South African M10 Achilles

[Golf Alpha Zulu]

Here is my effort at depicting a vehicle of the 1/11 AT Regiment of the SA 6th Armoured Division in Italy, 1945. There is no record of these seeing combat (they were only converted from 3-inch-equipped vehicles in April 1945). So I kept the weathering to a minimum. Crew from Warlord, decals from a range of sources...

[ultravanillasmurf]

Very good.

I like the camouflage of the long barrel, I cannot remember seeing that style on a model before.

The secured spare bogie wheel is a nice detail.

Are the crew plastic or metal? Absence of crew is one of the reasons I have not started my build (http://ultravanillasmurf.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/salute-2016.html).

[Golf Alpha Zulu]

Thanks.

One figure is metal - from the old Warlord resin M10; the other is plastic - from the Warlord Universal Carrier kit. Both slightly bashed around to fit.

[ripley]

Nice looking Achilles . Paint looks excellent , Not too sure about the berets , thought only the Paras wore the red ? The Warlord Universal plastic crew is a fantastic starting point for kit bashing into various seated crew figures , I've got a couple seated  in one of my  Panzer IV turret side doors . Actually been trying to get more, as a lot of guys don't like them. Tthey are a little oversized/ tall and too skinny to match the BA plastic figures . Wish someone would release crew  figures like this 

[Pinky]

It looks as though the berets were khaki:



Interesting how one M10 seems to be a different colour to the others.

I like this model - the crew really bring it to life.

[ultravanillasmurf]

I think GAZ mentioned the colour difference somewhere in his blog.

Interesting question on the berets. The Shermans have tanker black berets (which would have been my thought) but were the M10s artillery or something else?

[Pinky]

I think GAZ mentioned the colour difference somewhere in his blog.

Interesting question on the berets. The Shermans have tanker black berets (which would have been my thought) but were the M10s artillery or something else?

I'd be surprised if he hadn't checked.  In the British Army the M10s were Royal Artillery, and didn't wear the Royal Armoured Corps' black beret.

[Golf Alpha Zulu]

Thanks for the feedback. That the berets are reading as red shows there is quite a bad colorcast on the image - the color is a reddish brown.

The M10s were part of the artillery units.

In the Union Defence Force (as it was then), in many cases the beret colours pointed to the history and origins of the units. Armour/cavalry regiments = Black, Field artillery = (dark) Blue, Infantry = Green, etc. (There were exceptions, so the Imperial Light Horse, for example, despite being a mechanized infantry regiment in Italy, wore the black beret which pointed to their cavalry origins). I couldn't find a color image of the 1/11th, so worked backwards from current regiments and compared them to other support regiments. The modern antecedents of the 1/11 use a red-brown, so it was a toss-up between blue (field artillery) and red-brown (some support regiments). Local military historians that I asked were not sure, but agreed the density of the berets in the black and white images looked more like red-brown than blue. The sappers and other B-echelon forces had the khaki beret, as far as I am aware. Short version: I am ready to be proved wrong... 

As for the variation in tank color, the South African division showed a huge variation in vehicle color in Italy , with General Orders re: painting applied on an "as and when possible" basis. They were under command of the US 5th Army towards the end of the war, (a bit out of sight of the British General Staff) so a mix of Olive Drab and SCC 15 was evident, as well as the Light Mud/Blue Black "Italian pattern", and even the desert "Light Stone" (with various disruptors) and "UDF Olive Green" (the color used in East Africa, home front and Madagascar).