75th Anniversary of Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Army Build)

With the chipping completed and some of the Churchills adorned with branches, I need to apply the mud. I’ve ground up some of the finest Mid Sussex Low Wealden dried mud in my pestle and mortar (see below) and mixed it up with some PVA. This just gets dabbed over where you would expect mud to land.

And then everything gets a Matt varnish to finish it off. Here’s the finished models. We have,

3 Universal Carriers with 2 MGs

3 Universal Carriers with .50 Cal MG

2 Churchill V with the 95mm Howitzer

3 Churchill III with the 6pdr gun

3 Churchill VII

7 Churchill IV with the 75mm

And a selection of turrets that can be swapped in to make up another couple of Mk VII and Mk IV

I’ve been looking at some reference pictures of Churchill tanks in Italy and a few show the crews covering their tanks in branches, effectively making them mobile shrubberies. Here’s an example:

For a couple of the tanks (not all, there’s plenty of images of clean tanks in Italy) I’m going to try and recreate the look. I’m going to use some lichen for the branches but as this is 15mm, I’m going to need very small pieces.

The lichen is also green, so I’ll dip it into some brown paint and leave it to dry.

I then mixed up three types of fine flock of varying shades of green. With a very small brush, I applied PVA to the tips of the branches and dunked it in the flock and left it to dry.

I’ve then stuck the branches to the tanks using superglue. I will go back and apply some watered down PVA to them as well to harden them up.

Since the last update, I’ve given everything a matt varnish to protect all the paint work so far and to remove the shine that the dip leaves. I’ve then started work on the chipping with the age old method of a bit of sponge and firstly some dark colour, in this case I used German Black Brown.

Once the dark colour was dry, I applied a gunmetal to the edges and engine decks. I wanted to achieve a fairly beat up look to emulate these tanks having been in the field for some time. I’ve probably over applied the gunmetal in some areas so I may need to go back and put a little olive drab back in.

The Cricket World Cup has been distracting me a lot in the last couple of weeks and progress has not been as quick as I would have wanted. Besides, I’ve been finding painting 15 near identical tanks increasingly a chore but I think I’ve now broken the back of the task.

I’ve now painted on the Army Painter Dip and left it to dry. I’ve started wiping the dip off of the flat surfaces before it settles to stop it pooling and creating tide marks. Once dry, I gave everything a heavy dry brush of Reflective Green and again picked out the tools and other details. I’ve then dry brushed the tracks with gunmetal.

The next steps will be to apply a matt varnish and then get to work with the chipping and mud. But here’s where we are at the moment.

I thought I would stick to the historical colour scheme and so I went olive drab. While the sand/black scheme looks good, I have a lot of other tanks (Shermans, Stuarts etc) already in an olive drab and doing the same here will just look better and tie in.

So I’ve now base coated everything olive drab, as you can see,

I’ve added the transfers as well. The NIH decal didn’t stand out too well against the green background so I’ve added one transfer and then applied a second over the top, which was a little fiddly. It does stand out a little better though.

I’ve also painted the detail such as the tools and skin. I’ve base coated the tracks in a burnt umber colour ready for dry brushing later in the process.

With all of the Churchills primed and ready for painting, I have a decision to make. I already have a couple of North Irish Horse Churchills that I painted in an early Italian campaign camo pattern. This was primarily a carry over from the North Africa campaign of a desert yellow with black splotches. I like the pattern however it was only really used in 1943 and by the time 1944 had rolled around, the NIH had converted to the standard (and boring) Olive Green.

Here’s what I have already:

I can apply some poetic licence and continue with the same pattern to set my forces apart, or I could take the historical route and go Olive Green.

In the time being, I need some more NIH transfers. I’ve printed these myself onto clear transfer paper. Given that this is 15mm scale, I can get away with a fairly crude version put together in Powerpoint. Once it’s reduced in size, it should look fine. Once printed and varnished, this is what I have.

With my batch job of German tanks completed, it’s time to turn back to the Allies and give them some more punch. My tank force is centred around the North Irish Horse and while they had Sherman tanks toward the latter part of the war, they started with a lot of Churchill tanks. So to represent this and to provide some variety, I’ve got 15 tanks and 19 turrets. This will allow me to field the 6pdr Churchill III, the Churchill CS V fitted with the howitzer, the Churchill NA75 (with the 75mm gun) and the hugely up armoured Churchill VII.

While I’m painting the Churchills, I have also added 6 Universal Carriers, three of which are fitted with a .50 Cal.

I’ll see how quickly I can get this lot painted up.

I actually finished this lot over a week ago but I’ve been away for the half term so this is the first chance I’ve had to post an update. Here are all the models completed with weathering, mud, varnished and ready for battle!

So here’s the rogues gallery of completed German Armour