"More comrades join the Soviet forces" Topic

This week sees another fifteen comrades join the cadre. After the efforts of last week and this only another dozen or so figures to paint and I'll have my platoon ready for some Chain of Command.

As usual, more pictures and commentary on the Scrivsland blog.

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Awesome!

I'm sure you know this already but those figs are a tad late for Fall Blau.

Cool to see you were in S. Dakota. We were too at some of the same places. Looks like you had a good time also.

Could you drop me a note at aphillathehun at yahoo dot com?

Cool!

Thanks

Yes I realise the figures were a little late with all the stand-up collars, shoulder boards and PPSh-43s but Assault Group were having a sale and they are such lovely figures.

These figures by Richard Ansell are lovely indeed. Great paintjob.

Yes I realise the figures were a little late with all the … PPSh-43s but …

Well, um, not meaning to sound like Mr. Picky (tm) here, but there's no such gun as a PPSh-43.

Perhaps you meant the PPS-43.

Kak etta pa Russky? (Как это по-русски?) I hear you cry.

Well, it's this. You see, when WE write PPSh, that's a transliteration of: ППШ. As in ППШ-41.

And when WE write PPS, that's a transliteration of: ППC. As in ППC-43.

(Actually the proper transliteration in English would not be PPSh, it would be PPš, but no one but a linguist would actually know what that last character is.)

Do you see? ППC is not the same as ППШ. In English we can perhaps think that Sh is just a different rendering of S. Maybe S is just a lazy-man's writing of Sh. But in the Cyrillic alphabet the letter for "Sh" is "Ш". That is in no way rendered differently into just "S", which in Cyrillic is "C".

It would kind of be like someone who was not particularly familiar with English getting P confused with F. Well, yes, if you write PH it sounds like F. But still most people don't get confused between F and P. If you mean NYFD, you usually don't write NYPD. They aren't the same at all. And Russians don't understand getting confused between Ш and C. They aren't the same at all.

PPSh-41 (ППШ-41) is the Machinegun Pistol Shpagin of 1941. Shpagin was the designer. It had a wooden stock, and was originally fed by a 71-round drum magazine.

PPS-43 (ППC-43) is the Machinegun Pistol Sudayev of 1943. It was designed by Sudayev. It had a folding metal stock, and introduced a 35 round banana clip (which also fit the PPSh-41, and was popular for both guns by the end of the war).

Just in case you wanted to know…

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

Well that's a lot of information :)

Well that's a lot of information :)

Yeah, it kinda was.

But maybe some folks don't understand the difference, and want to know. Or maybe they don't (want to know). Or maybe I should switch to decaf.

;)

None-the-less, what I didn't say in my last soap-box lecture was that I think you've done a great job on those figures.

In particular I like the shading of the uniforms. It's inconsistent. And I appreciate that. It is a level of nuance that catches my eye.

I like how some of the soldiers' uniforms are more green, and some are more brown/tan. And I even notice that some of the soldier's trousers are more green, while their tunics are more tan. And the rolled greatcoats they carry across their torsos are also varied in their hue, with some more gray than others.

All of that tracks well with my readings of Soviet WW2 uniforms. It makes the unit look more realistic to those who study the period. It also gives more "character" to the troops.

Another point I would add, and this one, really DEEPLY into the details, might be a mis-interpretation due to the lighting in the pics, but … it appears to me that the bayonets on the rifles are blued, but with some silvered highlights (dry-brushing or other edging / weathering technique). If so, I offer again my praise to the attention to detail and nuance.

Different from most western armies, and even different from the bayonet on the SVT-40 semi-auto rifle, the bayonet for the Mosin-Nagant bolt-action rifle was indeed blued. It started out as the same color as the barrel of the gun. However, as it was always on the gun when firing (or at least it was always intended to be on the gun, to the point that the gun's sighting was adjusted to reflect the bayonet's affect on accuracy) the bluing tended to wear off faster than on the rest of the gun. As any Mosin collector/shooter will tell you, the bluing on the bayonet wears quickly due to the muzzle flash, and you wind up with silvery bare-metal edges.

Even my own Soviet troops do not have blued bayonets with silvered highlights. Truly a nice touch!

Overall, a very well done and impressive set of miniatures.

-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)

I am glad to learn that Mark. Very instructive. Effectively the error gives Shpagin credit for Sudayev's design. So it is worth getting it right.

Great figures, great paint job BTW. Thanks for posting.

Thanks Mark.

The uniform hues are intentional, the bayonets a happy coincidence.