Just to add a little colour to the Western desert what about the Bersaglieri? I've always fancied infantry with chickens on their heads!! and they would be different.
Plus could we have some Italian POWs (these could be cast in blocks of thirty) rather than individuals. Each pack could come with a single tommy just to act as the guard!!!
Martyn
Greetings
Adding plumes to the helmets of fucilieri isn't difficult.
Sun helmets would have been nice as an option given their preponderance in IEA and the early desert war but I've made do with helmets.
Mind you I have to admit my Bersaglieri battalion in progress is from another manufacturer because they had sun helmets.
Regards
Edward
Quote from: kustenjaeger on 18 June 2011, 03:58:49 PM
Mind you I have to admit my Bersaglieri battalion in progress is from another manufacturer because they had sun helmets.
Regards
Edward
As is my Bersaglieri battalion I'm afraid, an additional incentive was that I could also get them on motorcycles.
Graham
So no one wants Italians with chickens on their heads!!! ;D
Looks like everyone has gone for the ones from 'the other place', myself included :-[
How do they match for size against Pendraken?
Not too bad. Not always as good quality in detail.
I also got my French from them as well. Then Leon brings out the French :'(
There are some plans underway to get them done, but nothing concrete yet.
Well here's a bump.
WW2 Italian Bersaglieri inf + heavy weapons + motorcyclists (both single and sidecar)
Ta
Ben
Votes added!
8)
I have painted a sizeable desert war Italian battlegroup based on Pendraken figures but the range is definitely not complete.
The most obvious miss are the Bersaglieri (infantry+ heavy weapons+ motorcycles) but also artillery is totally missing except for the AT 47/32.
Please Leon ;)
Seconding or bumping this. Would love some Bersag-whatnots for my Italian desert force.
Quote from: Martyn on 16 June 2011, 06:18:48 PM
Just to add a little colour to the Western desert what about the Bersaglieri? I've always fancied infantry with chickens on their heads!! and they would be different.
Plus could we have some Italian POWs (these could be cast in blocks of thirty) rather than individuals. Each pack could come with a single tommy just to act as the guard!!!
Martyn
Next you'll be asking for Tanks jammed in reverse 5th gear.
Add me in
Count me in too!
Some Alpini, cavalry and Guastatori assault engineers would be welcome too, and you can't even start an Italian WW2 army without 45mm mortars, 20mm Breda AA, and 20mm Solothurn anti-tank rifles.
Mark
Was thinking about the WW2 Italians, and the wishlist to complete the range is quite large. Feel free to add, but off the top of my head I get it to:
Desert Italians:
flamethrower teams
Bersaglieri infantry (riflemen, SMG, LMG, command)
Bersaglieri heavy weapons (MMG, 45mm mortars, gun crews for 47/32 and 20mm Solothurn, 81mm mortars)
Bersaglieri motorcycle combinations and motor-tricycles
65/17 infantry gun with shield, not sure how common this was?(I know the shieldless gun is in the WW1/SCW ranges)
20mm Solothurn A/T rifles
75/27 M1906 and M1911 field guns
20mm Breda AA
102mm MILMART gun truck (can'd do Operation Crusader Ariete Division without this one)
AS37 truck (including gun trucks)
Fiat 634 lorry with 65/17 gun
Fiat 626 armoured lorry
Folgore paratrooper heavy weapons
Russian front Italians:
Cavalry (rifles and sabres)
75/46 AA gun
Alpini would be nice (riflemen, LMG, command)
Alpini heavy weapons (MMG, 45mm mortars, gun crews, 81mm mortars) (engineers??)
Guastatori assault engineers (flamethrowers, pole charges, demo charges, SMG, rifles, LMG)
For late war:
Semovente 105/25
Semovente 75/46
Dovunque armoured lorry
AS37 APC
Almost worth a mini-none-kickstarter ;)
Wot? No "infantry surrendering"? ;)
Quote from: Ithoriel on 24 December 2020, 12:10:14 PM
Wot? No "infantry surrendering"? ;)
Well your infantry may be D class but mine aren't! :D
I am reminded of a tale from the Royal Tournament in the 1950s. The Bersaglieri Band was to perform and the bandmaster was being shown the Earls Court arena by the crusty old cove who ran the show then.
The Bersaglieri band, of course, makes a speciality of tootling as they run.
The bandmaster was horrified at the state of the surface of the arena and said to the organiser: 'This is impossible, we cannot run on sand'. To which the old buffer responded: 'You didn't have much difficulty doing so in 1941'.
My late father in law (Eighth Army El Alamein to Cassino then Greece) always said the Italian troops were brave and good fighters let down by incompetent generals and obsolete kit.
Quote from: Ben Waterhouse on 25 March 2021, 07:39:57 PM
My late father in law (Eighth Army El Alamein to Cassino then Greece) always said the Italian troops were brave and good fighters let down by incompetent generals and obsolete kit.
Unenthusiastic conscripts, fighting a war they did not want, against an enemy they did not hate, without adequate equipment or supplies. No surprise they surrendered in large numbers. By the time the Germans were surrendering in Normandy during the NWE campaign the Germans had established their reputation as tough fighters; the 200,000+ PoWs taken in Normandy suggests that many had similar views to the Italian troops.
And the alternative to surrender was often being stuck on foot in the desert with little or no water...
Quote from: Ben Waterhouse on 25 March 2021, 07:39:57 PM
My late father in law (Eighth Army El Alamein to Cassino then Greece) always said the Italian troops were brave and good fighters let down by incompetent generals and obsolete kit.
I think we forget that the Italians in the desert were not fully motorised.
No prospects for them of hopping into the Opel or Volkswagen and bugging out a hundred miles to the rear.
Anybody doubting their courage ought to take a look at an L3/33.
Paper thin armour, leaky fuel handling, and you're up against 25 pounders and Matildas.
There's the site of an old POW camp just up the road from where I live.
Really nice lads by all accounts: worked on the local farms, caused no bother, attended the local chapel, some remained behind afterwards.
Much more agreeable than the airmen and U-boat crews who replaced them in '44.
Had to double the wire and arm the guards for that lot.
Italians - good troops very badly lead. Plus in 40-41 O'Conner captured all the water supply. Really left em no choice.
My late father spent his entire war from 1941 to 1946 in North Africa and Palestine. I remember him rebuking me for making a disparaging remark about Italians, to the effect "I saw a lot of dead Italians. There is not much more you can ask of a soldier".
Quote from: ianrs54 on 26 March 2021, 08:39:44 AM
Italians - good troops very badly lead. Plus in 40-41 O'Conner captured all the water supply. Really left em no choice.
Once you can't boil your spaghetti, it's game over.
(Tongue in cheek reference to a notorious set of boardgame rules).
https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/09/18/pasta-rule-campaign-north-africa-not-actually-thing/#:~:text=In%20The%20Campaign%20for%20North,rule%20for%20a%20fiddly%20wargame. (https://www.quartertothree.com/fp/2017/09/18/pasta-rule-campaign-north-africa-not-actually-thing/#:~:text=In%20The%20Campaign%20for%20North,rule%20for%20a%20fiddly%20wargame.)
Quote from: ianrs54 on 26 March 2021, 08:39:44 AM
Italians - good troops very badly lead.
Pewter is better than lead, anyway.
Just bumping this one up as I'm getting desperate for 'em. (says more perhaps about my state of mind than anything else!). Need 'em for those plumes, need 'em for holding the position my M11 and M13s seize Please, please please... ;D
Quote from: henjed on 01 September 2021, 10:10:37 AM
Just bumping this one up as I'm getting desperate for 'em. (says more perhaps about my state of mind than anything else!). Need 'em for those plumes, need 'em for holding the position my M11 and M13s seize Please, please please... ;D
Seconded, agin....😬
thirded :)
Did they wear the plumes in acytion?
There is newsreel film of them in the desert with plumes fixed, but it's not action stuff, so I doubt they would have.
I believe they did attached to their helmets
Any evidence Ben ?
Quote from: steve_holmes_11 on 01 September 2021, 11:53:44 AM
Did they wear the plumes in acytion?
Yes they did. There is plenty of imagery on-line showing them; they aren't plumes though but black rooster feathers. They wore them in Spain during the civil war, there are plots of photos of them on their colonial helmets and steel helmets in N Africa and on their steel helmets in Russia. I converted a couple of dozen with ProCreate putty to make a Bersaglieri motorcycle platoon for my CTV in Spain - hardly a challenge.
https://www.ridingvintage.com/2013/04/the-italian-bersaglieri.html (https://www.ridingvintage.com/2013/04/the-italian-bersaglieri.html)
My Italians are all6mm either H&R or GHQ so they get a tiny green blob on the side of their helmets at this scale!
Quote from: John Cook on 01 September 2021, 06:11:22 PM
Yes they did. There is plenty of imagery on-line showing them; they aren't plumes though but black rooster feathers. They wore them in Spain during the civil war, there are plots of photos of them on their colonial helmets and steel helmets in N Africa and on their steel helmets in Russia. I converted a couple of dozen with ProCreate putty to make a Bersaglieri motorcycle platoon for my CTV in Spain - hardly a challenge.
I think it's what Cavalrymen term a "falling plume".
Read somewhere that it consists of 400 feathers.
For some reason I thought they were capercaillie feathers not rooster, am I wrong?
Also, 400 feathers for parade and 100 for active service is my recollection, steve.
Mr. Too Lazy To Even Google It
:) :) :)
Just took out of a box my 1941 Italian Desert War force and, a tear in my eye, sighed softly to myself:
"No Bersaglieri."
But then, with straightened back and determined visage I mouthed:
"But they will, soon. They must!"
BUMP
The lack of basics in the Italian WW2 range is frustrating, and certainly reducing sales. No 45mm mortars, no Bersaglieri, no cavalry, no 20mm Solothurns - we're having to substitute with Japanese 50mm mortars and Type 97 ATR for Italian regulars.
Some Alpini and Guastatori assault engineers would be nice too.
Once Tony has returned from a bit of time off I'll start working up the next batches of work and the Italians need to be in there I think.
We had a chap today asking about this armoured car/truck as well: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/italy/dovunque-35-blindato-apc/
Dovunque 35 blindato APC – 8 built
Clearly a major gap in your range :)
The truck on which it is based, though, was apparently widely used by the Italians in North Africa and Russia and by the Germans after Italy joined the Allies.
QuoteOnce Tony has returned from a bit of time off I'll start working up the next batches of work and the Italians need to be in there I think.
We had a chap today asking about this armoured car/truck as well: https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/italy/dovunque-35-blindato-apc/
It's the wrong one, it is the Fiat 665N armoured truck that they built 110 of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_665NM_protetto
that we want models of.
Each Armoured Division was to have 94 of them, including 30 in one Bersaglieri battalion, 10 in a divisional recce company, 24 as gun tows for divisional 75mm field guns, some others for HQs and 47/32 ATG. In the end they all ended up in Yugoslavia on anti-partisan duties, but we can fudge things a bit for a 1943 army.
There was also an armoured version of the Fiat 626 that was used in North Africa:
(https://i.postimg.cc/RVSX12nY/Fiat-626-armoured-truck4.jpg) (https://postimages.org/)
Quote from: Ithoriel on 26 May 2022, 07:42:14 PMDovunque 35
The truck on which it is based, though, was apparently widely used by the Italians in North Africa and Russia and by the Germans after Italy joined the Allies.
Aye, and is already made by Pendraken ITA8.
It's the light trucks, AS37 and TL37 series that the range is also short of.
And when we ask for Bersaglieri, that includes those on motorcycles and motorcycle combinations ;)
More details of the Fiat 665NM armoured truck here:
https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/fiat-665nm-protetto/
Quote from: sultanbev on 26 May 2022, 10:21:06 PMIt's the wrong one, it is the Fiat 665N armoured truck that they built 110 of
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_665NM_protetto
that we want models of.
I'll let you tell the customer then, he said he wanted 20 of the Dovunque for his army! He'd have more than they actually made it seems...
Quote from: sultanbev on 26 May 2022, 10:41:16 PMAnd when we ask for Bersaglieri, that includes those on motorcycles and motorcycle combinations ;)
More details of the Fiat 665NM armoured truck here:
https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/fiat-665nm-protetto/
Seconded!
THIRDED!!!!!!!! ;D
QuoteAnd when we ask for Bersaglieri, that includes those on motorcycles and motorcycle combinations ;)
yes please!
can we get them suitable for the fight in Russia and Italy, too.
jon
Votes added!