Tuesday, 7 July 2026

Nationalist Reinforcements

Nationalist Reinforcements

Some more armour for my Spanish Civil War Rebel forces.

I have found an account of an interesting engagement where the Rebels used a Panzer I with the field conversion where they mounted a 20mm Breda into the turret. Now I`ve only ever owned one Minairons Pz I and I was sure I still have the extra turret (with Breda) in one of my bits box, but could I found it - could I fuck!! But a quick post begging on Facebook and The Wargamer`s Forum got a couple of guys to volunteer to give me a couple - people are very kind 😁These are now with the lads back in Wales but won`t be with me until the end of the month.

As it turns out Lluis of Minairons had also read my post on FB, now I`ve known Lluis for over 30yrs he was an Ebay trader long before he started his own business. He got in touch and offered me a box of Panzer Is, it seems he still has stock of the plastic kits even though he is retired and the business now closed; well I couldn`t resist and it gave a few Euros to a mate 😁 

I couldn`t resist - so here they are:

Panzer I in early panzer grey



Late war Panzer I in blotchy camouflage


Converted Panzer I with 20mm Breda
This field conversion was designed as a way to up-gun the Panzer I and give it (be it limited) an anti-tank capability. Eventually only four (4) vehicles were converted because the Rebels began aquiring numbers of T-26s from their former owners and putting these back into service. At least two were knocked out in combat, it is unknown what happened to the others - probably scrapped post Civil War!


The Rebels got a rude awakening once their Panzer Is and Italian CV33s were confronted by the Russian 45mm armed T-26! 
They quickly learned that their tanks couldn`t get close enough to do damage, so they looked for quick fix, initially this entailed towed 37mm Pak AT guns being attached to tank platoons. With that in mind I painted up a Pak36 too, I think the gun is Hat Industrie 










  

 

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2 comments:

  1. Elliesdad7 July 2026 at 13:41

    The rebels will need all the help they can get when they’re facing T26’s. Nice looking models 👏👏
    Cheers,
    Geoff

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    Replies
    1. Richard B7 July 2026 at 14:27

      The Russians only allowed Communist members to train as tankers which extremely limited the pool of potential crews. This led to bad usage, awful deployment and poor general maintenance. The T-26s broke down and were abandoned, some ran out of fuel which led to the Rebels capturing large numbers which eventually meant the Rebels had as many T-26s as the Republic.

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