Sunday, August 9, 2015

Chain of Command - WWII Finns, Summer Campaign

A Finnish section from the Continuation War(1941-1944)

This sommer I have off an on been working on some more troops for our upcoming Chain of Command games. As some of you alredy Notes we are using 15mm mintures instead of the typical 28mm. We also use multi bases.  Thus far it has worked out quite well.

We will continue the ongoing winter campaign, but we are also preparing for a Summer campaign as well. Ulf( Tabletop gamer) is working on Summer Russians and I will paint up the Finns. Well some of them were already painted when I started, but I hade to rebase them. Some hade to be painted from scratch. Able you can see a section of a Finnish platoon from the Continuation war. A typical section would consist of 8 men and an NCO. The main difference from the Winter War(39-40) was that each section(there are 4 of them in each platoon) recieves a light machine gun. It was usually a Russian 
Degtvarvo(DP for short) machine gun, with it's typical drum magazine on top. However most 
minatures manufacturers prefer to depict a machine gunner with a Lathi Saloranta instead. That was the main weapon of the Winter war, but was gradually replaced during the Contunation War. The main reason was that the DP was a better machine gun, and that the Finns had loads of them taken as war booty during the Winter War.


Here we have the entire platoon - 4 sections and two senior leaders


The senior leaders are based with two miniatures on each base in order distinguish them from the Junior leaders.

Support weapons - Maxim medium machine Guns and Lathi L-39 anti-tank rifles. The later were probably not that useful during the later part of the war, but could knock out standard tanks of the early part of the war. They were also used as long range sniping rifles and  for bunker busting.



If a player really would like to get their Finn minis to knock out pesky Russian Tanks then I suggest a couple of 75mm Pak 40.  In the real war the Finns started to use these from 1942 and onwards.

















6 comments:

  1. Interesting expansion of your existing Finnish collection. I really like the details in the basing, it give a lot of life to these 15's. Amazing that you managed to add a mushroom, perhaps something for Division Wiking to feast on :0)

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    1. The mushroom was a bit too much, but I couldn't help myself. I found a pack of plants flowers, mushroom and forest animals from the model railroad Scenery company Busch.

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  2. Hienoa työtä.
    Maisemointi on hyvin onnistunut.
    Pidän kovasti myös aiheesta.
    Kiitos siitä.
    :) Esim kenttälakit ovat kuin suoraan SA-mallia...

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  3. Great addition to the Finish forces! Like Sören, I'm very impressed by your basing: lots of nice details there.

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