What do you do with an elephant like this?

Nelly taking her gun caisson for a walk

I picked this elephant drawn gun from John Cunningham last year and I've been meaning to get around to it for quite some time. I finally bit the bullet and started putting it together.

I was about half way through when I realise it had somehow become separated from it's gun, which I'm sure will turn up, but the other thing that was confusing me was how exactly to attach the traces. There is a leather strap that goes under the Elephants tail, the use of which is clear enough, however I was a bit perplexed at the purpose of the two dangling straps either side of the tail.

Having looked at a number of pictures, I realised that the artists and photographers of the past were unaccountably less than taken with recording the finer details of elephants bottoms. But we soldier on.

I eventually found this illustration which shows them being used to hold the traces connecting the caisson to the elephant.  The elephant on the left in the background is probably the best illustration of that. I'm quite happy to have solved that particular mystery - rather than trying to bodge something and making a fool of myself.

There are now of course, new opportunities to make a fool of myself. But I will at least be a fool with an elephant.

And that is no small thing.

Indian Army Artillery

Mounted on pots awaiting paint

(click to embiggen)

Along with Nick's very kind gift of Ghurkas, there was an Indian Army screw gun and crew.  I know shamefully little about the Indian army beyond what I've learned from Jac Weller's "Wellington in India", but decided to set to these fellas as there was no Indian artillery attached to the Kinch Field Force. 

There was the vexed question of how to paint them though, some scratching around had yielded a succession of fearsome looking gentlemen in khaki.  However, my liking for the more brightly coloured uniform won out and I went in search of something appropriate. My colonial forces are inspired by "The Man who would be King" and "Zulu", more than dull actuality. 

Blandford and Farwell were not supplying my wants in that department, so I turned to The Sword and the Flame facebook group.  Julian turned up trumps with the picture above, which looks excellent.  The turbans are "Spankin' in red" as Pete Postlethwaite would say. 

(click to embiggen)

Armed with this sort of information, the battery swiftly took shape and is currently doing duty on the Southern Border of the Kinch domain. I've no idea as to the maker, Ral Partha maybe, as they are on the larger side of 1/72. The gun itself so far as I can make out is a RML 2.5 Mountain Gun immortalised by Kipling in the poem "Screw Guns". 

(click to embiggen)

I shall have to add a mule to carry the whole assemblage, but I think I have something in stores.  I'm very happy with how they turned out, all the figures were painted with thinned Vallejo acylics.  I added some inks to the turban and did a slight highlight, just to show off the red a little. 

Out looking for Wascally Wahabbists

(click to embiggen)

These, I'm sure you'll agree, are a fine addition to the Kinch Field Force.  Thank you very much to Nick for his generosity and Julian for his knowledge of uniforms. 

I think these chaps will have to take the field and show De Gormaine a thing or two about how its done. 

Afghan Artillery

Afghan guns captured at Ali Masjid

I was looking into Afghan guns recently and was given some very sage advice by Sgt. Guinness and the Mad Guru.  I thought that there was little point in keeping such good stuff to myself, so I thought I'd share it here.

From my Sgt. Guinness. 

Your question peaked my interest in the Afghan artillery. I simply painted mine brown, however that may not be correct. I'd sent you the photo of the rows of guns captured at Ali Masjid. These are typical of the types af artillery they fielded. 

According to what the Mad Guru has told me the majority of the artillery came from the British with a little from the Turks, thus them being the regular British Blue Grey. You could also have some painted green as if the Russians has provided some. 

Additional from the Mad Guru: 

A combination of British military aid and buying new high tech RBL Armstrongs through Turkey. There are no pics of the RBL Armstrongs that I know of - also I don't think there was any difference in paint scheme of Afghan guns based on their origin - whether gifted by Britishs or purchased on their own from European or Ottoman suppliers by Afghans. I think they were all painted in British style colors. There is a pic showing dozens. unto hundreds of captured Afghan cannon, abandoned at Ali Masjid I think - maybe another one inside Bala Hissar But only b&w of course Sadly! Lots of small mountain guns, up to field pieces. My educated guess is yes - blue grey. I have never read any different description. The Second Afghan War started over anti Russian fears of a Russian rapprochement with Sher Ali - you could always give your afghan regulars a battery of green Russian style guns.

French guns - Fixed at last

I have finally put right a previous mistake where I had accidentally painted some French Crimean guns blue. They are now a more traditionally French green, which is handy as the original was embarrassing and led to awkward questions at parties. 

I have erased this appalling blot from the Kinch escutcheon. You may go about your business.

French Cannon

Du Gourmand has been muttering about taking the French to the Crimea for a while now. Now as I'm reliably informed that the French may have had a few chaps accompanying Lord Ragans army, so I suppose I shall have to add some French to the collection eventually. 

I have a set of Strelets French artillery which comes with about fourteen or fifteen gunners and two guns. As my batteries are representational at best I only use three gunners per unit and needed to draft in some extra guns to make use of the extra figures. 

Rattling around the spares box were some italeri ACW artillery which are a reasonable match for French guns of the time. A quick coat of PVA later and these are heading to the painting table.

Painted Zvesda 2lb Gun

I finally got around to painting my Zvesda 2lb. The gun was treated to a coat of Vallejo Brown Violet with a dry brush of the same with some yellow added and then some additional edge highlighting with yellow. It didn't turn out too bad. 

Unfortunately, the model had a close encounter of the four legged kind - but beyond looking slightly wonky if you examine closely it doesn't seem too much the worse for it.  The gunners were given my standard British infantry treatment and beyond looking at them now and realising that I haven't painted the chin straps, they appear to be none the worse for it. 

I picked up this piece mainly for VBCW games, but it could also certainly count as an artillery piece should we manage to play any 1939-1940 games. There is actually a short 1940 campaign in the first Memoir '44 campaign book, but I think Normandy might be more achievable in the short term.  I'll need some infantry of course, but I've got a birthday coming up and I've dropped some hints to Mrs. Kinch regarding SHQ's BEF range - so that may not be a concern. 

On mature reflection, I'm very happy with how this piece turned out.  It wasn't demanding, the model is so fine that it's difficult to paint it badly and it's added a nice little unit to my British army for the price of two packets of crisps. I think I will definitely be picking up some more of the Zvesda kits if I see them. 

I'll just fix those chin straps and lash a bit of varnish on it and away we go. 

British QF 2-pdr Anti-Tank Gun

This is one of Zvesda's Art of Tactic kits. I can't remember exactly when or why exactly I picked it up, but it was certainly only around €3 or €4. This is the 2lb (that's 40mm in new money) anti-tank gun that the British Expeditionary Force took to France at the outbreak of the war.

Regular readers will not doubt be bored stiff with this, but Zvesda have yet again produced an excellent, cleanly cast kit in glueable hard plastic.  The detail is fine, the construction relatively rugged considering the slender nature of the model and the price is right - there is a lot to like here.

Just about the only bad thing I can say about this kit is that it is snap together.  All the parts just click into place without any need for glue.  This does mean that if you try and put the kit together dry, just to test things out in the hope of taking it apart and gluing it for safety, you won't be able to. The fit is just that good. This created some problems for me as the gun carriage is quite slim and delicate and I wasn't able to get the good fit I was hoping for.  The trunnions and tube sit atop a turntable arrangement, which then sits on top of the carriage. I unfortunately had already pushed the carriage down into the base. I managed to get the turntable on top to fit in - sort of - but wasn't able to give it the kind of pressure that was needed for a really snug fit. I ended up lashing some liquid poly in there just to be sure. 

Forward thinking types could avoid this particular difficulty, but fixing the carriage to the plate last, which would leave you plenty of space to make a proper job of squishing the parts together.

So there you have it, a slim, beautiful little piece of work for pocket money prices.  Well done Zvesda I say. I will be painting mine up in Early War livery and I suspect it will be doing duty both in the Low Countries and during the VBCW. 

Ultima Ratio Regna

As I said previously, there's been precious little wargaming going on in the Kinch household of late. I'm still emptying the war room, though the wood is now ordered and will be delivered next week.

However, the Russians are coming and I've been doing my best to be prepared. I've been reading Digby Smiths' book on Borodino, which while well written makes for awful reading.  Perhaps I've been reading too much about the Duke and he was not without his faults, but he was commendably abstemious with life when he could manage it.  Borodino reminds one of a small boy crashing toy cars together for the fun of it.

With that in mind, allow me to present some gentlemen of the Russian foot artillery. These are Zvesda figures, painted by Krisztian Takacs of Budapest, and very beautiful they are too.

The Russian artillery was in poor shape at the beginning of the Napoleonic wars - but was reformed under the ultra-conservative General Arakeev. Arakeev was a martinet who frequently used his professional position to pursue personal vendettas, but he introduced standardised calibres and other reforms into the Russian artillery which made it very formidable indeed.

Once my MDF bases from Products for Wargamers arrive I'll get these chaps based up, but until then they'll have to carry on living in a box. These pictures were actually taken by Krisztian, who sent them on to me a few weeks ago. Stealing other men's glory, what!

The last thing many Frenchmen ever see.

I am blown away by how fine the detail on the Zvesda figures is and the fine job K did bringing it out. I think it's also rather fine how well the crew fit together, there is a definite sense of what is occurring here, rather than the old ESCI standing around with a bucket looking decorative situation.

In the Russian service, guns were served by a team of gunners split into two parts, the cannoneers (or gunners proper) and the "long arms", chaps who brought a strong back, but little else to the job.

Of the cannoneers, there were four.

No. 1 carried the swab.
No. 2 carried the charge.
No. 3 carried the slow match.
No. 4 carried the tube pouch and prickers.

I'll leave you with some up close pictures of the gun crew.

Plastic Soldier Company Soviet Gun Crews

One of the advantages of slowly unpacking my old boxes is the harvest of completed and almost completed stuff that emerges. I have more Germans than I know what to do with and a goodly crop of Russians. My Americans and British seem to have dissappeared, but there are two nearly complete Second World War armies in there. 

The Soviets had plenty of tanks and infantry to be going along with, but lacked artillery. I picked up a single box of Plastic Soldier Company 76mm guns. These a very neat little models, four guns and crew at a very reasonable price. 

The last few days have been fraught, but I found the time to paint up the fellows above. They are very clean, crisp models with good detail and take paint well. 

Recommended. 

Hinton Hunt Royal Horse Artillery

Hinton Hunt RHA rider with a horse of uncertain ancestry

I'm nearing the end of my project to complete British and French armies for the Peninsula. There are plenty of other projects beckoning (Cold War Force on Force, Memoir '44, Samurai, Spaniards, India and on and on and on), but one of the luxuries of nearing the end of at least one project is a filling in of gaps, indulgence in certain extravagances that would not otherwise be entertained except in the happy time when the main work is done. These fellows are one such extravagance, a gift from a chum, Jack Hixon, in old Virginny who saw my Newline Designs RHA and took such a dislike to them that he sent me these.

RHA gunner

I find it hard to look at this pose and not think of briefings in black and white war films, anything with Kenneth Moore or Jack Hawkins, where a moustachied Rupert would importantly jab a stick at map with the words, "Jerry is here, here and here." Though in the circumstances it should probably be, "Francois is here, here and here."

They are beautiful figures, though Krisztian was unimpressed by their tiny feet, but their upright posture and good carriage remind me of figures from a Hillingford painting. They've done good service too - they saw their first combat a few weeks ago at the Redinha and confounded the normal expectation of newly painted figure, by charging forward and blasting the French with grape at close range in the best Royal Horse Artillery tradition.  

Sergeant, pot that fellow would you? Hinton Hunt RHA officer

So these chaps have been replacing my Newlines on the field of Mars, though I can't quite find it in my heart to dispose of them. Krisztian did a lovely job on them, for all their tiny feet and I can see them giving good service for many years to come. God bless Jack Hixon and the Christian Brothers who taught him and left with such an affection for the Auld Sod.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

Spanish Guns & Gunners

SHQ Spanish Gunners with an ESCI gun

When I worked in the book trade I dealt with an elderly man who had served on Monty's staff during the Normandy campaign. I never met him in person as he was too frail to travel, but we spoke several times over the phone. I recall two very particular things.

1) The abuse that he heaped on me for sending him "The Full Monty" by Nigel Hamilton. I never knew elderly men knew such words. He had ordered it I hasten to add.

2) He always maintained that Eisenhower could have ended the war in six months if he hadn't tried to maintain a broad front.

I feel that in some ways I'm emulating Eisenhower's mistake as at present, I'm attempting to complete an order of battle for the Spanish army, while finishing off my Waterloo armies and struggling though my Indian and Cold War projects. It may take a while, but I have no doubt that we'll finish in Berlin.

SHQ Spanish Gunners

These are lovely little figures. They're very simple with clean lines and with very little flash. A few seconds trimming with a craft knife was all that was required to get them ready to go. I'll be packing them off to Mark shortly, but there was one problem, I had no guns. Fortunately, my researches indicated that the Spanish used Gribeauval system artillery, so I could use my surplus French guns. The first one picture above, shows an ESCI Guard Artillery gun.

This chap here required a little bit more thought. Despite being under the impression that I had many guns tucked away somewhere, I could only put my hand to one. However, there was a carriage spare from my ESCI box and I was able to wed that to a spare barrel from a Zvesda set.

It has come to my attention that regular readers of this blog have laboured under the misapprehension that General Du Gorman is a drunken, treacherous, cheese eating sybarite, whose moral turpitude is only matched by his devilish good luck.

I was shocked to learn that certain people could get such a wrong impression and wish to issue a full retraction on behalf of this blog and on behalf of the Internet in general; to anyone who may have read this blog and mistakenly assumed that General Du Gorman was a gin sodden, right wing oaf, whose professional life is devoted to the pursuit of a fraud so transparent as to make the Hitler diaries look like a piece of innocent fun and whose many tabletop victories are the result merely of treachery, underhandedness and happenstance.

An artists impression of General Du Gorman,

a mere scribble that cannot possibly hope to do justice to

the radiant inner light of man himself

What makes this misunderstanding all the more shocking is that General Du Gorman is in fact an angel who walks among us, whose sweetness and generosity makes a dark world light and shines as a beacon of hope to all his people, everywhere. A simple abstemious man who might have a glass of sherry at Christmas on returning home after entertaining the children at the orphanage with a puppet show, pausing only to mend a broken doves wing on his way.

A HAT gun from their French Horse Artillery set

I should also mention that General Du Gorman came across a HAT horse artillery gun that he had forgotten about and brought it over at last nights game. This meant that I won't have to buy another box to get that final gun. It also means that my Spanish artillery will have a suitably hodge podge appearance. On the whole I think I can write this one as a victory.

So with the Spanish artillery cobbled together and ready to go off to the painter, it looks like cavalry is the next thing on the agenda.

Newline Royal Horse Artillery

An Officer type

I've been using Revell Foot Artillery figures with an ADC figure as a substitute for Horse Artillery for quite some time. However, sooner or later I was going to have to get the right chaps on the board and finally, he they are.

This fellow is a Newline British Light Dragoon, who has had sword-ectomy and is now serving as the officer in charge of this particular gun.

Gunners, they wore fancier hats back then

These are Newline chaps again, I only actually needed two per gun, but it would be a silly waste of figures not to have a full (ish) crew for each piece. They are nice little figures and they don't look too out of scale with the rest of my collection.

The ensemble

I only needed two units of Royal Horse Artillery, no doubt once my ambitions become fixed on another big game I'll hanker for some more, but in the mean time these will do.

With the addition of these guns, all that remains to complete my British collection (at least until I decide I need something more exotic) is some Lifeguards. I think I hear the Revell set calling.

French Horse Artillery

Newline Designs French Horse Artillery

I've been extemporising Horse artillery for the last while, using an ADC figure and two chaps from the foot batteries. As a stop gap, it sufficed and there was little doubt as to which were the horse batteries and which the foot. But it rankled, so I have just mustered two new gun crews into the French service. These are Newline Designs figures and are a touch small, but they do well in units on their own. I had toyed with HATs offering, but wasn't convinced by the sculpting. I also wanted each horse battery to have at least one mounted gunner so that the difference between horse and foot batteries would be clear.

Up close for a whiff of grapeshot

My readers are all no doubt familiar with horse artillery, but in case Tim Gow has had a sudden rush of blood to the head and momentarily forgotten anything that doesn't have a jet engine on it.

Horse artillery are simply put, batteries of artillery where the gun crews ride rather than walk. The idea behind them was that they would provide fast mobile firepower where it was needed. Foot batteries, which typically carried a greater weight of metal, were more powerful, but couldn't be relied upon to get to the key point quickly. Horse artillery, sometimes called "flying batteries", though I've only heard this used when referring to the American arm, were most numerous in French service. They were expensive to train and raise as they required more horses then a foot battery and men who could ride as well as shoot. The first batteries were raised in 1792 under General Mathieu Dumas.

Sadly, this is not Alexandra Dumas father, who was the rather more imposing Thomas Alexandre Dumas. But the French artillery and horse artillery especially certainly shared his aggression. Paddy Griffith covers the "artillery charge" in passing in his Osprey on French Napoleonic Infantry tactics, but essentially it boiled down to getting in close and shooting fast, delivering murderous close range fire to rupture the enemy line.




We will never see a horse artillery battery in action in earnest, but to give you some impression of the speed, precision and dash of these men, have a look at this footage from the Royal Tournament in 1985.

Stragglers

While Command & Colours Napoleonics gun crews (at least as I organise them) come with only three crewmen and a gun, that seemed a rather scanty number of gunners. The Newline Design packs came with more figures than I needed, so should I ever need more crewmen (I won't say a full crew), these fellows are waiting in the wings.

I suppose that these pictures are part of a larger project to document my collection of figures, for my own satisfaction and so that I can insure them. I posted (as I usually do) a link to my blog entry on the subject to The Miniatures Page recently and received some interesting and not so interesting responses.

The discussion spiralled out of the bounds of reason and decency shortly there after and considerable time and energy that could have been more profitably spent calculating how many angels may dance on the head of the pin or perhaps ironing the undersides of cats was expended on the subject of whether it is right or proper to murder someone who is burgling your home. For a variety of reasons, I shall not go into my position on the subject here. I can only steal another man's eloquence.

"It is a big step to take another human life. It is never to be done lightly. I know of men who have taken life needlessly in other conflicts. I can assure you they live with the Mark of Cain upon them."

A tray for today

My tray - existing in its natural state of clutter

Today was a long day and it followed a day that had been very long as well. I become seized with a selfish desire to play after days like that, to do something hobby related. I'm too tire to do anything useful around the house or write or anything like that, but I can stick a toy soldier together.

As I have mentioned before I have started raising Dutch troops for the Waterloo campaign. The boxes arrived from Models2U the other day and I set to work with a will, washing and sorting the contents.

And damned if there weren't some RHA fellows in there as well...

First on the block are the Dutch gunners from Waterloo 1815. I was in a bit of pickle with these as they used French guns during the Hundred Days and they come with British guns. Fortunately, I went searching through my box of figures and came across a bag of old ESCI figures given to me by a friend who lost interest in Napoleonics some time ago.

Two gun carriages looking rather forlorn

A search through the bag yielded two French gun carriages, but only one tube. The tubes from the Dutch Artillery sets had very strange thick trunnions on them, which wouldn't fit and didn't look the thing at all. Eventually, I lighted upon a set of French Guard Artillery. I only need one of these, so I was able to sacrifice one of the tubes from the set to use with my Dutchmen.

Two Dutch guns awaiting crew

The tube took a bit of encouragement to sit right and I needed to trim the elevating screw a little with a stanley, but I think they look fine.

Two Dutch gun crews based up

Not having the mental energy to do much I else, I cut the Dutch gunners from their sprue and glued them to bases. That seemed like quite enough hard work for one night!

On a completely unrelated note - Joy and Forgetfulness will be having one of its periodic outages as Mrs Kinch and I are going on holiday. We'll be revisiting our Honey Moon haunt of Bath with a day trip to Bristol. Mrs Kinch is particularly excited about walking with Meerkats at Longleat.

We will have a car with us and any suggestions anyone might have for good game or book shops or anything in particular worth seeing along the way will be gratefully received.