WIP: Falaise Pocket 2 Argentan

My plan was to create the diorama going from right to left but the Normandy building which I was looking for was not avalable yet and so I bought another Miniart model. I decided to change the direction looking from left to right since the building looks better that way.



The next step was to make the cobblestone pavement leading to the archway. I simply used foamboam and glued it onto the wooden base with PVA glue. Later I would score the cobblestone pattern onto them.

It's time to work on the Normandy city building. Yeh! I was excited at first when I first got it since it was the first time I ever bought a building. My LHS guy warned me about the rough work ahead since he build one a couple of months before and there's plenty of puttying and sanding to do but I guess I was too excited since it would be easier than scratch building one myself.



The most challenging portion about this build is cutting off the excess parts (windows and doors) since the front and back needs to be level so that it would joint evenly. Of course that was not possible and I ended up applying putty and sanding the joints to make it flat and even.



Then I followed up by scratch building the archway. Okay this was an idea I got from someone's website(can't remember the address sorry). The method was to use tile grout and pour it into a plywood mould and to create tiny bricks that looks realistic. Since I have some grout to spare I experimented with it. The dreaded part of this method was the mould building. The tedious part is definitely the moulding process. It gets messy and you have to wait 24 hours for one batch of about 20 bricks to dry. Anyway I ran out of grout to mould (got bout 40 bricks)and combined them with foamboard cut into small brick shape and glued them together to make the archway.



The cobblestone road was made using paper clay. Before the clay dried, I scored lines to create the cobblestone road.(cont' next post)

WIP: Falaise Pocket 1 Argentan

Hi again,
This will be the first time I will be writing down the step by step process of building my dio so I hope everyone bear with me.

As I mentioned on my previous post, the diorama I am building is the scene at Argentan, France Aug 1944. The first thing I did was to brainstorm for ideas and come up with interesting scenes for this project.

At first I sketched an idea on paper and played around using Lego blocks to visualize the scene.

Soon however I got some more ideas using just the Lego blocks. I discovered that it just saves time for me.

The Story

The scene is basically US infantry from the 80th division with armour support trying to liberate the French city of Argentan. The real event was that this relatively new division had not seen real combat since its arrival into Normandy. The Germans defending the city however were battlehardened troops and were desperate to hold the city till their larger force escape the Falaise pocket which were about to be cut off by Allied forces. Argentan was the last city in this pocket and Germans had to hold on to it long enough. The initial assault by the 80th division were quite disasterous as the German had their best Tiger tanks and troops defending the city. After several unsuccesful assaults, the US army pounded the city into ruins for several days to demoralise the Germans before making another attempt to liberate the city.

Next was to build the base for my dio so I bought a frame and plywood about 30 by 25cm. I then glued and nail them to keep em together. Next I painted the frame black and applied some wood varnish to the surface and sides of the base. Then I masked the sides with tape to protect it for the work that is going to pile on top of it. (Con't next post)

Project: Falaise Pocket diorama

Peace brothers.

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.