Weird World War I: Part 5

O.K. - I'm bringing out the Land Dreadnought Big Guns - literally! Emboldened by the rail gun seen in a previous post, I'm having a go at converting some 6mm minis into a class of 'Devastators', weapons capable of taking out a land Dreadnought at one blow, if only from the enormous H.E. and cratering effect of one of their shells.

This is obviously a way for the less technologically capable or budget-starved nations, who are unable to produce the real thing themselves, to employ existing weapons, whether Naval or siege guns, to deadly effect. Once motorized, these weapons can avoid the pitfalls of being stuck in fixed defences, moving from site to site, evading detection, whilst stalking their prey.

I use the term stalk here, advisedly, of course, given that they will weigh hundreds of tons!

I started with a ready-made devastator of unfeasible proportions that actually existed, the German 'Karl Gerat' tracked mortar of WWII vintage. This holds the title of the largest Self-propelled Gun ever made, topping out at 124 tons, and mounting a 60cm or 24" gun capable of firing 1 round every 10 minutes!

This doesn't need much doing to it to give it a 'Weird WWI' look, but I had been admiring the newly released land train models from Brigade recently, and realised that a weapon of this size would need equally large ammunition which it could not effectively carry by itself, so I decided to add on a transport vehicle in convoy to form a truly enormous weapons system. Navwar's G075, and GWG6 A7V Uberlandwagen pair up below, the latter forming the rear transport section:

Mocking up an idea of the two together, (forgive the blue-tac!) we have a carrier which will have an added ammunition lift and some oversized shells on board. These I found rolling around in a desk drawer at work, not sure if they are some sort of pen nib or electrical connector, but they fit the bill as giant, heavy duty shells. I'm going to add some semblance of connector and loading gear, probably from some brass etched mesh I've got left over from an old project.

The whole, of course, will base up at a whopping 80x40mm, so definitely not for the faint hearted!

Next up, I've invested in a pair of Navwar's GWB19 Mk I Tank 'Mother' - this will form the basis of a sort of intermediate Land Dreadnought, as if an existing armoured vehicle had been super-sized in order to compete with the amphibious monsters of the Great Powers. I think the addition of a top turret should add more than a flavour of the AFV seen in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade as the plaything of the Ottoman Governor, so this will definitely serve as the front-line machine of the Turks. As you can see, this will base up at 40x40mm, so should scale well alongside existing minis.

Finally we have the work-in-progress photos of the production model of the Lebedenko Tank from Tsarist Russia. Based on the bonkers concept of the giant bicycle-wheeled behemoth seen here: (Scroll down to the bottom of the page)

http://strangevehicles.greyfalcon.us/KRUPP%20KUGELPANZER.htm

This version has done away with the wheels that were so vulnerable to artillery fire with something armoured and is seen below for comparison against the Grand Char de Rupture La Normandie:

It has been cannibalised from the rear wheels of the aforementioned 'Mother', the carriage of a 15mm Zulu-War era light field gun, and other various plastic and metal bits and bobs: observant readers will notice a miniature hex nut, some steel pins, and parts of a Royal British Legion Remembrance Day poppy (Never throw anything away!).

Will this weapon be any more successful than the original? We shall see....in any event, I think these new entries prove that the Global arms race has begun in earnest!

Photos of painted examples to follow as soon as they're ready.