Free Nations - Get on your 113's and RIDE!!!

Howdy everyone,

Taking some time out tonight to get some pics up of my latest progress shots on my 4 CMBG canuck battlegroup.  For anyone who is only seeing this for the first time or has been following my progress but wants to get caught up...feel free to check out the links to a few of my previous posts recording the collection, research, and painting of my Canadians:

M113's part 1
Research - tac call signs
Royal Canadian Dragoons and Leopard C1's
Research - Canadian War Museum

...and of course, I can't help but feel that my progress is somewhat timely given that Battlefront has recently launched their latest addition to the Team Yankee verse...

-picture taken from www.team-yankee.com-

I have been pumped for this expansion for quite some time...in fact, all of the M113s that I have painted to date come from the first sale that Battlefront had on their Nam line a BUNCH of years ago...projecting somewhat ahead, I had a rough idea of how many APCs I needed and I bought 4 boxes for that day when I would get painting and getting a 4 Brigade force.

So, with that in mind I watched the posts, pics, and videos with some interest as the release weekend came and went.  Given my excitement, it was not without its OCD-stress moments as I had questions on a few of the design choices...the Canadian M109s, specifically the barrel lengths and given my recent back and forth with a club-mate of mine who was in 2PPCLI in the late 80's with the mortar platoon, the carriers were the M125s...however, I will certainly give kudos for the 'scenario' rationale for the Canadians getting some 'lend-lease' M125s, well done...well done Battlefront!

Now, thanks to google, if you type in the search string "Canadian army m113 in germany" you get a great collage of 4CMBG pics from various sites including www.canadiansoldiers.com, www.armycadethistory.com, and www.silverhawkauthor.com to name a few.

For me, the biggest question when it came to this project, was specifically...how am I going to make my carriers and overall my battlegroup jump out and look different? The Free Nations has some excellent pics that are very motivating...there are some great samples of painting...again very motivating, but for me, as this has always been a project close to my heart, I wanted to look at the research and do my best to replicate what the pictures showed me.


www.canadiansoldiers.com



In the case of the picture above...I needed cam netting, extra water cans, a nicely faded paintjob, and extra stowage and kit on the carrier.  Now, I do not know how it was for other armies, but for Canadian M113s, everyone of them seemed to have an extra road wheel mounted on the front shield as well as extra water cans on the rear of the track.  Oh, and lots and lots of netting.

2 Platoon of the 1st Company...tracks 12 to 12C...each of them festooned with a variety of stowage and extra equipment.  As per my previous post, I also included a couple of US Army armoured cav gun shields...the canucks were at war, and just like from their experiences in Bosnia, this crew...the predecessors of our first Bosnian contingent, scrounged and adapted where they could.  In this case, a couple of bottles of Crown and a few cases of Molson...and voila, a couple of gun shields per platoon.

The next biggest thing on the 'shopping list'...I needed coils of razor wire...almost every picture I have seen from Bosnia and certainly Afghanistan shows barbed wire hanging from the front or sides of Canadian carriers.  In the era of the 113, this meant hanging coils off of the extra wheel on the shield...I was going to hang some off the side of the track, but given the tightness of my foam tray, it wasn't realistic.

One of my favourite shots from the Army Cadet history site, a company from the Royal Canadian Regiment getting ready to move out...lots and lots of cam netting...this was a very inspiring and motivating picture.  I also like that you can certainly see a very different hue and shade to the basic colours.

On top of the platoon carriers, I also realized I would need a good FOO carrier to take the queen of battle to the enemy.  Given that my brother served in 1RCHA in the mid-80's to early 90's I snagged a few pics from him to guide me by as well.

As I was fielding hordes of M113s I thought it would be prudent to have some variants to the FOO, in this case I took the side skirts off to dirty up the track some more...and as I already had another c/s12 in the force, I thought I would use the 'G' letter in addition to help pick it out.

So, as for colours...I used nato green to base coat the vehicles...I then used a mix of Russian Uniform 924 with dark camo green 894 (couple of layers with varying ratio)...the camo was german grey 995 and green-brown.  I used the same weathering/mud technique that I have used for most of my vehicles and that I figured out when I started with my WW1 tanks.

And finally, please enjoy some pics of the force so far...6 x Leopard C1s; 2 x Tows; 1 x FOO; 9 x M113A1s

 I hope you enjoyed...take care...


Lead Mountain Progress - Expedition 2018
Painted:

28mm: 13
15mm - figures: 12 (+7)
           - vehicles: 15 (+5)
           - terrain: 1

Purchased - 1 (15mm terrain)

Progress - +40