Royal Model released a new large scale figure, depicting German SS soldier.
This is partial text from the full article (usually with photos) at https://armorama.com/news/german-ss-soldier-with-mp-40-in-1-16-scale
This is partial text from the full article (usually with photos) at https://armorama.com/news/german-ss-soldier-with-mp-40-in-1-16-scale
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Looks like a really nice figure. However the painter has made a mistake. The smock and the helmet cover never appeared in “Pea” pattern.
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You are exactly right, sir. I lot of video games make this mistake with the helmet cover. If I remember correctly, a few were made for the Fallschirmjeager helmet very late for SS FJ battalion 500, but that’s a different subject.
I’ve tried to adopt the “never say never” attitude when it comes to WW2 gear, but I really have never seen a Erbsenmuster Dot Pea 44 M42 helmet cover or any smock.
I love the pose of this figure, though. Blurred edge Rauchtarnmuster would look fantastic.
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Nate, you are right about the “never say never”, but in this case the chronology doesn’t fit (as you are probably aware) because the Erbsenmuster came about for the M1944 (post war terminology again) suit. In fact it works the other way round, some of the early suits were made in “Oak Leaf”, at least according to Michael Beaver and J.F. Borsarello in “Camouflage Uniforms of the Waffen SS”. You are also correct about the blurred edge looking good on this figure. I suppose it’s just about possible that someone, somewhere, may have cut up a damaged jacket or trousers to make a helmet cover, but I’ve never seen any evidence in over 40 years of studying the Waffen SS.
In fact mistakes of this kind often come about through a lack of basic knowledge of the materials used. The Waffen SS Camouflage Smock was made of water repellent finely woven cotton, known as “duck”. It was impossible to print patterns onto this material in the normal way, so they were screen printed, which by it’s nature makes production comparatively slow and labour intensive, but this was fine while the Waffen SS was relatively small. The massive expansion from 1942/3 on meant that this was no longer viable. The M1944 is made from cotton twill and “shoddy” or recovered fabric. This is easy to over print in camouflage colours hence the move away from the smock (although experiments were even made to attempt to weave the camouflage pattern into the material). This is why you frequently see the smock worn over the suit, as the suit had no water resistant properties.
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