New 15mm German troops

Following on from my previous post where I showed additional troops to make my Soviet units CoC2 compliant, here are the German equivalents, again all by Peter Pig, plus a new Zug (platoon).

First, a three-man Engineer team and a sniper team;

Next a Volksgrenadier squad (see below also) supporting a three-man Flamethrower team;

Here are eight ammunition carriers because LMG teams now need more guys supporting the MG42 and I've also painted an extra Senior Leader. The figure was spare, so I painted him up;

And finally, my new unit, a Volksgrenadier Zug, equipped with the StG 44 assault rifle;

Volksgrenadier units weren't all supplied with the StG 44 because the bulk of the troops still had the Kar 98k rifle, because millions of them were produced during the war, with less than 500,000 StG 44s entering service. However, this is an assault Zug, with two assault squads and a heavy squad with two MG42 teams. That is a lot of firepower. The extra Volksgrenadier squad above will be a potential support choice for the Germans.

I'm pleased with the final photo, because I was able to use one of Jon Hodgson's SciFi backdrops as a battle-scarred cityscape.

Having reorganised all of my German units by mixing in the ammunition carriers and changing the structure of my Panzergrenadier Zug , I've managed to create two extra rifleman (Grenadier) squads and an extra Panzergrenadier squad as support options.

Looking at my Soviets and Germans, when I add in my Volkssturm and an earlier "green" Volksgrenadier squad I painted a few years ago, I reckon that I could put on a huge game with the Soviets and Germans fighting over the ruins of Berlin. Of course, I'd have to create a big pile of ruined buildings to add to the ones I've already got. Maybe a plan for the future?

 

And finally, the rest of the Volkssturm

Here are the last of my figures for this little project, three squads making up the core Volkssturm Zug.

The first squad, plus the Zugführer (slightly out of focus with the pistol);

Followed by the other two squads;

Each squad has a Junior Leader with a SMG and eight riflemen.

I have painted some of the figures in dark blue uniforms to represent members of the Hitlerjugend. This seems to be what they wore once they had grown out of their shorts, as far as I can tell. To be honest, I don't really want to dive into too many websites covering this unsavoury organisation.

I've also used the same vaguely military colours that I used for the guys with Panzerfausts, to give an idea of old soldiers getting a tunic or greatcoat out of the loft or maybe grabbing something left behind by retreating Heer units. I've also given one or two brown clothing, which seems to have been widely used by a lot of NSDAP paramilitary organisations like the Reichsarbeitsdienst. The colour seems to vary, but it is often a kind of diarrhoea brown, which seems appropriate. 

Some of the figures have helmets and others forage caps and they all have the Volkssturm armband.

The number of different figures in the Peter Pig Volkssturm offering isn't huge, so I bulked them out with rifle-armed figures from their Afrika Korps range. They are wearing a lot of military kit, such as gas mask cases, but I don't think that it matters that much. Perhaps this particular Volkssturm unit came from an area where kit was a bit more plentiful.

The problem with the Volkssturm is that regardless of any official organisational charts, the reality was always a lack of uniformity or adherence to what the regulations might state, due to all manner of reasons. However, to put something on the table which will work in Chain of Command rules terms, I've had to give the thing a coherent shape. 

Here is what I have gone with;

HQ: Zugführer - SL with pistol 

2 x MG42 teams (3 crew, gunner, loader, ammunition carrier). These can be allocated to a squad, deployed as a team without a leader or kept under the control of the SL. n.b the ammunition carrier doesn't use a rifle separately.

8 x men with Panzerfausts and no other armament, to be allocated as desired.

3 x Squads (Gruppenführer - JL with SMG, 8 rifles)

The Zug is rated Green as laid out in the CoC rule book.

More 15mm Volkssturm - Panzerfausts

The Volkssturm was supposed to be the mobilisation of the (male) German population into a huge army to defend the Fatherland against the allies. It never really turned out that way, though.

There was a shortage of weapons and uniforms and most of the available healthy manpower was siphoned off into the new Volksgrenadier units, many of which were wasted in the abortive Ardennes Offensive of December 1944.

However, Volkssturm units were formed and equipped with whatever was available, which meant a lot of obsolete rifles and even more Panzerfausts.

These are all Peter Pig figures, some of a more martial appearance than others, due to their military-style soft caps. I've used grey-green on some of the clothing to imply either military greatcoats dished out from a store somewhere or tunics that might date back to someone's service in the Great War. You will note that only two of these figures have rifles. The rest just have a 'faust. Again, I've attempted the red/white/black Volkssturm armband on them.

My idea here is that these guys will form a resource available to the Zugführer to allocate as he sees fit. I've even got an idea how they might be used in a game of CoC. They could be allocated to individual squads or be held centrally, either to be deployed as an Ambush, using a CoC dice, or as a one-man team which will activate on a 1 on a Command Dice. Once they have fired, if deployed as a 1-man team or an Ambush they will be unarmed and should be removed from the table. Those allocated to a squad will remain with the squad and will be able to replace a rifleman casualty (but not the Gruppenführer JL).

By September 1944, the Panzerfaust 60 reached peak production but was slowly being replaced by the more powerful Panzerfaust 100. Apart from the longer range of the Model 100, both versions were of a similar size and both could knock out any Allied tanks encountered. They were most effective in urban combat situations, where tanks were vulnerable to such portable one-shot weapons.

The start of a much postponed new WW2 project

I have had this idea for quite a long time now, and actually bought most of the figures at Colours in 2019, but it just got put aside when the pandemic struck us in early 2020. All the figures in this project, except one are Peter Pig.

The project is a 15mm German Volkssturm Zug for late-war Chain of Command. My reason for doing this was to allow me to play games in the last months of the Third Reich when the Volkssturm were supposed to be Germany's last line of defence. It was also part of a bigger plan, which was to do 15mm Soviet forces for Chain of Command too. 

So, I've started work on these now, and here are the first fruits. These represent the heavier firepower for the force.

Here are two MG42 teams. These are actually late war German infantry in greatcoats, but you can't get Volkssturm figures with LMGs, well I couldn't find any. You'll note that I have attempted to paint Volkssturm armbands on them. 

Next, and this is for a specific project I have in mind is a Ranking Senior Leader (in CoC terms), a NSDAP Gemeinschaftsleiter (Community Leader), with a runner or bodyguard (this one is a Forged in Battle early war German infantry figure)

I also had some Peter Pig late-war German infantry with StG 44 assault rifles hanging around so, I decided that my project might have well have some Volksgrenadiers as a support option. I'll rate them as Green for CoC games.

This squad is a Junior Leader with an SMG (pointing, on the larger base) and seven men with the StG 44 rifles. 

My next post will be about the actual Volkssturm Zug once I have varnished and photographed them.