16 August 2011

Soviet 120mm Mortar Teams

This week I've added a couple of 120mm Mortar teams to my Soviets.

As I understand it, the Soviets developed an excellent 120mm mortar just prior to WWII. It was such a good design that the Germans simply copied it. Since then it has been improved at least a couple of times, but the basic design remains the same. You can read a very brief description of this development process here and here and finally here. I'm going to "pretend" that my mortars are more likely to be the PM-43 variety rather than the 2B11 Sani developed in 1981, as I doubt all units would have them within the timeframe I'm dealing with and because the model I used is a WWII variant.

So...

For these teams I used Liberation VDV and Cam Jump Suit figures for the mortar crews. I found someWartime Miniatures 120mm mortars at Cancon earlier in the year (like January!) and thought they would look pretty good together. They are based on large GW round bases - 60mm I think... Here they are:

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I'm basically happy with the result - but I tried something different with the basing and I'm not happy with that result. I won't be using static grass and Silfor tufts together again. I also don't have any 120mm mortar bombs or appropriate sized boxes which could have made the bases that much better...

Onto a couple of youtube clips:

This first clip is from WWII but as it is about a german copy of the Soviet 120mm mortar I thought it worth having here. It gives you a good idea of the size etc.


This is a clip about a modern US Marine's 120mm mortar - gives you a good sense of the size of the rounds in particular


That's all for now

have fun

Richard

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