Rapid Fire! Eastern Front in 20mm - The South Ozereika landings (part 8); the German Gebirgsjäger company and MMG

 

This Ozereika landings have a very interesting bunch of different uints on both sides making a colorful table: you will field Soviet naval infantry with US tanks and jeeps against Romanians, German artillery and Gebirgsjäger. Particularly colorful are these Gebirgsjäger, with their light green parkas, and blue trousers. Initially I had the idea that the Gebirgsjägers were pretty close to standard infantry and in fact they are as they also used the helmet and field gtrey uniforms. The good thing about this ones is that the battle ocurred in February in the middle of a freezing cold and most probably these mountain troops wore, on top of the field grey uniform and field cap, a green parka and woolen blue trousers, something I´m trying to represent here. The painted glasses on the field cap finishes the thing. I decided to go this way after seeing a nice reconstruction of an original uniform in this YouTube clip: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oDStItpanM

The figures are decades old Airfix copies of the DAK set. They are bigger then the originals and made in a nice sturdy plastic. All figures got a big Milliput backpack typical of these units made. The DAK Airfix figures make very reasonable mountain troops as the positions are much more dynamic than the original Airfix mountain troops which are also a bit small in typical Airfix style and with few positions. 

All stands got one or two bycicles from Hat German cyclists as this was their mount at Ozereika. 

The MMG stand was the most interesting to make as the Gebirgsjäger tripod was apparently able to lower considerably the height of the gun and thus could be fired from a lying down position. I used small pieces of EverGreen rod and plate in order to replicate that. The base is the LMG firing figure of the Airfix DAK set. The No2 is a mix of the previous legs with the body of the classic Airfix German No2, finally with shaved helmet and glued cap. 

This is the Gebirgslafette 34 MMG tripod which looks that could be lowered considerably more then the infantry one. It also looks to me that the infantry model could somehow end up in the same position but I could only find one model for the infantry being fired from a lying down position and that is the small Zvezda set. 

Next: The Ozereika video (damn, Oscars already passed...).