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Wednesday, June 24, 2009

French 75 by HaT

The new HaT French WWI Late War Artillery set includes four of the sprues shown here. Molded in blue plastic, with no flash this is a great little battery of French 75s.

The US Army in training in 1917. Thousands of US Army soldiers went to France and had the chance to learn how to fire the French 75. The French could produce tanks and guns and planes but were running out of soldiers. The US Army brought fresh recruits to the ranks.

The WWI US Artillery with 75mm Cannon set comes with four sprues just like this one.


The French trained US troops and later US troops even helped fill in the ranks of some French units. Eventually, Pershing was able to get the US units put together to form divisions and corps of US Army soldiers.



The mold for these two sets is apparently the same, with different inserts for the different crews. A very efficient method of making different crews for the same kind of gun. This gun was widely used by many nations for at least 20 years.


4 comments:

The Young Oligarch said...

Looks good , Bunkermeister !

I know you don't paint the things , but has anyone got a suggestion about how to paint the French bleu horizon uniforms ? I tried dove grey years ago with the old Airfix ones , but it didn't work out very well .

Also , what colour should the French/US guns be ? Olive drab ? Dark Green ?

Any suggestions would be welcome .

FIXED BAYONET METAL SOLDIERS said...

THe American arrived in France without tin helmets without machine guns and saw very little action.The Amiens Offesive won the war.It was a combined French English effort in the main.So your remark is wrong.Good blog though.

The Young Oligarch said...

Fixed Bayonet Metal Soldiers -

You are being more than un-generous to our American allies . They did some hard fighting in the last months of the war and sustained significant casualties .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Battles_of_World_War_I_involving_the_United_States

Had the war continued into 1919 as expected , the US would certainly have been the major player .

While the British Empire and French forces did defeat the enemy decisively in the northern part of the front ,the 2 US armies were fighting hard further south where the Germans were not ready to retreat as far just yet .

In addition , many US units were involved in earlier battles within British and French formations .

As for the US troops being ill-equipped at the start of the war , so was everyone else , except the Germans . It took Britain the best part of 3 years to get their army fully-kitted out with suitable equipment , much of it manufactured in the US .

Furthermore , Scots , Welsh , Irish , Australian , Canadian , New Zealand and South African troops at Amiens would , I am sure , be surprised to find out that they were "English".

Bunkermeister didn't mention any of this . I fail to see where he is wrong .

Mike Bunkermeister Creek said...

The US Army mobilized over four million men, and had over 100,000 men killed in action. Hardly what I would call "very little action." That is about as many as were killed in Korea and Vietnam Wars combined.

We arrived in France with Montana Peak Hats and Colt and Marlin machine guns. We held back the Colt M1917 machine gun until very late in the war because it was so advanced we did not want them to fall into German hands. We also fielded the BAR and Lewis gun before the war ended and the Thompson SMG was shipped but did not arrive until the war ended.

US troops used both British and French helmets as well as the American M1917, Ford and Liberty helmets.