Merry Christmas and some Heavy Artillery!

Merry Christmas everyone, I hope you all had a great day yesterday. I didn't get any wargaming stuff this year, although I did get a fabulous pair of Dr Martens faux Monkey Boots. 

Back in the the late 1970s it was all very well for The Clash to stomp about in DMs, but us penniless teenagers had to make do with sneakers, old army boots or Monkey Boots, the poor man's Dr Marten, which cost about a tenner. Anyway, these are expensively luxurious, and hopefully will last a long time. 

Anyway, to spread a bit of seasonal high explosive cheer around, I have been on the hunt for some US Heavy Artillery for a very long time, specifically for a 155mm Long Tom. While there are various offerings of the tracked SP version, seemingly no-one makes the towed version in 1/100th scale, although you can get 1/72nd scale models. I've already got 155mm howitzers but I wanted something more suitable fir Corps artillery. 

In the end I resorted to trawling eBay for old Roco guns, as the model is long OOP, and they seem to be as rare as hens teeth (whereas back in the 1970s, they were everywhere).

Eventually I came across one listed as second hand, with no packaging, at a model shop in Germany. Vast sums of cash were transferred abroad, and after a while, a box turned up in the UK.

Here it is, and it isn't even a 155! It is even beefier 175mm, and what a massive great gun it is. At 1/87th it is obviously a bit overscale, but the real thing is so enormous anyway, that I don't think it matters. 

Although all the various folding and rotating parts still worked, and the gun locks back into travel mode, I lightly glued it with UHU to hold it all together, although some enterprising person in future can easily re-articulate it again. I even left the original mould lines on for nostalgias sake.

This is one of the better detailed Roco models, not as good as some, but certainly a step up from e.g. the primitive Panzer IVs and T34s so beloved of Charles Grant. As it is heavy artillery, it warranted four crew figures, all from the Peter Pig standing US gunners pack.

The PP gunners are really nice figures, the older style castings and so much slimmer than their modern 'michelin man' pals and they fit in well with my PSC US figures. The PP Russian gunners are similar, so I'd buy some now before they get remodelled. 

The gun I just painted in my usual variable OD scheme - Vallejo Russian Uniform with a wash of Bronze Green. Variations in the density of the wash produce guns and vehicles in a variety of tones, and the wash also works as a lowlight. It then got a drybrush of VJ Iraqi Sand.

As the gun is so vast, it goes on an  equally vast base, 40mm x 90mm. I deliberately left the trails closer together than they actually would be when deployed to avoid making it even bigger. I'm pleased to have finally got one of these, but I'm still faintly baffled by the apparently unavailablity of the towed 155, even from numerous 3D printers as well as the usual metal suppliers. Now I just need to work it into a game!