Fallschirmjäger Mörserzug (mortar platoon)
Once again I painted some new addition for my Fallschirmjägerkompanie. The mortars are vey crucial for the airborne infantry since they had very limited support of heavy artillery.
The Fallschirmjäger heavy mortar platoon in it´s ground operation setup. I took the picture with my brand new photo background which I airbrushed.
The Opel Blitz Trucks with bumper antennas and divisional markings for the 1. Fallschirmjägerdivision and tactical markings for artillery. Thanks to Grenadier Christian for helping me on these details!
A light mortar platoon for airborne mission with drop canister and dug in marker. In the front you can see a storage base for the exchangeable heavy mortars.
Closeup of the mortar crews. The uniform was used since Crete. The Fallschirmjäger tropical uniforms are combined with Splittertarn (splinter camo) Knochensäcke (bone sacks). The platoon commander wears an old style Luftwaffe blue helmet with FJ insignia.
Fallschirmjäger with KFZ 15 and Opel Blitz.
I should have painted these guys much more early. The light artillery battery I painted is not a big deal during the recent games. It consists just of two guns hence the gunteams are easily diminished.
However there are some details to mention in this platoon article: The gunteams have two options of mortar equipment: The mortars are glued on magnets so I can change from light to heavy mortars. For sure nobody would recognise the difference from a distance of half a metre but, well I can change it.
I painted the platoon both for airborne missions and for ground operations. I always wondered if that small amount of soldiers really were equipped with four Opel Blitz trucks, but they were fun to paint. I airbrushed them with our new club owned airbrush equipment and I did use the new shades from the paint utility set by Battle Front, which I recommend for every FOW enthusiast. The dark and brown shade are perfect for vehicles!
Studying pictures of Opel Blitz trucks I saw that they have antennas at the front of the bumper which are very characteristic for the time and for the vehicles so I gave them a try to model them. It came out very nice, but obviously they will break a lot of times in the future. I used wire and added some superglue on top of it. Then I just put a little bit of green stuff on it, just that bit that was glued, not more.
The infantry base with the tank obstacle is an dug in marker. Usually when I paint fow miniatures these day I paint a couple of markers with the platoon. The drop canister was painted, too. But to be honest, I do not like the mission "death from above" very much since the setup of a game takes ages.
However the Fallschirmjägercompany is now finished in it´s core, the rest will be options and nice to have additions.
Unfortunately it is impossible to buy Fallschirmjäger vehicle crews, so I cannot provide drivers for the KFZ 15. I need to be patient until they are available.
The 8cm mortars do only have three crew members whereas the 10.5cm mortar platoon has no option for a Panzerknacker team. These are two mistakes I would like to mention since I did not make that like it was mentioned in the rule book. It is quite likely that I will paint another mortar platoon in the future like lemming will do.A note on rule details by lemming
