My Model Dioramas:
US. Army, LRRPs in Vietnam on patrol.
German, PAK-36, 3.7cm A/T Gun “The Door Knocker” in France 1940.
This old Tamiya kit, sat around for years, until I found this odd cut piece of wood, out of a shipyard scrap wood pile, and the model and base eventually came together, with a simple plaster on the slope, and the figures added, in a fighting up-hill diorama, basically flat, with grass on it, and the model, it was simple, turned out well for me at the time, and then one day the plaster removed itself from the base and after gluing and re-gluing, and patching it up, I dropped it or something, and again it nearly went into the trash…but was finally resurrected to a deployed in the French hedgerows, early in the war.
The first two pictures are of the original diorama, and the rest are after I fixed it up.
The French “Resistance Fighters”:
German West-Wall, Observation Bunker:
This was something I wanted to make for a long time, (Dioramas are challenging for me and take up so much space) and I wanted to do it right, but to this day regret making that damn hatch into top…they wouldn’t do that a bomb could go right threw there, even a grenade tossed threw there…may change that somehow some day, but stands for now. I wanted the roof to come off anyways so it was a silly mistake. The rest came together ok, then I updated it 5-6 years ago again, but? I should try again to get it right, maybe this winter.
German Luftwaffe, Fixed 3.7cm Flak Implacement:
German (Georgian Volunteers) Normandie, meets the US. 2nd Infantry:
Members of the Underground Movement in Europe (1/35):
These fellows look like they may be French, but they could as well be in Belgium, the Netherlands, or the East they were the Partizans, but in any of the lands the German Army had taken control over, the people fought back, however, they could buy gathering information or using their guns, or took down airmen back to Allied line, that who the scene represents.
NEW “The Airmen” American-Flyers, WWII, B-25 Air-Crew Operating in the Pacific:
I don’t have many “Air-Men” in my collection, a little bit because planes are in 1/32 scale, which is larger than 1/35th Armor Models-its noticeable and it sucks, Aircraft would have to be in 1/75th or something to fit the same space. Anyways, these people were a large part of the story of WWII and all others too, so, I have individual American, British, Japanese, and so on, three or four German Aces, and Bomber pilots, but I liked the group shot for this “Kit” it was pretty darn good, and more artistic than some, I added and thing twisted, this is how they turned out. A Mitchel Bomber Crew, in the tropical kit, it could just as well be from Catch-22, where, they flying out of Tunisia or something so had summer clothing, great story there. So It’s Bomber Crewmen too, so finally have something for their contributions to the war effort, and the tremendous price paid, there will be more to come.
I recommend looking into these bombers on how they operated, and their effect on Japanese Land, Naval, and Air Forces, they were devastating, up-gunned, often flying low-level, and very fast, like a Mosquito!, but they used bombs rigged with parachutes too slow the decent, otherwise they could also blow themselves up! A few even carried 75mm canons! They raised Hell with Japanese Transports, and even tried skip=bomping off of the waves to fly into the ships! Amazing stuff and a terror at the same time, and because of the nature of the tactics, they suffered because they were closer to the ground, or tree tops, or…water than they ever should have been, at full speed, full of bombs, shooting at people that were also shooting at them, sweating all over while killing people they did not even know, it must have been complete pandemonium at times.
Getting captured by the Japanese was not an option then, the Germans didn’t particularly treat the American Air Crewman much the better, but a lot more served in German Presion Camps, they rarely got to a camp if you fell anywhere near Japanese-controlled areas. On the Japanese end, if someone bombed your city, and shot up your home, it was a very nasty and bitter war, nobody won, and the only ones who won were the ones who won were politicians, the people who had stayed home, but built everything for the war, few were completely exempt.
So…that pretty much wraps that up in a nutshell.
German advance on Kharkov:
This is one example of a squad or platoon of soldiers set in front of a vehicle or two, as an accent, not necessarily with the correct vehicle, but close, I have Grossdeutsclnd Panzer-Gernadiers, 10-12 guys walking, and several American Soldiers groups to use in the cabinets.
Here again, I had this idea, of portraying somehow the impending disasters of the horrible winter battle on the Easter Front, just atrocious, like others fought there but magnified a bit! A record cold of the first winter stopped the Germans in their tracks, and unprepared though many soldiers had seen it coming, the next winter..and again caught with their pants down really, there were horrific casualties, even just freezing to death. and these figures I had bought for the big scene, but that never happened and would have taken a lot of space to do right, would have arguably been cooler, but I just wanted to make them, so they all have their small stands, it works, but not as well as I would have liked. They don’t “Pop” at you, but they do look frozen!
“The First Winter in Russia” German Soldier Diorama:
More to my comment of the effect of a larger scene, here just four infantrymen in a trench on the Russian Front, you get the feel of the “knee-deep” snow, and just the difficulties of getting out of the frozen trench and trying to run towards the enemy….a desperate situation at best. you may get hidden if it was showing out, or…completely lost! A kind of warfare like this becomes static very quickly, if prepared, you have medium tanks ready with wide tracks, soldiers with cold-weather gear, and boots, and a lot of stored food, fuel, and ammunition.
The Germans didn’t have any of that, but the Russians, had a long history of winter war and had learned many valuable lessons on winter operations, like oil that would not freeze, loose fitting is good, works in winter good enough, precision German rifles and tanks and planes had problems in the winter. And all these lessons were learned again and again, and so the Germans never had enough, working good enough, in enough places, in enough time and the ending was inevitable.
The Cavalry:
Horses are always a challenge, but ya gotta have some, and there are some more to come (just not built yet), there is an SS- Reconnaissance Officer, and the Cossacks (In this case, Wehrmacht Volunteers!
More Mini-Vignettes in 1/35th scale:
From World War Two Vignets of English Women of the Military to British para’s and infantrymen and Polish Paratroopers in the Netherlands, a series of German, Gestapo, and Polizei at Warsaw, with several different soldiers of the Heer-Wehrmacht, Luftwaffe, and Waffen Ss uniforms and groups, to much to figure out again at the moment. Ending with the US, the Son-Tay Raiders in North Vietnam, And Troops training with their chemical warfare suits during the Desert Storm build-up. English/IRA Troubles in Northern Ireland, and the British Royal Marines at Goose Green, during the Falklands Operation.
Russian ISU-122 Assault Gun-WWII:
This is an upgraded model from long ago, now used on a City base. I thought I had taken more pictures…I’ll reshoot it, as it is done now. This was how it looked in the idea mode. Add to this site section when I get more stuff done, but this is the base for it! I’ll be adding more here as some of the old ones are quite dated and needed some help, and after several moves, from home to home, some are broken to bits, and most have broken antennas, and machine guns at least. But I’ll get going on this summer, and I will get out of burying and building kits, though I have piles of un-built ones as well.
The ISU-122 is one of my favorite Russian vehicles, and with the riders all over it fit a diorama petty well.
Joseph Stalin-II Tank, fording a river over a fascine bridge “Heading To Berlin”:
The Idea was from a picture, and lucky for me, the base was in large part, provided, via a hollow casting, I was lucky enough to find, and buy it. and modified by me, a couple of years ago, and only had a temporary model on it of an IS2 (JS-II), I was making it a Polish used vehicle, but realized the uniforms are different than the Russian ones, So Russian it is then, in the rush to Berlin, butt, but I’m upgrading the large diorama, and adding a permanent tank to it now.
I took pictures of the upgrade / Rebuild of this diorama, it took some time, and I guess I nursed it for some time while having a new cabinet for such large dioramas, being built, that project has had some set-backs, and this ended up much different really that the start, it was grayer, but trust me in the re-weathering process it went through all the seasons! I finally had to put it on the shelf before I broke it or dropped it! in the old cabinet now, and I’m pretty happy with it, the uniforms on the soldiers went from light khaki to green khaki, and the tank from wanting it to be Polish, to making Russian, and then somehow had the decals backward, and wrecked them, but found in my old decals a similar variation, this unit went into Berlin, and so it goes.
Panther Turret / Bunker in Berlin, 1945:
As a ner-Cold War starts, the Ash of the prior has hardly settled, and the future is bleak! There will have to be a lot of work to build up the destroyed city of Europe. Some will take many decades before they become what we know now as “Modern Cities”. But in 1946, Berlin which was too far to see into the future, much of Germany lay in ruins and fell into Communist control.
