Friday 25 April 2014

Blitzkrieg: Fighters from the Sky!

When I was a kid I was fascinated with the Fallschirmjäger. Given the fact that I had Featherstone's Wargaming Airborne Operations booked out of the library on a near permanent basis, loved the comic strip Fighter from the Sky in Battle and thought the Airfix German Paratroops were so cool looking they often defected to allied side to fight the Nazi in my games of toy soldiers, I suppose it was to be expected. Nearly forty years on, despite a general antipathy to the Germans as a wargames force, it appears that fascination has been rekindled...



I have already picked up most of the miniatures I need from Crusader for a platoon of Fallschirmjäger for my planned Tunisian project but on a whim I added a section of paratroops to a second order from Black Tree Design to take advantage of their 35% off sale (this time I grabbed the Italians as they were now showing the 35% discount) which arrived yesterday. The intention is to paint these up for early war actions and they will be useful for fighting the Danes, Dutch, Belgians and Norwegians.

I may try and paint them up over the weekend (along with some more Dane conversions) and have found a really useful painting guide on the Artizan website here. This is just as well as I was going to paint them in the blue-grey trousers I recalled from the Airfix box (above) but seems to be somewhat inaccurate! :-)

2 comments:

  1. If you are going to base the project in Tunsia then the excellent Artizan Ramcke Brigade Fallschirmajager are a must. The Crusader figures paint up great but Mike Owen's sculpts are superb. Look forward to seeing some photos of this project.:)

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  2. Hi there. I have a similar history w the falschirmjaeger and Featherstone/Tarr's book!
    I have recently rebased by Airfix figures for FoW in 20mm, and did some reseach on the uniforms. The Ramcke brigade wore pale or grey uniforms, similar to those used in Crete:
    http://wargamesobsession.blogspot.co.nz/2013/06/falschirmjaeger-just-about-ready-for.html
    and
    http://wargamesobsession.blogspot.co.nz/search?updated-max=2012-10-02T04:22:00-07:00&max-results=7&reverse-paginate=true&start=18&by-date=false

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