Tora Tora Tora! or Jap bomber trio

 

Yes I know these are all Army 'planes but who could resist the title?  Here are the completed bombers.  From the front - Ki-30 and two Ki-32.  I think they look rather smart.

Cold War Blitzspiel

 Following on from the Cold War Brigade Commander game was...lunch.  After that we reconvened for John A's game.  This has been in development for a couple of years now and John has had the questionable benefit of my input throughout.  John provided all the toys for this game, in which one toy AFV represented a real one.

I promised John I'd use this photo of his MTU-55 bridgelayer conversion.  The Sovs had a reinforced tank battalion.

The British force was built around a tank squadron, with an attached infantry platoon and Swingfire section.

Despite making a lot of smoke during their advance....

...the Sovs were soon making a lot of rather blacker smoke as the weight of British long range gunnery told.

A very jolly game which did much towards 'proving' the concept of the rules.

Cold War Brigade Commander

This was a game run by Pete a couple of weeks ago.  It featured his own collection of 6mm toys and terrain on one of my terrain sheets.  Pete officiated while six of us demonstrated our varying levels of command ability.  The photos are a bit of a mix and were taken by various of the players.  Speaking of whom, here we all are!  Front row L to R: Bish, Andrew, Russell.  Rear row: Martin, John, me, Pete.  As always, silly hat wearing was encouraged.

The battle under way.  Each stand represented a company.  Us Yanks had a couple of weak brigades while the Sovs seemed to have a full division.

Mi-24 Hinds attacking one of Russell's units.

I of course seized the opportunity to wear my Cavalry hat!

A nasty Sov trick was the Spetsnaz unit which appeared perilously close to my HQ.  Happily may chaps held it together and the wicked Commies expired in a hail of MG fire.

Pete doing pointing.

Sov tanks and AT engage US Mech infantry.  Russell's brigade had whizzy new M-1 and M-2, while mine made do with older M-60 and M-113.  Not for nothing was my command known as 'The Antiques Roadshow.'
 

I particularly liked Pete's woods.

Su-25s unsportingly bombing one of my battalions.

And who won?  We agreed that Russel's bde having been very roughly handled it would wthdraw, while mine would too - to the next set of prepared positions - having seen off the Sov tank regiment which came my way.

Kawasaki Ki-32

Having need of at least one Japanese Army light bomber I naturally ended up with three!  As well as the Ki-30 mentioned earlier I picked up a pair of these Ki-32.  Unusual among Japanese aircraft in having an inline (rather then radial) engine, the -32 looks to me very 'late thirties.'  The fixed undercarriage was used as it was felt that the simplicity and strength outweighed the drag issues.  In fact the Ki-32 was faster than it's contemporary, the Fairey Battle.

Like the Ki-30 kit, these needed a lot of taping and holding parts in place.  The panel gaps would be issues for proper modellers but you know by now that my standards are reassuringly low!

Unusually for a 1/72 kit, the wheels have separate rubber tyres.

Paint.  I'm doing one in overall pale grey and the other in this early pattern three-colour camo scheme.