Just discovered a couple of weeks back that Tamiya is holding a modelling competition on August 14 2007. That is something exciting and worth looking forward to. Very rare over in this country.
Anyway I decided to give it a go and get some experience. My first time taking part and hope not my last. So I for the past 2 weeks I went looking around and scouting around for what Tamiya products to use. Being a Tamiya contest, the product needed to be Tamiya only of course.
So finally I narrowed down to taking part in the diorama in 1/35 category. Since June to July are the Great Singapore sale months, I had the opportunity to get Tamiya stuff at 20% discount. I bought myself US assault infantry and a Cromwell tank after getting some ideas from the show "Band of Brothers". When I went further researching on the liberation of Normandy, to my dismay, I could not find any scene where the British tanks fought alongside US infantry. The only time was on "Operation Market Garden" and that was with the US airborne only.
After consulting the guys at Finescalemodeller(FSM), I made the decision to get the an M4 Sherman tank since converting the US infantry to US airborne would be time consuming since I have only 2 months to work with.
So I bought the Sherman and also a Normandy building diorama by Miniart Models(they also had 20% discount on one weekend at Storm Domain, so I grabbed it). This new product is made of Vacufoam and is 50% cheaper than the resin and plastic models of other brands.
Later I also bought another box of Tamiya US infantry and a Dragon US airborne set as spare parts. After all that spending, someone at FSM informed me that the US infantry did fight alongside Polish Cromwell tanks at the Falaise Pocket.Dang! With dat lead, I research on that operation and sure enuff the 90th US infantry defended the city of Chambois with the 1st Polish Armoured division. A further look at the details however revealed that the Polish had more Sherman tanks than Cromwell tanks and it was unclear whether the Cromwell took part in the defense of Chambois since the Cromwell were attached to the Polish HQ.
So abit of relief, I shall continue my Sherman with US infantry but the scene would be the the city of Argentan where the US infantry and armour failed to liberate in the final battle of the Falaise Pocket.Hence making the Allied forces unable to trap the sizeable Germans force who managed to flee the area and fight another day. That would be an interesting scenario! The Cromwell would make an apearance next year maybe?
Will update you all with the progress of the dio. Adios for now.
