The Painting Challenge Progress Report (2)

This is the second report of my participation in Curt’s Annual Painting Challenge.

Over the last three weeks since the previous blog entry, I continued fully focused on my British Airborne platoon for Chain of Command, adding a few pieces to the project and maintaining a (surprising) good painting momentum.

The first new entry was the Section Two of the platoon. This is identical to the first section, featuring a Rifle Team and a LMG (Bren) Team   and led by a Junior Leader (in the parlance of Chain of Command).

The second new entry took advantage of the so-called “Bonus Rounds” of the Challenge. These are special entries taking place every two weeks, under usually an obscure “theme” proposed by the Challenge master, owner and organiser, señor Curt Campbell (also kown as Lord Snow).

The round (on January 6) was called “Reconnaissance” and I made full use of the topic. I presented three iconic vehicles of the British Army in the Second World War.

The first was a Cronwell tank with the markings of the Armoured Reconnaissance Regiment of the 11th Armoured Division (Black Bulls); the white circle in the turret indicates that it belongs to the C Squadron. 

This is the Warlord plastic kit (the resin has been discontinued) and although presenting good detail, generally I still prefer the Rubicon models (sadly no Cromwells yet in their catalogue).

The second was a Humber Scout Car. widely used by the armoured divisions in the roles of command vehicle and also for scout purposes. In this case, the model is representing the vehicle of  Brigadier J.O.E. Vandeleur (aka Michael Cane in the film A Bridge Too Far), who led the spearhead of the XXX Corps across the infamous Hell’s Highway in Holland September 1944.

This model is a resin + metal kit from Warlord Games and will be part of my support list of the British Airborne platoon.

My third and last entry for the bonus round is the eponymous Willys jeep of the famous 1st Airborne Reconnaissance Squadron led by Major Gough. This was the first unit to engage in combat with the Germans defenders a few hours after glider-landing, failing to achieve its key objective, the bridge at Arnhem over the Rhine river. 

The jeep depicts the well-known “Mickey Mouse” camouflage pattern used by the British and shown in many contemporary photos of the Market Garden   operation. The model is again a Warlord resin+metal kit, and very pleasant to paint.

In the Challenge entry (link) I went into some depth about my research of the very confusing and to some extent complex vehicles marking system used by the British in the Second World War, offering some useful and helpful links to several website pages and videos found in my investigation.

The third new entry in the Challenge was the second bonus round (January 20) under the theme “sports”. This was a difficult one to crack and fit with my project. Finally I broke with an idea which was ti use the snipers teams to fulfil the bonus topic. I know, a bit extreme but I was not the only participant to use snipers…

These two pairs are a mix of plastic and metal Warlord

After the three recent entries, my Challenge scoring is now 350 points, close to 50% of my 750 points target for this year. Entering into the fifth week of the contest, I’m very happy with the progress and confident of reaching Spring on or very close to my target.