First Improvised Armoured Vehicle - The Great Antipodean Adventure

With unrest rife in the streets of Sydney Government and Revolutionary groups continued to clash. Initially the military were uncomfortable firing on civilians but these feelings evaporated as the crowds grew in animosity became armed and finally inflicted casualties on their units.

With the situation escalating more and increasingly deadly weapons were deployed by all parties. This lead to the introduction of improvised armoured vehicles to increase their men’s survivability in the face of a storm of lead...

Here is a group of men from one of the All Australia League’s Volunteer Rifle Companies advancing around an armoured Crossley Tender.

Last year I bought a ‘lot’ of 1/56 vehicles off EBay attracted especially by a Trenchworx Crossley Tender and Warlords Opel truck, BMW M/C Combination and Kubelwagon. Unfortunately the seller neglected to mention the Crossley was missing the firewall, lamps and steering wheel! Anyway I made a simple firewall to complete the kit. The lot included extra German drivers with steering wheels so I adapted one of those to fit so I just need to keep my eye out for some suitable lamps/lights. I am a fan of Trenchworx kits but there were a few fit issues here; the wheels were very loose and the passenger cab side rails lugs needed a lot of ‘shaping’ to fit correctly not sure if that’s how this would be how you get it from Trenchworx’s though! As it turned out is it’s eminently usable  for 1932.

The Crossley ready for use...

But the vehicle will also double as an improvised APC I made a simple ‘sheet steel’ front end and rear cab...I may add an LMG to the passenger side of the front shield if I can find one...this whole lot still needs a 'black wash' to bring out highlights.

For my VSF games I scratch built the below vehicle, without the mudguard MG's I think it too could pass as a 1930 improvised armoured vehicle on a sedan so I'm thinking I’ll build one chassis that I can then add various armoured superstructures too???

I’ll be keeping my eye out for cheap 1/48ish civilian die-cast vehicles and kits to use in games or even as scenery. Vehicles will not be the norm for the games I'm envisaging but they'll be a nice distraction when included!

Anyway going to run a trial of my first scenario with the A World Aflame Rules to test them out, used FUBAR last weekend and that worked okay still I like some of what these offer period wise! Slowly getting there.