"Tank cannon smoke and explosions from tank rounds." Topic

I model in 1/72 scale, and I was curious as to how I could replicate a tank firing. As of the moment I have a few vehicles, but no way to show them firing. I was wanting to do this, because it would look really good when taking pictures, but also be great for war gamming. I also wanted to replicate the explosion of various shells hitting the ground like HE or AP or what not, any tips for that?

One thing you can see from old footage-or eyewitness, is that when a tank takes a killing round there is less often an explosion a la Hollywood; more visable is a mushroom puff of black smoke up and out of the turret hatch, and the inference of what happened to the poor flesh inside.

A bit of pinched painted cotton is good for firing,

a black clot of foam turf spraying (glue, then paint the turf), under grey cotton (smoke) good for HE.

AP, when not hitting buldings or armour, would be less dramatic. Overshot, buried, wrecked a tree,etc.

When hitting stone,brick, mortar or metal of course, a small pinch of cotton painted orange for the entry hit: then whatever happened from your die roll represented by painted cotton wool again.

As I game 1/72nd almost exclusively, I find that a cotton ball glued to a penny, painted with red and black spray paint (streched out slightly to reveal the white cotton underneath), works great for exploding shells/knocked out tanks. For HE, just a cotton ball on a penny, streched out. For smoke rounds, just a plain cotton ball, unmounted, not streched out. Maybe not diorama quality, but for gaming it is good. Hope this helps…

I use, variously:

Irregular 6mm shell bursts, these paint up really well.

Lumps of kapok/hamster bedding etc

Grey packing foam carved into 'explosion' shapes with bright orange paint on the base.

Frontline Wargaming make a nice explosion marker in resin. It also makes a very nice bush!

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