Fallschirmjäger

My late war Fallschirmjäger platoon for Chain of Command is based around a load of old Raventhorpe 20mm miniatures I bought when Rapid Fire still looked like a set of rules I might play regularly.

I originally painted them in early war uniforms (plain green jump smocks and brown leather equipment) but I had several figures left over that I've since done in later war uniforms.

I've found that the spare heads available from Raventhorpe are good for making other manufacturers' models fit in quite well with the chunky Raventhorpe lads. For example, my Fallschirmjäger engineers are old Battlefield miniatures with head transplants. The difference in stature isn't too obvious once you've done the head swaps.

For a platoon properly organised for CoC, I need some rank and file chaps armed with SMGs but I've used all of the Raventhorpe SMG chaps as NCOs. I decided to see if a Raventhorpe head would allow me to convert an Italeri plastic engineer to fit. Taking the figure with a grenade bundle and a Sturmgewehr, I did a quick head transplant and swapped out the weapon for an MP40 from another plastic figure (the Sturmgewehr was held in an unrealistic position and anyway I'd accidentally sliced off the magazine trying to move flash from the moulding).

The result was this:

Obviously he's wearing an SS camo smock that he's scrounged from somewhere but with the Fallschirmjäger jump helmet I think he fits in ok next to a Raventhorpe figure:

Finally, if you're interested, here he is alongside the original Italeri figure (who's on a Leader base aka 2p piece):

Please don't zoom in on these pics by the way - they are very much wargames figures designed to look reasonable at normal playing distances not precision military models!