Salute 2018 – Part 1
Salute began early for us, after the day-trip to Nottingham, we we're ready and waiting at 7 a.m. at Cambridge Station.
Taking the Great Northern towards London, we had some time on our hand. It takes roughly an hour and gets you to Kings Cross without a stop. Spending that time on going through our "what-to-see", "what-to-try" and "what-to-buy" lists again and playing a match of Condottiere. Perfect size for the train.
Intro to Salute
Last thursday, on April 12th, Operation Sealion 2018 started. We went to Cologne Bonn Konrad Adenauer Airport, for our four day trip to the UK for Salute and a brief day trip to the Leadbelt.
There are a couple of ways to get to London. Two years ago and before that, we did the Salute as a day trip, grabbing a flight from Cologne to Stansted or Frankfurt to Heathrow. Flying from Germany takes roughly 1 to 1,5 hrs and sets you back between 70 - 150 Euro, depending on who you fly with. Just for Salute a rental car would only make sense, if the group is bigger than two people, as the London Underground is superb and reasonably priced. Only the shuttles ex-airport are sometimes a bit expensive. As we headed north to Nottingham, that question was already solved. Rentals are quite cheap in the UK, you can get cars for around 30 Euro per day. We paid just over 90 Euro for the prolonged weekend incl. unlimited miles. For rental cars I usually go with Budget, a daughter company of Avis. They offer good and uncomplicated service at reasonable quotes. The Honda Jazz was brand new, but not that much fun to drive and had a unpleasant driver seat.
Ryanair changed a lot in the last few months, along with strict limitations on the cabin luggage and checkin in. If you book all the excluded things to get back to a regular ticket, you end up with a price around the area of a Lufthansa ticket from FRA to LHR. Our flight was delayed by almost two hours due to mist, and on arrival we met quite a different weather compared to Spain two weeks ago.
Campaign Sea Lion 2018
It is time to take another approach and try to loot the Island for pewter, plastic and resin! Thursday we head over to the UK, for a short trip to the "Leadbelt" of Nottingham as well as paying a visit to the Salute on saturday.
Salute is the largest wargaming event in the UK, hosted by the South London Warlords at ExCel London on April 14th. Crisis in Antwerp is hard competition in size to this event, as it is larger on floor terms, but Salute is more international and has the benefit of being british homeground.
More from the Balearic Island of Mallorca
On friday, March 30th, our exploring journey of the island continued. We set for the southern part and made several stops along the coast, beginning with Cala Figuera. We had great luck with the weather, it was bright and sunny, and just look at these blues of sky and sea.
The second row shows the weathered stone ground along the coast line. With the smaller puddles it looks so outlandish, I thought this could be an interesting idea for an alien planet, using lava stones and such to recreate the surface. As a basing design for sci-fi settings like Gates of Antares or maybe a Necron or Mechanicus army project.
Vacation on the Balearic Islands, Mallorca
On March 26 we said goodbye 3° and !Hola! 20°, as we were on a Easter vacation to Mallorca. The flight was taken care of by Condor and it was such a positive start into the week off, to exit the airport and to be welcomed by this warm breeze and sunshine (especially after having to scrape ice of your windscreen).
Most Germans associate Mallorca with the Ballermann and heavy drinking. Our quarter was at the other end of the island, far away from all that trouble and noise.
Aviators, get your engines running!
I got my hands on a Airfix Dogfight Doubles set back in 2016, and build the Messerschmitt Bf109 and a Spitfire MkVb right away. Now I found some more 1:48 scale kits, that could be used as terrain. So I bought a Junkers Ju-88 by Revell and a Ju-87 by Italeri.
About the scale, that is a longer discussion. The proper scale would be 1:56, but there is currently only one kit availabe of a Stuka in that scale by Blitzkrieg Miniatures. And to be honest, 40 GBP ist in my opinion to much for a "stand-in". I got a Junkers Ju-88 A-4 by Revell for 30 Euros, quite a lot of plane for that money, as you can see from the pictures below. It works quite well scalewise as you can see from the comparison with the Fallschirmjäger.
The wingspan is amazing and overall it was an okay-ish fit. Some parts were rather annoying to assemble, like adding the engines to the wings. I'll paint the windows of the cockpit in a light blue and saved myself the trouble of building the interior. And some other parts were even more fun, like the 0,5mm thick struts that frame the bomb wings.
Bolt Action M3 Lee medium tank
This is a M3 review double feature, as I'll show you today the M3 Lee and the M3 Grant (with track guards). The M3 Lee kit is a regular shelf product, that comes in a boxed set. Warlord offers the Grant as a made-to-order / direct order product.
The M3 medium tank (not to be confused with the M3 Stuart / M3A1), was an American medium tank, that was supplied to other allied forces, like the British, Australian or Soviets during World War II. The differentiation between Lee and Grant, was done by the turret. The American issued turret (like in this kit) was called Lee, after the Confederate General Lee, the British issued turret after the Union General Grant.
Bolt Action M3 Grant medium tank with track guard
In addition to the M3 Lee review, this article will cover the british Grant variant of the M3 with track guards.
Unlike the M3 Lee, this kit is only available as made-to-order and therefore comes without a box in a simple bubble wrap bag.
As the M3 is already introduced in the other article, I'll focus here on the M3 Grant. Of the more than 6,000 Units the Americans build of the M3 Lee, 2,855 units were handed over to the British, who supplied them within the Commonwealth. The British had added modifications to their order, a different turret was designed with thicker armor plate, more space to house radio equipment and the machine gun cupola to be replaced with a simple hatch. The later was even done to some of the M3 Lee turrets in use by the British in China, Burma and India. And some of the M3 that were to be deployed in North Africa received sand guards, as this kit has as well.
Bolt Action Campaign New Guinea
After Empire in Flames, Bolt Action revisites the far east with the supplement Campaign New Guinea.
With 132 pages, Campaign New Guinea set a short new high score for page load, trumping Battle of the Bulge and Duel in the Sun (both 124 pages), only second to the recently released The Road to Berlin (148 pages). This campaign supplement covers the part of the pacific wars on the planets second largest island, between the Japanese Empire and the Allied Forces (Australian and US American). The price tag on this book reads 19,99 GBP or 30 USD, which translates roughly into 25 EUR. I want to start this review with the comparison of the final cover (left) and the early cover (right), presented by Osprey in one of their product catalogues. Nothing unusual, we already saw different covers circulating early among others for Duel in the Sun as well.
Bolt Action Universal Carrier Wasp Mk II
Along with the previous introduced Chindits, there is need for suiting vehicular support. In Burma they used the nimble bren carriers to transport soldiers and goods, some of the universal carriers were fitted with a flamethrower and called Wasp, which I want to introduce in this review.
Of the more than 110,000 units that were build of the universal carrier, roughly 1,000 units were manufactured as the wasp. The wasp carried the Ronson flamethrower system, with the Mark I having it fixed in the front and the Mk II the projector on the co-driver's position. Both had two fuel tanks with a capacity of 100 gallons. The canadians developed the Mk IIC with a single 75 gallon fuel tank. As you can see from the product image, this is the Mark II of the wasp.
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