'The Grand Old Duke of York'-Part 2, winter, 1944, the Baltic, 2nd Soviet shock army. 1/72

Muchmirth · June 12, 2021

The Grand Old Duke of York in 1/72 scale.

Part 2 of my 'before' and 'after' diorama is complete.

Its winter now and the 111 Germanic ss panzer corp has pulled back from the Tannenburg line/Narva region of Estonia after delaying the progress of the 2nd Soviet shock army.

The relevant links to part 1 is HERE

The link to the WIP is HERE

The link to the rfi for IL-2 is HERE

The link to the rfi for the is-2 is HERE

What Autumn looked like in part one below:

The below pics of the il-2. The Stormavik was flying towards the front, following the road and the convoy retreating back towards prussia/Poland. It spots some rag tag elements of the 20th waffen ss (The Estonians who no longer fought for the nazis but more for their own country.) It decides to circle back and take out the minor, futile counter attack, covertly building from the woods.

The unsuspecting ss look up to see the il-2 bearing down on them firing its devastating 37mm cannon's and rs-82 rockets: Some of the pics you maybe able to make out here I tried to make the ground strikes of the rounds hitting the ice/snow.

More of the ss sneaking into position to try take out the unsuspecting rear guard and engineers:

I removed the mg from the half track and placed it on top of the sand bags ready to man (behind this you can make out the helmets from the German graves.) Further down the the dio are other strewn parts of the half track.

In this I used the second armour fast half track from which wasn't used in part one. You may notice from other pics that the wheel was blown off the half track further down the slope leading off the road towards the battlefield, This is to give a clue as to where it as struck. Their are also ropes attached to the front and back of the half track used to haul it away. The road was detonated, to crater it, by the retreating division to try and slow the soviet steam roller. The idea here was that they used one of the tanks to pull the wrecked half track back up the hill to part block the road, then cut the ropes and left it lay. A few sand bags where built up around the crater and half track but then the defence was abandoned.

Also the graves in front of the road are fresh, hence why the build of snow on top is not as heavy as in other parts of the dio.

Close by the counter attack are some Russian guards warming themselves beside a oil drum fire whilst the last of the trench defenders surrender and are taken further to the rear:

The black boots poking out from beneath the bloody blankets, the ground too frozen to bury this man.

The T34/85'S are armour fast as well:

These here are used like tractors, one hauling the anti tank obstacle out with a chain, the wing I saved from part 1, is the wing of the crashed yak-3. The tank is used to remove the debris to help the bottleneck of traffic trying to get to the road:

Now the t34 which drove right at the trench (admittedly this is a bit of a stretch but I liked the angel and gave me an excuse to hang icicles from the barrel!!!!). This the 2nd of the armour fast duo. I used a metal binder clip and some tea strainer gauze to make the twisted grill at the rear. The idea that a heroic or nuts tank driver and commander drove suicidal at the trench after running out of ammo and trying to crush the enemy mg emplacement but hit a mine. Then a panzer faust hit its rear (possibly from the near by murder hole-seen in part one) as it was disabled, also blowing the hatches open.

The IS-2 is caught in the tail backs, it has rolled over the area that once was a house, now reduced to rubble: (here I made as BIG mistake by deciding to include the hat tank rider figures, these are very poor and shouldn't have been included as I don't like this at all, as you see their equipment, uniforms and poses are very poor.) If I could have removed without destroying the tank then I really ought to have but a lesson for next time.

I very much enjoy the zvezda is-2 model: Massive thanks to Stix for your advice, I applied your techniques and guidance on this one and the brushes worked a treat:

I used a hobby knife to scratch the decals to make them look more worn along with the hand painted white lines.

In part one their was heer troop caught in an explosion, so this time I decided to include him at the bottom of the frozen shell crater he was trying to crawl out of: