Renovating some 20mm-scale Hungarian World War 2 artillery

Many years ago, I scratch-built a number of generic artillery pieces that I eventually used as masters to make rubber moulds from. They included a small anti-tank gun (which was based on the Swedish Bofors 37mm and Belgian 47mm M1931 Anti-Tank Guns produced during the late 1930s and early 1940s) and an early twentieth century field gun/howitzer.

Above and below: A Bofors 37mm Anti-tank Gun.

Above: Belgian 47mm M1931 Anti-tank Guns in service with the Hungarian Army. In Hungarian service they were called 4.7cm 36M Páncéltörö ágyú.

Above: The Belgian 47mm M1931 Anti-tank Gun in service with the Belgian Army.

Above and below: A typical early twentieth century field gun/howitzer.

When I created my two Hungarian infantry battalions for use with Frank Chadwick's COMMAND DECISION rules, I used two of my homecast anti-tank guns to arm the battalion anti-tank batteries and added three homecast field howitzers and crew to provide the two infantry battalions with some artillery support. Over the past week I have been re-painting, varnishing, and re-basing my models so that I can use them with my recently renovated Hungarian troops, and the end results look like this:

Rather than leave them in a plain green finish, I have painted them in the camouflage scheme used on Hungarian armoured vehicles ... and I am very pleased with the end results.

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The Swedish Bofors 37mm Anti-tank Gun was widely used during the Second World War, and I can foresee having to mould a few more before my Eastern Front/Great Patriotic War project is finished. Amongst the countries that used this weapon are Denmark, Finland, Germany (captured from various countries), the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, the Soviet Union (seized after the invasion of Poland), Spain (supplied to the Republicans), Sweden, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and Yugoslavia. (The UK used the Bofors 37mm Anti-tank Gun in the Western Desert, having acquired them from stocks held by the Sudanese Defence Force.)

The Belgian 47mm M1931 Anti-tank Gun was the standard anti-tank gun used by Belgium up until the German invasion in 1940. They were seized as war booty by the Germans, who emplaced them along the Atlantic Wall or sold them to the Hungarians.