As the horse limbers to the Thai guns promised in my last post were proving to be so much of a chore that they threatened to obliterate my painting mojo, I instead devoted the past weekend to providing my long neglected French collection with some heavy weapons support using the crew packs from Elhiem Figures.
First up is a 25mm anti-tank gun. Made by Shellhole Scenics, it was an absolute delight to put together, being not just flash-free but also beautifully designed.
Purists will note that the paint scheme’s combination of Flat Earth, Bronze Green, and Tan Yellow (all Vallejo and copied from the Flames of War guide) is pure fantasy as the only hardware that appear to have sported a camouflage pattern in Vichy Indochina were the Panhard armoured cars and Citroen-Kegresse halftracks.
The unsurprising shortfall of modern weaponry in Indochina meant that many of the infantry battalions had to make do with the 37mm trench gun of Great War vintage, which more than twice outnumbered the Hotchkiss anti-tank guns available to the colony. Mine are by Early War Miniatures.
And lastly, a pair of Hotchkiss machine guns together with a helpful observer, all courtesy of Elhiem Figures.
The second unit to be completed as part of the week’s Big Push, this heavy artillery battalion (in Rapid Fire! terms, that is) stands ready to support the trudge up Indochina’s Route Coloniale 1 towards the elusive objective of Sisophon.
That I was able to churn these out in record time has much to do with the fact that the crew figures were actually painted nearly a decade ago, leaving only the observers to be done.
The guns are from Shellhole Scenics‘ Hungarian range, and like all of that maker’s products they are beautifully cast. Unfortunately they were a bit fiddly to assemble and, in the untrained hands of one such as myself, the end result is a slanted wobbliness that’s utterly unseemly of these behemoths.
The gunners are by Elhiem Figures and the clutter of shells and crates mainly Raventhorpe’s. For my own reference, the latter were basecoated in VMC Olive Grey, washed with Army Painter Dark Tone, and successively layered with VMC Olive Green and a 1:1 mix of VMC Olive Grey and VMC Flat Yellow.
Standing in for the Landsverk artillery tractor is the Japanese Type 98 “Shi-Ke”, which of course looks nothing like its Swedish counterpart. The tractor is from S&S Models and was a complete disappointment to behold. Design-wise it’s comparable to a Frontline Wargaming kit, which is to say it’s simple and workman-like. But unlike the average Frontline Wargaming product, the model is horribly moulded, with a good number of air bubbles and what seemed to me like unremovable flash, giving its £8.50 price tag the sheen of daylight robbery.
The helmeted observer is a Polish cavalryman from SHQ while his diminutive pal hails from that company’s early war Wehrmacht range. Hardly suitable as Thais, but then again no one’s going to notice at arm’s length.
To whisk the duo around is a diecast Vauxhall VX10 (a “pre-war version with vertical grille” according to the box) by Pocketbond repainted in VMC Olive Grey, the same colour as the guns and tractor. The license plate has been omitted pending the release of Black Lion Decal’s Thai army set.
Interestingly enough, the 105mm Bofors doesn’t appear to have been restricted to just heavy artillery battalions. Two firsthand accounts of the Japanese invasion — one an after-action report by a battalion commander at Nakhon Si Thammarat and the other a memoir penned half a century after the event by a battery commander at Songkhla — describe their battalions as having a battery of these alongside their regular 75mm calibre guns.
These were done on the hoof, spurred on by visits to Manila, my recent discovery of the devastatingly excellent blog that is Just Needs Varnish!, and a long-held secret admiration for the wash-centric painting method advocated by the talented folks at WWPD.
The Philippine Army was woefully unprepared for war, with the vast majority of those reserves mobilised in the months leading up to Pearl Harbor consisting of under-trained and badly equipped illiterates led by officers — either Tagalog speakers or Americans on secondment — whose orders they could never fully understand (there being as many as 75 different languages throughout the Philippine archipelago according to the Encyclopedia Britannica).
The figures are from Shellhole Scenics, whose Mexican federales provide near-perfect stand-ins for Filipinos if the colour plates (this and this) of reenactor and WWII eyewitness Daniel H. Dizon are anything to go by.
I also took the opportunity to try out the Army Painter acrylic washes I had long ago bought, in an attempt to short-circuit my usual block-painting practices. Sadly the results left a lot to be desired. This I attributed to the already dark tone of the blue chosen as the base colour for the denim uniform, something I proceeded to rectify with additional highlights (which should also have been applied to the webbing and rifle stock, except that would have defeated the purpose of the entire exercise).
The bigger question, of course, is how to complete the rest of the battalion given how I’m not too enamoured of this first batch’s overall look.
for a few rounds more 
