Eindhoven Reached - But Not Taken

Painting an Airborne Platoon for Kampfgruppe von Luck

A Work-in-Progress (WiP) - 1st update

A few posts back I posted (here) the 20mm figures for my next project, an Airborne platoon (and supports).  At that point the figures had all been cleaned up and primed.

Since then, I've have made some progress and reckon I'm almost a third of the way through, excluding the vehicles and glider - hence the rather silly title for this post.  But enough for an excuse to post a few photos.

First, the two guns: a 75mm Pack Howitzer; and, an Airborne variant of the 6-Pounder Anti-Tank Gun.

Each should have a crew of 5 men plus a junior leader, but the other figures are not finished yet, and can be seen in some of the later batches below.  BTW, by 'finished', I mean they are fully painted but have yet to sprayed with matt varnish and their bases textured and painted.

Next up, a mixed bag of a medic and assorted casualties (most of whom look beyond his help) and a bailed-out tank crew.

I've had the tank crew for ages so thought I'd include them in this batch.  The set included 5 figures but I didn't like one of them with an MP40 so he didn't make it out of the tank.  

Now, a Vickers medium machine gun with its full 5-man crew (no junior leader).

These are Adler IIRC (most of the other figures are FAA) and slightly bigger, but not enough to show.  Firing the gun is 'Lofty', so called because he has oddly long legs, and if he were to stand up, would tower over most of his comrades in arms.

Last of the fully painted figures are three 2" mortar teams (two of them have a second figure in a different painting batch), a figure with a supply canister (to serve as a supply point), and three individual paras (not sure why they went into this batch).

And, coming up behind these, are three more batches.

They've all had their faces and hands done and outlined in black, and the batch (what I call a plastic container's worth of figures) on the left has had the Denison smock painted and the webbing picked out in black. 

The only other progress has been assembly of the three SHQ Airborne Jeep kits, shown with some more supply canisters that will be used for jump-off or supply points, or maybe just battlefield scatter.  

The Jeeps will have magnets counter-sunk into the seats, which will hold in some AB Jeep crews I have - they will have magnets inserted where the sun doesn't shine.

Compared to many others I've seen, this is slow progress, but I'm fairly pleased with it.  Unfortunately, we're just running into another week and a bit of hot weather (by UK standards).  Not only do I find painting unpleasant when a bit sweaty, but also the paints dry quickly, and trying to keep them a suitable consistency makes it even more trying.  In short, I expect progress to slow over the next ten days or so.  But I shall try and keep them ticking over.