A leaked battle report of a classified skirmish occurred during "Operation Highjump"

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Earlier this year I bought a lot of minitures, most of them being Airfix copies. As 'knock offs' they are smaller than their originals, but in this lot there was even some smaller figures closer to 40mm or 0-scale in model railway terms. These are notably smaller than the figures I usually use for (war-) gaming, and they were not so numerous in the lot I bought, so I decided to use these smaller figures for 'other small projects' not requiring a whole army.

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It has snowed heavily in Norway this winter and I've been running some military garden railways in the snow, so I'd thought I would try to do some casual wargaming in the garden in the snow too. There has been a lot of snow and very cold this winter so I thought I had plenty of time to arrange this game, but the last couple of weeks have been 'warmer' and rainy so the snow started to melt rapidly. So I had to speed up giving this priority over some other projects, and 3D-print the bits and pieces needed for this game as quick as possible in low resolution and without preferred finishing touches for a smoother surface on them except for some paint. I didn't know at the time that the winter returned with heavy snowfall and cold weather again. 

The 40mm-ish figures from the lot I'll use for this game are German and American infantry, and was given a simple paintjob.

I 3D-printed a couple of vehicles (so my miniatures can travel on snow) and a Bunker entrance to go along with the figures for this wargame.

The USMC reconnaissance team
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The Gebirgsjäger squad and their bunkers
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I've always had a soft spot for 1 BC (One Brain Cell) Toy Soldier Rules by Pete Kautz and it's been a while since I played them, so I decided to use them with the advanced options for a small skirmish only needing a few miniatures for a game that could be located in a cold, icey and snowy terrain. They are obvious popular rules and my blogpost on them are the second most viewed on this blog.

These are great rules, but some 'house rules' seemed necessary for this game. I know 1 BC Toy Soldier Rules doesn't include vehicles,  so I just treated mine as a 'unit' according to the rules, but with 3 times the move of a trooper. The vehicles act as a transport, cover and a 'stationary HMG'. These rules have no rules for SMGs so I gave them a firing-range between pistol and rifle, 16'', and letting them roll 2 dice.

The Scenario

I've placed this scenario to 1946 and "Operation Highjump", which was a major American exercise in (Ant-) Arctic warfare and establishment of the Antarctic research base 'Little America'. Conspiracy theories claims that it was an offensive operation to fight secret nazi bases established in the Antarctic at the very end of WW2.

During the operation a maritime reconnaissance plane observed some odd shapes on the ground deep inland Antarctica, but couldn't get a clear view of it. To further examine this strange observation, a Marine reconnaissance-patrol of 8 members are sent in with 2 M29 Weasels (one of them with a HMG) for closer observation and further investigation. They'll fight as 2 fireteams of 4 each (as a Weasel can only carry 4 persons).

The aerial photo which demands a cliser look
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When approaching their object, the Marine reconnaissance-patrol are unaware that they also enters the line of sight and fire-range from a hidden and dug-in German Gebirgsjäger squad from the Neuschwabenland Division, guarding the entrance to an underground facility. The German squad fight as 2 fireteams; a Rifleteam of 6 and LMG-team of 3. The German squad was based upon graphics from Battle Order (which is a good website for references when building your army squad by squad).

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The Game

The engine noise of the approaching M29 Weasels with the Marines gives away their position and alerted the German sentry in the else so quiet Antarctica, so the rest of the Gebirgsjäger squad on guard was scrambled into their fortified positions made by ice.

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When approaching the coordinates for their objective, the sergeant leading the reconnaissance patrol gets careful and orders the HMG armed Weasel to drive up and secure an ice pass in front of them...

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...When entering the ice pass the HMG armed Weasel are met by intense fire, and get pinned there as some Marines go down...

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...Luckily their HMG is still operative, so it starts to return fire and secure the second fireteam's advance into the ice pass.

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Even if they are under heavy fire, the Gebirgsjäger rifle team holds their battle stance, and even takes down a couple of more Marines. But they don't manage to take out the American HMG...

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...- Which starts to take a toll on the Gebirgsjägers. Fortifications made by (hard) ice can be effective, but the 12,7mm HMG effectively starts 'chewing up' the ice-cover piece by piece, taking out Gebirgsjägers...

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...- after Gebirgsjägers...

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The Gebirgsjäger rifle team has no support of their LMG team as the Marines are too far away for it to be effective. Soon the German rifle team has lost so many members that their morale finally fails. I know the the rules says that remaining miniatures should be removed from the game, but we're in middle of Antarctica and there are no places to escape. So I just make them retreat to their Bunker entrance, which would be a 'safe zone' for them. The other Marine team exploits the German retreat and pursues the retreating forces. This was not a tactical success for the Marines...

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...The German Feldwebel is the last one of his rifle team, and he just empty his magazine against those following Americans, killing one and dazed another.

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When the American corporal recovers again, he finish off the Feldwebel, But now he comes under fire from the German LMG team. The American HMG returns fire, but doesn't hit very well as the Germans are in a heavily fortified position.

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The USMC reconnaissance patrol are so reduced by this time, and their HMG has problem hitting the LMG team in the fortified position, so they decides to pull out...

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... - and report their observations to HQ, so they can send in 'the cavalry' next time. They had to leave one fully functional M29 Weasel behind to the Germans though.

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Conclusion 

I guess it was a partial victory for the Germans as they managed to defend their bunker entrance, and partially an American victory as they managed to return to their own lines and report about their observarions and small skirmish to their HQ. -Their report was never known to the public tough, and probably classified as a lot of other things about this operation. Probably the Americans returned with a larger force. Operation Highjump lasted for 6 mounths which is pretty long time for an exercise...

This little game was a quickie, just taking 45 minutes to play 10 turns. Keep in mind if you want to game outside in the snow, that it's wet and cold so:

• Seal your miniatures before bringing them out in such conditions.
• Have some sort of dice tray.
• Laminate your rules.
• Let your miniatures dry thoroughly before putting them back in storage.
• Remember warm clothing...
• ...and something hot in your cup (!)

Enjoy!

From LGB 'ToyTrain System' to G-scale Heeresfeldbahn rollingstock

To expand my large-scale Heeresfeldbahn beyond the 3 wagons Incuded in the starterset, I found some inexpensive goods-wagons from the LGB's ToyTrain line. They were very colorfull and like the name indicated, toylike and needed to be 'militarized' to suit my purpose.

I've also been upgrading my aged FlashForge Finder 3D-printer to a FlashForge Adventurer 3 recently, and it really improved the overall print quality I think. Even if I bought it second hand, the new printer is very much value for money and are not very expensive even if you goes for a completely new one. Being goods-wagons, I tink they needed to be loaded with some 'military-goods', so to break my new 3D-printer in and get to know it, I printed some items to use as loads:

Despite of LGB's general 1:22,5 scale, my locomotives are built to 1:19th scale. Vehicles in 1:19 scale are rare and very expensive. 1:18 vehicles are more common and close enough in scale. Too bad many diecast cars in 1:18th scale are also usually very pricey, and especially military ones, but I found a couple of 1:18th scale toycars second hand I got for just about $69/£54 together. Despite being slightly over-scale, postwar and their civilian appearance, the very same type of vehicles were used by German forces during WWII (even on the eastern front), so they'll make a suitable loads in 16mm with new paintjobs.

While working on this project, I also found a cheap 1:18th scale BMW motorcycle for only $11. As the cars, it is actually a post war model but looks very like the older models used in WWII. I'll see if I can give it a convincing backdating as well.

This was very colorful so new paint was needed. It only came with 4 stakes when I bought it, so I kept it that way so it would look slightly different from the other wagons of the same type. I just re-positioned them. I placed the motorcycle pictured above as a load after cutting the windscreen away, changing the seat with some 3D-printed ones and painting it 'German Grey'.

This is the same car as the previous, but I think the numbers of stakes looked a bit 'overkill'. Perhaps it's needed if carrying long loads like logs etc. but for these smaller loads I thinks it's looked better if I removed some of the stakes. The observant reader may notice some 3D-printed parts for a Kettenkrad in this blogpost's 3rd photo. It was originally a 28mm wargame model I just resized to 1:19th scale, printed, painted and added some few more details to it. 8345 Kettenkrads was made during WWII. Did I mention I like motorcycles??

This wagon is just repainted and had one of the repainted 1:18 dicast car loaded to it. My Heeresfeldbahn rake looks like it's 'just been primed' or like '50 shades of grey' so I decided to add some 'kind of more color' to it, by giving the vehicles some different colors than the 'standard grey'. Some 688 VW 82/E Geländekäfer; Beetle body on Kübelwagen chassis were made for the German armed forces. 

This is exactly the same type of wagon as the previous one, so to make it slightly different I made it look revised and a 'modernized' version of the former by changing from spoked to disc-wheels and giving it a more refreshed grey-paintjob not looking so aged as the previous. Actually I did almost no weathering to it at all, and when bringing it to running sessions I was frecently asked when I was going to finish it. - So I gave it a dirty, brownish wash, just to tone the 'fresh grey' down. It's also had one of the 1:18th scale toycars added as a load after being repainted to suitable colors. Citroën Traction Avant was an innovative vehicle with front wheel drive and ground clearance enough to see service with the French army, Wehrmacht and The French resistance. Beside those vehicles seized by Wehrmacht after occupying France in 1940, another 4722 Citroën Tractions was built for Wehrmacht service, and they saw service on all fronts including in Stalingrad. Between 1934 - 1957 more than 760 000 were built in total. 

I think this looks like an old wagon and to 'backdating it' I changed the disc-wheels with spoked ones, as trying to paint it to an aged look. I have a friend who is facinated by open cars with figures placed in them often suggested to be partying and similar. I'm not sure if this is 'a thing', but such wagons can often be found on G-scale layouts on model railway exhibitions we have been visiting (mostly in Germany). As this is a German train and I'm often visiting this friend for running sessions in his garden, I would try to make such a theme in this open wagon as well trying to make it suitable for the train, theme and period though. Their pets, the black cats, are a homage to our own pets 'Svarten' and 'Sofus'.

Lesson learned and a warning...

When repainting the VW and Citroën I wanted to recreate a feeling of spraypainting with 'soft edges' in the camouflagepattern. To do this I used 'soft' modeling-clay as a mask to shape the camouflagepattern and spraypaint it with rattlecans (as this will give soft edges). So far, so good:

When removing the mask I saw that the edges had the soft effect I wanted, but it was a complete disaster!! The modeling clay had reacted with the paint beneath, so it become wet again, transparent, very sticky and the paint job was completely ruined. The paint didn't reharden either. Before trying to recover the errors I tried to 'seal' it by overspraying the model with a matt varnish, but it did not help; all the painted areas which had been covered by the modeling clay were still very sticky, and I was afraid the models was ruined. To try to save them, I sanded their surfaces until they didn't feel sticky anymore. Then I just primed them again and used brushes and acrylics for the camouflage.

So note to self, and don't do the same mistake as me; modeling clay does not work very well for painting masks. It made me search info if some modeling clay that would, but I didn't find any. Even Playdough doesn't seems to work acording to what I've seen online. Have you any experiences of what's working, or any other suggestions to get a spraypainted finnish without using an airbrush?

This project has taken a lot longer time that I expected it to, but finally my G-scale LGB Heeresfeldbahn rake slowly keeps growing...

My LGB Heeresfeldbahn so far with the original starterset + the 5 wagons described in this blogpost.
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It's been a lot of trains lately, so next blogpost will be about wargaming. A battle report perhaps? Sign up and follow this blog and find out.

A Day out with friends and trains

A member in our MRC invited to a running-session in his garden today. When I arrived I suddenly understood that it would probably be crowded and heavy traffic on his rails:

And here some of the other members are 'fiddling' and creating their rakes for today:

There is a great span in prototypes, eras and scales and the only thing in common is the rail-gauge with 45mm. Here follows some impressions of today's running-session:

This usually runs weekly on our club-house and made it's first outing today:

I was running my Heeresfeldbahn, surprise surprise...

And running it into another era and train. Luckily it went just fine.

Another member has a couple of the original LGB tankers, so I just had to pull my repainted one up for a comparsion:

We were running until late and it was dark. Then there is no use running my grey military train, as it looks like just grey works good for camouflage.

It was getting dark and cold outside, so our friend invited us in for pizza and beer.

What a great day out!