240mm (9.45 Inch) Trench Mortar - AEF

The US entered WW1 with an Army that was not organized, equipped or trained for trench warfare in Europe. It procured the 240mm Trench Mortar from France and issued it to regiments of the Coastal Artillery Corps who had experience manning large caliber mortars in coastal fortifications. Ironically, by the time the units were equipped, trained, and in Europe; the war had started to become fluid and the trench mortars struggled to keep pace. Consequently, the 240mm Trench Mortars of the AEF saw limited combat.

Vargas Scale Models has released an excellent 1:35 scale model of the 240mm (9.45 inch) Trench Mortar. The kit is CAD designed and is a combination of high quality 3D prints and resin castings of 3D printed masters. The fit of the parts is perfect and the resin casting is very high quality. This kit has some of the most delicate parts that I've encountered in any kit. The resin is extremely hard - it chips rather than cuts. The kit can be built in a number of variants as used by different nations. It includes projectiles and propellent cases.

The resin parts had a pretty healthy coat of mold release. I managed to break one of the thin sides of the mortar base plate during my cleaning. I had to replace this with strip styrene and and Meng rivets. I primed it with black rattle can enamel from the hardware store and finished it with Tamiya acrylics. It was weathered Windsor & Newton oils and AK weathering products. In looking at war time black and white photos, the mortars did not appear to be painted in a camouflage pattern. The photos show most of the mortars to be lighter in shade than the US uniform. I concluded that they were most likely painted gray and picked XF53 Neutral Gray. The platform was left unpainted wood.

All in all this was a nice quick project and is an excellent addition to my collection of AEF artillery pieces. I look forward to more interesting WW1 subjects from Vargas.