Vietnam War US Army

These are great troops.  1/72nd scale soft plastic US Army troops for Vietnam.  Unlike the Esci / Italeri figures which are rather thin, and even sort of comic book looking these guys look like they are in the war.

You get a infantry group and a command group.  43 figures is a perfect size for a Vietnam era plastoon.

First figure has an M14 rifle and a Stetson hat.  A bit Hollywood but a great pose.  Probably do a head swap on a few of these and give them a regular M1 helmet.

Advancing at the ready with an M16 rifle.  Look at all the gear he is packing!

M16 at the hip, fire while advancing, walking fire.  Note the extra canteens.

Radioman with smoke grenades.  I am popping smoke.  I identify yellow smoke.  Roger, yellow smoke.

You discharge a smoke grenade and the helicopter pilot tells you what color smoke he sees.  You confirm he has picked the right color so that if the enemy has also thrown smoke your pilot will still know where to land.

I love the gear on these guys, clearly they did not just dismount from a helicopter unless they are planning to walk back to base.  Note the quality of the casting and depth of detail.  Great figures.
 

Stealth Batman

Batman is always developing new gadgets.

The new Bat - Stealth - Drone.

Small Batman markings top and bottom.

Small, black, and able to evade radar, to spy on the most sophisticated criminals.

A new weapon in the war on crime.

It's a die cast toy that is very small for my 1/72nd scale air forces so I repainted it and repurposed it.  Now it has a new life as a crime fighter.
 

Big Gun

Interwar years and the American army is ready for war.

Using the latest technology to keep up with the times.

Soldiers prepare the artillery projectiles.

They use the crane to bring them onto the gun.

12 inch mobile artillery piece, the latest in firepower and mobility.

The crew get ready to fire.

The cavalry has spotted the enemy and reported back to the battery.

The commander gives the order to fire.

The lanyard is pulled and the gun goes ka-boom!
 

More Beach Action

In California and in Beach Blanket movies car culture and surfing overlap.  This little car has Malibu on the side of the car and depicts a surfing doing a wipe out.  I have been to Malibu a few times, many TV shows and movies are filmed there and have been for decades.

This car is the Mantaray.  It was in a Batman TV show episode and also in a movie called Bikini Beach.

The original car is a pearl white color, but Hot Wheels has released it in several color schemes.

Dune buggy parked in the parking lot along the beach front.

Two different dune buggies; they are sometimes production vehicles but often they are custom built.

Chicks dig the car.
 

Beach Vehicles

One of my collections is American Cities.  As part of that I have some beach culture.  I grew up in Southern California and spent a lot of time at the beach, and even worked at a fishing bait store for several years.  I use the American cities for World War III games, science fiction games, and role playing games.

The beach culture includes swimmers, sun bathers, scuba divers, fishermen, lifeguards, beach combers, and dune buggy drivers.  Sometimes it includes others like motorcycle riders, and campers.

Here are two dune buggies and a custom surf car.    You can see a lifeguard truck in the background.

Dune buggy on the beach.

Traditionally lifeguards wear red uniforms.

Some places have grass on the beach before it becomes all sand and water.

In California while it is legal to have a home or other private property near the beach, private beaches are prohibited a certain distance above the high water mark at high tide.  The idea is the beaches and coastline are public property and must have public access.  Other states allow private beaches.

I get cheap styrene figures, repaint them and add bases to make my figures for this group.  Based on the Beach Party genre of movies I include a motorcycle gang as a counterpoint for the surfers.  The movies depict them as a two groups that compete for women, bars, and other facilities.
 

Yellow Dune Buggy Part II

Maesto dune buggy.

It's a cute little vehicle and for a really cheap vehicle it is pretty good.

I got a few of these for my Beach Blanket Bingo collection.

I will likely disassemble a couple of them and repaint them.  The paint job is good, but I want more colors.

Shown here with an army Meyers Manx.
 

Tiger II and SWS and Stuff

Late war German vehicle line up.  With unusual vehicles that were never fielded or only built in minuscule numbers I typically only build enough for a platoon, usually four vehicles.

I have two of these heave tanks, and am gathering the parts to make two more for a four tank platoon.  Of course if the Normandy Invasion had failed, bad weather coming a couple weeks earlier for example, or Hitler releasing the Panzer Division sooner might have extended the war a few more months.  So some of the paper panzers might have made it to the battlefield.

Of course the war would have ended by September 1945 as the Americans would have dropped atomic bombs on Munich and Berlin, ending the war.  However, even the failure of the Normandy landings overlooks the Operation Dragoon landings in Southern France in August of 1944.  With the failure of Normandy these may have been moved up to July, 1944 and the war may have not lasted much longer than it did in real life.

Using a Roco machine gun barrel on the front of a Roco Tiger II really makes the front end look much better than the original little stick that masquerades as a machine gun on the origainal model.

I added a radio antenna to the turret roof.  I use a nylon brush bristle for the antenna.  Unlike a wire it does not bend and it does not poke you and it does not break.

Drill out the lifting lugs on the back is a nice touch too.
 

Upgraded Tiger II

This conversion I got in a collection, it is not one I did myself.  It is a Roco Tiger II hull with the turret from a Roco Panther tank, and a gun from an unknown source, it may be a Roco Tiger II gun that has been cut down.

In WWII the Germans determined that having a narrow turret front was a good way to avoid getting hit in the turret.  Also by having the sides sloping back from the front, a hit on the side from the front was likely to bounce off.

They produced a new variant of the Panther, the Panther F with a new narrower turret.

Here someone has taken a Roco Panther turret, put a new turret front on it, and added a much larger gun and created a similar version of the Tiger II.

Additional details include a large hatch at the turret rear.

The Roco Panther is a terrible model and vastly underscale.  Nearly all of mine have been traded off over the years.  However this conversion is interesting from a Panzer 46 point of view.

My collection includes a number of paper panzers, vehicles that were fielded in very low numbers, or in some cases were only paper design studies and never even made it to the wooden mock up stage.  They provide interesting vehicles for Allied and Soviet forces to contend with for wargames that take place late in 1945.