Hello all,
another US paratrooper that is slowly (too slowly) evolving to the point of completion...
A note...US paratroopers are the focus of my modelling, so the recent explosion of paratrooper releases are very welcome by me!
This particular trooper is inspired by the photo of stick No. 1, the 502 PIR pathfinder team, designated to mark Drop Zone A (in reality they dropped about 1-1/2 mile north, near St Germain de Varreville), commanded by Capt. Frank Lillyman.
The pre-boarding photo of this stick in front of their plane show a number of the troopers wearing the unique set-up of two 5-cell Thompson pouches rigged together and worn in bandoleer fashion attatched to their combat suspenders. This style of wearing Thompson pouches doesn't appear often in pre-boarding photos and is even more rare in pics of troopers once on the ground...quite frankly, it appears to me as if this 'rig' would be unwieldy and restrictive, as well as being heavy...( but it LOOKS BAD ASS!).
He's just about finished...but I'm NOW waiting on a few parts from the upcoming 'medic' releases...I want to see that DiD Thompson...and this guy is due to get some of those Soldier Story 'horsehide' gloves...( the 21st Century Thompson here is a 'stand-in')
None of my paratroopers have had blackened faces yet...so far I've been fortunate in modelling figures that didn't need it, but there was no way I was going to get away with that for a representative of this stick...blackening of faces for D-day was a very individual treatment, as was most of the ways troopers carried/stowed their equipment for the drop...some just applied a few smudges...others covered most of their actual face...a lot of these guys went completely 'black face' a la Al Jolson...
Sooooo...i took brush to acrylic paint, winced, and went after the very nice DiD HS...here's the result...
Thanks for looking,
Bruce
