Nazi Pigs

They use a mixture of German and traditional equipment.

German wagon.

The little green wagon was a baby crib!

I got it at a wedding store.

I added the wheels and the seats and traces.

Nazi pigs.

Cossack Conversions WWII

Cossacks wore a variety of uniforms, including German and traditional dress.

This battalion is small, but comes with infantry, anti-tank guns, command group, engineers and others.

Several clergy and you can see the dog mascot and radio operator.

There is also a small medical detachment.

Many of these troops have had their heads removed and replaced with more appropriate headgear.  There are also a couple dancers and a mandolin player to keep up morale.

Civilians

More bits and pieces of troops going back together in some way.

These guys are becoming civilians of the 19th and 20th Centuries.

WWII British pants, and upper body from a pioneer!

The upper body is a violin player, I use that guy's upper body frequently.  This lower body is one of several surplus!

New hats, new heads, new bodies!

ACW Troops

I had a few troops from the sick, lame and lazy pile that were to become ACW Union troops.

These figures are from at least five different companies.

The horse rider donated his head to a WWII American soldier.  Not unlike the guy from the Rat Patrol who wore an ACW Kepi.

He got a new head from an Alamo Defender and a horse from Eagle Games.

A few also became Confederates.

Ironically, they are photographed in blue!

GWB in Combat

A front view of the Imex Radio Operator. 1/72nd scale glue able plastic. I use regular model glue. He has a carbine, it was popular with the Germans and was a replacement for the pistol. That makes it a good weapon for the radio guy.

Another view of the Thomson gunner with US Army backpack.

A small unit of George Washington Brigade soldiers. Note the bazooka launcher team. The large bag is the ammo for the bazooka. Note also the panzerfaust man has a rifle next to him. In my rule set you only get the weapons the figures have. So to allow the panzerfaust man to shoot someone, he has to have a rifle.

More GWB

This is a pretty good rear view of the Thompson gunner. Note the combination of GI and German kit on his back. The Thompson was well respected by the Germans.

This Imex WWII German officer in 1/72nd scale plastic has been altered to be an American serving in the Waffen SS in the George Washington Brigade. I only did a small number of these guys but I figured they were intended to be more of a cadre than a typical squad and so included an officer.

The original figure is kneeling and firing a pistol. I cut off some of his German kit and replaced it with an American pack.

His firing arm was removed and I gave him a walkie talkie radio instead. This way the other radio guy has someone to talk to! I also added an American rifle to his left hand.

This one was very difficult. The standing German rifleman on the right, firing the rifle was altered to take the pistol from the American paratrooper in the center. A rather tricky conversion but it turned out well. I wanted these guys to use a good cross section of American weapons, yet retain their overall German appearance.

Last of the Cossacks

Roco Kubelwagen, Strelets Crimean War Cossacks, and Imex Pioneers, with yurts. Notice the cross held by the figure in the lower right hand corner. My massive wargame armies are not generally painted but sometimes I will paint them so they are all the same color. It helps to tie units together, since I don't base my troops. Often I convert figures by swapping a head or adding some other bits. I like complete units with supply troops and even camp followers, as in this case.

Here is a good view of the members of the camp as they do their typical camp duties, care for the kids and sew torn clothing.

Milk maids bring milk back to the camp. They can drink the milk or make cheese out of it. Cheese stores longer than milk without refrigeration.

A young man in the background stands in the doorway of his yurt. Other members of the host fill the cargo truck with heavy items. The radio operator monitors the frequencies for important messages. The radio man is a lead figure. While the bulk of my collection is plastic, I have thousands of lead figures to fill in gaps left by the plastic manufacturers.

A good close up view of the cargo truck. The German Army had cargo trucks made from all over the world. Even captured American trucks were in the German Army. French truck factories continued to produce trucks until nearly the end of the war.

An army moves on it's stomach. Here Imex pigs spend time with Imex Pioneers. Armies and refugees herded vast herds of animals to keep them out of the hands of the Russians and so they could eat. US forces ate many canned and frozen foods but not so much in the German Army, and even less so in their allied forces. Imex and Pegasus make several sets with farm animals in them. The old Airfix Farm Animals set was good too but having been out of production for 30 years makes it pretty rare.

German Gold Miners?

I love the new plastics. Imex and Pegasus are using a rather hard glue able plastic. While I would prefer it was a tiny bit softer, it glues very well, and I like it a lot. I took the Imex WWII German Infantry set and combined it with the Pegasus Gold Rush set. The Imex set has a few poses that I don't care for, a prone dead guy; a man standing, being shot; and a kneeling man, firing a pistol, while turning. The kneeling shooting man is not bad, but you get way too many in a box. So I have harvested these figures for heads/ helmets, weapons and equipment, and boots. These three figures have been converted from gold miners to WWII Germans. The German Army was so short staffed that they took men from almost anywhere they could get them. Late in the war they did not always get traditional uniforms.

My wargame units have as many of the support troops as I can field for them. That includes troops who are preparing meals, washing dishes, moving supplies. These gold miners are now dishwashers. The draft animals in the background have been drafted into the Wehrmacht. I added a mortar shell box to the back of one load and a Jerry can to the back of the other load. Little strips of styrene are used to hold the box down.

This man has a machine pistol on his lap, a pack and new head. Now he is washing dishes in the German Army, rather than panning for gold.

The cobbler has a supply of old boots that need repair. A pair of boots is valuable and troops often got them repaired rather than replaced. The high top boots were particularly prized.

This gold miner has been transformed with new arms from the kneeling firing man. He has a new head too. He is now an armorer and he is repairing and cleaning a Luger.

A little work on figures can pay off with new poses, new tasks, new variety for your wargame army.

German PAK 40 by HaT

You can see the little troops huddled up against the bottom of the box waiting for a Roco T-34/76 to come around the corner no doubt. HaT makes a series of four WWII German artillery pieces. I have three of them so far and will discuss this one now.

The other recent PAK 75 kit is this yellow one from Italeri. The Italeri one is rather chunky in comparison, but it's detail is more fine and more subtle. The Italeri one has a wheel hub that is closed unlike the HaT one that has an open wheel hub. The Italeri one looks better close up, but the HaT one looks better from a distance.

Seen from the side, you can see the HaT gun is a bit lower in silhouette.

Here is the HaT WWII German Pak36(r) ATG alongside the PAK 40. Both of these are pretty big guns.

The HaT PAK 40 comes in a set of four, with four crewmen per gun. Here seen with a couple extra HaT military police for a pointing guy and a man with binoculars. These are IMEX trees. The muzzle break on the HaT gun is not fully open, but it would not be too hard to clear out. The Italeri one has an open muzzle break. The main differences are this: Italeri has a six man crew per gun and two guns in a set that costs about $10. The Hat Set has four guns with crews for about $8.50. This is a very common gun for WWII Germans, and both sets are good. The HaT set is perfectly fine for wargaming, the Italeri set has a slightly better gun, but costs over twice as much. If I wanted a really nice gun, I would not get the Italeri gun, I would buy a real styrene kit of a PAK 40, they are pretty common.

Bigtoons, not just Pontoons

HaT makes this nice model of a Napoleonic Pontoon Bridge set. This is a pre-production one in purple. The real ones should be in stores any second now.

This HaT WWII German soldier in the pontoon and next to the HO scale Opel Blitz truck shows the size of these. I have been using Imex Conestoga Wagons wheels and undercarriages and horses for other wagons, but that has left me with the wagon boxes and canopy.

I figure the HaT pontoon is a bit small for running Tiger tanks over, so I think I may use the Conestoga Wagon boxes to make giant size pontoons for my WWII German heavy tank units.

Other than some simple planning I have done nothing to forward this project, but it has been added to the list of things to do. I also have to wait until the HaT pontoon bridges are available.

I try not to throw anything away that is left over after a conversion project, the best ones are those were everything from all the kits involved is used up. I am thinking the extra HaT pontoons will be used as boats, barges, rafts and such.

Sick and Wounded Horses

Every military unit that has horses has to deal with horses that get wounded in battle. They have to be evacuated, treated, convalesce, be retrained and then sent back to the front. Just like the human soldiers. Yet there are no 1/72nd scale veterinary soldiers as far as I know. Often we can't find specialized figures and troops for our wargames, dioramas and collections. One way to circumvent this situation is to make our own.

These horse and accessories are from three different Imex sets. The Southwestern/ Alamo Accessories provide the barrel, and hitching rail. The "sleeping" horses are from the Civil War accessories as are the bags and the brown horse is from the Eastern Friendly Indians set. This provides the beginnings of my first WWII German Veterinary unit. If it is successful, I will expand my veterinary services to include my WWI Americans and ACW armies as they are both large enough to warrant their own veterinary services.

My plan is to include a few soldiers with shovels, some with pitchforks, maybe some brushing the horses, carrying buckets of water. I have found that horses were sometimes suspended in slings to keep the weight off their feet and I will probably scratch build some sort of device to do that. I also need to make up some doctor types who can be operating or bandaging the horses. They will also need a few wagons or trucks to haul the wounded animals.