Desert desserts

There's some bits and pieces left from Operation Supercharge that I haven't shown you. First off there are some cute little softskins to show.

15cwt lorries, bren gun carriers and a dingo scout car.

The lorries are part of the infantry company and scout car represents the FAO attached to the regiment. In El Alamein the british drilled their artillery arms heavily with integrated observers in the forward units. Most significantly they developed "the stonk" where a single observer could call down a barrage from all available guns covering an area of 2400x1200 yards within minutes. Many axis counter attacks were broken up as soon they were spotted by such stonks. The carriers are from the AT platoon; when the 6-pounders deploy you can leave the carriers on the table to provide some light support or in case you need to move the guns to a better position.

A pair of german PaK38 50mm guns

Although I focused on the british I did paint up a couple of anti-tank guns for the germans. They were given a very hasty paint job, but I was careful so they wouldn't be the exactly same colour as the brits, although there just that many shades of sand I think I managed to pull it off.

In the desert the low profile of AT guns proved hard to spot, especially in the heat haze.

As with the brits they were drybrushed with white as the last step to represent the effect of the harsh desert sun. Some of the crew got olive green tunics for variation.

Three sangar gun pits.

I also made three "sangars" -- low gun pits or shelters made by stacking rocks in a circle. Sangars have the benefit of blending into the surrounding terrain since, well, they are made from the same material as the surrounding terrain. My sangars were simply made by gluing small rocks on a couple of 40x40mm and one 40x45mm bases I hade left over. They were then covered with pumice gel and drybrushed white, like all the bases.

Probably the last thing a british tanker wants to see...

In retrospect I should go back and glue a second layer of rocks on the sangars to make the guns sit more "in" the gun pits. But I didn't have the time. I will make a couple of more as well, perhaps a bit smaller maybe.

Panzerjäger I; obsolete tank chassi with a so-so gun, they still proved useful in the desert.

Finally I ressurected a couple of Heroics & Ros Panzerjägers I bought second-hand ages ago. They were crudely painted tank grey so I dabbed some diluted desert yellow paint on them, allowing the grey to shine through on edges and other areas of wear. This way they look like they have been transferred from France straight to Africa in 1940, and two year's fighting is beginning to show.

But what about the infantry I hear you say? Well, I did them over a year ago for fighting Jocke's Italians. There is a painting guide in Swedish here: http://figurfanatikern.blogspot.se/2011/05/baggy-trousers.html.

So that's all for this time. I still got lots of infantry to paint should the need arise; as well as a troop of Stuarts and a troop of Rolls Royce armoured cars in case I need more forces. I'm tempted to buy some DAK to supplement my two guns and panzerjägers... but naah. I don't think so. Well maybe. Some day.