So, I'm putting together my early war French stuff and I decided to continue my tank building and painting spree I started with the Tigers a few weeks ago.
Thankfully, the French were totally defeated before winter set in so I won't be doing any winter schemes or painting for this army. I can finally retire my white paint for awhile I hope :)
First up, I'm knocking out the 4 Somua S35 that will be in my Panhard (Panhorde) list.
In game terms I think it's a great little tank. For the time a 4, 2 1 armor is solid and the 2, 6, 4+ gun ain't bad either. The only drawback, like most French tanks is the slow turret. Historically, this little guy stood up well against it's adversary the early Panzer III. It's only because of poor strategic decisions by higher command and an inability to produce it in large numbers that it wasn't a major factor on the battlefield. The Germans used a number of captures Somua's late into 1944, with some seeing action in Normandy.
Here's the final product:
See my inspiration, how it got build and more smexy painted pics after the break!
For historical reference here are some more pics that as I used as part of my painting guide.
.jpg)
The build process was easy as these guys don't have a ton of parts, the only frustrating bit was getting the commanders hatch to stay level, but in the end I got it to work. Very little flash or resin weirdness on these:
 |
| Very few pieces indeed. And while I hate the way the smaller metal pieces are molded onto the bar of white metal, I can live with it. |
 |
| Detail of body |
 |
| Detail of tracks and gubbins |
 |
| Assembled turret |
 |
| Assembled body |
 |
| Final product |
Now on to the fun part, here are the painted pics!
A couple of notes. While most french units used the Deck of Cards symbols to represent their unit and platoon one, the one I chose to represent here, actually used dominoes. I thought that was pretty cool so I used it here. They're not perfect looking but I think they add some nice variety as all the Panhards will be using the Deck of Cards symbols.
Further, depending on rates of friendly fire French tanks placed their roundels in differing places. For my unit I put them on the top of the commanders cupola, thinking that this platoon has been lucky enough to not get shot at by it's own dudes.
Had I been drinking milk when I read, "Thankfully, the French were totally defeated before winter set in so I won't be doing any winter schemes or painting for this army," I would have blown it out my nose.
ReplyDeleteSince I've recently started an early war (free) French Foreign Legion project (that is moving at about the speed of a Souma across rough terrain) I'm loving your posts. Extra source material is great to have, especially as your vehicles came out so nicely.
I picked up one interesting fact in trying to find the "right" camo pattern for my Legionaires' support tanks. It turns out that camo patterns were applied at the factory for French tanks and no effort was made to supply units from a common source. So it was quite common to have multiple different patterns within the same unit. Doesn't look good on the table, but historically accurate.