Sunday, February 17, 2019

'Water Feature' from BenitoM: Higgins Landing Craft



My contribution to this week’s bonus round is indirectly related to the British Airborne project: a landing craft (the US Higgins) widely used in the Normandy beaches on June 44.

Actually and to make things more clear, this entry should have been the landing craft AND a section of the Royal Marine Commandos, which were the first troops to contact with the airborne unit defending the positions at the famous Pegasus Bridge. 

Unfortunately, despite ordering some Commando blisters from Warlord in early January, the order was lost and only recovered in the system by the end of the month, hitting my mailbox at home too late to be finished for this entry.
Focusing on the model, this is a very nice  resin casting, full historically designed and produced by Barrage Miniatures. The model is fairly large (almost 20 cm long) and as you can see in the photos below can accommodate a good number of infantry models (mine are based in 25 mm rounds, but with use 20mm bases these can be put two to a file).

The ramp is also very cleverly designed to be either close or open with a “snap” mechanism that keeps it in place in either position.


I had some trouble finding a suitable crew models until alerted by a Swedish Lard penguin about the Rubicon amphibious Buffalo crew. These actually come with the 30mm cal. MMGs and perfectly fit in the positions of the Barrage model. Note nonetheless that Rubicon models are truly 25mm scale and therefore look slightly small when compared to the Warlord 28mm size figures.



This entry credits some additional 80 points to my Challenge score:
Vehicle (landing craft): 20 points
Crew: 2 half models + 1 full size model = 10 points
Bonus round extra: 50 points

12 comments: