Reply To: Hobby Weekender 22/11/19 – *Insert coin to continue*

[oriskany 60771xp 3]

Good afternoon  ~  Apologies, @tuffyears … I didn’t know you were running the thread this week.

1. How did you get into the hobby – Avalon Hill’s Rise and Decline of the Third Reich, 1984.

2. Are we nearly there yet – Wake me up when we get there.

3. Whats the air speed velocity of a swallow – definitely slower than the rifle bullet I’ve just shot at it. 😀

For recent hobby:

This is a project close to my heart, and one I’ve been putting off for far too long. For almost two years now I’ve been wanting to build a US Marine Corps Team Yankee force, but instead of using them in a fictional war in Europe, I wanted to build them for 1991 historical Desert Storm.

So I finally broke down and bought it all, enough to field a respectable US Marine Corps force approximately as it would have appeared in Operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm, along with some enemy forces I can tweak into the T-55s, Type 59s, BTRs, and other vehicles used by the Iraqi divisions holding this section of the line. Possible recreations may include part of the Battle of Khafji in January 1991.

This project will cover the construction and painting of these forces, using mostly Battlefront 15mm from Teak Yankee and Fate of a Nation.

Here are the kits I bought for this project. I’m looking to build a passable for for both sides that historically faced off in this part of the 1991 Gulf War. Nothing here is an EXACT match, there is no “Gulf War” kit. So I’ll have to figure out a way to turn those M60A1s to USMC M60A1s with ERA reactive armor panels, and update those T-54s into T-55s and Type 59s used by Iraqi Army divisions (No T-72s “Lions of Babylon,” those were Republican Guard divisions further north and west).

Start off with the USMC LAV-25 platoon.  They give you a lot of choices here.  I built three with the standard autocannon (one commander), one with the mortar, and one with TOW-II ATGW mount to help deal with Iraqi tanks.

 

The Ryan’s Leathernecks kit comes with six of the older-model HMMWVs. I made one with the TOW ATGW, one with the Mark 19 Automatic grenade launcher, and the rest with the redoubtable .50 M2HB heavy machine gun.

 

The kit also comes with three M60 main battle tanks. Indeed, the Marine Corps was still using M60s during the 1991 Gulf War. The only difference is the ERA reactive armor I’ll have to figure out how to fabricate and mount.

 

Total Marine force at this point.  Long way to goon this one … 😀