More 1940 French

 

I had a big session and photographed all my 1940 equipment the other day, apart from the basic rifle platoons for both sides, which are mostly just readily available figures painted to a middling standard, so probably not of massive interest. I did take pictures of all the support weapons and equipment, because it's largely scratch-built, and I couldn't resist showing the few tanks belonging to this setup. So here's the rest of the French. The Hereditary Enemy will be in the next post

 

Here's an ER40 infantry radio and its team. Note the curious arrangement of a vertical and a horizontal aerial. Each French battalion had six such radios, which put them a little ahead of the German infantry, and veterans said they worked rather well. Crucially however, French tank radios were notoriously ineffective...

The radioman's base is complete with set, battery box and tripod

In the Chain of Command rules there is scope for a "medic", which in the French case meant a stretcher bearer, modelled here with 1892 folding stretcher. 

From the side you can see his armband, bearing the unexpected symbol of a white diagonal Maltese cross. Owing to an over-strict interpretation of the Geneva Convention, French stretcher bearers didn't claim the protection of the red cross armband, despite being completely unarmed. Their German equivalents carried pistols but didn't scruple to demand being treated as non-combatants. Then again the Germans didn't scruple about an awful lot of things at this time.

Here's a Brandt 60mm mortar and team, widely but too thinly distributed in the French infantry at the rate of one for every rifle company. The Brandt design greatly improved on the original British Stokes mortar of WWI, and all modern mortars are descended from it in fact.

With this last picture, I'll explain what all the bright red and blue business is on the French uniforms. The blue on the collar patches indicated the infantry branch of service; it's come out a bit brighter than in reality here, because it wouldn't otherwise show up the figures, which are smaller than the photos you are seeing. The red piping on cuffs and shoulder straps was a feature of the regular soldier's "best" uniform. Normally kept for parades and walking out, it was ordered as the "tenue de guerre" in September 1939. However most reservists recalled to the colours were issued plain khaki uniforms from stock, so the result was a somewhat patchy appearance.

This B1 bis tank is a resin kit that I didn't do much more than assemble and paint, but I like to show it to people because (a) it has an interesting colour scheme and (b) it's a bit of a beast really, isn't it? The B1 bis (B for battle tank, "bis" equating to "mark 2" in British parlance) had two decent guns, five crew and 60mm armour all round, making it the "Tiger tank of 1940". All B1's had individual names and numbers, this one's the "Maroc 203", and were commanded by officers. The fate of almost every single one is known, and a quick Google will show you what became of the Maroc.

This tank was terribly hard for the Germans to deal with, being invulnerable to their standard anti-tank guns. Often they just tried to stay out of the way until the things broke down, which sadly happened a lot. Statistically the majority of French tanks in 1940 were lost to breakdowns rather than enemy action.

French 1940 armour usually has exotic markings and paint schemes. For a start the hull and the turret usually had different camouflage patterns, the reason being they were built and painted in different factories, each of which had its own ideas on the already-vague painting regulations. 

You don't get many tanks with purple camouflage, but that was one of the seven shades used on the camouflage of the hull, all edged with black lines. The turret camouflage boasts a mere four colours.

I didn't go mad with the weathering, as I wanted the colours to show up. There's some dust and some oil spills, and the rust effect on the exhaust pipe came out quite nicely.