'Finnish' Bofors - Part 3

Crewing the gun
Under the Rapid Fire game rules that I'm using as a guide for my Finnish army collection, the Bofors AA unit needs a crew of three. The Zvezda kit does come with figures, but the WW2 pattern British Army uniform is just too difficult to modify to make passable Finns, so I'm having to look elsewhere.

Finnish Bofors crew in 1941, mostly wearing German M40 helmets. Though, it
seems they were still in short supply as the foremost crewman needs a bigger size!

In order to modify myBofors gun - to look like the Finnish variant - I purchased a couple of boxes of Zvezda's Soviet M1939 37mm AA gun (which itself is a variation of the Bofors 25mm AA gun). This set comes with a couple of Soviet crew, which will be easier to convert into Finnish soldiers (I'll probably use one of the Pegasus Soviet infantry figures I have to create a third member of the crew).

One of the Soviet AA gun crew fitted with the arms from the British Bofors crew.

The good thing about the Zvezda gun crew figures is that they are multipart, with separate limbs (which makes it easier to pose them correctly on the gun model). So, I can swap around arms to make the Soviets fit the British Bofors properly. All I need then is some suitable heads, but I have a plan...

I am going to try out some of Ceaser Model's mid-WW2 German infantry as noggin-doners. The Finns use the German M40 coal-scuttle ('Stahlhelme') helmet as standard during the Continuation War, so I will have to do some brutal transplant surgery.

Figures with the new heads. Just trial fitting positions for the fitting of arms.

There was a slight difference in scale between the Zvezda and the Ceasar figures, the Ceasar heads being a bit small for the bodies I grafted them onto. But I'm hoping this will not be so noticeable as they are in a sitting pose...

Dr, Frankenstein would be proud! :)

Well, they are a bit of a hack job, but they will have to do. Now, onto the painting, though, I may wait a while until I'm ready to paint a batch of Finnish figures (I have a few drivers in the works).

'Finnish' Bofors - Part 2

Construction of the Zvezda 'British Bofors 40mm AA Gun' and its conversion into a faux-Finnish version was relatively painless (aside from a surprise appearance of the dreaded carpet monster).

You can easily tell the parts that I converted - so that the Bofors looked more like the Finnish version - as these parts are the ones in green plastic. This isn't a truly authentic conversion, just my superficial take on the 'continental' Bofors. In truth, I should perhaps have waited and seen if I could have sourced the proper version as made by 'First to Fight', but hey-ho.

Aside from the absence of the gun shield, the 'continental' Bofors had different wheels and a different means of attaching them to the static support and the side support arms were square tubes rather than the round British tubes. This is just from my inexpert observations, you'll need to do some proper research to understand what the exact variations are between all the different makes and variants (practically every nation involved in WW2 had their own version of this hugely popular gun).

Finnish Bofors 40 mm. This gun mounts the original reflector sights, and
lacks the armor found on British examples. Source: Wikipedia

Thoughts on the Zvezda Kit
I was surprised at just how many parts there were in this kit, it wasn't the simplified 'easy build' war game model I have come to expect from Zvezda's 'Art of Tactics' range. Some of the little parts were quite fiddly (and, frustratingly, I lost two of the support 'feet' to the carpet monster).

The most noticeable feature of the kit - from a modeller's point of view - is the plastic from which it is made. It isn't exactly 'hard' plastic, it's sort of halfway in feel between the normal hard injection moulded plastic and the 'soft' plastic of Airfix soldiers. It tends to fray a little more than usual when you file or sand it, and I found that trimming or shaving with a scalpel was a neater way of getting rid of flash and mould seams, etc.

The gun itself felt a little bendy, although it wasn't actually bent. It just felt like it would easily bend and I did consider replacing it with a Millicast brass barrel, but I decided not to as the whole reason I went for this Zvezda kit was to save money.

Simplified 'wire' sights.

Rivet counters will take issue over the simplified sights on the gun, which are not only the wrong type for the Finnish version but also 'filled in' as the delicate wire construction of the real British sights would be impossible to replicate in scale plastic form. Again, Millicast do make a brass upgrade set for the 1/76 Bofors if you are a real stickler.

My final niggle is that the gun doesn't rotate, but is fixed by pins in one of four 90 degree positions. I would much rather that Zvezda had made the kit with a peg and plug arrangement so the Bofors could have been rotated, particularly as this model is intended for war gaming.

The four position gun mount which corresponds to two pins in the base of the
gun itself. You can mount the gun looking forward, left, right or back.

Overall, I think this is a rather nice looking model, it builds well if you are willing to spend the time cleaning off mould seams. There are no fit problems and everything just slots into place nicely.

Quite satisfied (aside from qualms over historical accuracy, but this is my fault and not Zvezda's).

Zvezda British Bofors

I  decided that January would be 'Anti-Aircraft Month', but I'm only just getting round to making my first AA gun (so expect this project to creep into February)!

The model I had chosen to represent the Finn's '40 ItK/35-39 B Bofors' (Finnish designation for the imported Swedish Bofors) is Zvezda's 'British Mk. I/II'. I'll be honest, I bought this because it's cheap(ish) and simple, but good. I've been very impressed with all the other Zvezda models I have bought, detail and moulding is always crisp.

(I could get exactly the right 'Swedish' (style) version - minus gun-shield - if I really wanted and was willing to search one out, but the Zvezda version is readily available. An option might have been to go for the 'First to Fight' Polish Army Bofors 40mm, but they weren't available when I looked.)

Superb original colour photo of a Finnish Bofors unit on the outskirts of Nokia
township in April 1944. Source: SA KUVA

Anyhoo, I reckon, to make the gun 'Finnish' I need only remove the gun-shield, source some different wheels (easy as I have plenty spare Gaz/Zis wheels which look about right) and change the figures. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy!

So, let's begin by having a look at the instructions...

First thing I noticed is that, this isn't the usual Zvezda simplified wargaming model, there are actually quite a few parts to this kit. And, as usual, I take their claim that this is a 'snap together' kit with a pinch of salt.

My impressions that this model is a little more than an 'easy build' was further reinforced when I started to examine the sprues. For starters, there are four sprues containing some quite small and detailed parts...

The crew sprue! Four figures, but for the Rapid Fire game rules I only need
to model three crew. We shall cross that bridge when we come to it.

The kit comes with this base for modelling the deployed gun. Also, here we
have the 'British wheels', I will have to replace these for the Finnish variant.

The Bofors, plus gun-shield (won't need that) and a wee flag! :)

As I said, plenty of parts, which should build into quite a nice little model. And, because I am building this under the Rapid Fire game rules, I have two of these kits - one to represent a deployed AA gun and another in the transportation mode (I was thinking of building this and adding some sort of canvas cover, maybe).

Finnish AA crew pose on a 1937 Ford truck, with a medium AA gun  (possibly
a 76 ItK/29 B, Bofors) in tow. Note the canvas gun cover. Source: SA KUVA

I'm hoping this will be a 'quick build' which will be completed about the same time as I finish my Hunor Ford M39 truck project (as this will be the towing vehicle for this gun). Luckily, the HUnor kit is turning out to be such a start and stop build - due to all the problems with the kit - that I should have plenty of time to get the Bofors built and painted...In theory...

The two versions I will be building; transportation mode and deployed.