British Airborne Pt. 8- QF 6 Pounder

QF 6 Pounder Anti-Tank Gun

This is my main anti-tank weapon for the airborne, christened 'Peggy' by the crew on the back of the gun shield. I love this sculpt. I like all of the extras that come with it. I snipped the ends off the couple of shells supplied to make ejected shell cases and scattered them on the ground. I also cut some slightly longer lengths of cocktail stick to make the individual shell sleeves and caps that are found within the shell boxes. The picket fence is made from coffee stirrers cut to length with cocktail stick supports. Time to ambush some panzers!

British Airborne Pt. 7- Jeeps

Recce Jeep

This is a Warlord vehicle, which I immediately wanted to include in my force. I debated whether to have a different vehicle in my armoured car slot, but this felt like the only real option. The trailer, for me, differentiates this jeep from the run-of-the-mill 'transport' jeeps- that and the MMG bolted to the front.

Signals Jeep

This Warlord vehicle is simply a cosmetic variant on the other 'transport' jeeps I have for this force, but because of its nature, I use it for ferrying my Lieutenant and his entourage about. Sometimes I attach the medic to my officer, other times the Intelligence officer hops on for a ride instead. I like the crew on this piece- particularly the radio operator.

Transport Jeeps

I have 3 of these vehicles, from Paint & Glue, with passengers from Artizan Designs. When I saw these separate items from these two manufacturers, I immediately put them together in my head as an option for my airborne force.

Paint & Glue do a whole bunch of different jeeps. I picked ones without windscreens because airborne jeeps had them removed to fit into Hamilcar gliders, and made sure I picked three with spare tyres/ jerry cans/ stowage in different configurations.

There is a bit of a scale mismatch. These jeeps are slightly smaller than my Warlord jeeps, and the Artizan crew look a bit oversized as a result- their knees come up over the dashboard! I had to remove the original, bulky steering wheels to fit in the driver, but made a replacement from the curved end of a paperclip. Slight quibble aside, I like these vehicles. Used as a group to ferry a section of paras around, they do their job nicely, and do not stand out as being out of scale; and for £4 a pop, I won't argue.

(Note: I house rule that a 10 man section/squad can travel around in 3 jeeps, which in the BA rules only has transport capacity for 9 men usually. There are numerous photos of allied troops hanging out of jeeps on all sides, so realistically I could imagine the last man squeezing on somewhere. Mostly, this is down to laziness and thrift. I didn't want to buy and paint a fourth jeep, but I think my justification is valid...) 

British Airborne Pt. 6- Tetrarch

 Tetrarch Tank

This is my only armoured vehicle for the airborne. Game-wise, it's quite fragile, with a light AT gun, but the Littlejohn adapter gives it bit mote punch. Thematically, it fits superbly- dropped by Hamilcar glider, these little tanks were the only armour on the ground at Arnhem in the later waves, but were hampered by getting parachute cords caught within their track arrangements on the LZs and so they were delayed. Anyway, I like it, and it fits with the force. This is a Paint & Glue 3D print. I've got several more of their vehicles in my Soviet and German forces, and a couple more bits and pieces for the airborne. Its simple, and most importantly, far cheaper than a resin or plastic kit.

British Airborne Pt. 5- Intelligence Section

Intelligence Section

Featuring the intelligence officer posted in part 1, this is the section that sometimes accompanies him onto the battlefield. This option was featured in the Battle of the Bulge campaign book and I like using it sometimes. I had four paras left over (3 Warlord and 1 Artizan Designs) for the section. They add another Order Dice to the bag and can pack quite a bit of short range punch. 

Alternatively, the intelligence officer can be attached to another officer's team. I sometimes do this, putting him with a lieutenant and his +1 man in a jeep for increased mobility.

British Airborne Pt. 4- Paradogs

Paradogs

I had no idea these animals existed until I read Osprey's Warrior 174 British Paratroopers (1940-45). On page 49 there is a colour illustration of Cpl Aaron Walton and his paradog, Bing, about to leap from an aeroplane over the Rhine. 

Paradogs acted as guard dogs, patrolling perimeters and alerting sentries to intruders. These plucky canines leapt out of a plane during wartime. Indeed, Bing had jumped over Normandy on D-Day, get lodged in a tree on descent, was injured by shrapnel and then finally cut down by his handler and carried on with his war! Superb! Dogs and their handlers won medals. A handler and his dog (Pte. Emil Corteil & Glen) are buried together in a cemetery in Ranville. How could I not want to reproduce this on the tabletop?

The soldier is a plastic Warlord figure. The dog is a Warlord Soviet bomb dog, repurposed for less explosive and final service. I clipped off the trigger peg on the top pouch and covered the explosives with a putty 'parachute'. Why it would still not be deployed by now is anyone's guess? 

For game purposes, I use the USMC Wardog rules from Empire in Flames. For 18 pts, you have a veteran trooper + dog, which provides Tough Fighters to its handler, and a spotting distance of 24" for Hidden enemies. Perfect! USMC Wardogs can be fielded in teams of up to four- more like an aggressive hunting pack, I feel, but one paradog seems enough and more fitting to their intended role.

British Airborne Pt. 3- Teams

While I continue to paint the infantry sections for this army (one and a half left to go...), here are a few of the other elements of the force drawn from the Platoon Organisation Chart.

MMG Team

Vickers MMG team from Warlord. I like to have members of my weapon teams based separately, so I can remove casualties as they occur. So, of course, my first example goes against that statement entirely! MMG loaders should be attached to their gunners, though, and that's what we have here. Team NCO is separate, and pointing like any respectable team leader should be...

Mortar Team

Separate team members! I like to put a mortar and its loader together on a pill base and position the rest of the team accordingly. I don't like basing teams on 60mm round bases- it makes them difficult to position in terrain/ buildings and a bit unwieldy. These are Artizan Designs miniatures.

Flamethrower & PIAT Teams

Both of these teams are Foundry casts. I aim to add the flamethrower team to my engineer section and swap out its Bren team occasionally (once they're painted), but otherwise I'll operate them as a separate team. I intend to get another PIAT team eventually, too, but for now, one team is going to have to be enough...

Sniper Team & Mortar Spotter

The mortar spotter is an Artizan Design figure. I love the pose and the image it conjures of desperate communication going on during the thick of a firefight.  The sniper is an Empress Miniatures design, drawn from their WW2 British range. I've co-opted him into my force purely because of the Denison smock he's wearing and also because I don't like any other airborne sniper figure that I've seen. A puzzle for me is his footwear. The sculpt, to me, looks like he's got sacking over his boots- for stealth (?!) or to keep his precious carpet slippers free from muck and grime... If anyone knows the reason for them, answers on a postcard, or in the comments below... Sniper team '+1' is a Warlord figure.

Terrain- Building 2- Cottage & Allotment

Building 2- Country Cottage

This MDF kit is from TT Combat, who produce great little kits at reasonable prices. I've collected several kits from their World War series, and this is the 'Maison Celeste' cottage.

In the corner of the garden is a Charlie Foxtrot 'Outside WC'. The barrel is a resin example from Serious Play Scenics, as are the seafoam tree and the rows of vegetables in the garden. The picket fence around the property is just coffee stirrers cut to size and made into fencing, with supports made from cut off BBQ skewer. The chimney pots are Lego cone pieces with flat pieces glued on top for the covers. The clothes line is cotton thread strung between two cocktail sticks...

As with my first yellow house, I retiled the roof of the cottage recently, which I think works much better. I'm not completely happy with the colour or texture of the outside walls, so I may revisit these at a later date.

Allotment

I had some strips of vegetables left over from the Serious Play Scenics pack I had bought for the cottage, and I had always wanted to make an allotment patch. I added a set of resin pumpkins, again from Serious Play Scenics, plus a bench and chicken coop (+ chickens) from Warbases. It's a nice little space filler on my gaming table, and adds a bit of character where otherwise a couple of trees or an open space would have been.