'C' Battery, 4 Royal Horse Artillery

Another project completed. Riding on the wave of hobbyist accomplishments, I decided I would sit down and finally finish these things off. Like many of my other models, I put them together ages ago and started with the base coats before I quickly lost interest and my drive. However, no longer will they sit part-painted collecting dust on my shelf. No, now they can sill fully painted collecting dust as should be the way!

These are from the Plastic Soldier Company Sexton kit, and what a kit they are. The box contains five, total. However, I can field four or eight, so I may have to purchase three more separately and work on them to have a complete Battery. As it stands, I will be able to field one Troop. So that's good at least.

In-game, they offer my Armoured units some flexible and mobile Artillery, having the ability to fire both open-sight - or direct fire, and Bombardment. Again, like the M-10's, they aren't necessarily better than the static 25 Pounder Field Guns. But because of wautism, Armoured units typically had them operate within them to keep up with the pace of Tanks, so here we are.

Like the Recce post, I used some historical pictures to give me a bit of an idea as to how I might paint these up. They're all Black and White, so at least for unit markings and the likes, I could get some idea as to what's what, but I also used modern restored pictures too. So let's have a look.

I used this for colour ideas - but as will be the case for most of this force - I went with Vallejo WW2 Russian Uniform. The vehicle above looks like it's a pretty close match, perhaps mixed with a little Middlestone or Khaki, but I wasn't going to bother with that. Behind the port-hatch is the symbol of the 21st Army Group, which the 4th Armoured Brigade was under. The "S" with the number is the vehicles Seriel Number "S" meaning "Self-propelled". On my own vehicles, I attempted a free-hand of the 21st Army Group symbol. Seeing the lovely work Greg put into his free-hand pauldron's on his Orkz, I figured I'd give it a try. They came out a little rough and can only commend him on his work he achieved, so well done Greg. I also added a camo pattern to them, similar to the above pic using Black Grey. I probably added a little more than what's seen on that vehicle, but that's fine. I found it to be a quite relaxing process and enjoyed doing it none the less.

Here's a look at them together. The front two with areals and three crew will be the two Troop leaders. Moving along, the next picture is taken of some crew that operated one of these, taken somewhere in Holland. In place of the 21st Army Group symbol, I noticed upon closer inspection that they have the Black Rat. Again, I wasn't going to use these, saving them for the Tanks, etc. So the free-hand it was. On the left, the Arm of Service badge is numbered "1191" I tried a few different techniques to paint and write in White this number, but found it far too tedious to achieve. Either coming out too thick or too watery, so in the end I went with a set of Royal Artillery badges that have the numbers in Black. This at least hides what unit it's supposed to represent and I am happy enough with this.

A closer look at the front. The 27 indicates roughly the tonnage of the vehicle as well as to what Bridges it can safely cross. Something I don't think the Germans ever considered and suffered greatly with its much larger, heavier Tanks when needing to cross a lot of old Stone and Wooden Bridges dotted all over Western Europe.

Few different angles to show the camo work and other decals. Again, I used the "T" for Tracked vehicles as I don't have any "S". I have seen pictures with the "T" being used as they are still technically Tracked vehicles. So I guess it's probably fine, but I just work with what I've got and make do.

And finally the names, lol. I decided to name them as I saw many pictures with them having names on them. Again, a bit of a tedious task. This time, I used a White gel pen and for all but one, it worked well enough I think. As it is 'C' Battery, I picked names beginning with "C". Something quite common I believe with Britain at the time.
So from left to right are Crusader, Charles, Crucifix and the two Troop Commanders are Courage and Chariot. I had a little trouble with these two at first - dunno why - but I eventually got Courage down. For some unknown reason, Chariot would not stick.
Initially I wrote the names down, let them dry for a good 15 mins and then very lightly added a dab of Matte Lacquer to protect them. In doing this it stripped the top layer leaving the print on the vehicle making it look like the names were actually pianted on. It came out great. But Chariot wouldn't abide by this, so it's a bit messy, lol.

And with that ends another post of another unit completed.