Launcher assembly

A wooden A-stand

This launcher was a simple device, it was built from four pieces. These pieces were supposedly wooden, I just failed to discern any woodgrain on either side of the parts. I had not had a more perfect opportunity to try another of Uncle Night Shift's tricks that he has used a few times to make plain polystyrene to look more like actual wood.

 

Before anything else I snipped the pieces off the sprue and got the large excess chunks off. On the flipside the bits were much uglier than the outside, especially the main part #1 had huge lumps of ejector pin marks and whatnot that made it look more like a Lego piece. When that was done I made some passes along the parts with my file cleaning brush.

At this point I didn't stop to clean them up with liquid cement but just built the frame itself. I started by leaving the hinges free to move so I could play with the angle. That didn't work, it wouldn't stand on its own without collapsing. So I glued it in a fixed position.

Munitions

With the frame done I built the four rockets. Two of the rockets were of the 28cm HE variety, the other two were 32cm napalm rockets. Wurfkörper Spreng and Wurfkörper Flamm in the original language. This photo here showed that especially the second from the bottom especially needed some more cleanup.

Launcher leader

The time I had available allowed me to assemble one of the five figures, and the randomly chosen one was the boss of the unit. He was looking at his wrist watch for the launching times, hand ready to swing down for the FEUER! command. Cleaning these dudes was going to take some time, and I was already stressing about painting them.

My mood was going to decide if my next step was going to be the people assembly, or the launcher crate PE folding step. My decision was also going to be heavily influenced by the time I had the next time I sat down with this kit. Another possible path was also just a simple cleanup session to get the rockets paintable, or glue-cleaning the rack's wooden parts. Ah, the excitement!