Gunn Figure Release Feb 2024 (1 Viewer)

[Gunn Miniatures]

Kelly with Black Hair

That's it for now, we sincerely hope you enjoy these new releases and look forward to hearing from you. The Team @ Gunn

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

The Vietnam War Gooooood Morning Vietnam. Well our 2 new releases are certainly getting our attention and they look like they are ‘gunning for trouble’. Waiting with her M60 and bandolero of ammo, they are stripped for the hot Vietnam climate and ready for action. NAM002A. Annie’s Got Her Gun with brown Hair NAM002B. Machine Gun Kelly with black Hair Both limited to 50 in number and priced at $50 per figure whilst stocks last.

Annie with Brown Hair

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

Lilly with Black Hair

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

WW2 Germans A couple of new Fraulein’s, but they are hard to Miss and it would be difficult to keep your Hans off them. Armed with an MG34, they are ready for action and certainly loaded. SS152A. Heidi with brown hair Priced at $50 and limited to 50 in number. SS152B. Lilly with black hair Priced at $50 and limited to 50 in number.

Heidi with Brown Hair

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

RAF007B Yvonne Cormeau

Yvonne Cormeau was born in 1909 to a Belgian consular official and Scottish mother. She was educated in both Belgium and Scotland was living in London when in 1937 she married Charles Emile Cormeau, a chartered accountant. Her husband enlisted in the army and in 1940 he was wounded in France and was sent back to the UK. Shortly afterwards he was killed when their London home was bombed. Her life was saved by a bathtub which fell over her head and protected her, although killing her unborn baby. She sent her other two-year-old daughter Yvette to the countryside to escape the frequent bombing of London.

Newly widowed, Cormeau decided to "take her husband's place in the Armed Forces" and she joined the WAAF as an administrator in November 1941, while serving at RAF Swinderby she answered an appeal on the noticeboard for linguists, and was recruited by SOE and began training as an F Section wireless operator on 15 February 1943. She was commissioned and promoted to the rank of Flight Officer.

She did her SOE training with Yolande Beekman Noor Inayat Khan. She was the only one of the three to survive her mission to France.
On the night of 22 August 1943 Cormeau was parachuted into Nazi occupied France.
Her assignment was to work as the wireless operator on the SOE F Section Wheelwright circuit in Gascony. The leader of the circuit (or network) was George Starr, code name Hilaire, whom she had known before the war when living in Brussels, her code name was Annette. She declined to take with her the cyanide pill offered by SOE to agents so they could commit suicide if captured. She arrived armed with a .22 revolver, but on Starr's advice, she never carried it with her during her thirteen months in France. To be captured by the Germans while carrying a firearm or a cyanide pill was, he told her a death sentence.

Cormeau was a talented signaler and could transmit up to 22 words per minute whilst the average was 12 words per minute.

She was almost arrested by the Germans after being betrayed by an agent codenamed Rodolph. However, she continued to operate, despite being confronted by "wanted" posters in her neighborhood which gave an accurate sketch of her appearance. She was stopped at a German roadblock with George Starr; the pair was questioned while a gun was held to their backs. Eventually the Germans accepted her story and the false identification papers and she succeeded in passing her wireless equipment off as an X-ray machine.

Cormeau sent over 400 messages to London, second only to Auguste Floiras of the Jockey network who operated for a longer period of time. She made arrangements for arms and supplies to be dropped for the local Maquis. She assisted in the cutting of the power and telephone lines, resulting in the isolation of the Wehrmacht Group G garrison near Toulouse.

In June 1944, Cormeau was shot in the leg while escaping from a German attack on Castelnau, but managed to escape with her wireless. The dress she wore on this occasion and the bloodstained briefcase she carried are on permanent display in the Imperial War Museum in London along with her WAAF officer's uniform. On 21 August, Toulouse fell to the French Forces of the Interior, the umbrella organisation of resistance fighters. Starr and Yvonne Cormeau drove into the city, American and British flags on their car.
The liberation of southwestern France was complete and her war was over.

Cormeau is acknowledged to be the inspiration behind the book and film ‘Charlotte Gray’.

This figure of Cormeau in happier times chatting with Beekman prior to their mission is limited to 100 pieces and priced at $55 whilst stocks last. This B version differs from the A version in that she is looking straight ahead and has no machine gun.

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

The Special Operations Executive (SOE)

The SOE WAS created in July 1940 under the Ministry of Economic Warfare and was a secret WW2 British organization. Its purpose was to conduct espionage, sabotage and reconnaissance in occupied Europe and later, also in occupied Southeast Asia. Members of SOE were sometimes referred to as the "Baker Street Irregulars", after the location of its London headquarters. The organization was dissolved in January 1946. There were 1,300 brave men and women who served in the SOE, from many different nationalities, with 200 being women.

Their weapons were their bravery and guile, and rightly so there are a number of memorials. The official memorial to all those who served in the SOE in WW2 was unveiled in February 1996, on the wall of the west cloister of Westminster Abbey west Cloister, by Queen Elizabeth, The Queen Mother. Based on the Albert Embankment in London, unveiled in 2009, the Valençay SOE Memorial honours the 104 SOE agents who lost their lives while working in France. The Tempsford Memorial was unveiled on 3 December 2013 by the then Charles, Prince of Wales, now King Charlies III, in Church End, Tempsford, Bedfordshire, close to the site of RAF Tempsford. Where many of the SOE left for their missions in occupied Europe.

This month we are releasing the first of a new sub-range of SOE Figures.

RAF007A Yolande Beekman
Yolande Elsa Maria Beekman [Born Jan 7th 1911 – Died Sept 13[SUP]th[/SUP] 1944] was a British secret agent in WW II, who served in the Women's Auxiliary Air Force and the SOE. She had a Swiss father and English mother in Paris. As a child, she grew up in London and Paris and was fluent in English, German, and French.

After enlisting in the RAF Signals Wing, she transferred and trained to be an SOE Agent and then flew into occupied France on the night of Sept 17/18 1943, in a Lysander. Whilst in training she met and married a Dutch Sergeant, Jaap Beekman, with whom she was on the W/O training course. After arriving in France, Beekman operated the wireless for Gustave Biéler, the Canadian in charge of the Musician circuit [the SOE named the clandestine networks ‘circuits’] at Saint-Quentin in Aisne departement, using the codenames "Mariette" and "Kilt" (wireless codename), and the alias "Yvonne."
The Germans, using radio detection equipment, traced her radio signal and Beekman along with Bieler were arrested, Bieler was executed on September 5[SUP]th[/SUP] 1944. While in prison Beekman was brutalised and tortured, Yolanda Beekman was executed at Dachau concentration camp, with fellow agents, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan, and Eliane Plewman. on September 13[SUP]th[/SUP] 1944. They were executed by Wilhelm Ruppert, who after the war was tried, found guilty and hanged in May 1946.

Our figure depicts Beekman in WAAF uniform with a Tommy Gun looking left whilst holding a cup of tea as if she has just come from a weapons familiarization lesson. Limited to 100 in number and priced at $55 per figure.

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

World War 2

The Air Transport Auxiliary (ATA)

The ATA was a British civilian organization set up at the beginning of WW2, headquarters were at White Waltham Airfield in Berkshire. The ATA ferried new, repaired and damaged military aircraft between factories, assembly plants, transatlantic delivery points, maintenance units, scrapyards, and active service squadrons and airfields, but not to naval aircraft carriers. Also ferrying service personnel and performed some air ambulance work. During the war around 10% of ATA pilots were women, were 168 female pilots, one in eight of all ATA pilots, and they volunteered from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, the United States, the Netherlands and Poland. The female pilots nicknamed "Attagirls" had a high profile in the press and from 1943 they received equal pay to their male colleagues, a first for the British government.

In Feb 2024 we are releasing the first 2 of our ATA Women. We are extremely pleased with the figures and will look to be releasing several figures representing these pioneering women, who stepped up to serve when they were asked. This is the first of the new ATA female pilots from Thomas Gunn

RAF006A Joy Lofthouse (born 14th Feb 1923 – died 15th Nov 2017)
Joy was a British pilot, having joined the ATA pilot in December 1943. Together with her sister, Yvonne, after see a magazine advert asking seeking women to learn how to fly. They were 2 of only 17 out of 2,000 applicants accepted, including Joy, who had never even driven a car. She flew 18 types of aircraft and Lofthouse was based at White Waltham, in Berkshire. Her first solo flight was in a Miles Magister, her initial work focused on delivering Magisters and Tiger Moth biplanes to flying schools. She later went on to fly Spitfires and bombers.

In 2015, she returned to the skies, taking control of a dual control tandem Spitfire, 70 years after last flying in one in 1945. She died in November 2017, at the age of 94. Before she died, Lofthouse was one of the two surviving WW II "Spitfire Girls".

The masters for these WAAF girls were all painted by a national champion award winning model painter and we hope you can see the quality shining through on these figures.

Limited to 100 in number and priced at $55 per figure whilst stocks last.

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

ROM169 Ambidextrous - The Gladiator/Mercenary

Deadly with both swords and fast as lighting, Ambidextrous rules the arena, fighting other Gladiators, the mighty beasts, or Rome's enemies, he looks truly excellent and is well equipped for the job. We hope ‘you are entertained’ by our new first release Gladiator or equally, he could be a mercenary serving in Rome's army, after all the Romans employed thousands of mercenaries and what's not to like about this one in his striking helmet and blue tunic?

Priced at $55.00 per figure
Limited to 100 in number.

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

EGYPT011B. Egyptian Guard with Cheetah – Number 2

The first Egyptian Guard and Cheetah set was a big success with collectors and sold out very quickly. After being asked if there were anymore to be released? We have answered that question with our second [and last] Egyptian Guard with Cheetah. This new Guard has his arms folded and the Cheetah has a new angrier face showing his teeth and his displeasure.

Limited to 100 in number and priced at $85 whilst stocks last.

 

[Gunn Miniatures]

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Dear All Welcome to the first February 2024 figure newsletter, Warplanes newsletter to follow in the next 2 weeks. All just in time for Valentine's day so you can buy yourself something really nice!

 

[villagehorse]

Yes some of these are on my radar. Really like the RAF theme. Robin.

 

[Terp152]

"Yolanda Beekman was executed at Dachau concentration camp, with fellow agents, Madeleine Damerment, Noor Inayat Khan, and Eliane Plewman. " Thanks for making figs representing these courageous women. I've visited Dachau and seen their memorial plaque in the oven room where their remains were cremated. Never forget.

 

[29 Let's Go]

Further reading on the subject of spies; I recommend: "A Woman Of No Importance."

Steve

 

[jason foote]

Love the Egyptian and the gkadiator

 

[WesternOutlaw]

A fine medley of figures. I really like the Gladiator as well.

 

[Combat]

Lily and co. are going to do a lot for recruiting.

 

[WesternOutlaw]

In re. to the Roman Gladiator, I'd like to add that I love TG's sword blades (shiny and sharp).