The lure of Malta, and Spencer-Smith Saxons - finally

 I really must get back to a spot of painting, and maybe even gaming..was the sign-off to my last post here. Well, one out of two isn't bad.. I did manage to get behind a paintbrush or two this past week, of which more later. But I also got slightly led astray.. You see, as a child in the grip of an obsession with aeroplanes ( thanks to Capt. W.E, Johns, of course )  I picked up a little paperback book that made a huge impression.- Faith, Hope and Charity by Kenneth Poolman. Here is that very volume, which I have hung on to all these years: 

 

The story of the famous trio ( actually, maybe  there were four of them )  of Gloster Gladiators and the heroic defense of Malta from Italian and German air attacks from 1940 to 1942 ( it was the most heavily-bombed place on earth )  just grabbed my imagination, and I have never really forgotten it.  Several more books on the subject have joined my bookshelves since - I can recommned James Holland's Fortress Malta  as a really good modern telling of the story, with lots of eyewitness accounts. I also made it to Malta once, just on a ordinary package  holiday, but I remember managing to drag my friends to the museum in Valetta to look at the semi-restored airframe of the last survivor of those Gladiators - 'Faith'.  And then last week The Naval and Military Press came up with one of their special offers - 25% off WW2 books, in this case  - and I found something of a bargain. This is Fighters Over Malta: Gladiators and Hurricanes 1940-42  by Brian Cull and Frederick Galea, published in 2018. by Fonthill.  

 Now Mr. Cull has form in this area, with a string of books relating to wartime events on Malta to his name, ( many years ago I picked-up his earlier  'Malta: the Hurricane Years' and was pretty much amazed that someone had researched in such detail )  and Frederick Galea is a Maltese native and aviation writer, who is also hon. secretary of Malta's National War Museum Association, so we are in the hands of experts.  They have produced something of a doorstop of a volume, almost 500 pages ( in a small typeface too!) , covering the operations of Gladiator and Hurricane fighters defending Malta from June 1940 to April 1942. The text includes a very high proportion of extracts from personal diaries and journals written by those taking part, and I think that, combined with Brian Cull's mastery of the detailed history,  will make it especially interesting. You've got to salute a book that includes, among nine appendices, one that simply lists the serial numbers of all the known Hurricanes used on the island - I'm sure that will be extremely useful(!).   I am really very pleased with this book, now the only issue is the small matter of actually  reading it! I am thinking of a  'real-time' approach - given that the story is told strictly chronologically from  June 1940,  I hope to make a start now and read up to mid-July 1940, and then  every few days, read the account of the events of the same few days 83 years earlier. Only a few minutes each day ( or week ) should be  required - though of course I wouldn't then finish the whole book until April 2025!   Anyway, this is going to be something of a feast, I am very pleased to have acquired it. By the time I finish, I suspect there may be a companion volume on the Malta Spitfires..  I haven't really tried gaming this campaign,  though I do have the recent WW2 air combat boardgame Wing Leader, and I am pretty sure that has some Malta scenarios. Tally ho!

And the painting? Well, I am glad to say I finally finished painting a couple of Portable Wargame units of infantry, representing the  Friedrich August Regiment of the army of Saxony. These are the vintage Spencer-Smith figures gifted to me by Neil from the excellent Aufklarungsabteilung blog - I was really pleased to get them, but I will admit I struggled with painting them! A case of  'be careful what you wish for', perhaps?  I thought that their minimal detail would make them easier to paint, but in reality it seemed to be exactly the reverse, and I clearly didn't have the skills, steady hand or eyesight for the job.  I hit something of a 'wall' with these, but eventually managed to press on and finish them. Here they are - just don't look too closely!

                                                                      

I am still really very pleased to have these nice old figures in my armies, their distinctive pose is so evocative of the old-school games pictured in Charles Grant's The War Game .  I think I rather rushed into doing these, and I will need to think and plan a bit before doing the next batch, but I also think I learned some useful lessons which will help me do better in future. I think I need to do at least one, perhaps two  more eight-figure units for regiment Friedrich August, and I then hope to add another infantry regiment from Saxony, plus some cavalry.  In case you are wondering, the slightly wobbly black-lining was done with a fine-tipped pen from an art shop - luckily it proved to be waterproof when I gave them a coat of matt acrylic varnish - and I think the resulting delineation between colours,  especially the white and yellow in the uniforms, helped a bit. I hope  they won't fight any worse than other units when deployed on the table - and one advantage of mostly gaming solo is that no-one else is likely to get a very close look at them! 

Having more or less got back into a painting habit, I have also been picking at the first few of my HaT Alexandrian Macedonian figures - more of those later, if I can keep up the momentum. And surely some gaming must be in order: these Saxons need to take the field.  So,  watch this space, and until next time keep well, everyone.