British Paratroopers and Canadian Infantry

So here are my WW2 Paratroopers and Canadian Infantry - based upon 1st British Airbourne and 3rd Canadian infantry Respectively.

The support elements are interchangeable (at the moment)as I don't have enough for both - eventually I intend to have enough to field both divisions concurrently but at the moment either my Canadians represent the Air Landing (Glider) Brigade or the Paras represent standard infantry.

British/Commonwealth Forces

I had organised my Parachute Battalions as having 4 companies each as per standard infantry however I now believe that the Paras only had 3 companies per battalion. I will leave this as is until I get the other parachute brigade - this also means that I can use them for standard infantry in the meanwhile.

1st Parachute Brigade

1st Parachute Battalion

2nd Parachute Battalion - Lt. Col. John (Anthony Hopkins)  Frost Commanding

3rd Parachute Battalion

I have played around with a few rule variants for these in terms of the drops but haven't finalised as yet - once I do I will post them. For our Spearkrieg rules, I count the Paras as SMG armed Rifles - so 5 attack at 3" - 4 attack at 6".

Canadian Infantry Brigade (Probably 7th)

In various states of basing, the uniforms of the Canadians are identical to British Infantry but greener. I have enough left to field at least one more brigade, maybe more and I will complete the Division eventually.

Brigade HQ Stands

The equivalent of Regimental commands in other armies.

Engineer Squadrons

British (Commonwealth) forces are not the easiest to work out what is what interchanging regiment, battalion, brigade, company and squadron for various different units. I then have numerous support elements which can be attached to either.

Heavy Machine Guns

6 pdr Anti Tank Guns

17 pdr Anti Tank Guns

Then a few purely for my Paratroopers. I have some artillery support as well as some jeeps complete with appropriate berets. To represent the transport I have scratch built some gliders out of matchsticks.

Pack 75mm Howitzers. Not a massive punch but can't fit much in a glider.

Airbourne Jeeps

"This signpost looks funny sir!"

So that is it so far, I hope to be able to field both of these as division sized forces separately and in unfinished models I'm a good chunk of the way.

British Armour!

Again had these painted for a while but finally got round to posting these. Got another squadron of Churchills but haven't finished basing them along with a Crocodile.

British Heavy Armour

I've organised the formation into a regiment of 3 squadrons - 3 Churchill Mk7s and 1 Mk8 to each squadron. As with all my WW2 forces, they are Pendraken - lovely models but if I ever do an actual armoured formation (Panzer Division etc)  I would probably use Skytrex miniatures - cost a lot less and don't take up quite such a large amount of space on the table - these are BIG models.

Regimental HQ

Not quite sure how often I'll use this stand - usual practice was to split the squadrons in a supporting role amongst attacking Infantry Divisions.

I may redo the names on the sides of the tank as it was originally done with acrylic and has badly rubbed so the names are unreadable. The individual squadrons have the squadron markings in yellow on the turrets - circles, squares (and triangles).

Side View

I also have (as part of Canadian Infantry Division) a couple of M10 Tank Destroyers. Eventually, I will post the division in full once its completed.

I'm not overly impressed with these - no crews and less detail than I have seen on others. However they are more than adequate and when I'm fielding 3rd Canadian Infantry they won't have much armour to be compared to.

Coming Up: I've got my British and Canadian Infantry to post and I'm still musing over Game of Thrones - working title is currently Stag Rampant.

British WW2 Gliders

So finally getting around to indexing my current troops.

Gliders

First of all here are my scratch built gliders for my British Airborne Division. Just a few matchsticks glued together, cut to shape make the glider itself.

Horsas

Painted all in black then the top half was painted in dark green. This was followed with the brown before the white stripes were added. Finally I retouched up the black and added the black stripes on the white.

Hamilcar

The models I feel are effective if not perfectly accurate. I use these for gaming with my 10mm models, although they are probably closer to 6mm or even smaller. I will eventually post the orbat but for more information on the Horsa and Hamilcar Gliders please click on the names.

Next time; 1st Brigade