Abyssinia Crisis: SEAMAG 20mm AA-Gun

Another option is completed - a 20mm SEMAG AA gun with 2 crew and an NCO/Junior Officer.

Since my platoon lacks real firepower especially against armored targets, this will be one of the most important options, I guess - whether this is so, the games with my Abyssinians will show, who will mostly have to face a modern army, Italians.

While there are pictures that 20mm Bofor were in use, albeit very very few, with the Kebur Zabagna (the Imperial Guard), for the normal units there are only a few and blurry pictures of SEMAG's or Oerlikon 20mm, mostly very early versions from after WW1.

These are often only mounted on simple tripods, sometimes you can see wheels for transport / quick change of position.

Of course there is no model of the early SEMAG (SEMAG would later be taken over by Oerlikon) and certainly none with Mehal Sefari as crew, so here again conversion and scratch build was the order of the day.

Completed model

Scratchbuilding the model and crew

For the crew, meanwhile, practiced handling: sawing off heads and sometimes the feet, pinning other heads and feet, fitting, gluing and, if necessary, reworking with Liquid Green Stuff.

For the SEMAG, I reworked a grip from a 20mm Solothurn (model from Warlord Games) as the corpus, to which I fitted a turned brass barrel from a german 20mm FLAK, plus a 20mm FLAK magazine.

The suspension (unfortunately blurred in the foreground) I filed from sheet brass, bent and then fitted the pin that would allow the SEMAG to be aimed horizontally.

Next, I soldered the tripod from brass wire and filed an axle mount from a U-section to hold the axle for the wheels.

The upper plate is punched out of a plastic plate, and I then fitted the suspension of the SEMAG into the centered pin.

The strut of the tripod, which points to the shooter, I then cut to length so that the shaft of the SEMAG fits exactly into the hands of the same.

The completed model of the 20mm SEMAG AAG ready for painting

Since I wanted a small diorama again, I built 2 ammunition boxes from a brass kit - that was done quite quickly in this case: separate from the frame, fold and solder, done.

From Green Stuff I then formed individual sandbags and then built the suggestion of a gun position.

Then was just the fun part left: arranging figures and designing the base, which again meant cut brass wire to represent spent and ejected cartridge cases.

The next weeks I will try my hand at a FIAT 3000 (Renault FT 17), which will be the last option of the Chain of Command Army List of my Mehal Sefari for the time being, everything else has to show up in the games.

After the tank, I'll work on suitable terrain, buildings, etc.