Guns in the Sand: OQF 25lb artillery in North Africa

Watching the horizon for dust plumes.

As teased in desert table photos, one of the projects gracing my workbench these days is a midwar British desert army. Since I hope to field this force in both North Africa and Southern Italy scenarios, I made my desert basing a little deeper in tone than purely sand. I also used a special blend of static grass I mixed to try and average Tunisia and Sicily.

I love the crew poses in these sets - they really bring the tiny scenes to life.

My interest in military modelling was helped along early on by a visit to an old dusty hobby shop across the street from my dad's school. When he took us in there as kids, there was a display case with a diorama of a British artillery piece with its crew entrenched in the western desert, loading like madmen. When I got home that day I hot-glued a bunch of rocks to make sandbags and put a little metal souvenir cannon from Ft. McHenry in it with some green army men. I really wanted to make my own artillery diorama. When I got back into Flames of War this past year, I jumped at the chance to paint up some OQF 25lb guns with their crews, and hopefully do that orignial diorama justice.

One of the best little features of the Battlefront kit is that the sprue comes with multiple barrels. You can build the guns as early or late 25 pounders (muzzle break available for late war) or as the now legendary 17/25 lb anti tank guns. (Like mixing peanut butter and chocolate, these 17lb guns really came into their own when mounted on Lend-Lease Sherman tank hulls).

You can see the small magnet under the gun mount

Of course I couldn't let the other gun barrels go to waste, so I added magnets to the gun carriages and glued some short sections of paper clip to the under side of each gun's breech.

With the first guns completed, I'll be updating periodically with the forces I continue to work on for this army, in the in between my updates for Star Wars Legion.