Sunday, February 28, 2016

'Nautical' from LeeH - 'Landships!'


Back when Curt admitted me to this competition I made the foolhardy statement that I was going to try and get through the Challenge without entering the Bonus Rounds. My reasoning was I wanted to concentrate on getting model painted that were specifically for gaming rather than for display. The problem is my lead mountain contains some lovely models and your bonus rounds are just too tempting to ignore!


 So in typical 'Reject' fashion I'm taking the nautical bonus round and twisting until it breaks...hence I present some WWI Mk IV tanks. Churchill famously headed up the Admiralty Landships Committee that was influential in the early development of the secret weapon that became known as the Tank. These Mk IV Tanks represent one of the most successful and widely used versions of the classic rhomboid shaped vehicles.


The Mark Four had a crew of eight inside its 26ft hull and the male tanks weighed in at about 29 tons. Nothing of similar size would be built for another two decades. The 105 bhp engine produced a maximum speed of 4 mph so these beasts still lumbered very slowly across the battlefield. The Germans by this stage of the war were beginning to develop anti tank strategies such as the K Bullet and were beginning to use artillery in a direct AT role. I have nothing but admiration for the men that fought in these early tanks, they really were a different breed and very very brave.


These models are by H&R and originally I bought four vehicles, two male and two female. However the machine gun tanks had such serious mould lines that I couldn't remove them without also removing the detail. I reluctantly decided to just proceed with the Male Mark Fours but I'm really happy with how they turned out.

Regards

Lee Hadley

14 comments:

  1. Landships. Of course!

    A brilliant spin on the topic, and excellently-executed!

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  2. Nice work Lee :)

    Twisting the theme so as to enter landships, I'm surprised DaveD hasn't submitted a bunch of camels as "ships of the desert" ;)

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  3. Stunning work Lee and the basing is just perfect for these!

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  4. Very nice work, Lee! The I like the weathering and squadron markings! ;)

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  5. A skewball interpretation of the theme but I like it. You've done a fabulous job on these little guys Lee. I quite like the pockmarked terrain - very evocative.

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  6. Lovely weathering and basing, they really look the part!

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  7. Clever use of the black and white background. Hmmmm 6mm WW1 well that should lead to some divisional level goodness. It is funny 6mm WW1 was mentioned at cavalier yesterday (By a guy who does not even know you! Strange as it may seem there was a guy who did not know any bloggers were at the show!) Shame about the female tanks but these are very worth looking at.

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  8. The landships are great, thanks for sharing!

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  9. brilliant idea to go slightly off piste and great paint job.

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