Kreighton Builds a Case Yellow Fallschirmjager Army
By Kreighton Long
Bring on the pain! I bravely (read foolishly) decided to break out my X-Acto knife and green stuff to try to build a Case Yellow Fallschirmjager force using the Warlord Games sprues. As I started planning there were a few things I needed to keep in mind.
First was to have as many troopers as possible in the early war step-in smocks. This was in keeping with the fact that the second version jump smock had not become readily available to the Fallschirmjager corps during Case Yellow. Second was to use heads with uncovered helmets.
Nearly all the photographs I found online from this period show the Fallschirmjager with neither camo covers or netting over their head protection. Third was to identify where weapon substitutions or additions would need to take place. The primary light machine gun for the Case Yellow Fallschirmjager was the MG34 and the flamethrower of choice in 1940 would have been the Flammenwerfer 35 as the Flammenwerfer 41 was not introduced until 1941. With these three things in mind I got to work.
The Warlord Games Fallschirmjager sprue is comprised of six torsos and a myriad of weapon options. Three of the torsos were sculpted in the early war step-in smock — so those will be easy to utilize. The other three were sculpted in the second version smock. To turn these three into the step-in smocks I trimmed out the plastic between the legs where the coat hangs down and tried to shape it into something resembling the legs of the step-in smocks.
The heads available on the Warlord Games Fallschrimjager sprue presented another challenge. Only two of the twelve heads have the uncovered helmets and one of those two have goggles around the helmet. My solution was to dig out spare heads from the other German sprues and find heads that could be modified. Most of what I had available were the standard stahlhelm with a band around the helmet. Using my X-Acto knife, I first smoothed the band down flush with the helmet then carefully trimmed the brim off the helmet and ended up with something that hopefully pass as a Fallschirmjager helmet once painted and on the table.
Finally I needed to proof-test my weapon substitutions. The Warlord Games Fallschirmjager sprue only features MG42 options for light machine guns. After digging out some spare Blitzkrieg and Afrika Korps sprues I was able to find some MG34s to swap in for the MG42s. My first MG34 gunner features what started as the MG42 resting on the shoulder from the Fallschirmjager sprue. I cut off the MG42 and glued on a MG34 taken from the Blitzkrieg sprue. That weapon swap was simple enough and I plan on coming up with other variants for my other MG34 gunners.
The second weapon substitution I needed to try out was the Flammenwerfer 35. The flamethrower option from Warlord Games is the Flammenwerfer 41 model which simply won’t do. To create my flamethrower model I used rifle arms from Afrika Korps sprue, the back end of a Panzerfaust from the Winter German sprue, a weapon sling from the Fallschirmjager sprue, and some green stuff. The green stuff formed the cannister and harness, the panzerfaust bit the nozzle, the sling the hose, and the arms for holding the nozzle. I admit green stuffing is not my strongest skill set but this project should provide me a few opportunities to suck less at it.
Happy hobbying!