WW2 Italians WIP

After the recent success of my Italians, I decided to create some additional elements to give them a better chance against Mr K.'s US forces. First off, I dragged out a nicely painted HO scale figure of  Mussolini from the Rocco Leaders set, and stuck it on a nice GW 20mm x 20mm base to give him some height.

Edit: Not painted by me - acquired painted second hand over 12 years ago.

While not strictly a fieldable unit, it does give me the option a nicely painted senior officer to use as a Command stand. Most likely though is that I will base it up and stick it in a box until I can display it safely (we still get the odd aftershock here, and the vibrations from the trains are significantly worst than before the earthquakes due to damage to the piles, still others have it much worse). While aspects of  Fascist Italy were better than in the Third Reich, it was still a totalitarian state that waged aggressive and expansionist wars, whilst repressing sections of its own citizenry. Had Mussolini survived the war, I believe that there is little doubt that he would of stood trial for warcrimes.

Next up are the Brixa 45mm Mortars. each Italian infantry battalion in CD is meant to have two stands of these. While other nations have 81mm mortar platoons organic to their battalions, the Italians have something somewhat less useful.

Metal Figures - I think by FAA. One stand is in the firing position, one stand showing the mortar on the move. The only game difference is aesthetic.

And the other side of each stand.

And the figures for four more stands.

Each infantry battion is also meant to have two MMG stands. Currently, I only have the four Breda M1937s from the Waterloo 1815 Folgore Division Light Artillery set, which have a gunner cast with the figure, and has the gunner in the paratrooper helmet. I plan to get hold of a few sets of the Waterloo 1815 Italian Infantry Support Group to acquire some more, but in the meantime I will make an attempt to scratch bulid a couple.

1/35 weapons often provide useful fiddly bits for scratch building.

And yet again a Bren may save the day.

As work progresses on these, I will post the results. I also will attempt to make some other infantry support weapons such as the various models of  Fiat-Revelli MMGs.

Of course I will need to provide my Italians with some anti aircraft defenses, so I glued onto a coaster mdf base a resin model of a Skoda7.5cm kanon PL vz.37, which was known in Italian service as the Cannone da 75/49, or even as the Cannone da 75/50 I have had this model for quite a few years, and as a result have no idea of its manufacturer.

Basing it will protect the fragile resin parts.

Enough room is on the base for the gun crew stand to placed right next to the gun.

Waterloo 1815 47mm Antitank gun. I need to make up multiple gun crews for these.

The only painted Italians I have at the moment are Esci Alpini that I acquired second hand based for WRG  and rebased for Cd. The uniform colour is a little too green for my liking, and the use of green for ammunition pouches - my understanding is that they were brown leather, black, grey, or grey/green. Still they did the job against Mr K.!

Command Infantry and Command stand. Nice Alpini figures with their black crow's feather.

Infantry stands. The LMG figures don't add an additional factor to the stand.

Pack mule stand. Every Italian infantry battalion has one pack mule stand in it's TOE.

The rest of the painted figures. Many of these were converted to normal infantry by having the Alpini feather trimmed off their helmets.

Unpainted Esci and Airfix Italians.

Unpainted Waterloo 1815 Italians.

Hopefully, I will be able to mix and match figure sets to build up some reasonable Italians for use in Spain, North Africa, Italy, and even the Eastern Front. The next post I do should be an AAR on last weekends Harad game.