Skytrex 15mm Artillery Arrives

I took the opportunity presented by Skytrex's 10% Off offer, which ran until the 31st March to order a variety of 15mm guns from their Command Decision range.

The order was made online late on Monday evening and the parcel arrived today, Thursday. Such a fast turn around can only be regarded as excellent service.

These are very crisp models, well moulded with almost no seamlines or flash. There's not eve any flash where i'd expect it on the spokes of the gun carriage wheels. I'm impressed. Very impressed.

I bought CD581 Italian 75mm FieldGuns, CD548 French 105mm Guns and CD549 French 155mm Howitzers. Needless to say the Italian 75mm guns will join my Italian forces straight away, whilst the heavier French pieces are destined to become generic heavy guns.

For the Italian 75mm I'm sure I could have gotten away with the famous French Schneider 75/28 of which already own several Peter Pig models (Range 16, pack.94 (for WW1, RCW, 1940). However, it's such a hackneyed field piece in wargames terms (along with the German Krupp 77/96) that I wanted something different, but not as scarily different as the Flames of War Italian 75mm field gun.

I'll take a look at the artillery used by the Italian C.T.V. and models available in 15mm, in a later post. For now, if you want to know more about the artillery used during the Spanish Civil War you'll find the following websites incredibly useful.

Artillery Used in the Spanish Civil War - Spanish Site

Grand Atlas of Artillery in Spain in the C20th - Spanish Site

Landships - A great WW1 site in English

Finland used almost as many different types of guns as both sides in the Spanish Civil War, and even sold some to Spain! These are excellent websites in English that have good photo, service histories and lots of technical details.

WinterWar.com

Jager Platoon - a really good resource for historians, wargamers and modellers

Another good website for identifying SCW artillery, but this time dedicated to the Romanian Armed Services in WW2 is this one:

WorldWar2.Ro

And most importantly, don't forget to Wiki. Most artillery pieces will appear in Wikipedia with photos, service history and links to additional external sites by just running the gun's name through your browser's search engine. For instance, I've just typed 'Schneider 105mm' into Google and the very first result was this Wiki for the Canon de 105 mle 1913 Schneider.

15mm SCW Comparisons

Just some quick photos for manufacturer's size comparison.

Basque (Guardi) command (pack SCW002) from The Late Queen

Republicans in Spanish Helmet (Range 13, pack.5) from Peter Pig

I'll take better pics when my camera has recharged.

15mm Big Men

Had a small disaster last week. I found that my backup DVD with all my photos of miniatures and games going back the last 10 years was almost completely corrupted. Still, I managed to save a couple of SCW pics and here they are.


'Big Men' from my games using Up Your Cara Al Sol, the Spanish Civil War supplement to I Ain't Been Shot Mum by the Too Fat Lardies. This supplement is available in their 2004 Summer Special. The figures are my Abraham-Lincolns from Peter Pig. An OOP Militiaman to the left (range 13, pack.7), and an International Brigader on right (range13, pack.8) whom I really like. Love the Stalin cap, but getting 2-3 SMGs in a pack of 8 figures is a bit much. If he'd had long trousers rather than breeches, he would have been useful as an Asalto or Carabinero or even a generic Republican Brigada.


Abraham-Lincolns, again from Peter Pig. A Nationalist infantryman on the left (range 13, pack.1), with tassle and forward point of his gorro sidecap filed down to be of a more Republican shape. You'll notice that I've painted him and the Big Man with SMG in the picture above in a ligter shade of khaki represent the 'summer' uniform found in many photos of the XVth International Brigade. I think the figure on the right is from the International Brigade pack (range 13, pack.8). I painted him wearing a leather jacket for additional variety.


A Nationalist 37mm, Pak36 anti-tank gun in action. I tend to keep gun crews separate so that; 1) I can use the guns in WW1, RCW or WW2 as required, 2) mix and match which side uses the guns in the SCW, 3) Reuse the gunners on dfferent types of guns. Peter Pig doesn't do any appropriate crew figures for anti-tank/infantry guns/mortars etc in their Spanish Civil War range, so I cobbled together crews taken from the Nationalist HMG pack (kneeling, range 13, pack.17) and Nationalist LMG pack (lying, range 13, Pack.9). Looks effective though. The Pak36 is also from Peter Pig (range 8, pack.35) and I should note, has been remodelled since I purchased the one in the photo.

In 'squint mode' you can use the German Pak36 as either the Soviet 37mm M1930 37mm anti-tank gun or the later 45mm M1937 anti-tank gun both of which saw service in Spain and were based upon the Rheinmetall Pak36. The M1930 should really have spoked wheels, whilst the M1937 had a slightly longer barrel, but not enough to worry about in this scale if the SCW isn't your prime wargaming interest.