Herbie gets a B-echelon finally!

In my previous posting in which I showed off my 15mm WW2 Canadian army I mentioned some bits that I was missing. Well thanks to one friend scouring the Fall-In Flea Market and another willing to trade some pieces for more painting I've been able to round things out more.

So while painting up the Mad Padre's anti-tank guns I also worked on my own Canadian kit. I mix my own Canadian battledress uniform colour and highlight colour for my armour. It's easier to mix larger batches of paint all at once, so it was more efficient to do both lots of models together.

First up is a brace of Shermans. The Firefly came to me assembled and primed and was gifted by the fellow for whom I painted the Italian paratroopers. It has a resin hull so I'm guessing it's Battlefront. I just added the antenna.

The Sherman V is a Battlefront model and sits a bit taller than my Old Glory models. I added some extra stowage since Canadian armour tended to have a 'gypsy caravan' look with baggage strapped all over the deck. The hatch covers went on a lot easier with this one than my other two troop commander tanks. I'm thinking this one will be my squadron commander, so I included the .50 cal. AAMG. Or with the Firefly he can make a third understrength troop.  Of course now I find myself wanting to build a full 5 troop squadron!

Next is a pair of Humber armoured cars from the Divisonal Recce regiment to reinforce my Dingos. The one on the left is a Quality Cast model and was in pretty rough shape. I had to trim some flash, replace a wheel and repaint it. The one on the right is a Battlefront model and came the way it looks here. The original owner did a nice job on the camo and Allied recognition star so I won't touch those.

I also added four more Battlefront Bren carriers which just needed a bit of a drybrush so the paint would match my existing armour. This brings me up to 10 carriers which is enough to field the Carrier platoon or have some transport for weapons teams or 6 pounders. I could also field a very small mechanized infantry force to represent one of the combined arms mobile columns 5th Canadian Armoured Division would send out when the front became 'fluid'.

For company sized WW2 battles it doesn't make sense to have too much baggage and rear-echelon stuff on table since they'd try to stay far out of the line of fire. Even lorried infantry and weapons teams would debus in the rear and march forward to the firing line. But it's nice to have some transport and a trio of Battlefront 15cwt CMP trucks fit the bill.

I just love the angles on the CMP (Canadian Military Pattern) cabs.

And at long last I have a Typhoon! He's carrying bombs instead of rockets but I'll live. He's a heavy die cast model and I need to get him a heavier, more stable base or there will be some unfortunate crashes! He fell over during the photo shoot and wobbled for quite a while before I could take the picture.

Finally we have this nice little pontoon bridge that came to me as 'free to a good home.' So I've given it a good home and a coat of paint. It's soft plastic and I suspect came with a toy playset originally. But a coat of gesso helped the paint stick. As you can see it just happens to fit my resin river quite nicely.

While I was reading On to Victory and Terrible Victory by Mark Zuelke I noticed that Wasps kept showing up to support every company sized attack. It seems that by June or July 1944 some Wasp flame thrower carriers were organic to every infantry battalion. I'm still trying to figure out how many and where they were attached. I'm guessing they were added to the Pioneer platoon. But it seems that for battles in Holland and Germany my squaddies need a trio of Wasps to support them. Really big attacks would have Crocodiles (a flame-throwing Churchill tank) and Wasps but I'll settle for getting some Wasps.

For now...