Sigur's big old WW2 thread!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Hey there!

Over the years I worked on a lot of WW2 projects; be it for myself or customers. On other forums I run multiple threads for my WW2 stuff, but I think it's just bothersome which is why here on the fine establishment of LAF I'll all roll it into one big pile.

As with other threads I run on here I'll have my current going-ons running parallel with posting prior WW2 projects I've done.

At the moment I'm working on 15mm resin buildings by Goldfinger Models for use in our Kampfgruppe von Luck campaign.

The thing is that so far I wasn't all that much into the idea of doing the usual fare of Western Front 1944/45 with all the uberweapons and such. However, a few things changed that. For one my regular gaming pal got really into the idea of doing British airborne troops. In addition to that Too Fat Lardies, the fine, fine company who came up with the brilliant Chain of Command rules, released another mini campaign rulebook with an interesting theme.

This of course is a great opportunity to get our WW2 campaign going, based on the struggle between elements of 21st Panzer Division / 125th Panzergrenadiers as part of Kampfgruppe von Luck and British/Canadian Paratroopers in the early hours of the D-Day Landings on June 6th 1944. The Paratroops had been dropped down to capture strategic points and keep German reinforcements away from the beaches while local German forces have to aim to throw them out and recapture important approach routes to Normandy. As my friend immediately went for the Paras I'll do the Germans.

The whole thing will be based on the recently released 'pint-sized campaign' supplement by Too Fat Lardies, Kampfgruppe von Luck:




This means basically I have to collect and paint the following:
.) A platoon of 1944 Panzergrenadiers consisting of: 1 Officer, 1 Panzerschreck team of 2, 3 squads of 10 Panzergrenadiers
.) A bunch of these mostly improvised rearmed originally French vehicles cobbled together by engineer Major Alfred Becker and his staff
.) A bunch of other support. Additional staff, egineers, heavy weapons, vehicles, obstacles, etc.

Because the minis I'd ordered took a while to show up I got this:




It's Colonel Hand von Luck's memoirs. Weird title, as the guy mostly didn't have all that much to do with battle tanks, neither did he do a lot of tank commandeering during the war. Most of the time he was commander or armoured recon formations. Guess that sort of title sells well in English-speaking areas. More remarkably, he was in pretty much any theatre of the war. Having started his career as Unteroffizier before the war he was one of the young officers who gathered around Rommel and his unconventional and often reckless ideas. Von Luck was there right from the attack on Poland, was with armoured recon in France, then in Russia, but to his big luck (which he often had over the course of the war) he got reassigned to Rommel's Afrikakorps in 1942 where he served until right before the end when he was sent off the Germany to present plans for an evacuation of the German and Italian Africa veterans before they'd gotten ground up between British and American forces. (these plans for a 'German Dunkirk' weren't accepted by the leadership btw, and only way, way too late chaotic evacuation was attempted)

In 1944, when an invasion of Western Europe was to be expected, Luck, an Oberstleutnant then, was assigned to the reborn 21st tank division in France where they basically sat tight, waiting for where the invasion force would strike. This pretty much is the point in time where I hop in.

Operation Tonga was the code name of 6th British Airborne Division's plans for D-Day. The division had been thoroughly trained for this specific mission for a year, but had no combat experience. This is why its goals were very straightforward: Protect the Eastern flank of the invasion force by taking and defending the two bridges crossing Caen canal (famous 'Pegasus' and 'Horsa' bridges) intact. The second goal was to destroy the Merville coastal artillery battery. Their third goal was to destroy several smaller bridges in the area, so German reinforcements couldn't intervene on the Eastern flank and would have to re-rout to the two remaining bridges defended by the Airborne troops.


Operation Tonga

On the German side troops were scattered all over the place due to lack of transport and not knowing where the invasion would happen. Even during D-Day the Normandy landing was taken for a diversion by high command. Basically the two opposing schools of thought on the situation were that Allied troops had to be met with full force right at the beach and thrown back into the sea immediately to have any chance of avoiding the opening of a second front (or third front rather, taking Italy in account) in Europe. This was Rommel's position. Others were convinced that an organized large scale counter-attack as soon as Allied troops were outside the range of their naval support guns was the way to go.

Starting at 00:15 the first British gliders of 5th Parachute Brigade with the job of taking the canal bridges and the bridges over river Orne (crash-) landed. 15 minutes later the major bridges were under British control. In the meantime pathfinder groups had landed and marked further landing zones for reinforcements. Many Paratroops and especially equipment didn't land on spot and either were lost or only met up with their units later on. Of many formations only 40% of men were at the spot on schedule, often without heavier equipment such as anti-tank weapons, Jeeps, radios and so on. Despite this Merville Battery was taken by 5 am.

Based on prior experiences with Allied invasions German HQ expected them to wait for good weather and enough daylight, so the 6th of June was considered not to be a probable date for the landings. For this reasons many officers were either with their HQs (many of them wargaming, actually) or on leave. The most immediate danger to the British and Canadian airborne troops who landed in the early hours of the 6th were 12 SS Panzer Division in the area, but they required Hitler's direct order to move out and he was asleep at the time. In addition to that there was much confusion among local German leadership. In part due to British diversion tactics of bombing various targets, dropping puppets on parachutes and SAS operatives carrying out fake attacks (in addition to this bombardments and Résistance attacks had mostly taken down the German radio net in the area), but also unintentionally so by Airborne troops who were dropped off at wrong locations who had to engage German forces on their way to their units. No other formations counter-attacked during the night either because despite requesting so no clearance for offensive action was given by army HQ. Von Luck writes:

So the night and the first hours of 6 June went by. Too late, much too late! was how it seemed to us. We were dismayed and angry that we had not been believed by the highest authority.

Finally General Marcks, whether authorized to do so or not, ordered our division to attack at once, with the whole division, east of the Orne and smash the units of the 6th Airborne Division that had landed there and cut their communications with the west.

Operation Tonga was hanging by a thread for a few hours, but as German forces weren't able to react effectively it was a success. British and Canadian Airborne formations were able to set up a bridgehead and due to constant supply and reinforcements were able to hold.


British Horsa gliders at Landing Zone 'N', 7 June 1944

German counter-attacks following during daylight were constantly harassed by British airforce and naval bombardment, especially in and around Caen through which German units had to 'squeeze' after the smaller bridges in the area had been demolished. The Allies pretty much had air superiority at this point as Göring's promise of "1000 fighter planes at the ready" had not been followed up on.


A few more words on Hans von Luck's memoirs: As far as first hand accounts of German field officers go this one is said to be one of the best. I'm only halfway through at this point (347 pages), and it's a pretty interesting read so far. It's doesn't hold any mind-boggling discoveries, but it's reasonably interesting. Especially the bits in the desert between his recon unit and the British 11th Hussars, both patrolling at the northern border of the Sahara to keep each other from outflanking the main force. Of course it would be much more fruitful a read if I knew more about the general going-ons historically, but I would say that for the desert stuff and France stuff (I expect) mainly this is a very good read. It's not very 'meaty' in terms of tactics or actual descriptions of combat, but a good read. And it's really cheap. I mean it's a cheap edition. Soft-back, cheap paper, but I don't mind. I ordered it along with the little book of calm actually. Not (only) to mess with Amazon's profiling algorithm thing.


Here are some shots of the buildings I did over the past days:











These are pretty much done; they will get some more weathering or finishing touches though and I'm still looking for 15mm posters to stick to them. Next: A bit on how I put together my force and after that I hope to quickly finish the rest of the buildings (a Café, a chateau, piles of rubble, a monument, walls and a car).

See you soon!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Right, now for the minis.

As mentioned above my core platoon in this campaign is a mid-1944 Panzergrenadiers platoon. For some reason 15mm Panzergrenadiers (I'd elected to go with Battlefront for this project because I'd had good experiences with their minis in my 1941 North Africa collections) were kinda hard go come by. Just to get by (and because he wanted to get rid of them anyway), a friend gave me a platoon blister of German Pioniers. For some reason for WW2 German collections my first minis are always Pioniers. First 1:35th figures I got for christmas from my Dad when I was a wee one were Revell Pioniers. When I started my 28mm Germans first thing I got was Warlord's German Pioniers (a.k.a. 'Blitzkrieg infantry' with additional metal bits for basically free) and in 15mm it wasn't any different.

On top of that I got myself a box of Plastic Soldier Company's "late German heavy weapons" and from that I tried to cobble together a Panzergrenadiers platoon. For the core platoon I ended up with two full squads of 10 each (NCO, 2 LMG teams and three riflemen + 2 Panzerfausts in each squads), a Panzerschreck team and a junior officer. Still one squad short, so I was hoping to get my proper Panzergrenadiers blister soon.


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/flames-of-war/platoon1.jpg


Also: Some support made up of mostly PSC plastics in the shape of another Panzerschreck team, an MMG team of 5 and a Flamethrower team.



As a baptism of fire game for the Panzergrenadiers and my pal's Paratroopers as looming I also quickly put together a sniper, Obergefreiter Wilhelm Busch:





...and with this I was all set up for

Chain of Command demo day at WoW/Keepers Vienna

On January 8th 2016 we had the first 'VIVAT Presents...' event happening at World of Warhammer (they came up with the name shortly before that video game that sounds kinda similar. Unfortunate, I guess. :p ) / Keepers of Dice club in Vienna. VIVAT of course being the annual event for historical wargaming 'round here. The organizers came up with the great idea of having smaller get-togethers throughout the year and demo historical rules sets which maybe get more attention than we believe they deserve. Presenting alternatives to the more 'mainstream' rules sets, showing something different, stuff like that.



At 4pm we met, tables were already set up using the excellent terrain collection provided by the club.


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/beginning.jpg

Virago, who pretty much organized the whole thing, and I handed out some quick reference sheets and jumped right in.

The scenario we played was Attack & Defend from the Chain of Command rulebook, virago's British elite Paratroopers versus my Panzergrenadiers. My platoon was one third (one Panzergrenadiers squad) short as my minis hadn't arrived in time. The British had three squads of paratroopers (one of them with two light MGs instead of the usual one), two snipers, a light mortar team, two senior leaders, forward artillery observers and a 3" mortar battery off-table. I had two squads of Panzergrenadiers, one senior leader, a MG42 MMG team, a sniper and a small engineers team with flamethrower. I was to defend, the British were on the attack.

Here you can see the table along with the patrol markers:

full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/patrolphase.jpg

This was the first game in a Western Front 1944 setting. Usually we play in the early desert theatre of war. It was also our first game featuring Elite troops on one side who proved to be very strong indeed. In terms of fighting power, but mostly in terms of organizational effectiveness and thus initiative (simply put: They activate more and more flexibly). On the other side Panzergrenadiers of course pack an unholy amount of firepower.


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/germans3.jpg

This being a demo game, of course the dice gods decided to have a little fun and it turned out to be - out of the many games of CoC we had - probably the most extreme. The British Paras got to go five or six times in one go at one point, which of course got the Germans in serious trouble.


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/paras.jpg


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/paras3.jpg
The British set up a firebase on top of a hill, covered by trees.


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/midgame1b.jpg

Early on I had made it my foremost objective to take possession of the buildings, which I achieved too, but then my guys got shot up so badly that they pretty much were lost right away. The rest were kicked out in bloody hand to hand combat by Paras with sub-machine guns. The buildings in use are Battlefront ones and I have to say that they are pretty neat. Removable roofs are rather handy.


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/paras-jop.jpg
In typical tip-top preparedness, virago had also whipped up some great looking scenic jump-off points for his fellas.

With my second squad of Panzergrenadiers I made an attempt at flanking the British, but was met with (in my opinion) a disproportionally large amount of bullets and a 3" mortar barrage. :p At this point the morale of even the stoutest Panzergrenadier started to slip and the game ended in a British victory.

And it was a very, very interesting game indeed. Lots of new stuff to learn even for us (mostly exotic stuff like snipers, flamethrowers and such). The massive impetus of the British attack with several phases in a row of course was an extreme situation, but it happens. An attack of a full Paras platoon is supposed to hit like a bag of bricks (with a red hat on top). As mentioned before - Chain of Command isn't a tournament game, it's probably not for people who believe that in battle there are certainties. In fact there is very little predictability. It's one little crisis to manage after another.

I have to admit that we probably got a little caught up in the game and all the new bits we had to get used to ourselves, so at the beginning explanations about how the game works fell a bit short at first, but that was remedied quickly.

The second table featured Polish troops attacking a German convoy in Northern Italy:

full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/convoi.jpg


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/table_7.jpg


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/lurking.jpg


In the meantime a few of the guys who had watched the first game had a go themselves at the same scenario on table#1:


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/patrol.jpg
Pat-rollin', rollin', rollin', rollin' .... ( yes, I indeed am down with the music of the hip cats)

The game went even worse for the Germans, but the whole scenario wasn't balanced to begin with. No biggie. It worked well to get the general mechanics over I believe. The whole event went on until midnight. All of the guys present remarked on really liking the game mechanics. The usual disputes about what scale to use emerged immediately (all the tables were played with 15mm figures, but many people also got 28mm collections and will go with that) and many of the guys present looked up how to order the rulebook, markers, campaign supplements and so on.

I enjoy Chain of Command immensely and it's great to see it catching on like that. I would like to thank the organizers as well as everyone who attended and the club for letting us use the premises on the day. Good times, looking forward to the next VIVAT Presents...-event!


full size picture: http://sigur.tabletopgeeks.com/wp-content/blogs.dir/18/gallery/games/peeps.jpg

[Battle Brush Sigur]

If you're interested in learning more about Chain of Command you can find my review of the rules here:

http://skirmishwargaming.com/chain-of-command-rules-review/



Alternatively you can get a whole bunch of more info on the game in Meeples and Miniatures podcast episodes #107, #108 and #112.

The campaign supplement At the Sharp End (which puts the cherry on top) I reviewed here:

http://skirmishwargaming.com/chain-command-sharp-end-review/



and it's talked about in M&M podcast episode #120.

[joroas]

I'm still looking for 15mm posters to stick to them

emailed you.

[Driscoles]

looks very nice !

[hayeswauford]

Very nice!

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@joroas: Ooooh, most useful indeed. Thanks, Sir!

@Driscoles: Thanks!

@hayeswauford: Cheers!

Shortly thereater my toys arrived!



A platoon of Panzergrenadiers, 2 sFH mounted on Lorraine Schleppers, 2 Pak40 mounted on S307(f)s and 2 Unix 304(f) armoured troop carriers.



Also, I couldn't resist doing some pretty irresponsible shopping at PSC as well.


Here's my in-depth review of Plastic Soldier Company's 15mm Panther platoon box.

In this article I'm covering the historical background of the Panther tank and then get on to the nitty-gritty including unboxing, large high-res pictures of sprues and details, assembly and painting.



http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2016/01/review-15mm-panthers-by-plastic-soldier.html







I hope that you find the article interesting and informative!

[Gunner Dunbar]

Nice looking troops, I'm building several CoC forces in 20mm and I have Germans and Brits in 15mm, you post is inspirational.

[SABOT]

It all looks top notch. Very impressive.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

@Gunner Dunbar: Cheers! 20mm is also a very reasonable scale. What minis are you using? We quickly settled with 15mm because we already had the minis and it matches the ground scale so well. Especially as most of our Chain of Command gaming takes place in mid-1941 in North Africa, right after the Germans show up and when gaming the desert you want a lot of space to maneuver. A few times we also played in 28mm (i'll get to battle reports of this later in this thread), but it just looked too cramped to us and ranged looked a bit naff.

@SABOT: Thanks very much! Painting 15mm is really good fun.


On to another review of an unreasonable purchase I made: It's the Panzer IV platoon box by Plastic Soldier Company!

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2016/02/review-15mm-panzer-iv-by-plastic.html




And another look at how I proceeded with my Panzergrenadiers and oddball French-German vehicles.

Panzergrenadiers platoon:


full size picture: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2016_08/platoon2.jpg.0f8700fb8688a742d1144d6ca156cebb.jpg

As you can see, compared to the chaps above, these are wearing a whole lot more camo and a whole lot more MG42. Look at all those camo jackets. As a general rule of thumb Panzergrenadiers had priority in getting camo gear (helmet covers, jackets mostly or ponchos. Camo trousers were less common) of all Wehrmacht units. Waffen-SS units got a whole lot of camo gear, but their had their own patterns and I think that Waffen-SS technically weren't really part of the Wehrmacht even though they were under command of Wehrmacht HQ.

The camo pattern I used on these is a Wehrmacht one as the 125th Panzergrenadiers were just that.


Roight, here's the whole batch all painted up.


full size picture: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2016_08/57bce798d3b73_vehiclesdone.jpg.5abdc301271fad2e52bc7ceb7ea6e492.jpg

A full platoon of Panzergrenadiers (the Panzerschreck-team's not in the picture), 2 sFH (heavy howitzer, 15cm) on Lorraine Schleppers, 2 Unic armoured personnel carriers and 2 pak40 on S307(f), all built/converted by Major Becker's group.


(left to right) Some dude in the background, Major Becker, Field Marshall Rommel and General Feuchtinger (commander of the 21st Panzer Division) at an inspection 1944, right before the invasion.


Near Paris Major Becker and his staff used old factories to rearm French vehicles to create mobile armoured units for heavy fire support, all to be part of "Schnelle Division West" (Fast Division West). The idea was to create a rapid reaction force to an Allied Invasion in northern France. A major part of this was the 21st Panzer Division and under it Major Becker's Sturmgeschützabteilung 200, which consisted soley of such rearmed vehicles.


A 7,5cm Pak40 on S307(f) half-track. Not very heavily armoured, but a very potent anti-tank weapon.



Similarly, the 15cm sFH13 on Lorraine Schleppers proved to be invaluable assets. This modification (some with the lighter 10,5cm gun) had been used in Africa and the Eastern front before as part of a cooperation between Becker and the Alkett company near Berlin. Circa 166 such vehicles were produced from 1942 on. For 21st tank division a slightly changed variant was built near Paris.



The "Lorraine" Schlepper (towing vehicle) originally was designed for the French army as an artillery tractor and ammunition carrier. Quite a lot of those landed in German hands after France was occupied and they were used extensively. In 1942 Major Becker and Alkett worked out several designs for mobilizing guns on these Lorraine chassis. This had several advantages: mechanized guns don't require as much crew, no artillery trains in the old sense, they enjoy some protection against small arms fire and shrapnell and still can be operational under fire and of course they can relocate to advance along with the tanks and infantry and thus exploit holes in enemy lines OR of course avoid enemy artillery counter-fire.

The third odd little vehicle, of which several hundred were made, was the U304(f) SPW based on the P107 half-track. This was another towing/transport vehicle used by the French army in large numbers and looked like this:


In German army it got the designation U304(f). Whenever you see an (f), (r), (e) or something like that after a vehicle or gun designation it means that this is a captured vehicle or gun. The letter in brackets refers to the country the gun or vehicle originally was from: (f) = französisch/french, (r) = russisch/russian, (e) = Englis(c)h and so on.

For 21st Panzer Division it was turned into a Schützenpanzerwagen (= armoured personnel transport), because the regular Sd.Kfz.251 and 250 and so on were all busy at the Eastern front and a large number of armoured Panzergrenadier companies were required for 21st Panzer Division to work properly in Normandy.

So it was turned into this:



This is a vehicle you won't see very often on gaming tables.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Shortly thereafter I got a bit of a scare of Allied air superiority and decided to react accordingly:


full size picture: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2016_08/foliage.jpg.62fc015c872d5ad1b7c90e5b84dc19fc.jpg



I wasn't fast enough, so this one got hit: 






I'm using it as a German Jump-Of Point.



...and since you need more than one Jump-Off Points I ordered some resin goodies from Baueda:



full size picture: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2016_09/jop4.jpg.e52ebbca5136b0e821e255989cea2c5f.jpg


full size picture: http://www.tabletopwelt.de/uploads/monthly_2016_09/jop3.jpg.dbe9abfc27cbf479ccd174bbe2de0a70.jpg

Yup, these will work for France and Italy as well.


Seeing as how it's August already I'll place a quick little shout-out to remind us all of VIVAT, the annual wargames get-together at which the small, but mostly glorious historical wargaming community in Eastern Austria gather to have games and whatnot.

In 2016, apart from the usual painting table and the whole Battle Brush Studios thing, I half-ran the Chain of Command table as well. This being a show we got out the 28mm figures. Here's my report of the show:

http://www.battlebrushstudios.com/2016/10/show-report-vivat-2016.html




Afterwards (well, not right afterwards. Right afterwards I had a very late dinner and collapsed. :p ) I painted a few 15mm field fortifications for an upcoming big Chain of Command game, also by Baueda Wargames:




...and to hop back to the present - I'm proceeding well with the 15mm buildings. Painting on the Café is mostly done (painting intact houses is so much easier than painting ruins ), I just need to figure out how to best put the great posters and signs to use which mr.Joroas sent me. In the meantime I've started painting the small Chateau.

[Battle Brush Sigur]

Earlier this year I added general support for my Panzergrenadiers. Not to be used in our upcoming Kampfgruppe von Luck campaign, but nice to have for other or one-off games:



A Pak37 anti-tank gun with Stielgranate, a Panzer II Luchs (mainly because it looks nice), a Flammpanzer III flamethrower tank (...which I hope passes as regular Panzer III H, J and M as well despite the thicker barrel), a base of forward artillery observers (in the middle) and two light infantry guns 18 (leIG18 = leichtes Infanteriegeschütz 18).

The leIG18 was in use with Wehrmacht infantry throughout the war as a light field gun (75mm) for close support. The whole gun's weight was less than 500 kilos. For transport the gun could be taken apart into 8 pieces (the heaviest weighing no more than 75 kilos). Crew was six men. The loading mechanism was pretty remarkable, as it worked differently to other guns, much more like on a shotgun. In this video here Tom explains it to Ron:

[video=youtube_share;GH1UbffL4_s]https://youtu.be/GH1UbffL4_s[/video]

The gun was not planned to be used in an anti-vehicle role, but with the right type of ammo it was able to crack enemy scout vehicles and armoured cars at up to 300m. Later on HEAT rounds were issued which allowed the leIG18 to combat enemy medium tanks.

[moiterei_1984]

That's some rather splendid painting here 

[Driscoles]

It gets better and better !

[SABOT]

Have to agree - cracking project.