"28mm WWII Early War German SS from Crusader" Topic

All,

This is from the wonderful Mr. Nick over at Northstar, who hooked me up with a platoon deal to serve as the core of my early war Waffen SS force. Specifically, these are metal figures from Crusader, and they're lovely. Nice and hefty, great detail on weapons and gear, great proportions, and though I love my Warlord plastic figures, it was such a blessing to not have to build all these guys!!!

I bought a regular rifle platoon, then augmented with some weapons teams and engineers. I wanted the early war force to have a uniform look, so I painted the rifle platoon and some of the supporting weapons teams in Oak Leaf pattern camo, and I painted the engineers and ATG crew in Plane Tree camo, just to set them apart a bit.

Platoon leadership types, the Lieutenant on the left and his Platoon Sergeant. Pretty happy with how the camo turned out.

The backside of a couple NCOs with MP-40s.

A pair of riflemen.

First two engineers, one on right has the flamethrower. I have no idea what the dude on the left has in his hand; is it a flare pistol of some sort? It looks like a pistol with a rifle grenade attached to it…

Closeup of my Plane Tree Camo.

To see a bunch more photos, please check the blog at:
link

Pretty cool little unit. And if I've got early war SS, then you know what's coming next.

V/R,
Jack

The Germans had a small grenade that could be launched from a pistol. I'm sure that's what is shown on the one figure with the mystery weapon.

I'm told that is a "Sturmpistole," an early attempt at making an AT weapon for the everyman, weighing in at almost six pounds!

V/R,
Jack

Great job on the cammo.

Thanks, 79th!

V/R,
Jack

An example of diabolical Nazi ingenuity:

Wiki – Sturmpistole

Stand well back when one of the fanatical Reichs-believers decides to shoot himself in the head with it.

Indeed! ;)

V/R,
Jack

Nice cam jobs, Jack. I've never seen anything like that pistol grenade either, but the Gerries tended to go in for strange (and usually useless) ideas like that.

Aussies can't talk, though. We were still using ENTAC* in the 1980's.

*ENTAC- an anti-tank missile designed to drape wires over enemy APC in the off-chance they would cut a crewie's throat- because in my (happily limited) experience the missiles never hit anything they were aimed at.

Thanks, Dal, and that's funny about ENTAC!

V/R,
Jack