Whilst I'm primarily a
1/48 scale modeller these days, there is always the temptation to
investigate interesting subjects in other scales and 1/50 is close
enough to my preferred scale to be largely compatible. In the past
year I've picked up several 'wargames' models because they cover
subjects I can't otherwise get in my scale. Quality varies widely as
you might expect but there are a surprising number of good models
around and some will happily sit alongside mainstream 'scale' models.
This Rolls Royce
Armoured car from Empress Miniatures is one such example. I knew it
was underscale by my normal standards, but I kept coming back to it
on their website and looking again at the possibilities. Eventually,
after several months of procrastination, I bit the bullet and ordered
the kit.
Within a week, it had
arrived on my doorstep. I had a couple of surprises when I inspected
the kit. Firstly there were no instructions and secondly, the vast
majority of the parts were white metal with only two pieces (the
turret body and central hull unit) being in resin. After some initial
panic, a more sober inspection of the parts left me more confident.
The lack of instructions was offset by the logical break-down of the
parts. A little bit of guesswork and some decent photos of real
examples would resolve that. The greater concern was my lack of
experience with white metal kits, but that was a challenge I was
willing to address.
So, what do you get?
That's something of a problem. The spoked wheels and location of the
headlamps would imply that the model represents a 1914 Pattern Rolls
Royce A/C, but two other features, the taller turret and the offset
vision slots in the driver's visor, are indicative of a 1920 Pattern
vehicle. However, the production history of the real vehicle is
somewhat messy, so a hybrid might be possible. The last batch of 8-10
1914 Pattern vehicles were apparently manufactured with the taller
turret and it possible perhaps, that they also had the offset vision
slots. The RAF also ordered a number of 'cars' after WWI when the
Army initially refused to supply them with vehicles (they later
relented). These were referred to as 'Standard Type A' and had the
taller turret (and possibly the offset visor) but may have been built
on a spoked wheel chassis. Then of course we have a fairly widespread
programme of transferring 1914 Pattern armoured bodies off older 'war
weary' chassis onto newly built chassis with later features.
You could backdate the
model to a 1914 Pattern by altering the vision slots and living with
the taller turret. Or you could upgrade it to a 1920 Pattern vehicle
by finding (or scratchbuilding) the necessary solid dished wheels
characteristic of this variant. The third option is to leave the
model as it stands and just enjoy building it into a representative
example of the beast - after all, the level of variation in the real
vehicles means it could be accurate as it stands for at least one
vehicle.
Despite their fame,
production figures for the Roll Royce Armoured Car are surprisingly
small. It's been suggested that around 100-150 1914 Pattern vehicles
were manufactured, perhaps 55 1920 Pattern and maybe 23 1924 Pattern
vehicles, plus around 20 additional Standard Type A examples for the
Royal Air Force. Thus we are looking at a production run of 250
vehicles or thereabouts. To compound the difficulties, Rolls Royce
did not manufacture the armoured cars. All they did was provide the
chassis. The armoured bodies were then built up by a number of
specialist coachbuilding firms. This was common practice even for
RR's civilian sales, where a buyer would purchase the chassis and
then have a body built to their own specification.
Rolls Royce armoured
cars survived in active service through until around 1942 in
ever-decreasing numbers. The last serviceable RAF examples survived
until around 1942. A proportion of these had their bodies transferred
onto Fordson 4x2 truck chassis around 1940 but some true Rolls Royce
Armoured Cars lingered until the very end in North Africa.
Assembly commenced with
laying out all the parts and trying to identify them. This proved
fairly easy (with a couple of exceptions). Next, each of the parts
was gently cleaned up, especially the edges where the parts would
mate together. The chassis provides a good starting point for the
assembly process and I soon had the axles and engine block glued into
place.
The recommended glue
for strength is a two-part '5 minute' epoxy adhesive, a material I
had little previous experience of. Cyanoacrylate glue will work too,
but it lacks strength and the joints tend to be brittle. In several
cases I tacked the parts together with cyano, and then flooded the
joints with epoxy to provide strength. I suspect I got more epoxy on
my fingers than on the model, but that is apparently part of the joy
of learning!
Next, I dry-fitted the
resin body and rear cargo tray and they both dropped neatly into
place. Confidence increasing, I turned to the engine compartment
walls and struck my first problem. The side panels were slightly too
long compared to the bonnet panels and that meant the radiator didn't
fit where it should.
The lack of
instructions didn't help and photos of the primed model on the
Empress Miniatures website only seemed to confirm the panel length
was wrong. At this point I contacted them with a couple of queries
and received a very helpful reply. It appears the side panels are
indeed slightly too long and also that Empress hope to have some
instructions available soon.
Armed with the
knowledge that the engine panels were too long (rather than there
being an error on my part), I carefully filed them back to the
correct length, working slowly and patiently (and checking their fit
to the model regularly. I still didn't get the fit quite right but
the problem is conveniently hidden by a spare wheel.
Turret
Consisting of just four
parts including the Vickers MG, the turret is a combination of resin
body and metal roof. A separate roof hatch is included too. For this
project, some additional items were also incorporated. Many RAF
vehicles had searchlights and an extra MG fitted on a pedestal mount
at the rear of the turret roof, usually a Lewis Gun. The searchlight
is a 1/35 scale resin item that was found in the spares box, fitted
to a copper wire bracket. The additional gun is one of the excellent
Lewis Guns from Gas Patch, fitted to a scratchbuilt brass rod
pedestal. You could replace the Vickers MG with a Gas Patch item too
if you wanted, but the kit item is well detailed for what little of
it you see on the finished model. Also added were the rolled signal
flags strapped the the sloping turret sides - Brass rod along with
small scraps of masking tape provided the raw materials for these.
The Wheels
Already mentioned is
the fact that spoked wheels are the most common option for a 1920
Pattern Rolls Royce, but Empress Miniatures took the view that
creating them was worth the effort (although apparently it nearly
defeated them!). The wheels are supplied in two halves, an 'inner'
and an 'outer'. The inner halves are all identical, but there are two
types on Outer. Most of the wheels use a spoked outer half, but the
inside wheel of the pair on the rear axles are each provided with a
half that has no spokes (to help with the assembly of the double rear
wheels).
The solution Empress
have come up with for the spokes impressed me. It allows the wheels
to be cast in white metal whilst at the same time providing a genuine
three-dimensional look to the finished wheels. Some filling and
sanding was inevitably required along the join line but careful
pre-sanding minimised this.
My kit was supplied
with an an extra outer half (and one less inner half), leaving me
with one mismatched wheel. I contacted Paul at Empress Miniatures by
email, explained the problem and within four days, a new wheel unit
had arrived on my doorstep - excellent service!
Rather than scrap the
two spare 'outers', I cobbled them together to create a third spare
wheel. Arguably, you need more because most cars seem to have carried
two spares on each side officially (and often more, strapped to other
parts of the body and even the turret roof).
When it comes to
stowage, contemporary photos show a mix of heavily stowed vehicles
and almost 'clean' examples. This is in part due to the way they
operated. Much of their operational use was for local patrolling from
a permanent base. In the case of the RAF Armoured Car Squadrons, this
usually meant an airfield. Throughout much of the 1920s and 1930s,
the RAF operated a 'combined arms' policy where armoured cars and
aircraft were used to support each other on operations. It was only
on longer patrols or when deploying to a new area that the vehicles
carried more than the minimum levels of stowage. I decided to add a
number of items, some from scratch and others from the spares box.
The tow rope on the front suspension 'horns' is braided copper wire,
whilst the drum, two and four gallon cans and rolled tarpaulin are
Red Zebra and Black Dog items.
The figure is an item
from The Fusilier. He is one of a three-figure set that includes two
ground crew, both holding up parts of aircraft as trophies. The
pilot/officer figure seemed an appropriate character to place
alongside the Rolls. Throughout the Inter-war years, a high
proportion of officers in the RAF armoured car companies were pilots
serving a ground tour, whilst others were former pilots no longer
medically fit to fly but still wanting an RAF career. This must have
helped foster a close cameraderie and cooperation between the 'cars'
and the aircraft squadrons and probably accounted for the high levels
of success of this combined approach to their colonial policing role.
Colours and Markings
My plan was to
represent an early 1920s RAF 'car' in Iraq. There were a number of
reasons for this. In part it provided an interesting counterpoint to
recent RAF activities in Iraq and in part because my father spent
much of his National Service based at RAF Habbaniya, where some of
the armoured car units had been based in the 1930s - tenuous I know,
but it's what inspired me to complete the model.
The overall colour is a
matter of some debate. Contemporary monochrome images show vehicles
in both 'dark' and 'light' overall colours, suggesting that some
vehicles were probably Deep Bronze Green (or similar) and that others
were a desert sand (or similar) shade. I wanted the 'dark' option as
I felt it provided an interesting counterpart to the sand coloured
vehicles that people expect to see.
The model was given an
initial coat of Halford's Grey Primer to provide a key for the paint
and also to highlight any small imperfections in the construction
stage and allow them to be corrected.
For the main colour I
used Tamiya XF-53 JGSDF Dark Green, with a touch of XF-58 Olive Green
added. I felt that the car would have a faded, dusty appearance so I
didn't want to go any darker, especially as subsequent washes would
darken the shade anyway. With the paint thoroughly dry, I started
with the first of those washes, a mix of Burnt Sienna and Lamp Black
oil paint thinned heavily with white spirit. This was applied over
the whole model initially, before the detail was picked outmore
carefully with a slightly darker version of the wash. Some subtle
streaking was added down the vertical sides of the hull and turret
(too subtle probably as it doesn't really show on the finished
model). Next I turned to a bottle of XF-49 Khaki. Using a wide,
flat-profile soft paintbrush, I gently started to dry-brush the
model, slowly bringing out the raised detail as I worked across the
model in stages.
At this point I decided
on the final selection of markings to be used. RAF 'cars' were often
named, but not all the time. As I wanted to create a generic example
of the type, I went with a simple serial number. I also added a pair
of RAF roundels to the body. Prior to applying the decals (all found
in my decal collection from various sources), the relevant body
panels on the model were gloss varnished with Johnson's Klear to help
with decal adhesion. After the decals had been added, a couple of
coats of Vallejo Matt Varnish were added to hide the glossy
appearance of the panels.
Final thoughts
Correspondence with
Empress Miniatures indicates that they hope to release other variants
of the Rolls, and that the solid, 1920 Pattern wheels are also on the
cards. Overall I really enjoyed this project. It challenged me to
work with new materials and new adhesives and that added to the
satisfaction of completing it successfully. It is a subject that
isn't available as a mainstream kit in 1/48 scale and whilst this is
strictly speaking a 1/50 scale model, it's close enough to sit
comfortably amongst my growing collection of quarter-scale models.
References:
The Rolls Royce
Armoured Car
David Fletcher
Osprey New Vanguard No.
189 (2012)
ISBN: 9781849085809
In Every Place - RAF
Armoured Cars in the Middle East 1921-1953
Nigel Warwick
Forces and Corporate
Publishing Ltd (2014)
ISBN: 9780957472525
Sources:
Empress Miniatures -
www.empressminiatures.com
Red Zebra -
www.redzebramodels.co.uk
The Fusilier -
www.thefusilier.net
Gaspatch - www.gaspatchmodels.com
