In this part of the article series on my wee British fellas I will have a look at more support choices I got, mainly big guns I got for support.

Kanonen

In the left you can see the (in-)famous 2pdr anti-tank gun, the same calibre as was built into almost all British battle tanks of the time. The gun lacked the punch to pose a real danger to German tanks at longer distances.

What was even more of a problem was that neither the tanks nor the crewed anti-tank guns carried any high-explosive rounds for their 2pdr guns. This made fighting enemy anti-tank guns and infantry positions a horrible gamble.

What about those ‘soft targets’?

This problem was in part rectified by the gun you see in the right – the 40mm Bofors anti-air gun. It was the most widely used light anti-air gun, in service with most Western allies and some Axis forces.

To this day the Bofors gun is produced and in service.  While by design an anti-air gun, the British occasionally used it to great against ground targets. At short range it was capable of penetrating tank armour, but above all it was possible to fight enemy infantry positions and gun positions with it.

The little tanks in the left you already know. In the middle you can see a heavy machine gun on a tripod with an Indian crew. In the right you can see another Bofors anti-air gun which I mounted on a smaller base with just three crewmen (in games I just add two more models to make up for the rest of the crew) in a position to fire at ground targets.

The guns are all magnetized so I can turn them around if I feel the need to do so.

I also got a second 2pdr gun, but there were two parts missing from the blister, so I couldn’t build the second gun yet.

Under Pressure

One of the interesting aspects about the British army of the time was that they were in a very bad spot. Just having been kicked off mainland Europe along with all of their allies, seeing their colonies under threat in Africa and Asia alike, with no recipe in sight to stop the German war machine and the Americans not willing to enter the war any time soon.

So they called on everything they had to fight the Germans and Italians in Northern Africa, resulting in a force comprised of British, South Africans, Australians, Indians and so on.

So I quickly painted up a rifle section of Australians:

A surprisingly high proportion of the miniatures are depicted as wearing the famous Australian slouch hat. If you look it up there are some stories of amazing bravado going on with Australian units, including the back and forth night time raids between Australians and Germans during the siege of Tobruk. This is a theme for several skirmish scenarios in itself.

Having another infantry squad as possible support unit is a very attractive choice.

This ends my third article on supports for my 15mm British platoon. I hope you liked the pictures and the accompanying text bits. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to post them in the comments section, the forums or approach me directly via Facebook (Battle Brush Studios), the Battle Brush Studios website or via e-mail.