Unit Reveal - Willys MBs

Two more transports today - the venerable Willys MB Jeep from Butlers' Printed Models:

Everybody knows the Jeep. Almost 650.000 of them were used during World War 2, and wherever   US troops went, the Jeep accompanied them.

Nobody really knows why the Jeep is called "Jeep". One plausible and popular theory is that it derives from Ford's designation for the vehicle, "GP". There might be a connection to a character from the contemporary Popeye comic books!

General George Marshall, Chief of Staff during the war, called the Jeep "America's greatest contribution to modern warfare." Right from the start, the vehicle had a major impact and it was not unusual to have fleets of fifty to sixty jeeps roaming the Western desert hunting Rommel's forces.

The Jeeps served in any role imaginable, including as weapon carriers for machine guns and even as  portee with 37mm guns, there was a British Jeep Wasp armed with a flamethrower and the US used Bazooka-Jeeps with improvised armor in the Ardennes. As one war journalist put it: "It does everything. It goes everywhere. It's as faithful as a dog, as strong as a mule and as agile as a goat. It constantly carries twice what it was designed for, and still keeps on going."

Our Jeeps are painted in the same colors as all the other vehicles, and loaded up with some extra supplies. They will serve your officers well on the battlefield!

Tomorrow, we will have more Airborne soldiers ready for you.

Pimp My Rides

I needed a break from painting miniatures (so many faces!) and decided to pack up the Butler's Printed Models vehicles with some leftover JTFM accessories. I hope you like it!

 I also cut out the windscreens of the Jeeps, which was quite a mission. Anyway, they look much better this way!

The HMC M8 Scott got a bunch of sand bags and other baggage, as well as a new .50 cal.

I have one more review to do, and after that we will start to reveal finished units. Exciting!

So, just to give you a new count on army composition:

70 Airborne
41 Army
25 Rangers
1 57mm ATG
1 75mm pack howitzer
2 M3 Halftracks
2 Jeeps

1 Truck
1 M5 Stuart

1 M8 Scott
3 M4A4 Sherman
1 M4A3E2 Jumbo Sherman
1 M10 Wolverine
2 M8/M20 Armored Cars
1 Bolt Action 2nd Edition book

Or in short: 136 infantry, 7 tanks, 2 armored cars, 2 guns, 5 transports and a rulebook!

Review - Butlers' Printed Models M8 Scott

Great Scott! Today we have a closer look at Butlers' Printed Models 75 mm Howitzer Motor Carriage M8.

The M8 Scott was a self-propelled howitzer based on the M5 Stuart light tank. It was used by Cavalry Reconnaissance Squadrons for close support against fortified positions and saw action in Italy, North-West Europe and the Pacific.
Although based on the Stuart it differs from it in many aspects. It uses a new, larger turret and the hull had no hatches for the driver and loader. Instead, all crew had to get in and out of the vehicle through the open-topped turret. It also lacked a hull-mounted machine gun, but had a .50 cal mounted on the back of the turret.

Butlers' Printed Models offers a M8 Scott in different scales, including 28mm and 1/48th. Here, we look at the 28mm version:

While the hull correctly shows the large vision flaps on the glacis and the additional periscopes on the top, it also has a hull MG modeled. I guess I will just remove it.

Overall, the print is okay. Yes, there are visible steps, but this is straight "out of box" and it will be easy to sand the larger areas down. Otherwise, proportions and details look fine.

In comparison to the Rubicon Models the M8 Scott is larger, but the dimensions are almost perfectly 1/56th scale. In reality, the M8 was slightly longer and taller than the M5 Stuart. So if at all, the Rubicon Models M5 is too high.

Overall, a nice model that doesn't require any assembly, but offers a good degree of details. The addition of the hull MG is a weird oversight, but that is easily corrected.

Review - Butlers' Printed Models Jeeps

Butlers' Printed Models offers an interesting service - 3D-printed vehicles in different scales and covering WW2, Cold War and Modern vehicles, including several models I haven't seen anywhere else.
Today we will look at their first contribution to our project, which is the humble jeep, or rather, two jeeps!

This is a first for me, I have never had the opportunity to examine a 3D-printed vehicle up close. I have seen plenty of pictures, and like to pretend I know a thing or two about the technology, but I never actually got my hands on the products.

Many people will say that 3D-prints are still too rough and lack the details to compete with resin and plastic kits, and, well, that is true. Nevertheless, these jeeps are making a mighty fine impression on me:

The undersides are quite rough, but that doesn't really matter, does it?

There are some easy improvements one can make, i.e. taking out the printed windows from the frames and replacing the steering wheel. I hope to find a driver for each, and I'll add some of the surplus storage from other kits.

The stepping on the hood is quite obvious, but it is extremely easy to fix.

It took me literally less than two minutes to file it down to this, and some sanding should easily finish the job.

The size of the vehicles looks spot on:

I'll do another 5 minutes of filing/sanding on each and than they are going into the painting pipeline. No doubt they will make great additions to the army!