Friday 7 January 2011

The British Army 1965-80

Back in the seventies I used to own a copy of Osprey Men-at-Arms series, No.71 The British Army 1965-80.  Long gone.



It's really little more than a list of regiments and cap basges with a briefest of overviews of uniforms. If you see it for a pound or two on eBay, go for it - but pay no more than £2. Personally I think the DPM represented in this Men-at-Arms title as too 'yellow' but I've found this to be a regular conceit amongst illustrators. Back in the late seventies I used the figure on the cover of the book to paint my Airfix 1/32nd scale Modern British Infantry - lovely models.Shame Airfix made no opposition or made these in 1/7nd where they would at least have had a Chieftain and Scorprion/Scimitar to go with. A simple but all too non-existant marketing strategy.

 Airfix 1/32nd Modern British Infantry
Production 1977-1984

A Call To Arms should be releasing 1/72nd scale, yes 1/72nd scale, Modern British Paratroopers later this year, equal in quality to the larger OOP Airfix British. Not surprising as they are based on Britains 54mm SuperDeetail British Paratroopers from 1978, in Combat Dress, '58 webbing and berets. A preview of the full sprue with 8 diffrent poses is available at Plastictsoldierreview.com.

With the success of Warhammer and the like if I were in charge at Airfix I'd use the masters for their 1/32nd  ranges to make boxes of 28mm figures. Rant over.

Cheers
Mark

5 comments:

  1. Great stuff Mark (I loved Angus, by the way :)Good news about the Paras too; do you know of any decent Cold War Soviet figures about at the moment?
    Cheers mate,

    Monty

    ReplyDelete
  2. those Call To Arms are going to be just to much fun to ignore - and you'd like to think that some WarPact would follow in their wake, unless C2A are went altogether more South Atlantic....

    ReplyDelete
  3. Cheers Monty!

    In plastic there's only the Esci Soviet Paras and Warsaw Pact Infantry sets. If they are still available?

    In metal - Combat Miniatures (Stonewall Figures in UK), Platoon 20 and Liberation Mins (RH Models).

    Cheers
    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  4. I have that book myself.Those ACTA modern brits look exactly like a set of Britians toy soldiers in 1/32 I had when I was a kid.
    I had actually thought ACTA had gone out of business.Its a shame they Airfix didn't scale them down either.

    Cheers Rich.

    ReplyDelete
  5. My father has a copy of this book back in Nova Scotia. He was a Canadian Reserve/Militia officer in the 1st Battalion, Nova Scotia Highlanders (North) and was attached to 4th Battalion (TA) Royal Green Jackets in the summer of 1974. He had alot of good times with them. He still has his DPM kit and 58 pattern webbing the officers gave him back in 1980 when he visited the officer mess.

    ReplyDelete