The Italeri WWII U.S. Army infantry set has a pretty good .30 caliber machine gun team. The tripod and gun are two separate parts. The hand grip of the machine gun has the hand of the gunner molded onto it. It fits together pretty well, but I would rather have had a larger base for the gunner and gun. It is nice to get a three man team, it would have been even better to get an ammo belt for the machine gun, a major omission!
The Grease Gunner is one of the few firing poses in the set. A great figure.
This tanker is firing his Colt .45 pistol. The barrel looks a bit short, it may be a Colt Commander, a slightly shorter version. General Patton was a tanker and an Olympic pistol shooter. In the old days duelers used to turn their side towards the other duelist so as to present a thin aspect to their opponent. This stance eventually became popular for Olympic and law enforcement and military shooters.
Several of the figures in this set look like they are on patrol, this little vignette shows the BAR gunner. Pretty good, but it would have been great if the BAR man was looking in the direction he was pointing his automatic rifle.
Two more men on patrol, Italeri seems to like the point the gun left and look right pose. I do not. Troops point the gun where they are looking so they can shoot at what they see. Nice carbine and M1 rifle armed troops. The sculpting of this set is fantastic and the figures very lifelike.
9 comments:
very nice figures, i like'em.
it does not look too hard to make the bar gunner look into the right direction depending on how glueable the used plastic is.
It's not that glueable. First thing I thought too! It will work with a bit of superglue, N-Heptane and guitar string!
What on earth is that rifleman wearing? Looks like half a rifle belt and half pistol....certainly nothing made for or worn by US soldiers! I guess that's supposed to be his gas mask case under his left arm, but looks more like a block of wood; as for that machine gunner, well he looks more like he's trying to drown the gun instead of fire it. In position he's just begging to be shot - and perhaps he should be. bA total waste of plastic
The web belt could have a set of rifle ammo pouch slid over it, riflemen usually wore two of them, so it looked like pouches all around. The "pistol" belt was the same belt without the rifle ammo pouches. It looks like he has one set of rifle ammo pouches, and a first aid pouch, and carbine or pistol ammo pouch and a large pouch on the other side. My conclusion is that he is a machine gun crewmember or mortar crewmember and the pouch is cleaning gear, or components of the mortar or mg.
Actually I like the way the two gunners hold their weapons away from their line of sight.
I will use them to peak around a house corner during a street patrol.
Or waiting in front of a door, while searching the buildings.
Chris
Yes, Chris, they will work well for that. It is more of a patrol set than combat set.
Sorry, but I own two of these rifle belts, one worn by a friend years when he served in WWII.
The 10 rifle ammo pouches are made as part of the belt and cannot be slipped on, off or over, and it is not possible to link half a rifle belt with a pistol belt. You simply can't have 'one set of pouches'.
The carbine pouches do slip over pistol belt, fastened with a press stud, and it's commonly seen on the butt stock of the carbine, either as well as or instead of on the belt.
There is more than one kind of those ammo pouch belts. Weapons crews did sometimes wear a half belt of ammo pouches and the other have had various bits for the crew served weapons.
We had 16 million people in the US Armed forces in WWII, there was considerable variation in the equipment.
Well leaving aside for a minute the fact that both the machine gunner and A-gunner were armed with a .45 and had no need for rifle or carbine pouches, (they already had enough junk to carry), it just isn't possible to graft half a rifle belt onto a pistol belt.
I'll concede that the rifle belt does have an adjuster buckle in back so it *could* be possible to attach one half to half a BAR belt, but why on earth would anyone - especially someone *without* a rifle - want to do that?!?
This is just another example of manufacturers doing sloppy or non existent research to turn out an inaccurate product. No wonder wargamers buy metal!
Post a Comment