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!

Team Yankee - East German Kampfgruppe

As the Frostgrave and Sharps Practice campaigns are heading into their last couple of games, I thought it would be a good time to look at starting up another campaign at the store. With the release of Red Thunder for Team Yankee last month I decided that perhaps a modern campaign would be a good choice and change of pace. The decision was made easier as Battlefront has released a Red Thunder campaign kit!

It has been a long time since I painted up a 15mm army, so thought I should do up a store army to kick off the Campaign. As I had not many sales for the East Germans I thought I would do up a list for them so that all the factions were present (turns out there will be three EG armies!).

Here is the 100pt list I came up with for the store:

9th Panzer Division Kampfgruppe		100
Panzer Battalion		47
Bn Hq	1x T-55	1
Tnk Co	6x T-55	8
Tnk Co	6x T-55	8
Tnk Co	6x T-72	19
Recon Plt	2x BRDM-2	1
SAM Plt	2x SA-13	2
AA Sec	2x ZSU-23	2
ART	3x Carnation	6
BTR Mot-Schutzen Battalion		39
Bn Hq	1x BTR-60, 1x Cmd Team	1
BTR-60 Co	9x BTR-60, 1x PKLMG, 6x RPG7, 7x MG, 1x AT-4	12
BTR-60 Co	5x BTR-60, 3x RPG7, 4x MG, 1xAG-17	6
Tnk Co	7x T-55	10
AT Plt	3x Spandrel Zug	2
Recon Plt	2x BRDM-2	1
ART	3x Carnation	6
AA	2x SA-9	1
Division Support		14
AT Plt	3x Spandrel	2
Rocket	3x BM-21 Hail	5
Air	2x SU-25	7

The first thing I noticed about this list is that it has a ton of vehicles, 66 in total! I am actually not sure this will even be playable on a 6'x4' table. With generous help from Battlefront, I began getting the models and assembling them ... and by "I", I really mean Steve, who did most of the assembling. This left me able to turn my attention to painting them all up.

The easy solution was to just use Battlefront's Soviet Green and spray the whole lot, a little dark grey on the tires, tracks and HMG's, rust up the tracks, wash the whole vehicle and call it good! I'd easily have all sixty six done in a single day. But that would just be plain boring!

As this is a fictitious war, I went with the idea that the NVA authorized camouflaged for their vehicles a few years earlier than 1988. The Volks Armee book from Battlefront has steps on how to do this camo scheme. But when looking at the colors needed, plus my decades of painting experience, I started having reservations about how the scheme would look on the 15mm vehicles, especially the "white".

So I started searching online for color suggestions and came across a website in german that had images from the army manual for painting the camo scheme. But more importantly I read that the white/black camo scheme was an amendment issued in April of '88 . The original order was for beige and brown (see translation below).

The Ministry of National Defense of the GDR introduced a new camouflage for the NVA in the late 1980s with the instruction "Distortions on combat technology, armament and equipment" . The prescription differentiated a three-color summer and a two-color winter coat, which should be applied to all combat and combat support vehicles. Olive green was the basic color for summer as well as for winter. The summer camouflage initially saw an additional blotch from the two supplementary colors brown and beige.

I thought this scheme would look better than the black and white, and while it is possible no actual vehicles were ever painted in these colors ... mine were going to be! I had intended to just do the tanks in the camo, but it seems that all vehicles were camo'd so I resigned myself to painting camo on sixty six vehicles ...

The camo is more of hard edge, but as I was not going to mask out all those vehicles, nor hand paint the edges so I ended up with feathered edges when using my Airbrush. Interestingly I also found out that each Warsaw Pact nation had its own "green", so all the research on what would work for soviet green was moot as the East Germans green was much brighter.

The Tank Battalion sans SP Artillery

After a a little experimenting I settled on the following steps:

 1) Green rattle can primer (Battlefront TYP292 NATO Green).
 2) Overspray of brighter green with the airbrush (Model Air 71094 Green Zinc Chrome)
 3) Airbrushed on brown patches (Model Air 71043 Olive Drab)
 4) Airbrushed beige patches (Model Air 71023 Hemp)
 5) Painted the tires and mg's in dark grey (Model Color 70994 Dark Grey)
 6) Painted the "get unstuck log" random color of brown (Model Color ???)
 7) Washed the whole vehicle (Army Painter WP1134 Soft Tone)
 8) At the same time muddy up the tracks (Secret Weapon Pigment WP1003 Clay Brown)
 9) Apply Decals and Clear Coat

Not 100% sure I'll decal all the vehicles, but will do a lot of the East German shields ... Now onto the 32 vehicles for the Motor Battalion!

Read part two

US 155mm Battery

Lately I have been finishing up old projects, and this week it was a section of US 155mm howitzers for Flames of War that I finally finished.

A new 4th edition FOW is coming out this year (IMO entirely NOT needed), though it is geared toward Mid-War (which is entirely needed). Fortunately most of my American forces can be used in both mid or late war, as can these 155mm's.

US 155mm Howitzer Section

The green on the howitzers was darker than I wanted, but it will suffice for gaming. With all the 28mm figures I have painted these past few years, I had forgotten how much darker paints looks on 15's.

The 155mm Howitzer model barely fits on the supplied base

I went with a painted table, as I felt a wood color would blend to much with the pants. I like this staff team set, especially as it is just a generic set.

The Staff Team, ready to repeat any bombardments or coordinate other indirect fire.

I was not happy with how the tan jackets turned out, and they really don't look the same as my original US figures. I will just tell myself that they are newer issued jackets and have not faded as much :)

Battery Commander, he also can acts as a secondary spotter.

I really liked the FO figures, and the only thing that would have made them better is if the figure on the left was either looking through binos or was consulting a map.

FO Team, ready to call in the big guns!

I may look at finishing up my French Foreign legion figures ... I have a few AT guns and another platoon to do for them. Though I am trying to talk myself into doing up a Team Yankee army for the store.