M51 Ishermans and F4-E Phantom for the Yom Kippur War!

More escalation for the YKW! First we have a platoon of upgraded M51 Shermans from Khurasan. Love that massive 105mm gun right?!?!

I really like these models. They aren't supplied with crew, but I swapped in a tank commander from Battlefront's range. If he looks a little on the larger side, more on that later...

The models are really straightforward to build. I painted them in the usual style - AK Grey-Green, light Agrax Earthshade wash, sponge chipping.

Chevrons pointing forward indicate the second company (pointing down, first company; pointing up, third company).

OK so this marking I completely messed up. The Hebrew letter (aleph) indicates the individual vehicle within the platoon (here, the first vehicle) - the numeral indicates the platoon number (second platoon, in this case). I assumed the opposite when I put on the decals. Ugh. I might fix this, or maybe not.

EDIT: I couldn't not fix the tactical markings so I did that today. First I put second battalion markings on the gun barrels, then replaced the markings on the turrets.

Now we have call signs "Aleph", "Bet", and "Gimel" of the 1st Platoon.

Unfortunately, for some reason the Battlefront decal sheet only had decals for Aleph and Gimel, so I painted Bet's marking by hand. I also put vehicle ID plates on the tanks, they're Battlefront decals too.

So these vehicles are now officially done!

Anyway onto the next thing. This is an Academy F4-E Phantom in 1/144 scale, marked for the 107th Squadron of the Israeli air force, 1973.

Pretty easy to paint, I used the same colours as on my Skyhawks.

The roundels are from the same sheet as used for the Skyhawks, too. The tail numbers are hand-done with a fine-tipped technical pen. The red vertical stabilizer and emblem are distinctions of the 107th squadron based at Hatzerim. This aircraft is based on an illustration in the Osprey "Israeli F-4 Phantom II Aces" book by Shlomo Aloni.

So the only thing about the Khurasan models is that they're a bit smaller than other 15mm models. It's OK when they're by themselves but don't put 'em too close to the plastic Battlefront Shermans. This one is an old metal Sherman, maybe from Command Decision? But still bigger than the Khurasan model.

Stay tuned for more from the YKW. I have a few Israeli jeeps and something for the Egyptians to use to defend themselves from Israeli air attack. Shalom!

Israeli Skyhawks for the Yom Kippur War!

Further escalation in the October War project! Undeterred by the apparent anachronisms running rampant in my Israeli armour, I'm continuing the project with a pair of A-4E Skyhawks for their air force.

I found these USAF models from Battlefront's 'Nam range for an unbelievable deal, so picked them up for my Israeli force. I stand to be corrected in the comment section but I think the aircraft are reasonably accurate representations of the planes that served in the October War.

The Israelis used a couple different variants of the Skyhawk in a ground-attack role during the conflict. These are early A-4Es. Later on we'd see the modified A-4H and -N versions with the hump on the dorsal surface of the fuselage, that contained an upgraded avionics package. Even the -Es got upgraded with this package but these are the earlier sleeker version of the aircraft. I didn't add the extended anti-SAM tailpipe as that upgrade came later too. I think I might bend out the refueling probe a bit though.

Of course since these planes were sold for the 'Nam range, they didn't come with suitable decals... but no worries, Israeli roundels were sourced from a Canadian eBay seller and came very quickly indeed! The "tail numbers" are from the original Battlefront USAF decal set as I'm not that fussed with trying to replicate specific aircraft. Shalom! 

Egyptian Su-20 Fitter-Cs for the Yom Kippur War

OK so with the recent self-escalation of the Yom Kippur War project I decided to pick up some air support for my Egyptians. The best available option (as MiG-17s are no longer available from Battlefront) are these - the Su-17 Fitter box set.

These were on sale at Meeplemart and Conscript Greg kindly picked them up for me before his recent visit back to Winnipeg. These aircraft kits are fully injection molded plastic (well except for the missiles which are resin) and are a doddle to assemble.

No Egyptian decals in the box of course so I hand painted the roundels and flag, and scribed the numbers in "Western Arabic" numerals with my technical pen.

Oh and I guess I should explain how these work for the Egyptian air force of the YKW... it's simple really, the Su-20 used by the Egyptians in-period was just the export version of the Soviet Su-17M. As far as I've been able to tell, the aircraft were identical in appearance.

I think these are pretty good-looking aircraft and they were a great deal from the Meeple-people. They'll do nicely in a YKW game. Of course I've got some Israeli aircraft done too - but they're waiting for decals to arrive and once they do, I'll get 'em posted here. Youm Sa'id!
 

Tornado Warning!

Something completely different done on a whim... it's back to Team Yankee and the Bundesluftwaffe. Long version: Conscript Greg was planning a visit to the Meeplemart and I noted that they had the "new" Team Yankee Tornado flight in plastic, in stock, for the very reasonable price of $35CAD (as opposed to the old resin aircraft that were an extortionate $53 for two). I thought I might ask Greg to get these for me, but I already have one painted Tornado... and there's no need to have three. However I'd had a Revell plastic Tornado kit on my eBay watchlist for some time and this was the prompt to finally buy it, for well under $20 shipped. 

So last week the kit arrived and was quickly assembled. I left off some of the bits specific to the "ECR" version and built it identical to its squadron mate already in my collection.

Painting was pretty simple - it's a three colour scheme - I just copied it from the plane I'd painted before. However I just tried to look up "Wings Palette" where I'd sourced the scheme in the first place... and nothing - the site seems to be defunct. Too bad as it was an amazing resource for aircraft color schemes :-(

Anyway the Luftwaffe Tornados are in a three-colour scheme - I painted this in black highlighted Dark Rubber; Castellan Green; and Castellan Green highlighted Death World Forest; the whole thing then washed with Nuln Oil. 

Here it is with its squadron-mate, not a bad match despite the fact I had failed to record the colours used on it. Happy to finish the second Tornado to join the first, and that'll complete the Bundeswehr's air support for Team Yankee.

Wings of Glory - Outnumbered

Last Thursday I ran the latest in our long-running Wings of Glory WWI campaign for the Fawcett Avenue Conscripts. We played a 1917 scenario based upon mission 7a of the Knights of the Air campaign setting, “Outnumbered”.  The Germans were the attackers, since they won the last game (which was played before COVID).  

Frederick, the leading German player, had a Deadly Aim 1 ace flying a Pfalz DIII. Hugh, new to WoG, flew a trusty Albatross DII. Kevin is the leading French player, and flew a SPAD S.VII. I flew the colourful Nieuport XI with a wing mounted Lewis gun that allowed firing even if overlapped! Both German planes had twin guns using the A deck, and both French planes had a single gun using the B deck. This would be interesting. 

Under the rules of the mission, if a French plane was shot down, it could basically re-spawn on the French table edge, representing reinforcements. 

The Germans set up within the confines of the green circle, then the French rolled randomly for placement from the mission map. People got stuck in right away, with a damaging pass that resulted in several smoking planes and jammed guns. The two sides kept circling , with my Nieuport also trying to bring the Germans closer to a ground based French AA machine gun. 

Frederick’s ace skill was impactful. For most of the game the Nieuport was flying on only 1 damage point left! I got in the ace’s sights again and was shot down in no-man’s land. My plane re-spawned near my original deployment. 

Fredrick and Kevin’s pilots got into a fight, and an explosion card was finally drawn by Frederick! Under the rules of the campaign, Frederick drew a card from the A deck to determine his ace’s fate. His pilot managed to avoid being killed outright, and crawled wounded from the wreck near the German front line trench, vowing to return to the fray. 

Hugh's pilot, with a plane damaged by both French aircraft and ground fire, managed to accidentally fly off the French table edge into captivity, setting up a later escape and rescue scenario!

Much fun was had by all. Thanks to Frederick, Hugh, and Kevin for playing, and to Dallas for dropping by and showing off his new WWI aircraft book. 

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The current standings in the campaign (as the moderator, my results do not count):

Frederick's German Flight Leader (suffered 6 wounds in mission 7a): +6 (six sorties flown) +23 (4 and 1/2 planes (18) and one balloon (5) shot down) +4 (drove off two enemy aircraft) -8 (being shot down twice) 7 1/2 victories = 25 campaign points, Knight's Cross, Deadly Aim 1

Kevin's French Flight Leader: +4 (four sorties flown) +10 (2 victories (Frederick's Wingman and Ace and one shared victory) +2 (drove off one enemy aircraft) 4 1/2 victories = 16 campaign points

Brian: +2 (two sorties flown) +8 (two planes shot down) 2 victories = 10 campaign points

Indo: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) = 5 campaign points

Bill (suffered 2 wounds in Mission 1): +2 (two sorties flown) -4 (being shot down) +4 (one plane shot down) 1 victory = 2 campaign points

Frederick's German Wingman  (suffered 1 wound in Mission 4a): +3 (three sorties flown) +2 (drove off enemy aircraft) -4 (being shot down) 1 victory = 1 campaign point

Kevin's French Wingman: +1 (one sortie flown) = 1 campaign point

Jim: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) -4 (being shot down) 1 victory = 1 campaign point

Byron (suffered 3 wounds in Mission 3a): +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being shot down = -3 campaign points

MikeA: +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being shot down) = -3 campaign points

Hugh: +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being forced down = -3 campaign points

Sukhoi SU-25 Frogfoot Attack Aircraft for Team Yankee

Team Yankee escalation continues with some Soviet aviation - a pair of Sukhoi SU-25 Frogfoot ground-attack aircraft from Battlefront (TSBX20). Greg painted a couple of really nice Frogfoots (Frogfeet?) a few years ago, and since Battlefront's come out with an updated (and cheaper!) iteration of the models that I've just finished, a bit of a compare-and-contrast might be in order.

 

First of all, these are the latest and greatest SU-25s from Battlefront. While Greg's planes were resin, these are injection-molded plastic model kits. Like the Harriers I posted a short while ago, I believe that the sprues themselves were procured by Battlefront from a third-party manufacturer, Ace Corporation. However, while the plastic injection sprue includes drop tanks, rocket pods, and bombs, the Battlefront box also contains a sprue of resin KH-25 (NATO: "Karen") air-to-ground missiles. 

I elected to assemble the models as they would appear at the start of a sortie, with all 10 hardpoints filled with weapons. From inboard to outboard (fuselage to wingtip) they are: drop tank, KH-25, rocket pod, rocket pod, bomb. The canopy that's included is molded in the same grey plastic as the rest of the parts so I've painted it to match the rest of my aircraft. Speaking of paint, for the record I used Zandri Dust, Rhinox Hide, Castellan Green, and Vallejo German Uniform for the camouflage, washed Agrax Earthshade and re-highlighted Zandri Dust with some panel lines put in with Nuln Oil. The underside was painted with Mechanicus Standard Grey highlighted with The Fang (ugh) and Thunderhawk Blue. The canopy was done with Kantor Blue and Temple Guard Blue. Wingtips are Warpstone Glow. Rocket Pods are Leadbelcher washed with Nuln Oil.

The box comes with a full decal sheet as well, including these funky little flashes for the tailplane.

While the box instructions advise modelers to affix a provided clear socket to the underside of the fuselage, I elected to use magnets. The one advantage of the resin planes was that there is a recessed slot molded in to accommodate a magnetized stand, whereas the injection kits have no such feature.

 

All in all a pretty nice box set and should come in handy in games of Team Yankee. Can't argue with the price point either - $39 CAD compared to over $60 CAD for the old resin box set. The only downside of the injection kits is a slightly more fiddly way to mount them to the flying stands - but I'll take that tradeoff for $20 per box. Plus most of the weapons are injection molded and perfect - no worries about the crappy resin ordnance that plagued Greg in his build.

Onward to the West!

Wings of Glory - Break Through

Just before Christmas,we finally returned to our long-running Wings of Glory campaign. For that night’s game, the second game of the campaign set in early 1917, the scenario was Mission 5: Break Through:

Capitalizing on recent victories, German HQ has put more emphasis on controlling the skies.
Type: DogfightVictory
Conditions: Mission Points. At the end of each sortie, calculate each side’s Mission Points. The side with the most points wins the mission.
Fallback: Mission 4a
Setup: Mission should be played length wise on a 4’x6’ table. The German Attackers have a 12 inch deployment zone and the French Defenders have a 36 inch deployment zone. This leaves 24 inches of No-man’s Land.

• Both sides must start the sortie with their planes inside their deployments zones in a loose formation with no more then a ruler length between planes.
• The defender’s side has a chance for random balloons. Use the special Balloons rules.
• Each side has a chance for random ground targets. Use the special Ground Targets rules.

We drew cards, and manged to avoid both random Balloons and Ground Targets.

Frederick and Kevin ran, respectively, the Germans and the French. Since it was 1917, one pilot character on each side got an upgraded plane: a hex-camouflaged Albatros D.V. (Frederick) and a yellow SPAD XIII (Brian). Kevin ran a silver Nieuport 17 with twin MGs, and I ran a relatively elderly Albatros  D.II painted in the colours of Oswald Boelcke.

Below are the combatants, from L-R, D.II, SPAD, D.V., and Nieuport:

Below, two photos showing the French (Kevin) and German (Frederick) flight leaders.







Below, the two flights set off against each other. Nearest is my Albatross D.II.




The two sides flew past each other, the French to the south, and the Germans to the north (below, looking south):




Below, three of the four planes turned and got firing solutions right away, with the Albatros D.II and Nieuport taking some hits (my Albatross took 5 points of damage in one shot!).




The fight got really mixed up as the planes kept jousting at each other.






After a couple of Immelmann's, Kevin and I lined up on each other again.






Later, my Albatross and Brian's planes avoided a collision.




Kevin's Nieuport finally fell to my twin Spandaus, crash landing in No-Man's land.



Brian, wanting revenge for his comrade, started after the D.II.



Frederick came to my aid, flying under me.






Frederick trailed Brian for a bit, but the latter pulled another Immelmann...



...tried to attack Frederick...



...then went head to head with the D.II., shooting my plane down.



Brian then accelerated east...







...before turning around to dive for the western (Allied) board edge.




The fast SPAD blew right past the Albatross D.V.




Frederick got some shots into the SPAD, but not enough to bring it down, and chased Brian off the table.

The current standings in the campaign (as the moderator, my results do not count):

• Frederick's German Flight Leader: +5 (five sorties flown) +19 (three and 1/2 planes (14) and one balloon (5) shot down) +4 (drove off two enemy aircraft) -4 (being shot down) 6 1/2 victories = 24 campaign points, Knight's Cross, Deadly Aim 1
• Brian: +2 (two sorties flown) +8 (two planes shot down) 2 victories = 10 campaign points
• Kevin's French Flight Leader: +3 (three sorties flown) +6 (1 victory (Frederick's Wingman) and one shared victory) +2 (drove off one enemy aircraft) 2 1/2 victories = 7 campaign points
• Indo: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) = 5 campaign points
• Bill (suffered 2 wounds in Mission 1): +2 (two sorties flown) -4 (being shot down) +4 (one plane shot down) 1 victory = 2 campaign points
• Frederick's German Wingman  (suffered 1 wound in Mission 4a): +3 (three sorties flown) +2 (drove off enemy aircraft) -4 (being shot down) = 1 campaign point
• Kevin's French Wingman: +1 (one sortie flown) = 1 campaign point
• Jim: +1 (one sortie flown) +4 (one plane shot down) -4 (being shot down) 1 victory = 1 campaign point
• Byron (suffered 3 wounds in Mission 3a): +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being shot down = -3 campaign points
• MikeA: +1 (one sortie flown) -4 (being shot down) = -3 campaign points

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Tripods & Triplanes

I have also purchased the Tripods & Triplanes supplement for Wings of Glory from Ares Games. The story is as follows:

March 18th, 1918: the nearest approach of planet Mars to Earth. The First World War suddenly changes into a War of the Worlds, when what appears as a meteor shower falls over a wood in Alsace. A few hours later, just after dawn, an army of giant alien fighting machines appear out of the trees and starts burning villages and houses with their lethal heat-rays, leaving pestilential trails of black smoke behind them.

 A truce is hurriedly signed between the warring nations and, against the advancing Martian tripods, the best war machines of Earth are dispatched, manned by the most gallant and skilled warriors of our planet!

The supplement includes both a Nieuport 16 (armed with Le Prieur anti-balloon rockets) and a small Martian "Locust" Tripod. Le Prieur rockets seem to function well against the Martian invaders. I currently have four such balloon-busting Nieuport 16 models, flying under the flags of France, Italy, and Britain.

Below are examples of the Martian Locust Tripod and an RAF Nieuport 16. 

(These two photos copyright Ares Games)

With another couple of Martian Tripods ordered, I look forward to running some alternate-history sci-fi games!