Stash additions for January 2017

January is 'Anti-Aircraft Month'! All my 'Finnish' project builds are flak related (either AA guns, their crews or towing vehicles). Above Zvesda kits were delivered today, a lovely BEF Bofors set, Soviet 37mm gun set and little Flak 38 set.

The Finns seem to have been reasonably well equipped when it came to AA guns and there is a wonderful reference source over at JaegerPlatoon.Net, including everything from light anti-aircraft machine guns all the way up to the heavy flak guns: www.jaegerplatoon.net/AAMG.htm

As usual, SA KUVA - the Finnish WW2 photo archive - is an excellent source
of reference photographs. Anti-Aircraft guns seemed to be a very popular subject
for propaganda purposes, so there is an abundance of really good material. If you
do a search for 'ilmatorjunta' - which I believe is Finnish for 'anti-aircraft', you
should come up trumps.

Like many other nations at the time, the mainstay of their AA inventory was the good old Bofors 40mm. Perhaps not surprising as Sweden is a near neighbour. The Finn's used the M/35 & M/39 Bofors, while very similar to the British Mk. I gun, the Finnish gun did not come equipped with a shield (so I will omit that component when I build the kit).

The Zvezda British Bofors set is actually very detailed and not what you would
term an 'easy build' (which many of their 'Art of Tactic' range are).

Actually, the reason I have also bought the Russian 37mm AA gun is so I can pinch it's crew and wheels! The Finnish Bofors has different wheels to its British counterpart, and the British gun crew are too different in their uniforms for me to convert, so the Russian AA crew will be substituted (probably with the addition of German helmets).

I have bought two of the Zvezda Bofors sets so that I can model the gun in both static and mobile modes.

As the war progressed and Finland swapped sides (!), they started to get more and more German equipment. Among this were a number of Flakvierling 38 (or Flak 38 for short) 2cm guns which the Finns designated as theItK/38.

The Zvesda Flak38 is a sweet little kit, with minimal parts but it looks terrific and I can use the German crew as is as they will pass for Finns when painted.

For the towed version (which, because I am using war game rules as my guidelines for this project, I will also need), I was lucky enough to pick up an example of this gun in its mobile configuration with a Deagostini Steyr 1500A/01 car I bought.

I bought this Steyr 1500A/Flak 38 set as I wanted the car to convert into a
Finnish Army command car. Handy.

So I just need to source a suitable Finnish vehicle as the tow (a light truck, like the Russian Gaz AA or Zis 5, which the Finns had in fairly large numbers).