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.

Announcement!

Hi guys, just to let ya all know my iraq dio photo is being used for a newstory at nowpublic.com. Ain't dat cool or what. Never thought that would ever happen. http://www.nowpublic.com/military_contractors_surviving_familes_being_sued_by_employer

Peace

Updated and improved Iraq Mosque Raid

Hi everyone,

Due to great response and input from the guys at Finescalemodeller.com, I made certain improvemets to the diorama I posted a month back.http://cs.finescale.com/forums/777238/ShowPost.aspx I added a soldier to man the .50 caliber a Browning on the Humvee and also made some changes the desert camo scheme colour of the overall troops. Also I added a NVG mounts on some of the soldiers to have them have an updated look.

Thanks to the army guys like m1garand and US Iraq veteran DM1975 who gave great input this past month especially on the equipment that US soldiers are currently using. Of course, I won't forget the others who contributed to the thread as well.

I did a bit more research and added a little more colour and weathering on the Humvee especially the tyres and boots of the soldiers. Well there is still lots of updating to do but I guess this is the best thing I could conjure up with at this moment. I experimented with transparent googles for two of the soldiers using resin for the gunner on Humvee and the African American soldier on the right.

Hope everyone enjoy the photos .

Peace.