Reds for Blood Red Skies (1) Some White Death

I have been painting a few new additions to my BRS collection , mainly fuelled by guilt at the build up of unpainted models, and also as I'm aware there are going to be quite a few new releases from Warlord in the coming months that I will want. I'm not that excited about the soon to be released Fw190 Dora's, I already have my hands full playing against the Fw190As, and the Me410s look cool but are not my thing, however there are several new Soviet packs due out that I must pick up, so I thought some work running down the VVS back log may be a good idea.

First up - my Little Pawns. I painted a Pe2 several years ago for our Wings of Glory WW2 campaign we ran at Hartlepool Wargames Society. The campaign went OK without being a great success, and the one "Peshka" sat lonely in the planes box for quite some while. I already have several Tupolev SB2s painted up for BRS to act as light bombers for the Soviets, but I thought I would need a more modern plane type for later battles as the poor old SB2s were shot to ribbons fairly early in the war and had pretty much vanished from service by 1942. The logical choice is the Pe2, so I ordered another two from Armaments in Miniature to make them up to a flight strength for BRS. The minor problem being in my WoGWW2 campaign I had painted the first one a very bright white winter camo. I could either replicate this or repaint the original - I went with replicate and I will have to explain away somehow why my bombers are in winter camo and my fighters are not.

The Pe2 was an outstanding light bomber. It's fashionable to compare light bombers to the superb DeHaviland Mosquito, and if there was going to be a Russian Mossie, the Pe2 is it. In truth that is a bit of a misconception, because the Pe2 was really inspired by the Ju88. The Soviets got to see the early Ju88 in it's dive bomber configuration, and quite liked the idea. The Pe2 followed the same general layout and like the initial batches of Ju88s was fitted with dive brakes to make it a rather handy dive bomber. As the war wore on the dive brakes were found to be an unnecessary feature and were deleted to simplify production and operations, just like the Ju88. Also like the Ju88 the Pe2 got dragooned into being a nightfighter \ heavy fighter as the Pe3, but that was not that common or successful.  Pe2s served from 1941 throughout the war and soldiered on after it. Throughout its service it was updated and still remained relevent and useful.

Anyway, after a bit of effort here are my trio of Pe2s. The stars on the upper wing are "non standard" but I couldn't resist as the contrast of the red on white is so pretty. I shall beat myself later in punishment. Theyve all been fitted with Hawk Widgts to get them to sit on the BRS stands, and I'm happy to say they seem to do this without the need of the bomber base extension. In BRS these give the Soviet player a very interesting fast bomber that can give the German defenders something to really worry about. The stat card for the Pe2 is going to be included in the Soviet Expansion set due out later in the year, but for the moment I am using the Beta stats of Speed 7 Agility 1 Firepower 0 with a flexible FP1 gun. Even when loaded that makes this a speedy and hard to intercept target.

Models from Armaments in Miniature link here

Next, the plane I love the most......