75th Anniversary of Battle of Monte Cassino and Northern Italy (Army Build)
A Company of Churchills
With my batch job of German tanks completed, it’s time to turn back to the Allies and give them some more punch. My tank force is centred around the North Irish Horse and while they had Sherman tanks toward the latter part of the war, they started with a lot of Churchill tanks. So to represent this and to provide some variety, I’ve got 15 tanks and 19 turrets. This will allow me to field the 6pdr Churchill III, the Churchill CS V fitted with the howitzer, the Churchill NA75 (with the 75mm gun) and the hugely up armoured Churchill VII.
While I’m painting the Churchills, I have also added 6 Universal Carriers, three of which are fitted with a .50 Cal.
All the hulls of the Churchills including 3 metal Churchill VII
All ready for priming and base coatingI’ll see how quickly I can get this lot painted up.
I had two great uncles serve in the North Irish Horse, they served together but one was on my mum’s side and the other on my dad’s side. Very interested to see what you do with these as I plan at some stage to do a force based on the North Irish Horse, but haven’t decided scale, ruleset etc. Good luck!
Thanks @Robert. Both of my grandfathers were on the water during the war, one in the North Atlantic convoys and the other in the Royal Navy, so I have no real connection to the army, Ireland or anything else. However, the NIH have an interesting history and I do like the Churchill tank of which the NIH had plenty of.
If you are interested, I’m gaming the Italian campaign on my other project thread and these tanks will make an appearance when I get to the NIH’s involvement later in the year. You can find it all here:
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project/1324738/
More great work, @redvers – and damn, that’s a lot of heavy armor! I am glad to see you have at least two support (CS) Churchills in there with the assault howitzers (??) Unless those are AVREs with the demolition mortar? I can’t really tell in the photos. But you definitely need some non-tank killing firepower to deal with German fallshirmjaeger dug into the ruins. Any plans for Sextants / Priests? Or are those already in your force / handled via off-board artillery support?
Thanks @Oriskany. This lot is for the later part of the Italian campaign after Cassino fell. The North Irish Horse were withdrawn from the front during this battle and were being refitted. They rejoined once the British Eighth Army moved back to the East Coast. They are indeed CS Churchills, the Mark V with the 95mm Howitzer. I already have some AVREs. from a gaming perspective (FoW) the ARVEs are cheap as chips, at only 50 points for two. You get to take them with a Sherman mine clearing platoon (1 Sherman, 2 Sherman Crabs) which costs 150 points. Give… Read more »