Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Airfix Rescue Launch - Refit

I bought this kit from a garage sale about ten years ago for $1. It was pretty much as you see it in the pictures below, until the other day when I started messing around with it. Here it is in its original form, but not the state I got it in!


 I got it to use as a small river boat for a scenario we played; set in 1919 when a large force of Bolsheviks attacked an Allied intervention force in Russia, and the gunboat was on the Red's OOB. The next two pictures show it as it was when I bought it


Start. Just the forward gun added at this stage, the previous owner had already added the small smoke stack at the rear




Initial colours



With crew and additional weaponry


Most of the crew figures are Airfix with head swaps from the Esci Spetsnaz figure set (all I had sailor head-gear wise)


Forward gun, probably a 3' or 4' variety - cut down Pak 40 barrel, gun shield is from an Attack version of an assault gun mounted on a Pz38t chassis, quite detailed



Rear gun is a 1lb or 2lb quick-fire - HaT gun with modified Pak 40 gun shield


Upper-mounted medium machinegun will provide modest antiaircraft capability - modified HaT Colt MMG with shield and belt-feed added 


May add some decals yet?


Still pretty rough in places but I had a lot of fun messing around with it. I tried to make it look as multinational as possible in terms of paint scheme, crew and weapons so that it wouldn't look too out of place in any conflict or era we wanted to use it in


This has featured in many, many games. Easily usable in conflicts from around the turn of the last century up until about the 1950s, though several minor nations maintained this sort of vessel in their navies for a lot longer.


8 comments:

  1. cool well done mate .. " well saved "

    ReplyDelete
  2. wow, i like it!
    very good job, well done!
    bye

    ReplyDelete
  3. Very nice save there! I can see that this would be useful in allot of games!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thanks guys, great little project

    ReplyDelete
  5. Lovely bit of TLC on that model, Al. Great improvement, it just needs a big red flag. The head swaps really work, those caps give a great Russian look. Bravo.
    Cheers,
    Michael

    ReplyDelete
  6. Thanks mate, would have liked less of a Russian look but still happy :)

    Cheers

    ReplyDelete
  7. Would that be the Armistice Day scenario from Over The Top CD Rules for WWI by any chance?

    Good conversion

    ReplyDelete