Terrain - Modern Utilities and Infrastructure

Part of the Modern landscape is created by a variety of distribution and utility services, these range from petrol for vehicles, electricity distribution and generation, water and water treatment, telephony mobile and fixed, radio and telivision all of which have impacted on the landscape.  This post looks at Power, Water and Petrol with the production of a Water Tower, Petrol Station and a bunch of electricity pylons and telegraph poles.

These pictures provided the inspiration for the Petrol Station and the Water Tower.  Both of which were scratch built.

As can be seen from these pictures the Water Tower is made from some old favourites in the junk modeling world, a Yogurt Pot and the card board centre from a roll of Kitchen Paper. Both of which required fairly significant work to disguise there origins. The initial attempts at this seen in the picture above involved building some detail onto the smooth surfaces with cardboard and plasticard and then trying to change the surface texture using wall filler.  This still left me with a yogurt pot or more accurately creme fresh pot sitting on a less obvious long toilet roll.

In the end the trick proved to be rounding out some of the hard edges under the lid around the top and between the pot and the toilet roll.  which I thought created a more convincing effect.  Bizarly the original inspiration looked more like the yogurt pot on the toilet roll. The guard rail around the top was added using brass rod and wire.

The Water Tower was then painted "white" in Ocher tones and mounted on an MDF base. 

The Garage was built more in line with the techniques described for the other buildings that I have covered in this series of posts.  An MDF Hard board base onto which was mounted the petrol pumps, building and raised flower bed.  The buildings windows were plasticard with frames built from Plastic strip whilst the walls were constructed from molded plastic sheets.  The cover over the refuling area is MDF edged with plasticard and the small walls were built from strips of Foam core covered in wall filler.  The Garage represents a small filling station and was built under scale to keep the foot print down to a manageable size.

The building and pumps were painted "white" in grey tones and the fore court Grey overwashed with lighter tones and finally weathered with Kahki washes.  

The pylons were Hornbys rather expensive offering and whilst not really representative of pylons in Europe do add a distinctively modern flavour to any game, they have been based on MDF and whilst the base has been painted the pylons are not.

The Car park is another MDF Foam core offering with the surface detail just painted on.  I have an intent to do something similar but a little bigger with more features in the parking area.  You can never have too many car parks and they add usefull areas of grey to built up areas.  The Telegraph poles are Dapol and based on coins.

In addition to the major terrain pieces I have a range of what I call micro terrain designed to create a bit of character these range from the tin outhouses/sheds through to wheely bins from hornby mounted on coins to ground dumped containers and a range of small utility huts and roof detail that can sit on or alongside other structures.  The pavements and low ground cover are used to edge roads around built up areas and help to define the extent of the "Urban" space.

Other Posts in this Series:

Terrain - Modern Farm Buildings

Terrain - Byzantium 20mm, German Buildings

Terrain - Modern Supermarket

Terrain - Hikki Trees, Pine Forests

Terrain - Making It Modern

Terrain - Camouflaged Hides 

Review - Books, Red Thrust Central Front

Red Thrust by Steven Zaloga was written in 1989 and looks at a series of vignettes set within a central european cold war conflict. Each chapter examines a different Soviet Arm of Service and each vignette is followed by an analysis and discussion which look at aspects of the doctrine and the evolution of weapons and forces, both NATO and Soviet this of course was written at the time of the cold war and was trying to predict forward so has limitations.  The Chapters cover the subject matter as follows:

Ch 1 Operational Planning and Operational Art

Ch 2 Motor Rifle Troops

Ch 3 Tank Troops

Ch 4 Spetznaz

Ch 5 Attack Helicopters and Air Assault

Ch 6 Artillery

Ch 7 Air Support

Ch 8 Chemical Warfare

The Vignettes sit within the overall context of a Danube crossing operation in Southern Germany and the various stories come together to describe the operational action.  Some of the Vignettes particularly around the core arms of service, tank and motor rifle are not particularly illuminating as the methods of operation of these Arms tend to be reasonably well understood at the level of description provided in the vignettes.  The vignettes on Spetznaz, Air Assault, Artillery and Air Support are more useful as they illustrate the progress of the operation in the context of the doctrine in areas that are less well covered else where.  The analysis components are where the real value of the book lies but these sadly comprise less than 50% of the book. 

Ultimately looking at Soviet combined arms doctrine from the perspective of a single arm is difficult as their whole approach to war fighting emphasised its prosecution in a combined arms environment. The fact that the book is tying to examine the impact of future equipment change identified as coming into service in the 1990s is another limitation if your intent is to use it to understand what the Soviets intended to do at the backend of the cold war. The book is of interest none the less and I found the predictions interesting in the context of how the 1990s played out.  If you can find one at a low price its worth a look but be prepared to be disappointed with some of the chapters, I found Chapters 5-8 the most useful.

Red Thrust: Attack on the Central Front- Soviet Tactics and Capabilities in the 1990s @ amazon

Other Book Reviews:

The Soviet Afghan War, How a Super Power Fought and Lost
Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army
Soviet Air Land Battle Tactics
The Military Balance
Encyclopaedia of the Modern British Army
The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Manoeuvre
First Clash
The Third World War
The British Army in Germany

The Cold War Bookstore contains links to over 60 Cold War titles covered in my book list

Review - Models 1/72, Airfix FV107 Scimitar

The CVR(T) series of vehicles are one of the more enduring vehicles on the planet with their design origins back in the Malayan Campaign and enduring still with our deployed forces in Afganistan. This particular beast is the Scimeter which with Scorpion provide the mainstay of formation and close reconaisance throughout the back end of the cold war. The Scimitar equipped the close reconaisance platoons of Mechanised track and Armoured Infantry Battalions and always needed to carry more equipment than you could possibly get in it.  This lead to a degree of central and local modification of external stowage solutions throughout this period which radically altered the shape of the base vehicle.

The kit itself is relativly straight forward to construct except for the tracks which were particularly painful to get to stick.  The principal problem is that the kit represents an early version, devoid of external stowage and including the floatation screen which was abandoned quite early in the vehicles existance when the British Army gave up swimming rivers having realised that the main issue was getting out on the other side. Leaving the flotation screen in place inhibits the ability to build and attach correctly the various stowage bins and containers that were added. Compare the build from box picture above with the vehicles as used that it sits between.  Effort is required to adapt the kit to be more representative of vehicles deployed in the mid to late 80s.

Having built the hull and basic turret I removed the flotation screen with Knife and file.  The vehicles were then crewed and stowed.  Crews came from SHQs gulf war range which being quite small 20mm figures make good crew.

The principle stowage items added were external stowage boxes simply constructed from plasticard.  The main one being the large box on the hull rear.  Webbing items which were draped over the hatches were built from green stuff and antennas from brass rod.  Ammo boxes, jerry cans, sleeping matts and canvas rolls came from Goffy.

The vehicle had cam nets added from non elasticated bandage soaked in white glue and hessian rolls attached to various parts of the lower hull which were draped over the track and front of vehicle to eliminate deep shadow when the vehicle was static and cammed up. Painting was in line with the guide provided in the FV 432 post and the crews DPM uniforms are in line with the DPM painting guide.  Markings came from the model trans British decal set.

The CVR(T) series are some of my favourite vehicles but require a bit of effort to get the period look and feel right. No British cold war army should really be without them and there are numerous models on the market in addition to the Airfix one.  It is not however particularly difficult to take the basic Airfix model and turn it into something more representative of the period.  Currently the kit is quite difficult to find a few are still popping up on e-bay, hopefully Airfix will get it back in production sometime soon.

References:

FV 101 Scorpion (better example of the cold war hull)
LEP Scimitar (post cold war hull stowage, reasonable example of turret)
ORBAT 1980's British BG - Part 4 Recce Group
Review - Model 1/72, Britannia FV432 Painting Guide for British Vehicles
Painting British Army DPM
Review FV107 Scimetar Review @ Miniatures.de

Review - Model, Revell 1/72 Mi 26 Halo

Happy New Year, the first post of 2013 and following hard on the heals of the late 2012 obsession is the continuing development of a Soviet Air Assault force.  The heavy lift component of which is to be largely supplied by the Mi 26 Halo. The Halo entered service with the Soviet Armed forces from about 1985 and is still flying today. Whilst the Hook was a revolution for its day the Mi 26 started to make the Soviet DShV vision a realisable reality given the equipment scaling and organisational size of the Front Helicopter Transport Regiments of the time.  Where the 24 Mi 6 could deliver 24 BMDs the Mi 26 could deliver 48 with the same number of airframes. Both Zedveda and Revell offer 1/72 versions of the Mi 26 at the time of wrighting the Revell version was cheaper by a couple of pounds, but judging by its lack of availability is looking like a discontinued item.

The Revell kit is fairly straight forward to build, inevitably with a kit this size there are a few challenges given the flexible nature of the material its made from.  As with the Mi 6 Model you need to assess the model befor choosing what interior detail to leave out as a significant amount of the models structural integrity comes from a number of the interior components.  Whilst I did not build in the cockpit detail any component that seemed to offer strength to the hull construction was built in.

Having built two of these beasts there are a couple of fun bits to watch out for, on the first aircraft I built I put the hold floor in the wrong way round, the second model was less calamitous but the cabin ceiling remains a challenge and needs to be glued in stages.  The Aircrafts hull needs similar treatment with the alighnment and location of the cabin floor and cieling into the opposite half of the hull requiering a fair bit of attention. The real pain of the build however is the main flight deck windscreen which has to be bent and forced into place a challenge to most peoples patience. Other than that the buildphase is a dream

Once built it is a great looking model and an impresive beast of a chopper even if like me you build it without the rotors.  In 1/72 scale its 50cm long and dwarfs other models, for real it has the load capacity of a hercules.  If you want to put air assault armour on the table from an air assault force you either need a few of these or some of  Rodens An 22s in order to run an air landing or parachute operation, which is tempting but expensive in this scale.

Painting this aircraft without an air brush is a challenge requiering numerous thined coats of paint if brush marks are to be avoided.  I painted mine in Vajello desert yellow with the disruptive pattern in Russian Uniform and wheels windows and exhausts in black grey.  The underside was painted sky grey.  Pannel lines were picked out in GW Agax Earthshade (brown) before being washed with dilute solutions of the base colour or cam colour as appropriate.

The aircraft is mounted on a 3" Corsec flight stand which in turn is mounted on a CD ROM which works well even for an aircraft of this size.  The Flight stand unscrews allowing the aircraft to be depicted airborn or on the ground.  

References:

Mi 26 - Development History
Mi 26 Walk Around
Mil's Heavylift Helicopters (Red Star)
Soviet Tactical Aviation
ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Units Part 1, Overview and Lift
FM 100-2-3 The Soviet Army Troops, Organization and Equipment

Models:

Revell 04645 Plastic Model Kit 1:72 Mil Mi-26 Heavy Helicopter @ Amazon
ZVEZDA Mil Mi-26 Soviet Helicopter 1:72 - Model Kit Z7270 @ Amazon

Modelling - Scratch building AT7 Saxhorn (9K115 Metis)

For the final post of 2012 I thought I'd cover the conversion and scratch building of an AT7 Saxhorn using figures from Elhiems Iraqi AT4.  The AT7 was initially introduced into Motor Rifle and Air Assault units at the end of the 1970s beginning of the 1980s,  The system was man portable and could engage targets out to a range of 1000m.  3 AT7s were issued to the weapons sections of BTR companies and Air Assault Infantry Companies along with 3 PKM GPMGs.  It is unlikely that all units scaled for the equipment had received it by the end of the cold war, I suspect but don't know that priority would be with air assault trained Motor Rifle elements as this was where the most utility was likely to be derived.  By the 1990s the Soviets had started to introduce the AT13 which was heavier and had a longer range, 2000m.

Whilst Underfire Miniatures make a AT14 it is sold as part of a set which includes an 82mm Morter and the figure is more modern than I was after.  I decided to use Elhiems Iraqi AT4 as at the time Matt had not produced a Soviet crewed version, the bonus from this approach is it also provided a "spare" AT4 Launcher which I used to convert ACE BMP 1s to BMP 1Ps.  As supplied the product looks like this.

Figures are in chest webbing with map pockets on pants and M1 Helmets, tripod for AT4 is visually different to AT7 as can be seen in the immage below.

Basic steps for this activity were:

• Figures: Remove Map Pockets, add hood and webbing from green stuff
• Tripod: trim to represent three simple angled legs using Clips.
• Launcher: build from plasticard

The launcher was built from a plastic rod with a larger diameter rod sliced and joined to produce the ends, a piece of plastic strip of appropriate length and with one corner chamfered was stuck below the launch tube and finally a smaller diameter piece of rod was attached under the launch tube to represent the site.  The launcher was then attached to the amended tripod using green stuff.

The crew had their patch pockets removed and were then attached to the bases before being worked on with green stuff, the uniforms were amended first thickening the legs and waist and adding a hood, once this was dry some additional webbing elements were added also fashioned from green stuff.

The Figures were painted in "Sun Bunnies" in line with all my Motor Rifle and Airborn/Air Assault troops.  Vallejo Olive Green 967 for the base colour, with the Camouflage patches in buff 976, the weapons were a mix of black grey and 977 Desert Yellow in an attempt at the mustard colour of the equipment shown in the photos at the top.  Bases are laser cut MDF covered in sand and white glue then painted GW Calthan Brown, highlighted with desert yellow before having a variety of scatter materials added.

References:

AT 13 Metis M @ Warfare.ru

ORBAT - 1980s Soviet MRR and TRR, Part 1 Deployment and Orbat

ORBAT - Soviet Air Assault Capability, Part 2 Army Air Assault Battalion

Review - Book, The Soviet Afghan War

How a Super Power Fought and Lost

A superb book on the Soviet Afghan War up there with the Bear went over The Mountain.  It is also another translation from original works by the Soviet Genreral Staff, this time a collection of papers based on their analysis of the armies performance over its extended deployment in Afghanistan. As such it provides a degree of analysis and overview beyond that provided in the Bear went over the Mountain and the Other Side of the Mountain.

Whilst it covers the General background to the war and the organisation and equipment of the Mujahideen, its real value lies in the Chapters on Operational Art, Combined Arms Tactics, Combat Arms Branch Tactics, Combat Support and Combat Service Support.

My Interest Lies mostly on the Central Front and my main interest sits in what the Soviets learned and started to apply to wider conflicts. Whilst the book can be read cover to cover I have mostly been dipping into selected chapters those on combined arms tactics and combat arms branch tactics offer considerable read across to the central front, particularly with regard to the employment of Air Assault and aviation assets.  In particular the detail on the co-ordination of activities between the different arms in the conduct of a mission along with the general level of task organisation that occurred is illuminating.  The Chapter on Operational Art provides an indication of how the Soviets intended to fight a war in central europe which adds in those components missing from similar expositions that focus on WW2 examples, in short it portrays an approach to war that was never likely to be successful against the Mujahideen but one that may have lead to some interesting outcomes if it had played out on the North German plain.

Lester Grau adds commentary at the end of each chapter which I found very useful often highlighting the issues presented by the differences between the war the Soviet Army was designed to fight rather than the one it was called upon to fight.  If your interested in the Soviet Afghan war its an excellent read, if your interested in the Cold War in general and war on the Central Front it is an extremely useful text on the organisation, operation and thinking that drove the Soviet War Machine.

The Soviet-Afghan War: How a Superpower Fought and Lost (Modern War Studies) @ Amazon

Other Book Reviews


Weapons and Tactics of the Soviet Army
Soviet Air Land Battle Tactics
The Military Balance
Encyclopaedia of the Modern British Army
The Soviet Conduct of Tactical Manoeuvre
First Clash
The Third World War
The British Army in Germany

The Cold War Bookstore contains links to over 60 Cold War titles covered in my book list

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