Stukas and Stringbags

Now that I've got quite a few ships done, I thought it was time to add some aircraft. The aircraft in Ghukek's Wargaming 3d catalog are FREE!, which is cool. They are scaled at 1:900 to go with the 1:1800 ships. He does the smaller fighters and carrier aircraft as singles and flights of three, joined at the tails or with overlapping wings. Large bombers, scout planes etc are all singles. 

Some he modeled with tiny propellers, which are weird. I cut them off where present.

Picture from Ghukek catalog of Bristol Beaufighters. Note individual model and flight of three model

The flights of three is how the Mad Padre printed my aircraft for the 1:2400 project a couple of years back.

Dauntless SBDs (joined wing tip to tail) and F4F Hellcats (joined at the wing tips) fly over a CVE early in the project.

It was easy enough to paint them. Clip off the peg on the post, glue the flight on, brush prime and paint.

Except, due to some casual storage, my flights of aircraft have taken some damage. Flights of three reduced to two, or even one, model with shortened wings.

The SBDs (far left and far right) if you look closely are in rather poor shape.

Don printed me the single models, not the flights. So I had six of each aircraft. These were going to be a bugger to paint and how to base them? And after all that effort, how to keep them from breakage? So solutions needed to be found.

For painting I hit on the idea to superglue them to some sprue. Easy to just pop them off the plastic, right? RIGHT???!!

Painting in progress

Wrong. A lot of wings and tails snapped as I tried to gently pop them off the sprue, even after I put a bunch in the freezer for 24 hours.

Carnage!

Some I was able to repair, because the breaks were simple, clean, and I could find the errant piece.

But many airframes were a complete write off. 2 out of 5 Do17s survived. I managed to repair the damaged Ju88s, so I got all six in service. Of the Me110s and Ju87s I only saved half, 3 each. The rest were unsalvageable.

Do17s attacking HMS Cleopatra off Crete

Two flights of Ju88s make a bombing run

Swordfish from HMS Illustrious attack the Armando Diaz off North Africa

For the British I only lost one each of the Swordfish and the Beaufighters, so I made a flight of three and a flight of two for each.

The British have 4 flights of attack aircraft. The Axis have five flights. One of Me110 fighters, two of Ju88s, and one each of Do17s and Ju87s. The Axis will have to wait until I get some Italian aircraft before they get torpedo bombers.

Me110s

For the flights of three, I cut a triangle of clear plastic from a food packaging clam shell and punched a hole behind where the lead aircraft would go. Flights of two got a rectangle with a hole punched in the center.

The aircraft were then hot glued into position. I left some overlap so the plastic would protect the wings.

Ju87 Stukas!

Beaufighters attacking a convoy in the North Sea, or maybe the Mediterranean.

I think with the next round of aircraft I'll hot glue the models to a popsicle stick, or a wooden skewer. They might be easier to pop free from the hot glue. Painting the bottoms isn't really needed. You don't see them.

The bases wobble a bit on the stands, but they come free to lay flat for storage. The angles also add a bit of drama to the scene as well, and helps you imagine attacking aircraft swooping around, dodging flak, as they pounce on their target.

In Which They Served

The second batch for the Royal Navy has finished their working up and are ready to deploy to the table top.

This group includes two Fiji, or Crown Colony, Class light cruisers from Lee MColl stls printed for me by the Mad Padre. These are insanely detailed, and Mike printed them on an FDM printer. I think better results might be had with a resin printer, but separating masts and guns from supports would be tricky as well. 

So who knows? Shan't look gift ships in the gun turrets so to speak.

Also two Dido class light anti-aircraft cruisers, which were terribly useful in the crowded Mediterranean, where allied shipping was never far from German and Italian airfields. These are the more robust, gamer friendly, stls from Ghukek.

Finally, six J,K, and N class destroyers. Again from Ghukek. These will be formed into two flotillas. One of the J-series and one of the K-series. 

That is the nice thing about many RN destroyers from WW2, you can tell what class it is just from the name.

With this batch I pushed the boat out a bit further with more complicated camouflage patterns which I think turned out well, even though the destroyers don't give a lot of room to work with.

Of course I'm trying to keep this project to light forces. Heavy cruisers were only with Force H in Gibraltar. But I already have a RN battlecruiser and a couple of Italian battleships in the pipeline, because I got the stls for free. So the temptation to get a couple of Queen Elizabeth class battleships keeps singing it's siren song.  The Mediterranean did after all feature one of the very few times that opposing battleships engaged each other in the Second World War.

Molti Nemici, Molto Onore -Regia Marina Gruppo Due

 "Many enemies, much honour."

The second batch of Italian ships has been launched and finished their shake down cruise. This group included a pair of super detailed Lee McColl 3d designs printed for me by the Mad Padre. These are proper Condotierri class light cruisers.

As you can see there are very fine masts, which I'm sure will break off, thin delicate gun barrels reminiscent of the metal GHQ models and freaking port holes!

Nailed it!

I managed to do a pretty good job copying the camouflage scheme in my Osprey Italian Cruisers of World War Two, which happened to be the Luigi Cardona. A name I'd already given to one of the Capitani Romani ships in the first group of Italian ships.

There's an obvious difference in size between the two classes

So I decided I would relabel the models and give the Capitani Romani ships the proper names of the two ships that actually saw any fighting before Mussolini was overthrown and Italy surrendered. They are essentially destroyer leaders rather than cruisers, and were designed in 1939 to match the French heavy destroyers. With four twin 5.5" gun turrets I'll treat them much like the British Dido class.

Ready to attack allied convoys

This group also includes six destroyers. Five Navigatoris and the stray Soldati to fix the last group's mix up. 

And six escort destroyers/frigates/torpedo boats. Five Spica class and one Orsa class (another bagging mix up....sigh). Of course I had to include the Lupo. But the Regia Marina had a lot of these little ships.

Brett and Dan came over to blood my new ships and try my idea for a scenario I'd like to run at KEGSCon in September. An Italian convoy of seven merchant ships, escorted by three Spicas and one Soldati has to exit the top left corner. Royal Navy enters the table top left table edge. Reinforcing Italian squadrons enter top right and bottom right corners.

Early casualties from long range torpedo launches.

Escorts lay a smoke screen but two of the Spicas are smashed by gunfire.

Turn end, the smoke screen ends and more carnage. Another escort is blown out of the water

It doesn't go all one way. The Zara gets a magazine hit on HMS Orion.

And then gets reduced to a flaming, water logged hulk by HMS Sheffield

Cruisers getting in among the convoy. Sailors wondering how far they can swim right about now.

British destroyers kill my other heavy cruiser

Ships exploding everywhere....

End game. The Italians have one light cruiser and four destroyers left. All the ships with smoke on them are floating wrecks. The British have lost a light cruiser and have a couple of damaged destroyers.

It was fun to get the models in a game and try my ideas out. The guys gave me some good feedback on the scenario to noodle about with. Ideally I'd like a game that could handle four to six players, which means it has to be on the big size. Maybe I'll reverse and have the Italians attacking a British convoy to Malta instead? Make it a night action? Or get my aircraft painted? 

So many options.

Patria e Onore

Motherland and honour!

The first squadrons for the Regia Marina are ready to sortie from Taranto.

Putting to sea

Two Zara class heavy cruisers.

Two Condotierri class light cruisers.

These are technically Capitan Romani class cruisers. But when looking up names for that family of ships I learned that only three of them were commissioned and only months before Italy surrenderd to the Allies. So instead, I've given them names from a group of the large and varied Condotierri class.

That's what I get for buying ships without doing my research or paying attention to the lists in the back of the rules. But having ships named the Pompeo Magno and Scipione Africano seemed too cool not to do.

Next are the first (of many!) destroyer flotillas.

Six destroyers. Five Soldati and one Navigatori class, because someone got into the wrong bag, and I didn't notice until the initial dry brushing. 

Soldati class DDs

Navigatori

With the Italian ships, picking names was less of an issue. Some classes only have two units anyway. I asked Don to "print me 6 of every destroyer", and then it turns out that the Orsa class of torpedo boat/escort destroyer only had four ships. Fortunately they were very similar to a preceding class of torpedo boat, so I borrowed some names from that family of ships.

While waiting to get the lables printed, and fighting with the printer to get it to recognize the juicy new ink cartridges, I also got the convoy of merchant ships painted up. There are two different .stls; the Liberty ship and a German Auxiliary ship. Both were free! The small ship is also a Liberty ship printed at 1:2400 scale by Mike Peterson a few years back when I first started on this nautical adventure. It's lost some derricks, but I'm not sure it matters?

They have generic labels so they can be an Allied convoy one game, Italian the next, and once I get German units, they can be a German convoy in the North Sea as well.

For the merchant ships, I used spare plastic bases from  Warlord Napoleonic infantry sets. 20mm x 100mm and 20mm x 60mm. I've also found the 100mm bases very useful for strings of pack horses.