Australian Morris CS11/30
2 Pdr Anti-Tank Portee

A Modelling Project in 1/76th Scale

by Mick Bell

Introduction

It’s taken me a long time to appreciate the value of the internet as a research tool. At first I regarded it as the preserve of square eyed nerds with nothing better to do, but in the past few months I’ve been forced to revise my opinion. Perhaps the quality of the information available has improved, or perhaps I’ve learned how to use it better; whichever it is I have recently found some very useful information for my drawing and modelling projects. The secret seems to be to have a specific aim in view and not to be distracted by irrelevant links and leads - however interesting they may look at the time.

One of the most useful sites I’ve found has been Anzac Steel. As the name suggests it is devoted to armour and other military vehicles of Australia and New Zealand. A recent article by Paul Handel describes the use of Australian troops to garrison Cyprus in 1941, to prevent an invasion similar to that suffered by Crete. One of the pictures illustrating the article shows a Morris CS11/30 mounting a 2 Pounder anti tank gun on its cut down flatbed body, portee fashion. This unique and unusual vehicle fascinated me and I decided I would like to build a model of it. First a little research was in order.

Vehicle Background

John Church has drawn a plan of the Morris CS11/30 in its basic cargo truck form. The closed cab version is shown fully, with scrap views showing the open cab variant. Mike Conniford’s Military Vehicle Pamphlet No 7, British 4-Wheeled 30 cwts, also has a drawing of the closed cab version and 3 photos showing both closed and open cabs.

Dry powder paint was used to add dust to the model

Bart Vanderveen’s The Observers’ Fighting Vehicles Directory has a photo of an open cabbed CS11/30 in desert colours, while his Historic Military Vehicles Directory has a picture of a pre-war closed cabbed truck. These references seemed to cover the truck adequately, next I needed to find out whether there was a model of the 2 Pounder available [I didn’t relish scratch building it] and what might be used as the basis of the truck.

Making a Start

A very nice little kit of the 2 Pounder is available in white metal from SHQ. The wheelbase of the CS11/30 [11 ft 2 ins] is the same as that of the Austin K2 Ambulance, so the Airfix kit of the Austin would provide an ideal chassis and running gear.

Airfix Austin K2 chassis with new bonnet, cab and wings built on. The wheels have added detail and the chassis carries raised bearers for the body.

Though the K2’s wheel base is correct, the chassis needs to be shortened at the front [to the front spring hangers] and extended at the rear to match the length of the body. According to the drawings the Morris’ chassis is higher behind the back axle than in front of it. I chose to ignore this and contented myself with fitting battens [40 thou by 60 thou] on top of the chassis rails to support the body at the right height. At the chassis rear I fitted a leaf spring and tow hook from the scrap box. There is no fuel tank visible on the photos, so I assume this was mounted either in the scuttle, or perhaps beneath the co-driver’s seat.

Unfortunately none of the parts of the Austin could be used for the cab and bonnet, so I constructed these from plasticard. Study of the photographs showed that the cab is not a lot narrower than the body on the nearside, but the spare wheel is mounted alongside the driver on the offside. I concluded that the cab must be asymmetrical, being wider on the nearside than the offside. It might be possible to used the radiator from a kit of a Morris truck [Airfix Quad, Bofors Tractor, or Matchbox 17 Pounder Tractor], but I didn’t have one to spare so had to scratch build the radiator from plasticard. I dithered for some time over whether to give the matrix of the radiator some sort of texture, but eventually decided that anything I did would be grossly overscale, so left it smooth. I later regretted this decision when painting the model and wished I’d used some fine mesh to represent the surface of the radiator. The K2 provided the driver’s seat, steering wheel, gear lever and handbrake - all essential in an open cabbed model.

Chassis/cab from the right side. I didn’t fit the driver’s seat until the driver was sitting on it, to make it easier to get the driver behind the wheel. The passenger’s seat cushion is from Milliput and the passenger’s bottom was pressed into it while it was still soft, to ensure that he would be realistically seated. The picture on Anzac Steel suggests that the spare wheel mounting had been replaced by a hand winch, presumably to assist in loading the 2 pdr.

The front mudguards presented the next puzzle. Both John Church’s and Mike Conniford’s drawings show 1930s style front wings sweeping back to the front of the cab, but the picture on the Anzac Steel website had semicircular wings quite closely fitted round the wheels. Luckily these are also well illustrated in Fighting Vehicles Directory with the long running boards behind them. I cut the front wings from the floor of the K2, added a reinforcing strip around the inside and a filler piece at the front outer corners. This provided enough ‘meat’ to file and sand the mudguards to a rounded shape before fitting them either side of the bonnet.

Mounting the 2 Pounder

The Aussies removed the sides from the Morris’ cargo body and fitted stout timber baulks across the flatbed to mount the 2 Pounder, still on its field carriage. The photo on Anzac Steel shows this well and also that the portion of the flatbed behind the offside rear wheel is missing. I constructed the flatbed from embossed planked plasticard, reinforced with a second lamination of 15 thou beneath. Mounting battens of 40 thou square strip run across the underside. Contrary to the drawings, but in agreement with the photos, I fitted a stowage box either side of the body in front of the rear wheels and a POL rack at the rear nearside. The rear offside of the body is missing, so there can be no box or rack there. I also detailed the rear of the flatbed with bolt heads and steps [twisted and bent from brass strip].

The flatbed body and timber baulks before fitting to the chassis. I think the rear mudguards were from the Airfix Opel Blitz - they were sculling about in my spares box.

The SHQ 2 Pounder AT Gun is a nice little model in its own right. Though SHQ’s models are intended for wargamers, they are certainly better than ‘wargames models’. They are cleanly moulded and simple to build, with only a little extra detail needed to bring them up to ‘collectors’ standard. It seemed a little large for the Morris, with the spread of the tripod legs exceeding the limits of the flatbed. However the use of battens to mount the gun suggests that the spread of the tripod legs did in fact exceed the width of the flatbed and the model tallies well with known dimensions of the piece in its deployed position.

SHQ white metal 2 pdr AT gun from the front. Visible detail additions in white are a new axle, torque rods and rivets on the gunshield.

The reference photos show that the gun fitted within the truck’s length and this is borne out by the models, provided the towing eye is removed from the rear trail leg.

Markings and Crew

The vehicle and gun appear to be overall light stone [or ‘desert sand’ depending on your preferred nomenclature] and the only marking visible is an illegible rear number plate. However, other pictures in the article show markings on other unit vehicles and it seemed reasonable to apply similar markings to the CS11/30. A picture of a Ford WOT2 shows a black square with the number 41 in white on the nearside front mudguard. On the opposite side the bridge classification disc is also painted black with 41 in white. On the CS11/30 I applied the black square and white ‘41’ on the nearside, but played safe and applied a normal yellow bridge disc on the offside.

The completed model before painting or crewing. The Anzac Steel photo does not show the gun’s wheels at all, so I left them off the finished model.

SHQ also make a crew for their 2 pounder, while AB figures do some nice seated figures. The AB figures provided the driver, driver’s mate and seated gunner, while SHQ’s gun crew contributed the loader and gun commander. I swapped the heads or hats [whichever was easier in each case] with heads/hats from SHQ’s slouch hatted British Infantry. On a couple of them I turned up the hat brim on the left side, ‘digger fashion’; others I left with the whole brim lowered.

The completed, painted and crewed vehicle makes an unusual addition to my collection and looks very different from the ‘run of the mill’ standard vehicles. I hope you will agree.

References:

A. http://www.hobbyvista.com/anzacsteel - look for article Australian Armour On Cyprus
B. John Church Plan No 254
C. Military Vehicle Pamphlet No 7 - British 4-Wheeled 30-cwts [Conniford]
D. Observers Fighting Vehicle Directory [Vanderveen]
E. Historic Military Vehicles Directory [Vanderveen]