French tanks in British service, Battle of France, 1941

[NARSES2]

Coming along nicely 

[Jakko]

Thanks, and after a bit more tinkering with the B1, it's now done too:

You cannot view this attachment.You cannot view this attachment.

The tow cables are nylon string with eyelets from — again — an AFV Club Churchill. The pins that the eyes are on are plastic rod while the hooks are brass rod, all glued into holes I drilled into the armour. I first laid the cables onto the sides of the tank, trying different ways to get them to sit plausibly, and when I found those I added the pens followed by glueing on the cables themselves. Only after that did I drill the holes for the hooks. Then I added a little support for the aerial base so it lines up with the B1's normal antenna cable, and I felt that enough is enough I'm not going to add the legs after all, because a few of them were damaged when I removed them from the tank earlier.

[Wardukw]

Very nice so far 👌

[Rick Lowe]

 

[Old Wombat]

 

[Jakko]

Thanks Now to see about painting them ...

[Jakko]

There's some paint on!

You cannot view this attachment.

According to Mike Starmer, Revell 361 is a good colour for Khaki Green No. 5, which is the basic colour for scheme 2 of the camouflage according to MTP 20 from 1939. So I bought a jar of it, the Aqua Color version, but when I thinned it with water and sprayed it on the H39, it was not exactly a complete success. I had feared a little that it would bead up on the bare plastic, and indeed, it did. (I had sprayed primer onto the model, but mainly where the metal parts are. The aerosol can was almost empty so I didn't spray the whole of the tanks with it.) So I quickly mixed up, by eye, approximately the same colour from Tamiya olive green and yellow green to spray the H39 with.

The original idea was to paint both tanks in the same pattern, but on re-reading Mike Starmer's book about British colours and camouflage in North-West Europe, I was reminded that the British Army changed over to new colours and patterns according to MTP 46 sometime in 1941. That's exactly the time period these models are supposed to represent, and though MTP 46 was mainly used on lorries, trucks etc., and rarely on fighting vehicles, I decided that it's reasonably plausible for the B1 anyway. The tank is so slab-sided and blocky that hiding the corners, like the patterns in MTP 20 are supposed to do, would probably be less effective than a pattern intended to equalise the apparent brightness of the lighter and darker sides of the vehicle. For this reason, I sprayed the B1 in Khaki Green No. 3 by AK 3rd Gen, which is a lot browner than you would expect — you might as well call it chocolate brown. Compared to the colour sample in Mike Starmer's book, this is slightly too light, but I can live with that. I will paint the upper sides in very dark brown, SCC 1A, but definitely not in Mickey Mouse pattern, because that's far too common on models, if you ask me. I'll use one of the patterns that are in MTP 46, but I've not decided which one exactly, yet.