Wespe Artillery

Painting my resin Paul Heiser Models Wespe self propelled guns.

Each battery of six guns gets two ammo carriers.

The primer paint gives a nice even texture to the model and sticks well to the resin.

Models are HO scale.

It was an excellent use of the Panzer II chassis to use it as a self-propelled gun and ammo carrier.

The ammo carrier was almost identical except it had no gun, just more ammo.

Orion Gun Crews in Action

A 10cm gun requires ten crewmen.

But it includes the men on the limber, with the horses, and carrying ammo.

I mount most of my artillery on bases, particularly the metal guns; it helps the trails stay on the gun.

I mark the nation, gun type on the bottom so that I can remember what's what, and other players can figure out what guns they have.

100mm ATG and Crew

A few old Lyzards Grin Tracks models.

With the new Orion 1/72nd scale soft plastic artillery crews.

100mm guns so they get a crew of ten men.

The models come without crews so getting these figures was a godsend.

Artillery Crews

In my ruleset, an artillery piece must have a crew equal to the size of the gun in centimeters, rounded down.

So a Soviet 122mm gun needs a 12 man crew.  That includes drivers, observers and those servicing the gun.

Some resin figures in the same pose as the plastic guy were included.

They were different colors, I added the bases.

Artillery the King of Battle

One of the problems with having a massive collection of WWII Soviet artillery is having enough men to man the guns.

Zvezda often gives only two or three crewmen for a gun that might need 8 or 12 men.

One way to solve the problem is to draft troops from other places.

The Airfix WWII Russian Infantry set is very old and very tired.  

As a result most of the men from that set in my collection have volunteered to serve the guns.

Many of the old hard plastic Esci Russians are also transferred to the artillery.

Still more have been needed so I have been buying the Orion Soviet Artillery Crew set to fill in the gaps.