I’ve got a lot of my boxed FoW stuff in shelves next to the stairs, so I see them quite a lot as I move around the house. This was the case with these Zvezda model kits that I kept seeing every time I went up and/or down the stairs, and so the other day I decided to just get rid of these in the most productive way – by assembling and painting them.
Despite being a Soviet-produced vehicle, captured BA-10 were used in relatively significant numbers in the Finnish forces during the Winter War and Continuation War, so it seems a historically appropriate use of my Zvezda kits that I picked up during my major FoW aquisition days during the days of The Pandemic. They’re simple assemblies, (though two of the headlights pinged off the painting desk and through a dimensional portal, never to be seen again – so replaced with sprue). I also added some very simple stowage with milliput and some space tiny plastic crates and jerry cans. Being captured vehicles, I also left them painted in a plain Russian Green rather than applying finnish 3-colour camo.
Finnish vehicles had registration numbers, following the pattern “Ps” and then several numbers designating the vehicle type and then the individual vehicle number. I wasn’t as aware of how the system worked at the time I painted these as I am now (these should be Ps.27-xx), but given the size of these models it was more of a case of giving an impresson of the Ps. numbers, and then using some larger number decals for “in-game” unit numbers so we know the “command” vehicle. I may or may not go back and try to “fix” the Ps. numbers on these three.
You might have noticed the symbol on the sides of the turrets and the rear of the hulls. Yes, it’s a swastika, but no, it’s also not a swastika. It’s actually a hakaristi, and just as many people are aware that the swastika is an ancient symbol of luck in many Asian and Eastern buddist cultures, it also has a long history of use without any association with nazis or fascism in European cultures – being in use by the Finns since 1918, some time before that Austrian guy came to prominence in Germany. For a more detailed background of it’s use in the Finnish military, click here or watch the linked video down below.
I have to admit, trying to hand-paint tiny two-colour hakaristi on the back of tiny armoured cars wasn’t on my Bingo card for the year, but I’ve always had an affection for the Finns, so I’m good with it being their time now. In theory, these cars should have six of them each – one on each side of the hulls as well as one on each side of the turrets – and I simply don’t have anywhere near enough decals for those numbers, so I decided to freehand the larger ones on the rear of their hulls. They’re a little rough, and also an excellent example of why I prefer to use decals for insignia that should be consistent across multiple models.
Azazel's Bitz Box. 
Very nicely done, and Finnish as well! 🙂
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Thanks John. Don’t think I haven’t been looking at some of your older posts while prepping and painting these and their forthcoming friends as well! 😉
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Excellent work including the freehand, and love the added history you included.
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Thanks Dave – I felt it pretty important to add that in the first Finnish post since it’s pretty easy to make a whole bunch of (reasonable) assumptions on first seeing them. 🙂
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Great work mate, like Dave, I to think you did a good jog on the free hand, my old hand sometimes gets the shakes when I attempt to do decals freehand😂😂.
The video was interesting also.
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Thanks Pat. I’m satisfied with the middle one, but the ones on left and right do make me cringe a little – I might end up touching those up, particularly if I end up redoing those Ps. numbers!
Mark Felton does really good historical videos – I highly recommend his channel(s) for a lot of interesting stuff that you can either watch or listen to like a radio documentary.
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Really interesting to see these as a Finn! Glad you added that part about the hakaristi as well, it can be a liiiittle awkward to explain…
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Hey Mikko! Good to see you again! I hope to maintain some consistency on my little force of Finns for at least a couple of months and see how much I can get painted and completed, so it’ll be great to read your perspective and opinion on them if/when you’ve got the time. 🙂
As for the hakaristi – I mean, it makes sense. Finland was using it nationally long before the Germans and then later on they were allied with the Germans (against the Soviets) in the defensive Continuation War. So it was a symbol-in-common for a period of time. In the modern European and Western contexts it does make sense to be minimising and removing it, though!
I think in general, people today are largely either innocently ignorant to the symbol’s long history across the world, while many others on social media simply choose to be wilfully ignorant when they see it used in different contexts, even historically.
An example of that would be when I (part) watched one YT video where the presenter started complaining about Nordic symbols on Dwarfs and Space Wolves making him uncomfortable because “alt-right”.
Huh, that’s a lot of text in a reply. I may end up recycling part of this down the road in a future post! 😉
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Well I certainly learned some things from this one (though I don’t know a ton about WWII, to be fair) and the vehicles came out very nicely too.
I’m glad to hear that I’m not the only one who gets motivated by seeing something unpainted day after day. If something sits on my hobby desk long enough, I’ll get annoyed and paint it eventually!
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Thanks mate. Would you believe that the next two sets of vehicles I’ve tried to apply this two have hit what I call “landmines”? (hobby roadblocks)
The next set of Finnish vehicles had 2 of 3 turrets miscast, and I’ve had to contact Battlefront. I’ve had Flippy working on some options, but tank part cleanup (and a potential great solution) got sidetracked by zombie cleanup.
Then this weekend I tried to work some British tanks, but awful casting set that back due to cleanup, filing and putty required instead of just glue – and then finding that Battlefront used to sell them in threes, and they can still be taken in threes. So the first two are 90% assembled and part-primed (the underside) outside while Flippy is solving that third-tank problem for the next 3h9mins as I type this…
And with that, the weekend ends with a ton of work done on various things but no newly completed models…
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I hate it when that happens. I don’t enjoy problem solving and so having to do hobby problem solving brings me little joy as well. I hope that Flippy helps solve these casting issues for you!
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Lovely work.
Cheers,
Pete.
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Thanks again Pete! More Finns to come! 😀
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