Another 20mm RLI Stop Group

Knocked these 4 20mm Liberation figs up, the only conversion is the MAGist who initially had an LMG, I removed the mag and added the carrying handle, bipod, ammo belt and a couple of minor details. It's not perfect but I'm happy enough with it. Dougie

20mm Rhodesian Light Infantry

I'm going to try and get all my painted collections on the blog over the next few weeks, first up are my 20mm RLI boys, the figures are Liberation. These are suitable for Internal Fireforce operations where the guys were in shorts and T-Shirts alot of the time, I've got 3 4 man bricks, and the Allouettes to transport them :) Dougie
Stop 1

Stop 2

Stop 3

20mm African Rebel Platoon

These guys are a generic African Platoon and they'll be putting in service as ZANLA/ZIPRA/FRELIMO for the Rhodesian Bush War and also SWAPO for the South African Border War. I've went for a fairly standard organisation 3 squads of 8 fighters, a platoon HQ and a couple of support elements. I wanted a random, though uniform look, so there's a mixture of green and navy uniforms as well as an occasional piece of camo. The figures are all Liberation apart from a single Mutineer RPG gunner. Dougie

First is the 4 man Platoon Command

1st Squad

2nd Squad

3rd Squad

Support, AGS-17 and a ZPU1

Casualties

There's more stuff to come including vehicles, I've been trying to get my hands on an S-Model BRDM2 without much luck, if anyone has a spare in their stash let me know!

Rhodesian Bush War

I'm currently working on a commision for Mutineer Miniatures with their 20mm African Militia range so in the same vein I thought I'd post some pictures of my Rhodesian forces that I've had for some time. Mutineer's African's work well as ZANLA or ZIPRA and below are some pictures of their nemises in the shape of RLI, Selous Scouts and Greys Scouts. There's a few diferences in my style now compared to these older figures, they will be getting tarted up and brought up to standard. Dougie

A 4 man RLI Stick, Liberation Miniatures, the metal on the weapons are painted in my old style which I'm now not happy with so they'll be getting updated.

Greys Scouts, Liberation figures converted with WW2 Cossacks! The figure on the right is nearly all sculpted by my goodself using a Liberation head on a wire armature. These figures are sporting the old gunmetal as well as my old basing, you can also see the old matt varnish I used which wasn't very matt, if you compare with the figures above you can see the difference.

There's a lot been written about the Selous Scouts and there's a lot of misconseptions about their role, to a certain extent this is courtesy of the Rhodesian Military who fronted the Scouts as a tracker unit with their PR people and the vast majority of photos you see have them in uniform examining spoor. Their main role was pseudo-guerilla work and the unit was mixed race with black african soldiers essential. On Ops white soldiers always wore "black is beautiful" face paint to blend in with their black colleagues. Towards the end of the war the Scouts did take part in a more conventional role in the large cross border ops.
Op. Virile in 1977 was a cross border raid into Mozambique to destroy bridges at Dombe and Espungabera, the Scouts had a converted civillian bus with a 12.7mm DShK mounted in the roof rack hidden by drop down screens and two .50 cals at the rear. The "passengers" were 10 African Scouts and 3 white Scouts.
The 3 white scouts wearing pseudo terr gear and "black is beautiful". The bear chested figure was a large conversion around a Liberation figure, again these will need "tarting up".

 The Bus

"The" book about the Scouts, "Selous Scouts Top Secret War" by Lt.Col. Ron Reid Daly