With the mid war equipment out of the way, it was time to move to late war. Unfortunately, the 1st FFI was rechristened as a mech division for the invasion of France. As I wanted some French armor, I had to switch divisions! I considered the second, as there is a lot more information on it. However, this is already well represented in our gaming group. Further, I wanted a formation that fought with the 1st FFI in southern France and Germany. I had the 1st and 5th to choose from. I kind of liked the markings on the 5th, but the 1st was just more active in support. So, the first it was.
While the 1st started with M4A2s and 4s, they received a lot of replacement vehicles from US stocks and became quite hodge podge, as the campaign went on. That being the case, I mixed up the hulls for the unit, back when I sorted out the models during painting. In this case, all the models are Battlefront plastic Sherman models.
The Peddinghaus sheets have a number of different Sherman markings, so I grabbed these to start. Looking at the available photos, I was able to piece together various looks for the units. I decided I would try to keep some uniformity with each platoon (to help separate them on the tabletop), and general look for the company.
These followed the same steps as the earlier lend lease project vehicles. I sprayed the models with Krylon dark olive camo paint, hit the bottoms with Vallejo mud pumice, black washed the tank, drybrushed up the green, added the decals, drybrushed the brown, dull coated the models and finished with a Iraqi Sand drybrush.
A keen eye will see that I am one tank short, as there is no 2iC. Not sure how I lost a tank, but I will need to sort that out in the future. As I do not have any 105s for the French, this will give me the opportunity to add those to and an OP to boot. The box is on the way as I type this article! In the meantime I still have more of my project ready for decals!
- Mantueffel