Rapid Fire! rules in 20mm - The Germans manning the WNs at Omaha

 

For some time I wanted to have some "proper" Germans for the Normandy beaches. By "proper" I mean late uniform and equipment, without camouflage smocks or helmets and, specially, without any grass on the bases. The period photos of the troops manning D-Day WN´s show them in pretty standard uniform and equipment. 

With the authorisation of Masters Colin and Richard you can see the number of figures needed for the biggest scenario of D-Day, Omaha beach, of course, belonging to both 352 and 716. Infantry Divisions. A total of 60 figures small arms equipped, 5 figures with PzFaust and 12 MMGs. As I have 7 pairs of the latter from Britannia (with surcoats but very nice figures) 5 more were added. Some of the MMGs are inside bunkers with no figures, like the ones in WN 71 and73, but maybe one day I´ll change those pieces of terrain so I can place the models inside of it. 

All figures are 1st type Valiant figures. For the MMG´s I used the figure manning the HMG but used the MG42 of the standing figure that fits nicely into this figure armpit . All the figures got some extra height to reach the level of my model trenches. 

The No 2 is the Valiant radio figure (with headphones cut out)  and, with some Extra Tech photo-etched ammo, it became a decent ammo provider. The stands were also cut at the front so the MMG can poke from the trench. 

Many of the riflemen got new arms and weapons from the Valiant Normandy set and they fit very well. 

By using different arms  from both sets you can get a lot of different figures. 

The Pzfausts got the same treatment and they also have a rifle for double usage. 

I will use the reinforcements from my other German infantry battalions as they eventually got a bit more time for some camouflage and the grass on the base will not look strange. The WN you see on the previous pictures is WN 72 with the famous 88mm and 50mm PAK guns on the western part of the beach. The Sentry model is a great piece of resin (which I copied here in styrofoam), unfortunately the distance between both casemates is too small (in fact it was some 150 meters) and Sentry used a small wall to connect both casemates when there should be a trench. I did the same with my copy as you don´t have too much space to portray accurately the German WN´s and the whole Omaha beach, that is over 7 km long. 

I made a few changes in my WN 72 based on the excellent work of Michael Akkerman. This guy is probably the leading expert on Omaha and also a talented painter. You can find his work on the Web, and particularly on the fabulous WW2 TV YouTube channel. 

Like this I painted  a bit more accurately the broken fence on the hotel next to the R667 casemate...

... and placed some stones and grass around the 50mm casemate. 

Related to 352.ID you can add a  Lorraine OP to the PzJäger Abt. of the division. This diagram came in an extensive 40 pages article on the PzJäger Abt. 352 in No38 of the excellent Normandie 1944 French magazine. So one more unit were you can have these funny vehicles instead of only the 21.PD. artillery.

In the top picture you can see one of the two in the top right corner. 

Next: a video on the Polish 1939 army, on Omaha or on the SCW. 

Rapid Fire! Normandy 1944 in 20mm - Allied aircraft

This is June so lets celebrate D-Day and  the Normandy campaign with some Allied aircraft built along many years. There are still some models missing like British bombers, late Spitfires and P-51 B/C models. 

Starting with the British the first picture is my sole Beaufighter, a nice Die-cast model from Altaya.

Next four Typhoons. The closer one is a Die-cast from Altaya and the others are Airfix. In reality the ones from Airfix are the later Tempest with a laminar flow wing as the main difference something hard to see in this scale. After a few cuts here and there they became closer to the intended ground attack Typhoon. 

Now for the USAAF. E2D is a Maisto Die-cast, all others are Revell. 

A P-47M Thunderbolt from Revell. 

A P-47D Thunderbolt "Razorback" Die-cast from Altaya. 

"Hard to get" is  B-26 Marauder from Revell. 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day 1944 - Omaha Beach (part 19) - Longues-sur-Mer battery

This is a forgotten model from the Omaha beach series. Its a sinthetique stone model by PN Sud Modelisme that represents one of the six bunkers of the kind in the Omaha/Gold area and includes a resin 152mm Naval gun.

I only added a protective wall made of wood for the back entrance and a camouflage net at the front.

 The only problem of such models is that they have to stay always in the bottom shelf, otherwise you will be out of shelves very quickly...

Next: The Germans mentioned in the previous post.

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day 1944 - Omaha Beach (part 18) - The full setting.

In the last weekend, in Coimbra, we had a nice toy fair. I took the opportunity to show my Omaha Beach. Unfortunately I didn't finish the last four 60X60cm boards of sea and sea and sand and I had to cram the whole setting on an area of fifteen boards (total 300cmX 180cm). Like this some of the German WN's had to be placed to the rear of others. Good enough for someone not very familiar with the events though...

At sea the things got no better. Many of the landing craft had to be left at home as there was clearly no room for all of them, otherwise the table would look like a Marina.

 In this picture it's better for the skipper of that LCT to  clear the way for the hurrying Destroyer!

 

In the eastern corner of the beach more overlapping can be seen.

 

Sie kommen!

 

And also here more sie kommen! They are sie kommen everywhere!!!

 

Destroyers come to hit those pesky openings on the bunkers.

 

The landing at full force.

 

Will the defences hold? They did but only in miniature.

Getting closer.

 

'Itza a beautiful zight, Gerhardt but I zink its time to leave!' I used Valiant figures this time for the German infantry (Valiant minis can really be seen from afar).

 

Next: the British D-Day beaches.

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day 1944 - Omaha Beach (part 17) - Last WN's: 60, 63 and 67

This the last post of this series about the Omaha beach scenario. Sixteen posts ago I started to show you the western German structures, starting withWN 73, and now I'll lead you to the easternest of them all, WN 60.

 

This one frankly was a little made up. Only the cliffs and the OB that Colin Rumford ordered are a real try to capture our usual compressed reality. All the rest is probably closer to 'Guns of Navarone' than anything else. In spite of having a nice plan of the WN 60 I opted for the high OP and cross shaped trenches which will leave our nice Pope Francis absolutely delighted.

 

 

See?

 

 

The manned trenches with an all Irregular Miniatures crew. In fact these trenches were not very effective as the cliffs in front hide many US survivors that reached them who would then attack this strongpoint from the rear.

 

 

The cliffs are made out of hard Styrofoam as usual. I opened vertical cuts on it with a blunt knife so more crevices could show up. The cliffs were painted black, then dark Brown and finally sand colour with some true sand mixed in. Don't forget to add some PVA glue on each of these operations to garantee some durability of the painting.  

 

 

The 'artistic' OP.

 

 

The 50mm mortar Tobruk.

 

 

A rear view. Only three bombs from the preparatory aerial bombardment hit the German defences, but apparently one of them struck the strairs to the OP against my wish.  

 

 

WN 67 was a Wurhframen (32cm rocket launcher) pre-sighted position with around 40 rockets. 

 

 

I built a ground metal stucture for four of them out of plastic card and added PSC and Hasegawa crewmen. The Kubelwagen is Hasegawa with Atlantic and Revell crew.

 

Here it ends Colin's WN's for his scenario on RF! book on D-Day. I've added WN 63, in fact a simple command company bunker on the road to Colleville-sur-Mer, and the Colleville Cemetery, today a big American cemetery with almost 10.000 US WWII servicemen buried there.

 

 

WN 63 was a simple bunker for transmissions and command. The very helpful book of George Bernage on Omaha Beach has some nice plans of it.

 

 

Bird's view.

 

 

One solid block of styrofoam and some paper roundels for the respirators and card doors made the thing.

 

 

 

The cemetery is also an extra and may be the beginning of my Zombie wargames. It was made in card, birthday cake trees and a  photo etched door I had lying around.

 

 

I took the oportunity to repaint two Altaya Marder III SP's and crew them with plastic figures for some of the reinforcements from 352nd Division.

 

As I told you this is the last post of this series.

 

As reference books for this series I used the inevitable RF! D-Day Campaign Guide by Sir - he and Richard should be by now - Colin Rumford   and also the Heimdal book on Omaha Beach by George Bernage. Mine is in French but there is also the English text version. For me its an invaluable source of information, with clear plans of US assault and German defences and some nice pictures of the real places.

 

Next I feel like going to South America and get rid of the Spanish (and Portuguese) rule in the beginning of the XIX century. First I was thinking doing so with 10mm Risk miniatures but that fever already passed and I'll do it with my beloved 20mm plastic Napoleonics. But to keep my RF! friends busy (which I know they are not) I'll soon start a series of posts about the British D-Day beaches.

 

Don't forget to support the mighty Sporting CP in its struggle  to defeat the horrendous Benfica and Porto, the two real faces of evil on earth! In particular Benfica (as my son is Porto) that has around 6 million supporters, they say, in a total population of 10 million. So if most of our awful forest fires are man-made it means most of them are ignited by Benfica fans. Obvious conclusion.

 

See you soon.

 

 

Rapid Fire! 20mm D-Day 1944 - Omaha Beach (part 16) - WN 61

WN 61, together with WN 62, was closing the acess to E3, the road to Colleville. This WN was placed lower down the bluffs and entering the beach itself. It housed another powerful A/T 88mm PAK 43 like the one in the oposite far end of the beach on WN 72. These two guns could crossfire the entire lenght of the beach.

.

There was a captured 37mm Puteaux gun from a French tank on Tobruk. This one is in fact 1/87th scale as I didn't want to ruin any of my precious French tanks for 1940 or German for 1944.

The 88mm PAK 43 this time is an Irregular Miniatures 100mm Russian A/T gun. I bought a few for my late war Russians but then I noticed how similar to the German gun this one was and I used it in my WN 61 with a few cuts here and there and some shortening of the trail. The crew is made of the eternal Airfix DAK officer and three gunners from the Pioneer Revell box converted to artillerymen with some rounds of 88mm ammo from Hasegawa.

I didn't want this WN too big (where the hell am I going to find 5 meters of table...) so I improvised some space for the extra six figures behind sand bags.  

Rear view of the strongpoint.  

The main bunker started as an isolated piece I made years ago but it's really completely different from the original H 667 model. But due to laziness (and having new stuff on my mind...) I left it like it was to save time. A true and excellent alternative model is provided by the Italeri D-Day diorama.

Next: the last few WN's: WN 60, WN 63 and WN 67.