The Rotterdam Project Part 6 - Armour

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Way back in the far lost mists of time - or just over a year ago, I was working on some Dutch Marines for a 1940 Chain of Command force. 

At the time there was an excellent range of figures and some support weapons from May 1940 Miniatures - based unsurprisingly in the Netherlands. The range was missing vehicles and some of the larger support weapons such as field artillery. This was before I acquired a 3d printer, but Paul D kindly printed a Pantserwagen M38 for me. It was a scaled up model from 1:144 so details were a bit fuzzy, and Paul had struggled with the print so it was warped, but beggars cant be choosers etc, so I put it together and painted it.

Covid and Brexit have made our planned Blitzkrieg campaign get delayed, but recently I saw a designer had released 1:56 (ie 28mm) stls for both the M38 and M39 Pantserwagens. They were not cheap by .stl standards, but I thought "why not?"

The M38 is the biggest model I have ever printed, and to be honest there are some issues with my print (not the stl which is superb), however it was declared "good enough for Government Work". Similarly the M39 with hindsight could have been printed at a better angle to avoid some of the obvious stepping, however on the whole I am very happy with the way these turned out. They're both hollow so are reasonably light, and I learned a lot from printing them that I'm sure will hold me in good stead for the future.

A basic paint job and here they are.

That should put Herr Hitler off should he decide to cause trouble!

The Rotterdam Project Part 5 - Roadblock

The whole lockdown thing has meant I've been flitting about gaming projects even more than normal, as there is no particular rush to finish anything for an upcoming game. One of the casualties has been the "almost" finished Dutch for 1940 Chain of Command which I got mostly done just before lockdown. Mostly. I was short some roadblocks, a few entrenchments, that sort of thing.

When lockdown was announced I was just about ready to order some pre made barricades, but then in all the uncertainty I decided to try scratch-building a barricade myself. Only a couple of problems, one of which was I was not sure what one would look like (!).

Luckily google came to my aid, unearthing this pic of a Dutch squad heading out (or back) through a rural roadblock.

It's a fascinating picture because it tells an interesting story. This is clearly a well thought out obstacle, not a hastily felled tree, and the more I looked at it, the more I liked the idea of copying it - "Play the Period" and all that. The other advantage was I thought this would be a minimum cost build - and so it was.

I initially went for a short constitutional walk, coincidentally bending down every now and then to pick up some likely looking twigs. When I got home and in the cold light of day I realised I could do just as well with some off-cut dowel, and was less likely to get any suspicious creepy crawlies coming out of the woodwork. I also stole a couple of the cats' chew sticks (sorry guys) for the main trees. After that it was just a case of sticking everything together. That took about half an hour. Then I put it off to one side to dry - and forgot about it. Yesterday I was casting about for something to do and saw the roadblock, and got it painted up in short notice. I'm quite happy with how it worked out. Obviously not quite the same as the original, but recognisable. The idea is it will sit on the road rather than being an extra road section.

It may be a bit too rural to really fit the Rotterdam theme, but it will do for now.
 

The Rotterdam Project Part 4 - Concrete

A major part of my cunning plan to stop Army Group B will be some fixed defenses and fortifications - or Kazemats in Dutch.

These will consist of a weapon bunker and a squad bunker (both concrete), a road block, and a couple of minefields and wire entanglements which I'll hopefully get finished soon.

The weapon bunker is an easy one - my mate Paul (with the 3d printer) has found a .stl of a Dutch B Type HMG \ ATG bunker and kindly printed it off. The print went a bit off with the roof but I judged it recoverable = beggars cant be choosers and all that. Here it is after a coat of paint.

The second emplacement is larger as it needs to hold either 2 teams \ weapons or a squad. This one is "home made" from pink foam based on a S Type bunker in the Peel-Raam line I found some plans for.

Both are a bit tall - a result of the real things being buried at least partly underground, but we cant really do that on our tables and reducing the height to represent that makes the rear doors look daft so I'm just going to have to live with tall bunkers.

Roadblock, mines and wire to follow........

The Rotterdam Project Part 3 - Support Troops

As I mentioned, the core of my force are Dutch Marines, who fought in the defence of Rotterdam in May 1940. In Chain of Command these troops can (and need to) draw their supports from other Dutch lists, so I have a few choices.

Initially I'm going with a Forward Observer, a Swartzloss Heavy Machinegun team, and a Pioneer team. All the models are from May 1940 miniatures Dutch Infantry. The Pioneers are "repurposed" stretcher bearers with cable reels and the like added from spare bits from the Warlord German Pioneer set, plus a spare officer pointing to tell the guys where to plant their bits. The Pio team is needed as some of the Blitzkrieg scenarios in Chain of Command require you to blow up "stuff" to slow the Germans down.

My last support choice for now is a Landsverk Armoured car. The Dutch had no tanks, but did have a couple of dozen armoured card that by 1939-40 standards were not that bad. This model is another 3d print that went a bit wrong, getting a bit twisted in the curing stage, but it has cleaned up ok and will certainly do til we can get another (better) one run off.

Dutch Marines for 1940 Chain of Command - The Rotterdam Project Part 1

In an attempt to provide myself with both encouragement and impetus I'm going to try and blog my progress on these. They were a Christmas present to myself and I'm hoping to get them done by the New Year - that will be 2020 before some wit asks :-)

The platoon consists of three squads of 12 men each, plus an officer. There are 2 spare officers that will be painted at the same time. I also have some Regular Army support weapons, but they will be in different uniforms to the Marines so I will do them later along with the other support options. In total I have 39 figures to paint in 5 days.

So this morning just after sparrowfart I got started with the preliminaries - cleaning the models up. In truth there is not a lot to do here. The models are by May 1940 Miniatures - the only supplier of 28mm Dutch Marines as far as I am aware. I'll probably go into the "why" I decided on Dutch Marines at some point later. The models are clean and almost flash free. There are some minor mould lines and some flash, mainly in the gaps on the figures that are firing rifles from the shoulder between the crook of the arm and the rifle, but it cleans up quickly. The models themselves are very nicely detailed and proportioned and the metal is good quality - I had one rifle lose it's foresight during clean up , other than that they are very nice models indeed.

In fact I probably spent more time on the pennies I intend to use as bases. The cunning plan is to store and transport the Dutch on magnetic sheet so the pennies which are ferrous will hold them in place. Actually not all 1p coins are ferrous so I checked the selected ones first just to be sure.  In the past I have had some problems with paint lifting from the edges of coins I have used to base figures on. A little while ago I asked for advice on Facebook and was told (by non other than Derek "Del" Hodge) that it helped if you roughened the edges with a file. This I did. I also washed the coins in soapy water - I never really thought of this before but when you think about it most of them will be filthy and covered in God knows what (yuk).

Lastly I glued the figures to the pennies using pva - with the likeness of HM The Queen face down. This isn't because I don't want to be arrested and charged with some sort of treason, or because I am a rabid Republican (which I am, but personally I don't have anything against her as an individual, but think the idea of the Monarchy is stupidly outdated). No the reason I stuck them to the reverse is because the patters on the reverse seem to give the glue something to work on better than old Liz.  One pose - a kneeling one, did not fit a penny so ended up on 2p pieces, and there is also a Lewis gun team that will have to be based as a pair on an mdf base and then some magnetic strip added later.

So that took just over three hours, with regular breaks for tea and a breakfast stop for a bacon butty. Once they're dry the next step will be to add sand to the bases, then spray the undercoat.