Churchills

 Churchills

As you all know Bill Krieg was kind enough to send me a box of part-built, semi scrap and broken kits.

Well among them was a venerable Airfix Churchill, among other issues was a lack of gun mantlet, I decided this was a opportunity to try and build a Churchill NA75 - for those of you living in a cave the NA75 was a conversion built in North Africa (NA) swapping the 6pdr on Churchill IVs for the complete 75mm gun mantlet off unserviceable/damaged Shermans carried out by a team of Royal Engineers under Captain P.H. Morrell, nearly 200 such conversions were completed and the finished tanks served right until the end of the war in Italy.

Now the Airfix Churchill hull/tracks is OK, but every image I`ve seen of an NA75 has had parts of the track covers removed (I guess to allow for quicker maintenance in the muddy conditions of Italy). So rather than taken a razor-saw to what was already a patched up plastic hull, I came up the idea of switching hulls/turrets with a Britannia Mk IV (which is modelled with the track guards removed).

So here is my new Mk IV 

(Britannia turret on an Airfix hull)

A coupe of photos of the new tank alongside a completed Britannia one from last year

Now back to the NA75, a simple conversion with no frills - I removed the front and mantlet off a Matchbox Firefly, trimmed and fitted to the front of the Airfix turret and added stowage and that will do - she won`t win any modeling awards, but I`m quite pleased with it

   

Fort Bernia

 Fort Bernia

Now whilst my wargaming interests are almost exclusively 20th Century, anything historic and or military peaks my interest.

On 24/06/21 my wife and son decided we needed to go for a explore and as we were near Altea (about 30mins from our home here in Spain), Chris chose a trek up into the mountains above Calpe/Callosa.

Now i knew because I`d seen signs that there was a ruined castle, so that is where we ended up. Now the route isn`t easy if you don`t like walking along rough rocky paths and the climb in places could be taxing, but the views were spectacular and we enjoyed the masses of butterflies, wild flowers and even some wild mountain goats we saw during the trek.

The castle itself in very ruined, with only parts of the living quarters, gates, bastion and curtain walls visible. What was obvious (even to me) was it was a star fort of renaissance design. I was really confused by how far it was from the sea and how high (around 700 meters above sea level). I`m pretty sure they had no cannon which could reach the sea! I was also pretty puzzled on why you would build such a complex fort so high/far away from any possible action as there didn`t seem anyway for an enemy to bring cannon near enough for the sloping curtain wall and bastions to be required??

A few shots showing how far the fort is from the sea!

various shots of the ruins

I found this amazing shot online showing the ruin, you can clearly see the star fort design taken on 12/17/2019. by: José Luis Luri 

I found some drawn design plans which give a better idea how it would have looked 

A bit more digging on the internet came up with a brief history:

Built by order of King Felipe II in 1562 to watch and protect the coastline against raid by Moorish pirates. Designed by Italian engineer Juan Bautista Antonelli (1527 - 1588). 

Unfortunately all the effort (and considerable monies) put into the construction proved pointless as the fort was just too remote to be of any assistance if there actually was an attack!

Eventually it fell into disrepair and in 1612, King Felipe III ordered it destroyed to prevent it being used as a stronghold by rebellious Moors who were resisting the expulsion decree which had been made law three years previous.

  

Moors

 More Moroccans

 6 Force20 Melhala part of the care package off Bill Krieg   

The figures are fine, the faces, the robes - but the weapons are truly awful, but they`ll blend into my large Berber/Arab force, no no harm done. I did swap out the worst Hotchkiss ever for an Airfix Vickers

Confiscated Tow

 Confiscated tow

Any transport is better than none

My Volksgrenadiers needed a tow for their 150mm SIG. There had been some discussions over on FB about Germans using Fire engines as transport in and around Arnhem - so I thought lets do something different

Started out as a much abused Lledo "Days Gone" di-cast (no ladder, only 2 tyres and damaged paintwork) Like this but imagine worse wear

  
I re-painted it, added a ladder, some mixed stowage and a crew selected from all over the shop and it now looks like this:

here is how it will look towing the SIG

French colonial guns

 French Colonial Guns

 Two scratched up additions to my colonial French gun park

I found i needed an additional AA gun to create a 2-gun battery for my Vichy forces, luckily I had a EWM gun crew in the spares box, so head-swapped them and painted them up to match my other Vichy colons. The twin 13.7mm AA is also EWM, but this do double duty with its original 1940 era crew

37mm trench/infantry gun with a Moroccan crew

The gun is a real Frankenstein creation, the seated Moor was a Force20 Hotchkiss gunner, the other guy is an EWM French gunner with a Raventhorpe head

German Command Car

 German Command Car

Elhiem Danish Tempo car

This was a 3d printed body with white metal wheels, this is the first time I`ve worked with this kind of product - a bit fiddly removing all the excess, but it took the paint really well and looks OK finished. The driver is EWM, the officer by S&S, this vehicle will join my Volksgrenadier HQ.