From DallasE: 15mm Battlefront Israeli M113 Zeldas for the Yom Kippur War (50 points)

Continuing the new "Israelis in '73" project, here is a box of Battlefront M113s. These are literally the stock M113s the BF sell for every other army, with some Israeli crew and a set of Israeli decals stuck in the box. Now I'm not complaining, these are super little models, but they do need some work to be Israeli Zeldas - and I did some of that work, but not all of it.

The defining feature of the Israeli M113 in period had to be the gypsy-caravan look with tons of stowage. Battlefront used to sell specific "Israeli stowage" packs but these aren't available anywhere in their current sales chaos. I also couldn't find any on eBay or the other usual places. So I had to order some 15mm stowage from Redog. Pretty good stuff but took a long time to get here. 

I stuck a LOT of stowage on these vehicles but did not build the racks that the Israelis equipped these vehicles with. I figured this was OK given the small scale.

HOWEVER... what I didn't do was scratch-build the special exhaust pipes that the Israelis equipped their M113s with. You'd see it in the picture here - they extended from the exhaust on the right top of the vehicle, and down the side. Try as I might I haven't been able to determine the exact rationale for the modification. I presume that the exhaust mod was done to address the problem of the exhaust being right in front of the "family hatch" on the top - but Conscript Hugh had extensive experience riding in M113s in the '80s and didn't recall any excessive exhaust coming into the troop compartment. Maybe in the Middle East the heat combined with exhaust presented a particular problem. Anyway the special BF stowage kits came with modded exhausts and I would have loved to have those bits. Oh well. 

For crew I used the dudes supplied in the box. You get four guys with MGs firing from the hatch, two guys yelling, and a couple sets of crews for more modern M113 weapons, AT missiles or something - not relevant for 1973. It was kinda tricky to get these figures settled in the hatch, but I ended up putting a blob of greenstuff on the vehicle floor and sticking the models' feet into that.

I think the models look pretty cool with crew hanging out of the hatch.

I did build one without any crew though. For this one I cut up some spare MGs and stuck them to the vehicle deck.

The BF decal set is great, and includes a bunch of the Israeli vehicle ID tags, one of which is seen just above the chevron.

I really like these models. Now I have to get to the IDF infantry which I ordered from Khurasan, and is sitting at my parcel service in North Dakota. Not anxious to go to the USA right now but I will have to get down there soon as I have a ton of parcels waiting.

Points:

4x 15mm vehicles (8 each) = 32 points

6x 15mm crew (2 each) = 12 points

3x 15mm half-crew (1 each) = 3 points

Total = 47 points 
 

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Cracking additions to your Israeli Force Dallas! The extra attention paid to crew and their inevitable mountain of "gubbinz" has really paid off and gives them a realistic 'lived in' look. Again your subtle chipping and shading on the bodywork nails 'the look' - great stuff! Take a few extra points for the extra conversions

- Paul