Long Time, No Post, Part 3.

A little more desert-themed stuff for Flames of War.

BF released plastic kits for various tanks for 1942 in the desert and I ended up with a few, just to see what they were like. The Grant kit contains parts British Grants or American Lees (different turrets, cupola, longer barrel for the optional M3 75mm gun for the USA). The kit goes together very well, but is short on stowage, leaving one with a handful of near-identical, 'clean" tanks. I already have a squadron of Grants, so I threw two of my three models together as Grants and one as a Lee and them painted them all differently.

The two Grants, one in Light Stone and Dark Green with black and white edging, appropriate for May to October 1942, the other in Desert Pink and Dark Green, as ordered shortly before Second El Alamein.

The Lee, US Olive, yellow turret band for the Torch landing and subsequent fighting in Tunisia and Algeria.

I've had a bunch of Crusaders sitting half-painted for nearly a decade, so this seemed like a good time get more paint on them. Most of the models are Old Glory, assembled as either 2pdr or 6pdr gun tanks. A pair of BF resin-and-metal tanks had been made up as the close support tanks with howitzers. All the tanks had been sprayed with an Army Painter primer that worked for Lightstone.

I started with the squadron HQ, to practice the camouflage pattern and figure out what order to paint details.

Since these were painted, I discovered (thanks, Tank Museum) that the objects on the back of the tank that I painted as rusty possible-exhausts are actually the air intakes and filters, so they will get repainted soonish.

Lastly, I painted up one of the old objective markers from the stash, the wrecked Crusader. Many Crusaders did not receive camouflage over the basic Lightstone, and this is one of them.