Joining the Perry WW2 WIP threads, this is my own contribition, with something a little bit different.
I have a bit of a thing for the Glider Pilot Regiment and for Airlanding in general (my username is a bit of a clue!
) and so the Perry's new Desert Rat minis have given me the opportunity to put together a Glider load (in this case of a Waco/Hadrian) of 2 pilots and 12 passengers for the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily.
The airborne landings are something of a story that I won't go into here, though if more info is desired the Pegasus Archive has a useful in-depth narrative.
http://www.pegasusarchive.org/sicily/frames.htmOne feature of the landings was that many gliders landed way off course. From the Sicilian Skirmishes page of the Pegasus Archive:
The 56 gliders carrying the 1st Airlanding Brigade that reached Sicily were for the most part scattered all across the south-eastern corner of the island, and many spent the day trying to find their units, linking up with other small groups as they went along.
The activities of the remainder of the widely scattered 1st Airlanding Brigade on the 10th July can be simply summarised as a plethora of small-scale actions by groups of men who were lost or had landed too far from their objectives to be of any assistance to the main parties, roaming the Sicilian countryside, cutting telephone wires and attacking any enemy positions that could be found.
The foregoing lends itself to small unit skirmish games on maybe a 2 ft sq table with the opportunity to build some Sicilian terrain.
A few images of airlanding units before departure. I have other or better images in books but these give something of an idea as to how the weapons and equipment differed to the British/Commonwealth troops that came in by sea, which I think were pretty much as the Perry "Desert Rats" plastics.
Differences in kit included multiple small packs, with the water bottle being inside one rather than slung at the hip, the pig-sticker bayonet and FS knife instead of the sword bayonet, the airborne helmet, the use of stens with sten bandoliers, and the carriage of entrenching tools.
So the figures, I have already opined on Captain Blood's fast growing "Magnum Opus of WW2 Perry Building", which (edited) was as follows:
I agree that they are on the small side so I hope the metal Italians and plastic Germans are similarly scaled. These are very much life-like proportions and so while they might be the same height as my original BAM paras, the heads, hands and crucially weapons are significantly finer. For many that won't matter and certainly isn't an issue for me as I won't be mixing these as mine will be a small project.
Aircav kindly sent me some Warlord STENs but these Perry minis do seem to be true 1:56. Without getting into scale debates, the Warlord STENs are about 3mm too long which doesn't sound much but to my eye seems too long when compared to the Perry No.4 rifles. The Warlord Stens could probably be cut back and I might still do this but will try another avenue first, of which more in a mo.
My force of 14 minis will compise:
Two glider pilots, for which I've used torsos with goggles, which I think are quite fitting:
And an airlanding infantry section comprising a corporal, six rifles .....
.... plus a lance corporal with the bren group (to which I have added an additional bren team to fill what would otherwise be empty seats):
All have had their water bottles and sword bayonets shaved away. All are mounted on 20mm plated steel washers.
I want to avoid using prostrate minis while having every mini different, so the above include a few 'cut and shut' jobs. These conversions were very easy to do, using a razor saw just above the pouch lid to use the lower half of a body and just below the pouch lid to use the upper half of a body, while matching up the straps in the small of the back. This does reduce the number of useable minis in the box, as the resulting spare parts have lost height to the thickness of the saw.
I didn't want to use the grenade throwing pose, so I gave that mini a new pair of legs, cut immediately below the shorts.
Anyways, back to the parts required to convert these from regular infantry to airlanding infantry..... I was hoping to use Warlord and perhaps TAG bits but for my purposes the sizing isn't optimum so I'm having a go at sculpting my own 1:56 conversion bits (still WIP).
FS Knife and pigsticker bayonet combo, small pack for the back, small pack for the hip, airborne helmet (all WIP):
Entrenching tool shaft and carrier and STEN bandolier (WIP):
STEN (WIP):
And something else for the Bren no 2 to carry, the spare barrel bag (WIP):
I'll be moving this project forward alongside my WotR and SSS projects, so progress won't be at lightening speed.
EDIT 5th March 2019 to recover images missing from this post
EDIT 6th March 2019 - I seem to have deleted or somehow mislaid quite a few of my posts after this point, as there are what are obviously replies without the preceding post to which they refer. As I cannot recreate posts that have vanished, the images to which the comments refer will be added back via my post on 18th May 2015, to be found here:
https://leadadventureforum.com/index.php?topic=53270.msg964251#msg964251
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