Airborne Universal Carrier with Polsten Cannon

[buzzbomb]

After a discussion around possible support vehicles for WWII British Airborne troops, I postulated a Universal Carrier with a Polsten cannon for forward recon work.
The thinking being that the Polsten was already in the inventory as an AA weapon, so ammunition was standard, plus it offered a fairly good and light weapon what packs a bit of punch.
So that meant I had to put plastic where my mouth was
So, far too cheap to spring for a resicast Polsten for this sort of build, so whipped one up from plastic rod, brass and wire


Of course the carrier needed small modifications just to make it a bit different, so a casement type mount


Then I ran into a problem in that the carrier has no suspension as I had used that on a Tapp Mantis scratchbuild.
Got some replacements from Russell at International Model Asia as I already had a set of his tracks.
Knocked up a jig to shape the resin tracks using a hairdryer


Getting there now, suspension and tracks on and a bit of stowage from Black Dog




Home stretch, a bit more stuff to put on then into paint
Cheers

Brian T

[proditor]

Damn that's cool! 

[NARSES2]

Wonderfull work, especially on the Polsten.

It's a rather sound idea as well 

[Captain Canada]

She's a little beauty alright ! Nice work so far. Love the cannon and thanks for the tip on forming the resin tracks.

[pyro-manic]

Fascinating! Maybe a stupid question, but would it not be more useful to mount the cannon where the Bren gun is, to give a better fire arc?

[dadlamassu]

The Free French did something similar with a 25mm Antitank gun:





Some were captured and used by the Germans



The German 2cm FlaK overloaded the Chassis





Some were used as training vehicles and were armed with 3.7cm PaK and captured 2 pdrs.  And some of these may have seen action.

[buzzbomb]

Thanks all.. having a blast with this one

Yes the Carrier is certainly versatile. The Free Fench conversion was somewhat of and ispiration for this, but I wanted to keep the fitout within weapons available in the Airborne ORBAT, thus the Polsten.
I see the Polsten Casement as being able to rotate, so the position it is in would give a good field of fire and still under armour. The Bren is for AA and Anti Personel use.

Ok call the build and finish done.








Bit of extra work on the radio and attacked it with pigments, which I now have to back off a bit, but that is easy enough as they just brush off.
Must say that I enjoyed this build.

Brian T

[Old Wombat]

Yup, definitely a sweet little vehicle, Brian!

[NARSES2]

Fantastic build

[Captain Canada]

That is just perfect. The Polsten looks so much better than the French example, the gun just seems to suit the carrier. I also think the pigment attack worked out fine...maybe it's easier to see in person but judging by your photos the weather looks great.

Nice one...and definitely one for the idea bank !

[pyro-manic]

Excellent result!

[Wardukw]

This is a very cool model ...buzzbomb mate this rocks and seeing the real thing with a Hotchkiss 25mm cannon was also very cool,,excellent work and very nicely weathered ,,12 out of 10 dude 

[Joe C-P]

I like this, it works.