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Iconic WW2 guns, Ace & Zvezda 1/72


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To get a bit of variation into the armour shelf I thought I'd have a look at some guns. At first I had some issues choosing, but with much of what's around in 1/72 being somewhat small and simple I ended up just grabbing three at once and calling that a single build. So in the end I ended up with two decidedly iconic guns of WW2, the 88mm Flak 36 and the Bofors 40mm AA gun, along with a probably rather less well known but still somewhat widely used gun, the Bofors 37mm AT gun found in Ace's catalogue (as the Finnish PstK36). Now the first two probably don't need any introduction, but as for the last one it was a small AT gun designed for Sweden's army in the early 30s, and used both as a wheeled piece on its own and in armoured vehicles. It was also sold abroad, the main customers being Finland and Poland, with smaller orders going to the Dutch, the Commonwealth (Ordnance QF 37 mm Mk I), Republican Spain and Denmark. Captured guns then saw service with Germany, the USSR and Romania. Supposedly a very well designed gun it is to have been quite good against the tanks of its day, but as most such guns it quickly started to struggle as we get past the first part of WW2. It had a pretty good HE round though, so it continued to be highly useful against just about everythign on the ground except for tanks.

 

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This won't be a big one in 1/72...

 

Anyway, getting started on things with a quick barrel comparison as I drilled them out. I'm worryingly amused by the fact that the tiny little one was meant to knock tanks, while the two much larger where at leats originally meant to be pointed at wood and aluminium.

 

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No, I won't even think about replicating the muzzle break holes on the 37mm.

The Ace kits goes from "some" to "generous" amounts of flash, and has a bit of mould slippage in places as well. Zvezdas kits are more uniforms, generally having that "ridged" kind of mould line, especially along sides that's be parallel to the mould separation movement. Maybe it makes it easier to pull the pursues out? These two kits are designed to be cheap and simple enough to fit wargaming as well, so... They're still ok from the model building perspective I'd say (though not brilliantly detailed), and well, they were available. The biggest issue is the feed guides for the 40mm ammo, where the two side ones have been cast as a solid block.

 

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Some carving out later, followed by a quick plasticard repair, and things are hopefully better. In that it should look better form a distance once painted up at least.

As we seem to be talking just under thirty pieces a model here a quick bit of tinkering gave me this.

 

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The bit that's turned up under the 40mm gun is the gun blister/pod from a JA37 Viggen, same scale, that I had lying around. 30x173 for an interceptor...

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So, built them up and slapped on some primer.

 

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The 40mm continued the theme from the 88 with a pretty substantial mould ridge to be removed from most things. Now with all this done I took another look at the solid discs trying to be the sights of the 40mm, and decided that even I could probably touch it up a bit. So off with those and out with the brass wire.

 

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Actually filling in the spider webs on the other hand seems like it'd likely just end up a mess. So off to paint.

 

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And there we are, all glossed up for the wash.

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12 hours ago, Stromness said:

Milicast do photoetch Bofors sights, even different versions (early/late) - just in case you might be interested.

I'll keep that in mind for the future. It isn't too unlikely that I'll return to the subject one day, and better sights would be one of the big things then.

Edited by Parrahs
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