifle is Caesar German Army, and the one with a SMG is from the Airfix Reconnaissance Set. The man with the back towards us is unknown.

More Pak 36 from Zvezda in 1/72

Another Pak 36 from Zvezda, this time with the diorama base and crew (se my review of the gun here).

The two crew memebers have good details and are appropriate for early war. It’s just a pity there are only two. For me that is not a problem, as I have lots of other crew that I can use, but it is a pity.

The diorama base is simple but effective. It is detailed with two ammo-boxes and a couple of spent cartridges, and it is of a size that works well in a game.

All in all a great little kit.

28mm Nymph from Otherworld

The nymph is one of the few monsters in the AD&D 1st edition Monster Manual that didn’t have an illustration. The reason: “Looking at one will cause permanent blindness undless the onlooker save versus magic. If the nymph is nude or disrobes, an onlooker will die unless a saving throw versus magic is successful.”

This nymph is from Otherworld set WE2 Dryad, Nymph & Sylph. A lovely little model. The problem with this figure is … if it is really well painted you risk permanent blindness. Thankfully Otherworld hasn’t made a nude version…

Anyway, paints used (Vallejo unless otherwise noted):

Flesh - 003 Pale Flesh, with a wash of Army Painter Soft Tone Ink and drybrushed with Pale Flesh.

Dress – 975 Military Green, drybrushed with 850 Medium Olive

Belt – 850 Medium Olive drybrushed 885 Pastel Green

Shoes – 843 Cork Brown

Hair – Coat d’Arms 235 Horse Tone Brown, washed with Army Painter Dark Tone Ink.

Book review – British Military Trucks of World War Two

When I started to build a British force for France 1940 I had quite some problems when it came to soft-skins. First off, there aren’t that many in plastics, but a myriad in metal and resin. But the question was: Which of them were used in 1940? The net helped me somewhat, but, being who I am, I really wanted a reference book. Looking around I didn’t find anything interesting about British soft-skins in book-form. Nothing.

But a couple of months ago I saw that Tankograd Publishing had released what I was looking for. My local favourite hobby store, Hobbybokhandeln, took in a couple and I went down there during lunch break, looked at the book and promptly bought it.

British Military Trucks of World War Two – Manufacturers, Types, Variants and Service of Trucks in British Army and Royal Air Force Service 1939-45, Les Freathy, Tankograd Publishing, 256 pages hardcover with 680 photographs, 2012.

Do you recognize AEC, Albion, Austin, Bedford, Commer, Crossley, Dennis, Dodge, ERF, Foden, Ford, FWD, Garner, Guy, Hillman, Humber, Karrier, Leyland, Maudsley, Morris, Scammel, Standard or Thornycroft? They all produced trucks for the British Army or RAF, and you will get details of the different truck types that these manufacturers made during the war. Every type gets between a half and 13 pages worth of pictures, technical data and other information. Usually very clear pictures giving a lot of details and very useful for modelling.

There are also sections on lend-lease vehicles and trailers.

The only thing I missed, which is an important omission I think, is dates of use. This information is often in the text, but not always. It would have been nice to see it clearly in for example the tables of technical data for each vehicle, or maybe in a separate table where the dates of all vehicles were collected.

All in all I think this is a great reference book on something that, to my knowledge, simply hasn’t been covered in detail before. If you need or want to know all there is on British soft-skins, then you have to buy this book, and I give it a rating of 5 out of 5. Simply a must buy.

If you have a passing interest then it could be anything from a 1 to a 4, it is simply so specialized that it depends on the circumstances. But if you don’t buy it, then it could be a good idea to let someone else do, and borrow it J

Welcome followers

- Mojo with the blog WeaponsInMassProduction – a very nice blog on wargaming. Well worth a visit.

- Friendly Fire – I haven’t found out if he has a blog. When I googled Friendly Fire and blogspot/blogger I got quite a few, erm, interesting sites. Some more presentable than others, and some not fit for print on a family friendly site. If you have a site, then please comment below and I will give an update.

Battle report - Dux Brittaniarum…. or maybe Gondorium

A week ago the group had our first try at the Too Fat Lardies’ rules Dux Brittaniarum, that is their rules for wargaming in the Age of Arthur, 450 to 600 AD. Brittish versus Saxons.,

This was our first go at the rules, and our rules guru and TFL expert Thomas guided us in the intricacies of ancient Britain and how they fought.

A peaceful pastoral scene

Oh, yeah, we don’t really have any ancients figures. 

But the Britons, being noble and just (well, I played them...) were substituted with LotR Gondorians, and the filthy (or whatever…) Saxons found their lookalikes in Thomas’ LotR Uruk Hai orcs.

This being our first attempt meant that we made a lot of mistakes (use the shield wall if your British!) and got the rules wrong a couple of times. But that is the way it is when you start.

I ended up on the British, defending, side both games.

Did you notice… “both games”? Yep, we actually managed two games in an afternoon. That is a record for our group, as we usually play one game a whole day and evening.

First game was a nail-biter. It started well-ish for us Britons.

Our troops appear in the flank of the Saxons

Our Lord and his troops charged the cavalry, which, cowardly, retreated before we could do them any harm.

It then went down-hill, as we lost one whole troop to a stupid charge coupled with us not really knowing just how stupid it is to charge a superior foe in some cover, not using the cards right and horrible dice-rolling (excuses, it was just stupid).

Then a full scale melee broke out, horrible losses for both sides. 

We could use our local superiority to get a slight advantage, and the Uruks made a gamble. Single combat between two nobles.

Justice and light won the day, as the filthy Uruk-Saxon was bested!

That was it for the Saxons, as they had had enough, and fled.

Hooray! I was on the winning side. Showing my superior handling of rules, troops and enemies!

In reality a very marginal victory.

Game two, and I'm still Briton. This time it goes down-hill from the beginning, whith a very clear trend.

 Here they come!

Our troops form up

 Close combat commences...

...and our troops are overwhelmed...

 ...and slaughtered...

...and flee.

No question about this match, a resounding defeat.

To read more on these games, you can check Thomas’ blog.

I had a great day. Two great games. New rules that are very playable and begs to be played more times. An umpire who is willing to start a campaign.

What more can one ask for?

To answer that, I will buy the rules and am considering one of the starting bundles from TFL, consisting of rules and a warband. It would be funnier with ‘real’ Britons next time.

(Reality has intervened. I have massively over-bought this year. Tons of Mantic figs, a lot of Otherworld via Indiegogo, and far too much WWII bought or ordered. The plastics and metal mountain is higher than ever. There will be no Britons, nor Saxons, this year. (But it’s soon a new year J))

Finally, welcome follower Jacksarge, with Jacksarge’s Wargames Ramblings. Great blog about WWII, Dark Ages and more.