"Preview - PSC 15mm British Heavy Weapons Set" Topic

Finished the 15mm British Heavy Weapon box set masters from PSC tonight… 4.2" mortar, 3" Mortar, Vickers MMG and a Flamethrower operator.

Those crew members tend to look a bit grumpy.

Did the Huns attack in the middle of their tea break?

i like these

Those colours don't look right. Have you changed your palette or is my ipad on the blink?

Just used Vallejo English Uniform.

Same as I have used on all my British for the last four years.

Could be the new grey backdrop throwing out the colour balance.

Well apart from that they are stunning as usual.

A very useful set of figures and they should sell well. I am a little dubious about weapons crews wearing bren gun pouches on their webbing though.

Those Bren gun pouches should be rather useful for carrying all sorts of items, not just Bren gun magazines.

Then again, I would also presume that some of the guys manning mortars might want to consider dropping off their webbing gear altogether – should make it easier to handle those 4.2" mortar shells.

Im sure some chaps in crews wore them…

Your first picture shows an early war 3 inch mortar crewmen at the time when they didn't have much in the way of transport and your second photo shows another 3 inch crew not wearing bren webbing with some infantryman walking past. Generally speaking this webbing was only worn by infantrymen as weapons crews would keep any Bren ammo they had in their carriers and not carry it around with them . Just look at some random photos of support weapons crews if you are still sceptical.

Pretty sure the guy kneeling on the right of the mortar has a bren pouch on…

But it is the far east.

Not sure where I said I was sceptical, just there are no absolutes when proclaiming what soldiers did, or did not wear.

I agree, most pics show them with little webbing, but always exceptions. Most British crew figures seem to get full webbing.

These boys seem to have them on…

As with 58 Pattern, the pouches are an integral part of the webbing. The crossbelts go over the shoulder and are then clipped to the top of the pouches, which are in turn attached to the belt. There is no way to fasten the crossbelts directly to the front of the waistbelt – you have to have a pouch to attach them to.

No you don't. There were brace attachments for people like officers and cavalrymen (still had horse cavalry in 1938) who didn't wear pouches.

No such thing as a "Bren" pouch BTW, they are "Universal Pouches" and were designed to accommodate mortar bombs and grenades as well as Bren magazines. There was an additional set of two pouches used by Bren No.2's that were worn slung over the shoulder, front and back.

Yes, actual Bren pouches were a special set on strap thingy the Bren NO. 2 wore. Those others are just Universal pouches.

37 pattern brace attachments

It is however much easier just to take the lot off and work without any webbing at all.

I stand corrected re the attachments, though I've never actually seen those adaptor attachments before. I was under the impression that Officers generally wore the pistol pouch on one side and the pistol charger pouch and/or binocular pouch on the other side, so they attached the slings to those.

What a great picture , it looks like Italy 1944. Anti tank gun crews would send the carriers to the rear once emplaced and crews had a Bren gun for local defence. I have gone through the pictures in my book collection and found webbing worn by 2 Vickers crews but one wasn't a combat photo. Some webbing was worn by a couple of anti tank gun crews but six A/T gun crews wore no webbing at all . I found no photos showing webbing worn by any 3 inch or 4.2 inch mortar crews in all the pictures I have, probably got in the way a bit.