Michael Wittmann Diorama

It's early in the morning, or maybe late in the day, and very soon we will be at the beginning of August, a fateful month 70 years ago this year for one highly successful and highly decorated tank commander by the name of Michael Wittmann

Some time ago now I decided to put together a diorama featuring Wittmann and The Collectors Showcase model of the Tiger 1 he was commanding when he achieved his famous victory against a British armoured column in Villers-Bocage. I posted about my plans at the time but never got round to posting about the final outcome, namely the completed diorama. I haven't been deliberately putting it off but I was thinking about it again the other day and soon realised that this year, 2014, is the 70th anniversary of his death. What better time then to finally get to grips with that post?

The more historically aware readers might be thinking at this point that Wittmann died in August, not July, and on August 8th, rather than right at the beginning of the month, and of course you'd be right. On August 4th I will be travelling to the picturesque countryside of central Wales to enjoy a few days holiday with the family, away from the hustle and bustle of the city and the almost constant distractions afforded to me by electronic devices and the world wide web. Whilst I won't be entirely 'out of the loop' I certainly won't be sitting down at a machine typing blog posts! So, I decided to get this one in a little ahead of time in that sense

This post isn't a personal tribute, nor is it intended to be a history lesson. For anyone interested in finding out more about the details of Wittmann's life as a tank commander, and/or his death at the hands of the Allies in 1944, then there's plenty of information to look at on the internet. I have taken the liberty of including a few details here, together with links to a handful of what I consider to be fairly reliable and informative sites

Information taken from Panzerace.net

Information taken form Achtungpanzer.com

The bulk of the post consists of photographs of the completed diorama which, hopefully, you will enjoy my sharing with you and from which you may be able to take some ideas or inspiration for dioramas of your own. At this point I'd just like to say that whilst the photographs are my own work, the diorama most certainly is not. I planned it and sketched it out, decided what figures and models I waned to include and then parted with the cash, but the real hard work is down to one man and one man alone, the incomparable David Marshall, the owner and creative genius behind TM Terrain, whose work you will no doubt have seen many times over at toy soldier and wargaming shows or on the pages of Toy Soldier Collector

The inspiration behind the diorama was the Wittmann Tiger and additional crew figures sets released by TCS a while back. The sets themselves were inspired by the photograph of Wittmann that almost every student of WW2 military history must surely know, the one of him sitting proudly atop the turret of a recently manufactured Tiger tank. King and Country had already produced a three figure set depicting a group of Wehrmacht press men and so I decided to take these sets, together with a pinch or two of artistic license and a soupcon of counter-factual history and build my diorama around the taking of this now iconic photograph

Imagine if you will, Wittmann has recently been awarded the Oak Leaves to his Knights Cross and in celebration of this event he is being photographed en route to arguably his most famous victory at Villers-Bocage, surrounded by admiring onlookers and soon to be fellow combatants. I hope you enjoy the pictures as much as I enjoyed taking them and putting the diorama together

The diorama depicts a somewhat battered road and a muddy track 'somewhere' in France, bordered by trees and open fields. It comprises four terrain boards, each measuring approximately 12" square, which can be displayed as separate stand alone pieces or be placed together to make a larger scene as shown here

A few shots of some of the 'onlookers and soon to be fellow combatants'

Pulling up just behind Wittmann's Tiger I have chosen to put this rather nice model of a Panzer IV made by Figarti. Wittmann's Tigers were supported by such a vehicle from the Panzer Lehr division during the action at VB

Tank and crew taking advantage of the opportunity to refuel

And so to the snapping of that iconic piece of propaganda. Wittmann sits proudly atop the turret of his newly acquired vehicle, accompanied by 'Bobby' Woll and other members of his crew

Finally, I thought you might be interested in this AV footage from YouTube, one of many such items relating to Wittmann and to German Panzers more generally. I hope you enjoy the post

      

TM Terrain

Hi there, and welcome to April

Later this morning I will be travelling up to Loughborough in Leicestershire to collect my Wittmann Diorama from Dave at TM Terrain. As soon as I can I will be setting it all up back at the ranch and taking some photos for the inevitable blog post

In the mean time, if you care to follow this link http://terrainandtoysoldiers.blogspot.co.uk/ you will be able to see for yourself what Dave has to say about it in terms of where he has sourced some of the materials from etc. Alternatively you could click on the link to the same article that you will find in my blog roll gadget further down the page

Catch you later!

Latest Additions: Wittmann Diorama Update

Just the other day I posted a handful of pictures relating to the progress of my Wittmann diorama. Since then, Dave at TM Terrain has managed to finish the job and he emailed me a number of photos of the completed piece. Here they are in all their glory

I'm planning to pick it up from Dave's home and workshop towards the end of the month so by the beginning of April I ought to be in a position to post some of my own photos with all of the purchased vehicles and figure sets in place. The FL figures shown in the photos are there purely to give some indication of scale

In the meantime, I hope you enjoy looking at these as much as I do

 

Three 'overviews' showing the main road where the two centre piece tanks will be positioned

The side road where the vehicle carrying the photographers will be placed.....

.....complete with a roadside shrine to Our Lady, a common sight in France and other European countries

I can hardly wait to get my hands on these and start placing the vehicles and figures. Happy days, and more photos, to follow

Latest Additions: Wittmann Diorama

Hi folks. If you've been following this series of posts you will know that I'm in the middle of putting together a diorama featuring Michael Wittmann and the Tiger 1 he commanded at Villers-Bocage

You will also know that I now have most of the figures and vehicles I want to populate it with. Indeed, the only thing I'm waiting on now is a cute little VW in Normandy three colour camo produced by K&C as part of their Vehicles 250 series

The terrain part of the diorama is being produced by the one and only Dave Marshall of TM Terrain fame whose work has now been featured at countless toy soldier shows and is frequently seen on the pages of toy soldier and wargaming hobby magazines

He sent me an email the other day to update me on the progress of the project and included three 'work in progress' shots of the assembled display area which is made up of four 1' square boards capable of being used together or as stand alone pieces

There's quite a lot still to be done but these pictures allow you to see the overall structure of the composition. I'm very pleased with it an can hardly wait to see how it will finally turn out once the finishing touches have been put to it

It still needs painting and flocking, water needs to be added to the holes in the road and to the ditches on either side, there' a fence to be added to the left-hand side, wire fencing to be added to the existing fence posts, and a fair bit of vegetation [bushes etc.] to be placed in the gaps between and around the trees

This is the largest diorama piece I have commissioned so far and I'm very excited about it. I'll be sure to keep you posted

Terrain.....but no Toy Soldiers!

It is the early hours of Saturday, 20th August and I have not long returned from an enjoyable holiday in Wales. We had a very pleasant few days sightseeing in and around Aberdovey and Tywyn, however, whilst there I received an email from Dave at TM Terrain informing me of some disappointing news

Some of you may already have heard, or read, that Dave and Mark are no longer going to be selling toy soldiers as part of their business. Rather than summarise the announcement, I thought I would reproduce it here:

This is a release we have sent to Treefrog Treasures (a toy soldier forum):

Some of you may have heard that TMTerrain has lost the JJD dealership so we can no longer buy figures from John. Mark and I were very disappointed when John told us and it dramatically affects our business. John's ranges made up around half of our toy soldier sales and his monthly release schedule helped a great deal with cash flow. Now that this has gone, and the fact that the terrain side of the business is going from strength to strength, we have decided to stop selling toy soldiers altogether

 

We have arranged for the new JJD dealer to buy all our John Jenkins stock from us so from Monday evening we will be stopping the sale of John’s figures altogether

 

We also have stocks of First Legion, Collectors Showcase and W Britain's. We plan to sell these off at 20% discount from today. Our web site still has the full prices listed but we will sort that out over the next couple of days. If you do want anything then ring us so we can sort it out over the phone. When the prices are done on the web site then you can buy using our online store as normal

 

The web site lists what we have in stock. Items will disappear off the site as we sell them and that will be it so if you want a deal on First Legion, Collectors or Britain's get in touch with us quickly

 

We expect to sell off the last of our stock at the Birmingham and London shows before Christmas so you will also be able to see us there

 

Finally, although TMTerrain will no longer be selling toy soldiers once we have sold off our stock, this does not affect the terrain building. Mark and I set up the company about 10 years ago to make terrain so we will have really just done a full circle but we now have all that experience under our belt and the dioramas we are making just get better and better. We plan to be around for many years to come! [Huzzah! Ed]

 

May we take this opportunity to thank all our customers over the last 4 years. It has been great fun selling toy soldiers to you. We hope we did a good job for you. Hopefully we will continue to see you and talk to you when you want a diorama! [You certainly will, Dave. Ed]

 

So, there you have it. I for one was very disappointed to hear the news, however, good to know that the terrain making side of things will remain unaffected. I have plans for a number of other commissions I would love them to undertake so, onwards and upwards guys!

Operation Anthropoid

Operation Anthropoid was the code name for the targeted killing of one of the Nazi regime's most infamous leaders, Reinhard Heydrich. He was chief of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA), Protector of Bohemia and Moravia and one of the leading architects of the Final Solution

Some time ago, I confess I don't remember when exactly, K+C released a strictly limited set of figures depicting his assassination. I recently decided to display this set on a specially commissioned terrain base, and asked David Marshall over at TM Terrain to do the job for me

Well, yesterday I took a trip over to Loughborough and collected the finished terrain base. If you have looked at the blog recently you may have seen photos sent to me by Dave showing the finished piece. I have every faith in Dave's ability to pack things safely and securely, but I didn't fancy taking the risk of it getting damaged in any way in the post, so I decided to collect it in person

So, here it is, the finished piece in all its glory, complete with the K+C figure set, placed in position. The car isn't the right colour, and is undamaged, and I'm not sure how historically accurate Heydrich's uniform is either but, historical inaccuracies and uncertainties notwithstanding, it makes for quite a dramatic piece and I'm sure you'll agree that Dave's work sets it off very nicely indeed

 

The trees, shrubs and park fencing are all supplied by John Gittins, the lamp posts, tram lines and cobbled street sections are by Mini-Art, whilst the pavement section has been scratch built. The whole thing has been given a firm foundation by being based on MDF, and Dave has created a slight slope to the road, just like the real life one

The commissioned piece was based on one of the photographs taken of the site where the assassination was carried out, often referred to as Anthropoid Corner

The hairpin turn where the assassination attempt took place

Two pictures showing the damage done to the car Heydrich was travelling in, photographed where it came to rest just after the bend in the road

I don't intend to go on for too long about the historical details of the event in this post. If you've been inspired to find out more, then there is plenty of information available on Wikipedia and on the HRP website

Suffice to say, the two courageous men responsible for Heydrich's eventual death are remembered, and commemorated, as heroes in the Czech Republic, as are the unfortunate inhabitants of Lidice, the tiny village that bore the brunt of Nazi reprisals after Heydrich's death later in 1942

A memorial to the two assassins

A memorial to the murdered children of Lidice

I'm going to leave you with a few pictures of the completed diorama which now rests on the top shelf of the IKEA display cabinet reserved for it

Thanks Dave for all your hard work. I hope you like the finished results as much as I do