You may recall that I did some work on a Swedish Rifle Platoon in WW2 for Chain of Command last year. This is part of a What-if Project I have been working on for some Potential WW2 actions involving the Swedish Army. I have been working away slowly with this project in the background. The rules I am using are Too Fat Lardies Chain of Command, but if you are interested in this What-if then you should be able to get something out of this even if you use another rule set.
More on this project here and here.
I will shortly do an update of the Swedish Platoon list for Chain of Command as there are a few errors in the support options.
One of the most iconic Swedish vehicles of the era was the Terrängbil m/42 KP (Off Road Vehicle), also known as the KP-bil. It was a domestic development and would allow the troops to keep up with the tanks and also offer some protection from artillery and small arms fire. The KP-bil was a APC basically developed from an army lorry with armour-plates. The first ones were delivered in 1944 but there were a produced in 1943 but rejected (due to weaknesses in the body). In the What-if scenarios I am developing with a German invasion of Sweden in 1943 these will be pressed into service earlier.
The KP-bil was finally de-commissioned from Swedish Military Service in 2004 and was baptised in fire during its service with the Swedish UN forces in Congo in the 1960s. It was sometimes referred to as the Coffin due to it shape and in Congo it was also known as the White Elephant. You can find more about this vehicle, in English, from these web pages:
- Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KP-bil
- Tanks Encyclopedia – http://www.tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/sweden/Terrangbil_m-42D_SKP.php
Putting them into Service
In doing the research for this WW2 Swedish project I found that it is possible to buy the KP-bil in 1/100 scale from Shapeways (link here).
The first issue is in the fact that these come with Machine Gun Mountings that were not included as standard until the 1950s – I could have stretched the imagination a little bit in this what-if and said that perhaps when they were pressed into service the mounting were attached? I decided to take them away. I did this with a fine cutter and then applied two pieces of thin card to cover the whole, the round piece incidentially the same diameter as a normal hole punch hole – I covered them with PVA glue.
I then painted them in three colour scheme – I have used this for the Tanks I am working on too (future posting).
The looked ok, but as they do not cover with any passengers the look a little bit boring. I thought I add some, but wanted to be able to take them out to show whether they were occupied or not on the gaming table.
During a very long telephone conference I got an idea and doodled it down – not a very clever one but good enough to achieve what I needed to do. I thought I would just create a block of soldiers that could be put in and out the vehicle.
I got some Italian Flames of War models (the one I used for the base Platoon I made) and created four bases (that I made sure fitted into the vehicles) with soldiers glued together (I used Grip Fill) trying to create some interesting “going ons”.
The I painted them as I did the other Platoon I did (see link here to that blog post for what Colours I used).
Had to get them out on a test spin, I think it was worth it.
/ Hope that was of some interest,
Roll a One - Wargaming Blog 
Definitely of interest Per! Great work – & very inspiring! – as always!
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Many thanks Colin, I really like them myself. It makes a hell of a difference for very little effort.
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Looking awesome, when I first glanced at the picture I though they were wheeled hanomag’s. I think the added infantry is inspired. They look brilliant.
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Thank you! I am going to do something similar for my Germans.
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Superb work- the sabot bases of passengers really make this part of the project stand out.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks Pete!
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We don’t that kind of elefant even white or camo!😉
Thanks for this interrestering story!
None swedish player got that on his table! 😉
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You are more than welcome, happy you liked it!
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Really well done Per. I think the Swedish stuff that you have done is inspired. Just curious on the Shapeways stiff. I am painting up a couple of 3D printed tanks (I do not remember who I got them from but they were on eBay) – they are M24 Chaffees and my first 3D printed models. I have used 3D printed buildings, but the printing lines on both drive me nuts. Especially on the tanks – limits washes and dry brushing. Your Shapewys stuff seems better – is that the case? Also, I have not played CoC – and I love What a Tanker – any similarities and what scale?
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Mark, I also have a few 3D printed tanks. The Shapeway ones I ordered are brilliant compared to some others I have or have seen. I did not work at all on the surface – it was all fine. CoC is different to What a Tanker in that it is a platoon plus based game (think Bolt Action with more historical accuracy in how units were built up and actually fought), but it has some, I think, more interesting features like a pre-game element – the patrol phase were you play a mini game to establish were your jump off point are – this means that when the actual game start you and your player knows roughly were things are (e.g. following early recon) but not may appear there as sections are being held back off-table until activated, activation is done by using dice (as in WaT, but works differently), etc. There are some good videos on YouTube that explains it better than me from the Too Fat Lardies themselves … this one sets them off https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XiT70m6CJO8 and there are also some good Lets Play Chain of Command videos they have made with Beast of War, this is one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fzSJUFI-mc . Hope you are well!
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Very nice models and the passengers look great! I’ve always thought the KP-bil looked quite striking so it’s nice to see your models. I’ve only bought a couple of Shapeways models in fine detail material and had issues with paint becoming slightly tacky after a while, which is frustrating, so I hope you don’t have any problems with these (so far acrylic paint seems more resistant than enamel). However, Shapeways seem to use quite fine resolutions with their prints and I find even their white strong and flexible models are good quality. 🙂
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Many thanks John. I have not had had the problem with the paint (yet!). I think the models are great but I find them a little bit fragile have dropped one or two which could lead to breakage – it snaps like porcelain (kind of!). But they are very smooth and nice models.
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