Rapid Fire! Normandy 1944 in 20mm - The unarmoured Unic P107 of the 21st Panzer Division

Both 2nd battalions of 125th and 192nd PzGrenadier regiments meet at Carrefour-Courbé, not far from Caen under the protection of a self-propelled AA gun...

This group is intended to replace the mounts of the two Motorized battalions until now wrongly equipped with Frontline Wargaming Somuas. These ones on its turn will pull heavy weapons on the PzJager battalion or in the artillery battalions or be used as ammunition suppliers for several units of the 21st PD. 

The models are MiniGeneral 3d prints for the transport version of the P107 and Raventhorpe RTR for the AA version. 

The MiniGeneral P107 are detailed little pieces without any serious printing lines to be seen. I left side the front canvas cover supplied and finished them in the same way Don McHugh showed recently in a Fb post. 

The figures for the PzGrenadiers are from Caesar and the drivers and officers are mostly S&S. 

The P107 with a more Edvard Munch camouflage will go for the II/125th regiment. 

This will be the transport of the Grenadiers of the II/192nd regiment based on scheme I have in Batailles&Blindés magazine No39 related to everybody's favourite Panzer Division, the 21st. 

Now for my favourites, the ones that helped me solving the old question of medium mortars (8cm) for the German PzGrenadier companies. Since the 90s I have Alan Verwicht book on the 21st PD which mentions an annex of the Meldung for foreign weapons. He states that 64 X Gr.W. 8,14 of French making apparently can be found on that paper and they would be naturally distributed among the infantry (besides the Recce and Pioneer units) but this without absolute certainty. I remember reading this, making four stands of medium mortars - 1 per infantry battalion, later another for the Pioneers- and then forgetting the issue. The RF Normandy Battlegroups doesn't even mention them and Zetterling lists do the same and we may be tempted to exclude them but it would be very strange for the German infantry to exist without such weapon, the type responsible for the largest number of soldier's casualties in WW2. A few weeks ago when reading Martin Block information in the Axis Forum this author also places these mortars among the "subunits of the division". So it was time to have something to transport them and these unarmoured and covered Unic P107 are my way to do it. The model is the MiniGeneral model with a piece of RoofMate shaped and sanded in place as a cover for the cargo part.  By reading the same kind of threads its also possible that the German  8cm or the French 81,4mm (they could fire the same ammunition) was placed inside the SPW P107 of the two armoured battalions in the same style of the Sdkfz 251/2. 

Another Unic SPW 20mm AA was built alongside its infantry siblings. On the contrary of its metal version, this Raventhorpe RTR comes without trailer which was quickly built out of different types of styrene. 

The figures, with the exception of the driver which comes with the model, are plastics from different brands. You may recognize the pioneer from Revell without its spade, a DAK torso from Airfix aiming the gun and the famous DAK Airfix officer (Airfix Chinese copy) slightly bent with fire in order to look upwards. 

The crude trailer was disguised with plenty of stowage. The body was built from hard styrene foam so don't forget to cover it in PVA glue before priming. 

Now very few things are left to portray the 21st PD. Still missing are:

- 2x SPW Unic to carry the medium mortars in the Sdkfz 251/2 style. 

- 2x more SPW Unic with 20mm AA gun, like the one above. 

Unfortunatly, nothing else and unfortunately as this division  is for me the most interesting big unit of the entire NW campaign of 1944. 

Another nice aspect about modelling the 21st PD are its various vehicle camouflages making this unit something unique. 

The next captions were taken from the Magazine mentioned above and are a good guide for the 21st PD camouflages. 

The UE with rockets is an old idea. Don`t know really if its true and I would discount that one. 

 

Next: probably the D1 tanks for the 1940 French.