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Post by quincannon on Oct 20, 2021 11:01:21 GMT
Well Ian, someone beat me to the 15mm armored cavalry troop, so I consoled myself with a 1/35 Tamiya M4A3E8, and a Valentine Mark II. Both are relatively new kits, all new tooling from previous editions. The Easy Eight has flexible tracks, while the Valentine has link and length. Should be fun. It's 0457 when I write this, and just put Joan on a plane to Baltimore, from where she will go to Annapolis. So it's me, the dog, three cats, some TV dinners, glue, paint, music on the radio, and hopefully peace and quite for the next five days.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 20, 2021 20:09:19 GMT
Just planning for a future project, the US Airborne company, the uniform is a strange colour and I can’t find a suitable colour in the Vallejo range, just a bit of trivia; the was a difference between paratroops and glider infantry, please enjoy;
The Glider borne troops were basically standard infantrymen who woke up one day to find themselves called Glidermen, there were no calls for volunteers here!
With a job equally as dangerous as their Paratrooper brothers they were denied the extra “jump pay” until just prior to the “Market Garden” landings when, finally, they achieved official recognition of the hazardous nature of their job. The uniform worn by these intrepid airborne soldiers was almost exactly the same as the “leg infantryman”.
Very strange, I don’t think we did such a thing.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 21, 2021 1:19:16 GMT
May sound strange but it is true. It is also true that three regiments of the 82nd Infantry Division (325, 326, 327) woke up one day in August 1942 to not only find out they were now glider regiments without extra pay, but also that of the three, four were created by lottery, the 325 and 326 stayed with the 82 ABD, as two battalion regiments, the 327 went to the newly created 101st ABD as a two battalion regiment, and a new 401st was created from two of the battalions left over, with that third extra battalion being broken up, and used as fillers. These two "new" airborne divisions were joined by the up to that time separate 504 PIR (82nd), and the 502 (101st)
Vallejo Khaki if not spot on is very very close, for the jacket and trousers Ian: It is a darker khaki with green overtones. The more they were washed though, the lighter in color they became.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 21, 2021 15:21:06 GMT
Well Ian, someone beat me to the 15mm armored cavalry troop, so I consoled myself with a 1/35 Tamiya M4A3E8, and a Valentine Mark II. Both are relatively new kits, all new tooling from previous editions. The Easy Eight has flexible tracks, while the Valentine has link and length. Should be fun. It's 0457 when I write this, and just put Joan on a plane to Baltimore, from where she will go to Annapolis. So it's me, the dog, three cats, some TV dinners, glue, paint, music on the radio, and hopefully peace and quite for the next five days. I remeber a dog we had years ago, he was great, but he lost his tail when it got trapped in a door, then had an ear bitten off by another dog, he also got blinded in one eye by a fool with a pellet gun and finally lost one of his legs when he got ran over by a car. Yes I will always remember "Lucky" he was a great dog!
Make the most of it Chuck, but I hope your cooking skills are okay, I wouldn't want you to live of ready meals for five days.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 21, 2021 16:24:12 GMT
Well I put a Jimmy Dean sausage, egg, and biscuit in the microwave for two minutes and am munching on it as I write this. Does that count for cooking skills? I had to read the instructions just to do that much. The dog wants some. The music on the radio is extraordinarily pleasing this morning. They threw in some of Elmer Bernstein's movie music - Magnificent Seven, Kill a Mockingbird. The cats won't care until about 1500, which is their feeding time, and the Valentine link and length tracks are much more simple than I anticipated.
Speaking of Valentines. Do you have any info on what tank regiments used Valentines in Tunisia? I know some were there.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 21, 2021 19:58:07 GMT
Sounds awful!
17th/21st Lancers who landed with 26th Armoured Brigade, had Valentines and Crusaders, they formed “Blade Force" to try and seize Tunis. The 17th/21st had a long tradition which went back to Balaclava.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 23, 2021 14:44:20 GMT
Just been reading about "blade force" the 17th/21st Lancers had to use Valentine tanks in the cruiser role, which was not what they were designed for, they are too slow for a start and because of this they fell under the class of "Infantry Tank". The main British cruiser tank at that time, was the Crusader, but the lack of Crusaders forced them to field 11 x Valentines to 6 x Crusaders per Sqn (others say that the regiment had two sqn of Valentines and two sqn of Crusaders).
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Post by quincannon on Oct 23, 2021 15:23:05 GMT
They came out from the UK with what they had. I believed they were all replaced with Shermans before February 43.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 23, 2021 19:35:50 GMT
Yes, the Valentines and Crusaders were the tanks they trained with back in England and took them to Africa, so like a lot of British Armoured Regiments, by 1943 had started to convert to M4s and I believe the 17/21 used their M4s all through the Italian campaign.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 29, 2021 21:42:54 GMT
Two completed this week, but I am now officially out of Vallejo spray paint with no news as to when I can get some more due to continuing supply/transportation issues.
The two models were both 1/56 scale Rubicon kits, an M4A1 (76) Wet Sherman, and an M5A1 Mid production Stuart. Both are nice little kits, simple to construct, and both kits offer a lot of options, but sadly no stowage is included in either kit.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 30, 2021 8:33:04 GMT
I am due for a paint resupply, I will contact Barry on Monday to order a box of British WW2 infantry by a company named "valiant", I have checked the figures out and they are very detailed.
He will call me when they arrive, then I will compile a list of what else I need Like paint and plastic card.
I am certain that you can order stowage in 1/56 scale on line, you can get almost anything these days, in fact check out Rubicon.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 30, 2021 10:49:25 GMT
I have spent the last week or so, haunting the axis forum, and wrote a couple of posts, one of them was about my thoughts on adding BARs and SMGs to my US Armoured Infantry Company. This brought my old friend Richard Anderson to the table, and this is what he said; This is a common theme, but there is little to substantiate it other than long postwar recollections. The reality may have been quite different.
For example, the BAR. As early as May 1944, First Army identified a critical shortfall in the supply of BAR to the ETOUSA. By July, losses were far exceeding the replacement rate and the reserve stocks (anticipated as sufficient for 17 weeks’ worth of replacement) was already expended. Insofar as I can make out, the shortages were not resolved until 1945.
We also asked Mac MacDonald about that, since one of the remarks about the 106th Inf Div taking over the position of the 2d Inf Div in early December was that they did not have all the "extra" equipment accumulated by a veteran division, with the inference that meant things like BAR and MG. Mac said there were never "extra" BAR in either of the companies he commanded and there were none when relieved by the 106th. They did have an abundance of field telephones over T/E, but those were German equipment they had seized and used. Nor did he say the use of German MG was common, because of the threat of fratricide when used.
I do know that some units repurposed MG meant for other purposes to make up for the shortfall in BAR and to increase the automatic firepower of the Rifle Company in an attempt to match that of the German. One common expedient was to modify the six tripod-mounted .30 caliber M1919A4 assigned to the Rifle Battalion (in the Weapons Company LMG Platoon) so they could be fired without the heavy tripod as a true LMG. Most modifications were variants on a "spike mount", essentially a simple spade attached to the pintle, which could be driven into the ground for stability, while various slings were used for carriage and "marching fire".
In another case, Company B, 103d Engineer Combat Battalion, 28th Infantry Division, "liberated" eight .50 Caliber BHMG from a crashed P-47, fabricating mounts for them so they could be used on tripods. They were used in the defense of Hosingen in December 1944, apparently with considerable effect, but were also lost there. Of course, many Infantry Regiments also augmented the firepower of its Weapons Company by shifting the truck-mounted .50 caliber BHMG found throughout the regiment to it, while the frequent attachment of SP AA was for the same purpose.
However, these were cases of existing equipment being repurposed to add firepower to the Rifle Company, rather than cases of "extras" somehow being found and used. I suspect what was being recollected was the shrinking in manpower of the Rifle Company in combat, where as many BAR as possible were retained making the proportion of BAR to riflemen higher. Overall, there is simply no real evidence other than recollection for this notion and considerable evidence to make it questionable.
The SMG was not a common item in most T/E. There were six in the Infantry Rifle Company HQ and two in the Infantry Rifle Battalion HQ for example. There were 18 in each PIB and that number was increased IIRC in the December 1944 revision, but most were held in a "pool" for issue by the commander as he saw fit. The Tank Battalion had a lot, 437 of them, mostly because rifles and carbines were impractical in a tank. It was usually the handier M3. So did the AIB, with 138 of them, mostly drivers and officers IIRC.
My Ears Pricked up when I saw the name Mac MacDonald, so I asked him did he mean MacDonald from Company Commander and he said;
Yes it was. He was a wonderful guy.
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Post by quincannon on Oct 30, 2021 16:15:40 GMT
Rubicon makes separate kits of stowage for German, Commonwealth, and American vehicles. In fact I think they have two different sets of German stowage. I will probably buy some in the By and By, not just now. The stowage can always be added later.
I don't disagree with Anderson. He is probably correct in that the numbers seemed to reflect a greater proportion of automatic weapons, as the units shrunk in strength.
Where I disagree a bit is that the American soldier is legendary for finding and employing anything on the battlefield that he, as an individual, thinks may be of future usefulness. So while he cites MacDonald, whom I personally revere, and I am aware that he had a fairly close relationship with him, MacDonald only commanded two companies in only one regiment of one division, and I think the jury is still out with regard to the question as a whole.
I read Axis Forum on a regular, but not daily basis, and have had fruitful exchanges with Anderson myself. He is quite a storehouse of U S Army knowledge.
Think my next project might be a 1/35 scale JSIII by Tamiya.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 30, 2021 19:04:05 GMT
Carl Schwamberger is another clever guy from the states, along with Gary Kennedy and Sheldrake from England.
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Post by yanmacca on Oct 30, 2021 19:20:29 GMT
I wonder when this is coming to a TV near me! I see Fred has a hand in it and Bill Rini too, no guessing which role he wanted to portray, "Capt Keogh"
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