December 2014 stash additions - Finnish recovery trucks

This month's stash additions have arrived! I'm trying very hard t stick to the plan and NOT just get stash kits just because they look cool!

Not just any old truck could recover a Tiger!

Mr. Postman brought me a couple of very impressive super-heavy trucks which will make-up the armour recovery element of my Finnish Continuation War collection. The Finn's - ever short of specialised vehicles - purchased a couple of giants from the Germans - the Bussing-NAG 4500 heavy truck and the even more monstrous Sd.kfz.9/1 'Famo'.

The only wartime photo (1944) I can find showing the Sd.kfz 'Famo' in use
with the Finns gives a glimpse of the huge vehicle taking part in some sort of
army review in front of command staff. You can clearly make out the front of
the Famo on the left, but - tantalisingly - could this be a fleeting appearance
of one of the Finn's Bussing-NAG recovery cranes on the right?
Picture source: SA KUVA Finnish wartime archive.

Under the Rapid Fire war-game rules I am allowed to add one tank recovery vehicle to the HQ Company, however due to an interesting twist of fate I actually decided to purchase models of both the Famo and Bussing-NAG.

Oh my! Braille Scale porn! And, for the first time, a 'premium' display quality
kit...A real beauty!

Yet another cheap Altaya diecast model fresh off eBay!

As it happened, the only version of the mighty Famo that I could find in stock with my usual model retailers was the fully tricked out recover version with the Bilsden 6 ton Crane, while the Bussing-NAG model was the standard cargo version which I found going cheap on eBay. Trouble is that the Finns had the standard version of the Famo and the crane version of the Bussing-NAG!

The solution seemed simple - transplant the crane onto the Bussing-NAG and convert the Famo back into the standard crew-carrying version of the half-track. (Lucky for me Trumpeter include the parts needed to make the standard version of the Famo in the kit!)

Both kit and diecast model look very nice. Obviously the Trumpeter kit should look fantastic but what amazed me most of all about both kit and model was the sheer size of the vehicles! Thus far I have been making pre-war era medium trucks and these wartime goliaths dwarf my earlier models.

The big Bussing-NAG compared to a contemporary medium truck! Oh heck!

Really that big? Oh yes, they really were! OMG!