Project-Flames of War

Now in the last entry I mentioned that I have a plan of where my Flames of War gaming/collecting will lead. Initially when I decided to play and collect miniatures for FoW, I chose the US Airborne mainly because I had some US Airborne in 28mm, and thought it would be nice to carry on the same theme in the smaller scale.

Since I was painting the US Paras to represent the 101st and/or 82nd Divisions in Normandy, ie wearing the m1942 jumpsuit, it seemed logical to collect German forces which featured in that campaign.

Primarily the Airborne will represent the 101st Division 'Screaming Eagles'. Both Paratrooper Divisions were dropped behind Utah Beach on D-day, but were badly scattered, numerous small scale actions took place as a result against the defending Germans. Now this means that I should be able to eventually create scenarios to represent these initial encounters, against the troops of the static divisions defending the coast line. The supplements produced by Battlefront cover some of the units defending the Normandy coast, so it should be fairly straight forward to use these to recreate the Grenadier Divisions.

Yet my initial German forces I have decided will represent the following German units.

The 6th Fallshirmjager Regiment was engaged against the Americans pretty much as soon as they landed. Was involved in the defence of and the attempt to re-capture the city of Carentan.

The 17th SS PanzerGrenadier Division 'Gotz von Berlichingen', was involved in the counter attack to re-capture Carentan from the 101st Division.

Both of these units have 'Briefings' on the Battlefront website allowing for their recreation. So this will mean I can build forces around their orders of battle, rather than use the generic army lists. Though I do not intend to give any of the models specific unit markings, so that any model units can be used to represent other Divisions present in the Normandy campaign or just to be 'generic' units for for use in the game.

After these units have been built for the Germans I will look to add in models for the Heer Grenadier formations, and for the US forces probably an armoured formation. I will eventually move onto the British, and would like to start with the 7th Armoured, who had the misfortune to encounter Michael_Wittmann at Villiers-Bocage.

This will be an ongoing project, but I'm hopeful that by aiming to design my forces and 'real' units it will be one which will maintain my interest.