TIM FORSTER
SMF Supporter
Well, I’m back! Rumours of my demise have been greatly exaggerated, etc…
Looking back I can see that it was November 21 that I finished my last project:
The Road to Singapore: Malaya 1941-42
Dear all, After (finally) finishing my Liberation, Italy 1944 diorama this is going to be my next throw of the dice. The Malayan Campaign began with the Japanese invasion of the Peninsular (now modern day Malaysia) on the eve of Pearl Harbour - 7th December 1941 - and ended with the surrender...
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Coming before that one was this:
Liberation, Italy 1944
For my ‘back story’ readers are directed to my posting in the Introduce Yourself section. The short version is that this is my first 1/35 project since I downed tools as a 16-year-old in 1984. Those who followed me from the other site will know that this blog started almost two years ago. I’m...
www.scale-models.co.uk
Sorry it has been so long. It’s all the usual excuses: work, family, life, etc. I haven’t even been much of a lurker…
But I have not been entirely idle!
When I was in my first modelling phase as a teenager back in the early 80s I had always wanted to build a Battle of the Bulge diorama. I can still recall the rush of excitement when I finally bought this book (published in 1984):
It was a HUGE inspiration. It also wasn’t cheap! As a comprehensive work of scholarship accompanied by all those maps and photos (many in the classic Then and Now format) I still don’t think it has really been surpassed, although there have been many excellent works published since.
Of course, there has been a lot more written about the history of this particular conflict since then, with the ‘Duel in the Mist’ series of books being a particular highlight.
We are all familiar with many of the images of the Ardennes offensive, such as a King Tiger crowded with Fallschirmjäger, or heavily armed Panzer Grenadiers posing in front of knocked out American vehicles at Poteau. Then there are the cine films showing the advance of Kampfgruppe Peiper into Stavelot.
It is worth noting that most of these come from the German side, taken during the early phase of the campaign. Ironically, many of these images survive today because they were captured by the Americans quite early on during the battle and then used in newsreels.
Then there are many more photographs taken later in the battle, mostly from the Allied perspective, usually showing destroyed German equipment and shattered buildings - often covered in snow (we will come back to that in due course).
Of course, there have also been a lot of dioramas inspired by these events - so many, in fact, that it might be said that the whole idea of depicting a scene from the Battle of the Bulge (a title that itself now seems somewhat dated) in model form has become something of a cliché.
So what to do? Well I am not going to lay claim to trying anything totally new here - but I am going to try and give it a slightly fresh spin. I am also going to avoid tanks, although, as you will already have spotted from the first picture, there is going to be an Sdkfz 250 Neu halftrack and a Schwimmwagen - plus a Jeep.
Above: SS-Oberscharführer and SS-Unterscharführer of 1. SS-Panzer-Division 'LSSAH', SS-Panzer-Aufklärungs-Abteilung 1 at the Kaiserbaracke crossroads on the road between Saint-Vith and Malmedy, probably 17th/18th December 1944
So the setting here is a moment during the first days of the German offensive - most likely the 17th or 18th December. Unlike my last diorama, this one is not based on any particular event, but a possible scenario. Elements of a German Reconnaissance Unit from 1st SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler have pulled up in front of a farmhouse during the advance through American lines. Despite the breakthrough and the initial euphoria that many of the soldiers may have felt, the commanders already knew that things were not going to plan and progress has been too slow.
The Recce group have arrived in a Schwimmwagen and 250 halftrack and troops dismount. An officer studies his map and checks his watch. Meanwhile, out of sight behind the building, an escaping Jeep has broken down. Realising that the enemy has just arrived, the GIs abandon their vehicle and beat a hasty retreat away from the farm and up the hill. Hearing the noise, some of the German troops move to investigate.
So the title is supposed to reflect the predicament of both sides at a brief moment in time when the Germans seemed to have the advantage and the Allies appeared to be losing - and yet we all know how things were to turn out!
Here are few shots showing my early attempts to work out the composition.
Part of the challenge I have faced has been to position the farmhouse so that it screens the abandoned Jeep from the advancing Germans without cutting the whole diorama in half…
Once I had the general idea I laid out the vehicles (or at least their shells) and decided what size and shape the base should be. All my previous dioramas have been rectangular, but I felt it was time to try something a little more daring - so I drew a shape that had curved ends but a straight middle section (a rhomboid rectangle?)
Ignore the stray British infantryman - he's just there for a bit of scale.
On the plus side the choice of shape means that I will have less corners to fill. On the downside, making the edging is going to be a nightmare!
I also started to construct a mock-up of the building. As you can see, this is just a rough cut from cardboard off-cuts held together with masking tape - but this was enough to convince me that the shape and dimensions of the base were more or less correct.
Having worked out the dimensions of the base I then cut out two pieces of card and used double-sided tape to attach these to both sides of a piece of low-density foam (the sort used for ceiling insulation which can be picked up for free from most building sites).
I have used this foam for both my previous projects because it is a) very cheap (i.e. free) and b) very easy to carve. However, it is also very messy. First I used a saw to carve the block into the approximate shape and then sanding blocks to refine it.
It is at this point that I find myself getting excited - and nervous. Basically, you have everything you need in front of you, but you also have to get rid of what you don’t!
After an hour or so of sawing, sanding, chiseling (and goodness knows what else) I ended up with this:
There is still a long way to go, but at this point I could see the whole thing beginning to look something like what I had in my mind's eye. You will also notice that the 250, Schwim and Jeep are also starting to take shape.
More to come…
