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Armor/AFV: Allied - WWII
Armor and ground forces of the Allied forces during World War II.
  
Hosted by: Jim Starkweather
Subject: 40mm Bofors Question
Dean
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Posted: Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 11:56 AM UTC
Is the upcoming Bronco Bofors gun the right model to depict in use by the British in December 1940 ?

If so what would it have been towed by ?

I want to do a diorama depicting the early days of hostilities in the western desert with a vague idea of an abandoned british artillery piece and it's towing vehicle being looked over by Italian troops ( most likely in a bronco CV3/33 and a Tamiya/Italeri L6/40 ).

The only other option I can think of is the Tamiya Quad with 25 pounder but not sure if that was around then and as far as I know that kit also needs a lot of work.
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Al Bowie
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Posted: Sunday, October 04, 2009 - 10:01 PM UTC

Quoted Text

Is the upcoming Bronco Bofors gun the right model to depict in use by the British in December 1940 ?

If so what would it have been towed by ?

I want to do a diorama depicting the early days of hostilities in the western desert with a vague idea of an abandoned british artillery piece and it's towing vehicle being looked over by Italian troops ( most likely in a bronco CV3/33 and a Tamiya/Italeri L6/40 ).

The only other option I can think of is the Tamiya Quad with 25 pounder but not sure if that was around then and as far as I know that kit also needs a lot of work.



Most pics I have seen of Bofors from the early war period are closer to the italeri Bofors than the Bronco Mk 2. Having said that the italeri one needs different wheels as it depicts the US type plus they usually had the rivetted lower carriage and trail. The Mk 2 seems to appear later and most of the initial production like that of the 3.7 AA was kept for home defence.
The towing vehilce would have been a 6 wheeled Morris gun gun tractor like the one in the Airfix 76mm kit.
Cheers
Al
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Alan McNeilly
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This user has contributed written articles for Armorama in the past year.Location: England - East Anglia, United Kingdom
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Posted: Monday, October 05, 2009 - 03:10 AM UTC
Hi Dean,

I asked a similar question when the kit came out. I believe there were a limited number of the American type sent to the British very early on in the war. Whether any made it to the Western Desert or were deployed only in England I can't say. My feeling is that in a home defence scene it would be OK as that would have been the priority in 1940.

Al
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Dean
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Posted: Monday, October 05, 2009 - 08:24 AM UTC
Cheers guys. To be on the safe side I'm going to go with the Quad and 25 pounder, I've checked out a few build logs on it and looks like it can be turned into a decent kit with a little work so looks like the way to go. The hard part looks to be finding an Italian truck.
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Stephen
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Posted: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 01:19 PM UTC
Just a point of historical fact:

December 1940 saw the start of Operation Compass which saw the british and Commonwealth Armies capture almost all of Cyrenaica and over
115 000 Italian troops, hundreds of tanks and guns and over 1000 aircraft. The Italians didn't do a lot of capturing, they were too busy surrendering. Anthony Eden famously said "Never has so much been surrendered by so many, to so few."

The Italians did make one small sortie into egypt in August 1940 just after italy declared war, but was quickly repelled with very minor Allied losses.

The Allies didn't face any real setbacks until the DAK started to arrive in numbers (and had enough fuel to do anything).

The war in the desert saw both sides using captured vehicles quite extensively. British and Australian troops used captured Italian tanks often, there were whole squadrons of Brits, Australians and Kiwis in L3s and M13s. The Germans even fielded a unit of captured Matildas at one point and captured guns and trucks were almost always pressed into service.
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Dean
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Posted: Wednesday, November 11, 2009 - 09:08 PM UTC

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Just a point of historical fact:

December 1940 saw the start of Operation Compass which saw the british and Commonwealth Armies capture almost all of Cyrenaica and over
115 000 Italian troops, hundreds of tanks and guns and over 1000 aircraft. The Italians didn't do a lot of capturing, they were too busy surrendering. Anthony Eden famously said "Never has so much been surrendered by so many, to so few."

The Italians did make one small sortie into egypt in August 1940 just after italy declared war, but was quickly repelled with very minor Allied losses.

The Allies didn't face any real setbacks until the DAK started to arrive in numbers (and had enough fuel to do anything).

The war in the desert saw both sides using captured vehicles quite extensively. British and Australian troops used captured Italian tanks often, there were whole squadrons of Brits, Australians and Kiwis in L3s and M13s. The Germans even fielded a unit of captured Matildas at one point and captured guns and trucks were almost always pressed into service.



I'm a Kiwi mate, I'm well aware of the timeline in the Western Desert ( remember we were there longer than your lot ). December '40 was chosen for exactly that reason, the diorama is the first of six which will display the ebb and flow of the war on North Africa and is intended to show one of the vehicles abandoned by the British in Halfaya pass in September so early December allows me to give it two and a half months to have been ravaged by the elements whilst still placing it in the time frame before the British counter attack which will be depicted in number two.
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