Team Yankee - East German Kampfgruppe, part 2

I have been working on more East German vehicles (part one) and now have most of the vehicles done (I am procrastinating on the 15x BTR's, as I am not keen on putting together so much plastic!).

BTR Battalion sans the BTR's :)

All the above vehicles are painted and washed. I am going to add the East German shield decal to them and call them temporarily done. Mostly because I am not sure how I'll number the vehicles of the BTR battalion. Battlefront has a very limited number system with their decals, so I'll have to take a look at other companies.

But before I do the shields, I received a box this week with the two SU-22 Fitters I ordered! As was pointed out to me by Tom and a little research confirmed, the East Germans did not use the SU-25's, instead they used Mig-25 and SU-22 for ground support. Academy had both but went for the more "traditional" ground support SU-22.

So got my tube of $1 plastic glue and went to work ... and it they turned out to be kind of a pain in the %#$ putting together! It is not the best kit, and had several very small parts with no markings on where they fit on the model. But powered through it and got both of them done, though if I was a modeler I'd have a lot of putting and scratch building left to do!

The thing I was most disappointed with is that they are not loaded for ground support but air supremacy (two missiles and drop tanks). Not being an "air guy" it is possible that there is a ground attack version of the su-22 though academy just had this one version.

It gives you the hard points for the cannon/rocket pods, but no pods. Perhaps some you crafty types could make up four gun pods for me in 1/144th scale!

Gund pod circled in red

I am going to paint them similar to the above photo, but might be a bit as the 15 BTR's have priority (I'll post pictures when finished). Also I might have to hand paint the East German shield as well ... though might be able to use a Battlefront shield as the core and just paint the diamond around it.

I'll also need to make different flight stands than the WW2 ones I already had done. First off the angle is to steep for the jets and second, that even though the Moderna and WW2 models are the same scale, the SU-22's are much bigger and in turn makes the base very unstable.

More to come but were getting close to starting the Red Thunder campaign!