I added an aerial base for a No. 11 wireless set, made from a lamp from my spares box, a bit of sprue and a few punched discs, plus a bit of plastic card for a base and copper wire for the cable. I also added two fire extinguishers someone else 3D-printed for me.
It now has its weld seams, deliberately not too finely because it’s war production with, as we say in Dutch, the French stroke It also has Churchill tools, as well as a pickaxe head from some unknown other source, as I couldn’t find another Churchill one. Now it needs some tow cables, an aerial base like on the H39, a couple of fire extinguishers and, I think, also the legs on which the tank could be raised from the ground (I had glued those on originally but removed them again — which reminds me that I also need to glue some plastic rod into the mountings for them).
The tow cables are nylon string with eyelets from — again — an AFV Club Churchill. The pins that the eyes are on are plastic rod while the hooks are brass rod, all glued into holes I drilled into the armour. I first laid the cables onto the sides of the tank, trying different ways to get them to sit plausibly, and when I found those I added the pins followed by glueing on the cables themselves. Only after that did I drill the holes for the hooks. Then I added a little support for the aerial base so it lines up with the B1’s normal antenna cable, and I felt that enough is enough I’m not going to add the legs after all, because a few of them were damaged when I removed them from the tank earlier.
According to Mike Starmer, Revell 361 is a good colour for Khaki Green No. 5, which is the basic colour for scheme 2 of the camouflage according to MTP 20 from 1939. So I bought a jar of it, the Aqua Color version, but when I thinned it with water and sprayed it on the H39, it was not exactly a complete success. I had feared a little that it would bead up on the bare plastic, and indeed, it did. (I had sprayed primer onto the model, but mainly where the metal parts are. The aerosol can was almost empty so I didn’t spray the whole of the tanks with it.) So I quickly mixed up, by eye, approximately the same colour from Tamiya olive green and yellow green to spray the H39 with.
The original idea was to paint both tanks in the same pattern, but on re-reading Mike Starmer’s book about British colours and camouflage in North-West Europe, I was reminded that the British Army changed over to new colours and patterns according to MTP 46 sometime in 1941. That’s exactly the time period these models are supposed to represent, and though MTP 46 was mainly used on lorries, trucks etc., and rarely on fighting vehicles, I decided that it’s reasonably plausible for the B1 anyway. The tank is so slab-sided and blocky that hiding the corners, like the patterns in MTP 20 are supposed to do, would probably be less effective than a pattern intended to equalise the apparent brightness of the lighter and darker sides of the vehicle. For this reason, I sprayed the B1 in Khaki Green No. 3 by AK 3rd Gen, which is a lot browner than you would expect — you might as well call it chocolate brown. Compared to the colour sample in Mike Starmer’s book, this is slightly too light, but I can live with that. I will paint the upper sides in very dark brown, SCC 1A, but definitely not in Mickey Mouse pattern, because that’s far too common on models, if you ask me. I’ll use one of the patterns that are in MTP 46, but I’ve not decided which one exactly, yet.
Here, I painted the horizontal surfaces (again with a brush) using an old bottle of Games Workshop Charadon Granite. That colour was especially odd: when I applied it, it was only barely darker than the brown already on the tank, but it got noticeably darker when it dried, ending up pretty close to the SCC 1A sample in Mike Starmer’s book. This one definitely isn’t done, though, as it still needs the splotches etc. around the edges of the vertical and sloping plates.
I’ve just been watching so far Jakko, but these two are coming out as real gems. Again, your attention to detail and quest for authenticity are remarkable. Your build and detailing are outstanding and the painting is fantastic. I hope you hit on the right colors to finish these beauties off.
The thought had crossed my mind to paint them like that, mainly the B1 because it would be relatively easy on its square shape. But the question for that is: would there ever have been a war in Africa at all if Germany got halted in France in 1940?
Most likely not but as a further “What If”, the green/stone based caunter scheme could still have been adopted later in 1940 even in northern Europe…perhaps…
I doubt that, I must say … It didn’t last long in the desert either, even though it kind of worked there because the point was to try and even out the apparent brightness on different sides of the vehicle (much like MTP 46). A scheme with straight lines is not generally good for hiding vehicles in European-style terrain, though.
Sickness, difficulty finding the right colours, an airbrush that didn’t want to cooperate … everything together this is once more taking longer than I would like. But by now I didn’t just finish the camouflage on the B1 but also added shadows and highlights to both. I will get there eventually
Italy joined the war on Germany’s side in June 1940 mainly because they saw an opportunity for a quick land grab in southeastern France, and expected the British to collapse soon as well, which might let Italy take over British colonies etc. in Africa as well. But in an alternative history in which the French and British halted the German advance somewhere in the north of France, would Italy act opportunistically in the same way? Probably not, I’d say — more likely would be for Mussolini to stay out of the war and see how it played out before choosing sides, if at all. He might still start a war against Greece, but without British and German intervention because neither would have much to gain there.
Taken from my big box of old decals, plus hand-painted (with the aid of a piece of masking tape with a hole cut in it) nationality markings — that is, the white squares. In real life, those were abolished after the BEF had been evacuated from France, but in the timeline in which these tanks existed, that of course never happened. There should also be one on the front, but for both I couldn’t find a good spot to put one that wouldn’t make it an aiming point without a crewman directly behind it.
The registration numbers are from much later tanks, but with the last digit cut off, they’re suddenly in the right kind of range for early in the war.
First, I added a wash of Tamiya XF-55 Deck Tan over the whole of the tank, except for the lower hull and suspension, and once it was dry, I sprayed those areas with that same colour. Next I added a wash of XF-57 Dark Earth, and when that had cured, drybrushed with cream white (Rackham Noesis White) followed by pure white. The upper parts, I drybrushed with the basic green and brown of the camouflage. All this is meant to give the impression of a tank coated in dust from a dry summer on the chalky ground of northwestern France.
Thanks As I’ve mentioned before, a what-if model has to be plausible to me. These are, IMHO, certainly once you know about the real British plans to adopt one or both of them.
Matilda I might fit French concepts of tank use. Matilda II I’m not sure of, but on the other hand, the French by 1940 were also seeing that one-man turrets were a dead-end street. So maybe, had the war gone on beyond June 1940 for them, they would have gone for a British tank to get a modern type with three-man turret crew in service quickly.
For the B1, I’m aiming for the look of a tank that’s out in the rain. On all of the vertical and sloping surfaces, I attempted to make rain streaks by brushing raw umber oil paint, thinned with white spirit, downward with a wide brush. Now, a few days later, it appears to be starting to dry Maybe it needs a bit more to increase the effect, but in the mean time, I’ve added an effect of thin mud running down the tank with Tamiya Flat Earth — except I just realised that I forgot to add it in and below the mud chutes towards the front of each side of the tank. I’ll do that in a moment, I guess
After that, I installed the tracks, which I had sprayed Flat Earth back when I had just built the model 15+ years ago, and now (before fitting them, of course) I added a wash to shade them and then drybrushed them with Humbrol Polished Steel. I also painted the teeth of the drive sprockets and the visible running surfaces of the idlers and roadwheels with that, then polished all of it with a soft toothbrush.
I think that I want to put a coat of semi-gloss varnish on the upper surfaces to give a wet effect, and also brush that in streaks down the sides etc. so it looks even more like rainwater running off the tank.
It also has Churchill tools, as well as a pickaxe head from some unknown other source, as I couldn’t find another Churchill one. Now it needs some tow cables, an aerial base like on the H39, a couple of fire extinguishers and, I think, also the legs on which the tank could be raised from the ground (I had glued those on originally but removed them again — which reminds me that I also need to glue some plastic rod into the mountings for them).
I’m not going to add the legs after all, because a few of them were damaged when I removed them from the tank earlier.
