This Purple Heart came home after 70 years.

Here's the Nesbit Purple Heart Happy End!

The Nesbit Purple Heart made it home to his daughter for Christmas, hit this link for the local news story and video. You can see a glimpse of Santa Cruz Warhammer...



Merry Christmas everyone.

Christmas Morning

Happy modeling everyone!

British 8th Army: 1st squad finished- Perry min vs the world

A while back my friend SC John gave me a box of the much discussed Perry Miniatures "Desert Rats'. He bought some Afrika Korps Germans from the same range and we decided to put together a desert themed battlefield, with 2 nice looking armies.

Just to make sure, here's the box set that I got:

Upon opening, I noticed one thing right away: these models have absolutely great detail. The sculpts are crisp with plenty of detail, including tiny shirt buttons. To be honest, i realized I am not a good enough painter to honor these little guys. Here's the radio man, which will become my forward observer for my Spitfire.

You can see the nicely detailed torso, with plenty of detail to work with - far superior to Warlord. it's not really strange, keep in mind the Perry twins have been in this game for a long time and have sculpted plenty of model classics. The only complaint I have about the set, is that there are no shirt sleeve decals. I had to paint mine on, which looks fine from afar but poor upclose.

Here's the painted squad:

All the models are on Games Workshop bases with Litko magnetic adhesive for easy transportation. I kept the ground on the base minimalistic, the way desert looks where there is a lot of foot traffic.

Much has been said about the Desert Rats' size, which is slightly smaller then the Bolt Action models. I have even read people saying they wouldn't model or play them, since the size difference bothered them so much....well here is a comparison, with a Victoria Miniatures (traitor)guardsmen included. The medic is metal, and the metals are actually a bit bulkier then the new plastics from Warlord.

Now you can't tell me the Perry minis are SO far off, you won't play with them?

SC Mike 

(UPDATED!)Help Us Make a Holiday Miracle Come True

WE DID it! After only ONE day we collected the needed 1200 dollars to bring this Purple Heart back to this heroes' family!. Thanks for all who helped!!)

SC John/ SC Mike

Many of  the long time readers of this blog will remember our past fund raising projects. We took on some huge projects, with great teams and brought a bunch of great people together from our hobby world to work together and give back as a group. This year I have decided to kick it down a notch. No raffles, no weekly updates from teams of blog hobby superstars. This time I am simply going to ask our readers and friends to help us do something that we feel needs to be done.

This year I am asking for your help to make a holiday miracle happen.

This is Jackie Nesbit, he was a member of the 17th Airborne 466th Parachute Field Artillery Battalion, he was killed in combat during Operation Varsity on March 24 1945 

This is a photo of Jackie and his wife Elizabeth Nesbit just before he was deployed to Europe. Jackie and Elizabeth had a daughter Patricia, she was born after Jackie left for the war, they never got to meet each other, she was one month old when he was killed in combat 

 Patricia as a young girl 

 This is Patricia now.

After the war Elizabeth remarried, and the family moved around a bit, sometime during that period, the Purple Heart Medal that was sent home after Jackie's death was lost.

I came across some messages online from Patricia's son in law, in which he was searching for the Purple Heart to return to Jackie Nesbit's daughter Patricia. He is ex Army, and so am I, we both understood the importance of returning this medal to his child, so I offered to help him.

The original named medal has been found in a private collection, and the owner has agreed to sell it for the amount he has invested in it.

Unfortunately these things are very collectible and command a high price. If it was 20 bucks I would just buy it and send it off to the family, who wouldn't. That's when I got to thinking, whats a few bucks to do the right thing? I know a bunch of people that would help pitch in a few bucks to make this right. I bet they all know a few friends too. 

This year I am asking all of you to pitch in and help return Jackie Nesbit's Purple Heart to his daughter and her family. 

You aren't going to win anything, I'm not going to grow a mustache, but maybe we can get together and make a holiday miracle happen for a little girl that never met her father and see to it that her family has something to remember him with.  

 Jackie Nesbit's remains were recovered from Holland and buried with honors at Arlington National Cemetery  

If you would like to help us with this project, please link to and share this page.

Thanks, and happy holidays.

British 8th Army start: Supermarine Spitfire for Bolt Action

After finishing my US 1000 point army for Bolt Action, my friend John got a hold of some new Perry miniatures, the British 8 army box. He also bought some Perry Germans and we decided to build and paint two armies, based in Northern Africa in the early forties.

I decided on the British and I have been working on my first squad of ten troopers, and they are almost done. In the meantime I built and painted a Spitfire for the army, basically a fancy phantom model that doesn't really have a role in Bolt Action, but looks cool. We use the plane with the forward observer so we can get some fire come down on the enemy's heads.

I picked up this box set from Airfix: 1:72 aifrcaft of the aces.

It comes with three planes: a Messerschmitt BF109, a P51 Mustang and the Supermarine Spitfire in an early rendition, the MK1a. It cost me about 30 bucks and came with paints, surprisingly good quality actually and with good colors and with a few brushes.

Anyway, for my desert army I painted the Spitfire up in desert camo. Here's the camo (but not color) pattern I copied:

And here's the model I just finished. I tried to make him look a bit weathered as well:

Of course the Airfix kit doesn't have the correct decals for the Northern Africa campaign and since the model will not really play a role in the game and is more for good looks, I decided not to follow through and purchase correct decals. Interesting to note is that in a lot of WW2 images, the Spits in the desert didn't have letter markings on the bodies, like above and below:

Here's a desert pattern from Eduard, that does include letters, but blue ones, outlined with white. 

You can see that the color scheme in the original color picture and the one above is more yellow, but the one below has more muted colors and that is what I went for in my model, since that fits better with the troops.

 I based the model on a long, 14 inch bamboo skewer, with a resin 60mm base. It's very stable and it's height makes it look great with 28mm models. Warlord has also advised to use 1/72 models for the game.

The airfix kit comes with the blue paint needed for the bottom and in my collection of Games Workshop paints, I could not find the right one; i was glad for the little mini cup of blueish paint!

And here are my palettes, just like everyone elses I presume! Trying to find the right colors takes some time.

SC Mike