Red Army Support Weapons

 A couple years back, I tried to unload my WWII Red Army onto Doug.  He recently returned the army to me, as he isn't particularly interested in WWII, but happily took my army of Tsar Alexander I in its place!  Getting the Red Army back has inspired me to finally finish painting the infantry support weapons, including Maxim machine guns and 50 mm and 82 mm mortars.

These models are, like most of the Red Army I painted back in 2019, are from Plastic Soldier Company.  As I noted when I first purchased them, the figures are very low price compared to other 28 mm figures, but are still nicely sculpted.

The Maxim machine guns look kinda small compared to MMGs from other manufacturers.  The Maxim gun is one of those iconic weapons that are so closely tied to a particular army - still in use today more than a century after its introduction.

The box set includes two pairs of soldiers pulling the MG being moved using its wheeled carriage.

Here are the two pairs of mortars, the 50 mm PM-41 light mortar and the 82 mm PM-37 medium mortar.  The kneeling crewmen aren't holding the mortar bombs quite high enough to drop them into the mortar, but I can forgive them; maybe the crewmen are just in the process of lifting the bombs.  ;^)

To finish up the crews, here are 5 assorted crewmen.  Since I'm unlikely to be using all the MGs and mortars at the same time, these blokes will be assigned to crew weapons as needed!

So my Red Army finally has some of the basic infantry support weapons one would expect them to have.

Red Army Officers and Riflemen

Here is another batch of Plastic Soldier Company Russians, this time the officers and riflemen.  As you can see, I'm still playing around with different colours and shades for the uniforms.  

Here are three different versions of one of the officer figures, showing my take on summer & winter-weight gymnastiorka tunics and one with a slightly fancier "French" khaki wool tunic.

And here are the riflemen.

Advancing and,

A firing line!

I'm not quite sure what to make of this pose.  Is he trying to maintain situational awareness while enduring dysentery?  

And of course the obligatory group shot.

PSC USSR ATR, LMG & SMG

Here is the next batch of Plastic Soldier Company WWII Russians.  Anti-tank rifles, light machine guns and submachine guns.

I've not quite settled on the colour and shade for the uniforms that I like best.  I initially followed the painting guide on the box, that called for a base colour of "tan yellow", which would probably be ok for the summer uniform, which was made of cotton and would typically fade to a light khaki colour.  However, since I want these to be useful into the fall of 1941, I wanted them to have more of an olive-green hue which the woolen fabric of the winter uniform was known for.  I experimented with several different approaches, using different colours for the base before I settled on Vallejo Model Color 70.988 Khaki.  I also played around with washes and then dry brushing a lighter shade on top of the washed figure. I'm still not content with the overall appearance, but I'm getting there. Rather than going back and doing all the figures with the same paint recipe, I've decided to keep a range of the results, which ends up showing another result:  as the Soviet supply chain and quality control were all over the place, it was common to have a range of hues in any given unit.  Hopefully this comes out with the way these soldiers ended up.

For LMG and ATR teams, PSC provides versions prone and firing, as well as advancing models.  I like this.  Time will tell if I have the enthusiasm to swap out figures that are firing and walking when I actually play a game, but for now at least I have the option!

The ATR (anti-tank rifle) teams are equipped with the PTRS ATR, although I wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the PTRS and the PTRD.  The Russians continued to equip their soldiers with anti-tank rifles long after other powers stopped doing so.  Turns out this was not such a bad idea, because even if the ATR can't penetrate tank armour, it's still able to mess up armoured cars and other more lightly armoured vehicles, and can make life unpleasant for enemies in bunkers or other cover that normal small arms wouldn't affect.

Here they are prone and firing.

And advancing.  A quirk of the plastic moulding process is that the folded bipod legs end up looking like a flat rectangular plate under the rifle!  A more clever painter than me could probably have disguised this a bit better 8^)

Next up are the light machine gun (LMG) crews.  These lads have the DP (or Degtyaryov) LMG with is distinctive circular pan magazine.  Advancing and firing versions both provided, and this time the loaders are clearly identified in the advancing sets!

And to round things out here are the submachine gunners, equipped with the famous and ubiquitous PPSh SMG.  My experimentation in uniform shades is clearly visible here.  I suppose I'll need to follow through on this variety when I move on to finish the riflemen.  

And finally, here is a group shot of the ATR, LMG and SMG troops.

PSC Russian Nurses and Commisars

Here are the next PSC figures to come off the painting table.  These come from the Russian Infantry box.  This box comes with 57 figures, so it will take me a while to get through them all.  

I've started with the 3 female figures and the 3 officer types in peaked caps.  The women are all going to be medics.  I had a vague idea that I could repurpose one or two of them in other roles such as signaller, but for simplicity I'm just leaving them as medics.  The faces on these ladies aren't quite as nice as I'd like, probably a restriction from the way they moulds were set up.  The bag should have a very visible red cross on it, however it is not as clear as it could be due to the position of the figure's arm.  I've just sort of squeezed it in as best I could - not quite accurate but makes the figure's role clear for gaming purposes.

I tried slightly different uniforms for the three blokes.  The uniforms are loosely based on suff I found in Osprey MAA 216, Red Army of the Great Patriotic War.  Depending on game needs, they can be Commissars, NKVD or another role.  The main idea being that they will stand out from the rank and file. 

PSC Russian Anti-tank Guns

For my WWII Russian army, I did a bit of research on my options for 28mm figures.  The best deal which combines low price with nice-looking sculpts has turned out to be from the Plastic Soldier Company, aka PSC.  PSC primarily produces their product in 15mm (or 1:100) and 20mm (roughly 1/72), but they have released three sets of Red Army soldiers in 28mm, including this 45mm anti-tank gun.  The kit allows two guns to be built, each with a crew of 4.  The guns can be the  45 mm M1937 AT gun, the 45 mm M1942 AT gun, or the 76 mm M1943 infantry gun.  As my goal is to build an army for Operation Barbarossa and the Battle of Moscow, which happened in 1941, I've elected to build the M1937.

The guns are easy to assemble, and they and their crews paint up easily.  The kit includes some nice extra swag, like ammunition boxes, spent shell casings and a few small arms (rifle and PPSh submachine gun).

Now that I've taken the photos, I see that I should have taken more care when building the models to ensure the barrel was laying horizontally.  As it is, it looks like they might be aiming up in the air.  Maybe they are getting ready to take on Hitler's flying tanks? (what would that be, fliegenpanzerkampfwagen?)  I can't fix them now - if I tried, I'd break the guns and would never get them right, but this minor error shouldn't be a problem with the guys I game with.  That is, unless they actually read this blog!