At a 6mm scale, I guess details between nations are even smaller, so maybe you could use XIXth century colonial troops with tropical helmets to represent 1942 Italian riflemen.
True, that. And I am not at all adverse to a bit of re-purposing and kit-bashing.
For example my French Armee d'Afrique force is built mostly on GHQ's Romanian infantry figures. The out-sized helmets make for a reasonable tropical sun helmet at this scale, rifles are pretty indistinguishable, and the LMGs are a good match:
Some kit-bashing helps. For French colonial forces some M1916 37mm trench guns can provide useful close-support (given the dearth of other heavier support weapons), and GHQ's odd choice of putting captured SG-43 MGs in the hands of the Romanians provided a useful starting point for a bit of modification:
But for my Italians I am still struggling. As mentioned I prefer the continental uniforms, as I like the gaming flexibility of a force for Tunisia, Sicily and the Eastern Front.
I'd love to put some motorcycles into my force. My target would be the motorcycle-equipped cavalry regiments, rather than the Bersaglieri, as this would allow re-use of my existing infantry figures for dismounts.
But alas, finding any Italian motorcyclists, or even any motorcyclists I could re-purpose into Italians, is proving difficult.
About the only motorcycle troops I can find at my scale are German (from multiple vendors), Russian (from one vendor) or Japanese. They are focused on side-car mounts. The Italian motorcycle forces used VERY few side-cars, and were mostly built on tandem riders, which I can not find. There are some Japanese tricycles available from one vendor, but that vendor's products don't mix too well with the others, and the tricycles, even at this scale are not very close to the Italian style.
So I am left trying to figure out if/how I could kit-bash second riders onto existing motorcycles (from side-car sets without the side-cars). I'm thinking of adding C-in-C marching (slung guns) US infantry to the back of GHQ German motorcycles. The C-in-C infantry are easy to bend (and break!), and they have slung rifles, and the GHQ motorcycles do not come with the side-cars pre-attached. If (big if) I could get the infantry figures appropriately on to the backs of the motorcycles, then I'd still have some helmet re-shaping to do.
And looking for some way to kit-bash the tricycles, perhaps by cutting of the back of a GHQ German Kettengrad and adding some sliced-up rendition of a GHQ US jeep trailer.
If I could even manage all of that, I expect the result would be a lot of time spent creating a fast (well OK, only half so) Italian motorcycle formation, just in time for some vendor to introduce some lovely figures for the same. Frequently runs that way for me.
But in any case I just yammer about it and think about it and plan for it, but you have put it together! For that, I applaud your force, and your work!
-Mark
(aka: Mk 1)
dips his toe into the Russo-Japanese War.
