Continuing on with my British Airborne project I have completed a medium mortar team including spotter with all the crew replaced with kit-bashed plastic kit. As mentioned in my Panzerschreck post I don't like warlords metals and the fact that they are slightly off scale to their plastics has always bugged me.
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| Real British Airborne with 3" mortar (from http://www.justordinarymen.org.uk) |
Inspired by other wargamers who have done similar things (mainly the excellent work from Ste) I set about making my crew from a series of British Airborne and SS plastic bits. The mortar is the metal mortar which comes with the British airborne army box. The results of the crew are below:
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| My Bolt action British Airborne with 3" mortar. |
Each crew member was built as follows:
The yelling loader guy was made from British airborne parts and is holding a PIAT shell in his left hand (I know not historically accurate but it gets the job done). His right arm is an SS hand which was holding a Kar98 which I've just clipped out. I imagine he is about to yell out "Fire in the hole!"
The map reader is another simple enough arm swap. The left hand holding the map is from the SS box and was an easy fit onto the airborne body. I tried to make him look focused on the map and he is preparing to write some note on there.
Next up is the ammo box loader guy. This was a simple conversion with a polish airborne head and British Airborne arms. The left hand was clipped from the hand holding the sten magazine and put onto an extended arm. The ammo box is from the US airborne sprue and the 'mortar' shells are spare PIAT shells from the airborne sprues. I like to imagine he's fiddling with the traversing knob or perhaps even the elevating crank!
Finally we have the spotter who had a simple handswap to be holding the binoculars and a pointing hand from the SS sprue. He also has the map case and pistol from the SS sprue. I suppose this guy could also double as an air/artillery observer.
All in all I think they capture the look and feel of a mortar team in action and these few simple conversions have given me a dynamic and unique team in plastic which I really prefer. This was a fun little project and my next one will be to make a plastic gun team for the 6pdr Anti-tank team!
Signing out,
Chewie
