Here are few pics of my 1/35 dio. It depicts Sherman Firefly of Polish 1st Armoured Division waiting near Caen to enter the combat in the begining of August 1944.
Tank is from Dragon, figures are from Tamiya British Tank Crew and the dog is from Tamiya's Modern Armour Accesories.
Ground is made of plaster, grass is mix of Heki's grass, bushes are some kind of moss sprinkled with kitchen herbs (marjoram mainly) and frame is from Ikea.

Excellent work well done.
Love the painting, bushes and photography.
Only things id mention are that the road looks a little clean (bit more weathering possibly?) and the guy sitting on the front of the tank seems like he's balancing there a bit. Perhaps moving his right leg would make it a little more natural, or perhaps a bit more 'stowage' on the front would help him rest a little better there.
Otherwise excellent!

James

Nice build. Good weathering. I have to agree with James, the road does look too clean, and the man on the glacis doesn't look natural there. Other than that, great work!

I love the "human interest" side with the puppy and the tanker.

Nicely done Firefly, could almost picture it as part of this lineup



For added accuracy the radio aerials need a trim. The left hand one should be 4' or 8' in scale and the right hand one 20" in scale.

And brown boots? AFAIK they should be black, following British practice.

David

isnt that the puppy from the tamiya M113A2?????? if yes what color did you paint it??

Hi Marciin,

Good looking build. Good use of the Tamiya figures. Would the leaves on the bushes have turned that much in early August? Just a thought.

Thanks for sharing, nice one.

Cheers

Al

Hi there

A very nice clean build. I like the paintjob all over, and the composition is good. I'd like to see more dirt on the road and perhaps a roadsign showing where we are in France.

Nice work

Cheers

Simon

Hey Marcin,
Your dio looks good.
Like the other guys have pointed out, I it may be just a little too clean and uncluttered.
And if you look closely at David's photo, you'll notice that Polish tank crew wore their berets in a very "un-British manner".
Polish crews wore their berets pulled back and wore their unit or regimental insignia dead center of the beret and not over the left eye like most Commonwealth troops.
I've seen many photos of Polish crews wearing a mixture of berets and AFV helmets.
You could use some of Hornet's British tankcrew heads if you wanted to upgrade your figures.
Hornet has a number of headsets with different beret styles and AFV helmets.
Keep up the good work.

Cheers,

jjumbo

Thank you for your comments, they all are very helpful.
I'll add some dust to road and maybe a roadsing (I was thinking about that earlier). I'll trim antennas too.


David, that's why boots are brown:

Officers shoes are brown, other ranks boots are blackened.

Wearing the beret badge centrally is sometimes seen in British armoured troops too, allegedly because of wearing headphones.

David

So only the figure that is in the turret has the correct colour of the boots.
I'll repaint ranks' boots.
Additional question concerning boot: Is the same rule (black for ranks and brown for officers) aplyable to Commomweath forces in North Africa?

Hi Marcin

In theory, the same rules applied in North Africa and Italy, but they were widely ignored by officers who tried to get away with wearing all sorts of footwear. polo boots, crepe soled suede boots, sandals etc. You can just about see the black boots on some of the tank crew in this shot taken in Tunisia though



Other ranks didn't always wear the hobnailed ammunition boots they were supposed to either. Ken Tout's memoirs of fighting in Normandy mention that he wore ordinary shoes instead of boots as it allowed him to get a better feel on the firing pedals of the gun on his Sherman. And I imagine that hobnails made climbing about on a steel tank hull pretty exciting too.

David

It is very interesting how far the solider's improvments to their equipment would go and how designers don't know what are they doing and how useless are their ideas, even nowadays.

I'll never forget the first time I wore hobnails (as a Roman re-enactor) - we went into a shop with a polished stone floor and it was like walking on ice...

David

Nice dio you've build Marcin.

Nice dio Marcin! Love the bloke with the puppy. Nice human touch. The bloke sitting on the glacis plate I'd move though so his legs are dropped through the hatch opening and have him leaning on the hatch. He looks like hes going to slip off. Nice dio mate.

I've tried to put that figure in a hatch but it looks even worse than now (figures are designed for Churchill Tank). I made a mistake finishing the tank first so I was afraid to testfit figures to not ruin paint work. I also though that they would fit properly. You have to belive that I couldn't find better place for that guy.



So maybe we should assume that he's going to stroke the puppy.