QRF 15mm L6

As I've been building up my 15mm collection I thought it might be useful to have some more Italian stuff with a view to the Italian 8th Army in Russia and possibly some adventures in Tunisia. I already have some L3s which have seen sterling service in the Spanish Civil War, and the poor old Italians in Russia never had anything heavier than light tanks. They did have their L3s replaced with shiny new L6/40s though, and I thought it would be fun to get some of those.

Ah, the mighty L6. The Italian answer to the T60. The 20mm autocannon wasn't a bad armament for a light tank and would have been hot stuff in 1936, sadly these arrived at the front in 1942.

These are exquisite castings, a different sculptor to the French tanks I think, a bit more delicate.

These are very small indeed. Essentially they are an L3 with a turret. You can just see some of the fine detail in this shot. The models are very simple, hull, turret and double sided tracks. The only thing to watch is that the 20mm barrels are very thin, if concerned about heavy handling, they might be better replaced with wire but I'll only do that if I need to.

A rather fuzzy three quarter view.

You can see the nice suspension here, it is also sits very well as a model and looks like it is raring to go. 

I wondered quite a while what colour to paint them, my L3s are in grey green with red brown disruptive camo and the early Italian vehicles for continental service were generally grey green. However, according to Zaloga the L6s were originally intended for use in the desert, and were shipped to Russia in their khaki sand scheme and the crews then daubed mud all over them to make them blend in. That seemed like a good way to go as it meant they would also do for Tunisia. So sand basecoat, brown mud disruptive and then a brown ink wash and light tan drybrush.