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Any takers

Got my WW2 Romanians and updated Germans #2 infantry in the mail today they look great. Thanks GHQ!

anyhow here is my question.

What colors from the GHQ or Vallejo paint lines would you use to Paint WW2 Romanians and WW2 French infantry?

Sincerely,

Carl
Cleveland Ohio

Got no ideas on colors, but nice to see someone else from northeast Ohio!

Ill be quiet now and maybe someone smarter than me will come along and answer your questions....

You already have the Romanians? Arrrgh! I am behind! Gotta get going...

Ahem. Sorry. Back to the topic. As to painting, I don't think you'll find any close matches in the GHQ paints as they come out of the bottle. But if you are willing to try some mixing, you can surely come up with something reasonably close.

But first, a caveat. I've never used GHQ paints. Most of my work is done with Polly-S acrylics. So my guesswork below is based only on the color patches on this fine website.

The French army in metropolitan France wore uniforms in a Khaki Green color. It is lighter than the GHQ Dark Green, but a richer green tone than the GHQ Khaki Drab or Olive Drab. The closest, I think, would be the GHQ Camo Green. Mixing always involves a little hit-and-miss experimentation, but I would expect that starting with the Camo Green and toning it down a bit with a touch of the Olive Drab would get you there. Or you could just go straight with the Camo Green. Haven't seen it on a model, so it is hard to judge.

If you want French tropical uniforms (Africa, the Levant, or Cochin China) your closest choice would be the GHQ UK Sand Yellow, but it is not quite light/yellow enough. Maybe cut with white and 10mm Cavalry Yellow, or some such.

The Romanians may prove more interesting. The color of their wollen wear was very similar to the Khaki that the Soviets wore. Enough so that Romanian troops took to putting yellow armbands on so German soldiers they served with wouldn't shoot them.

This khaki had a fair bit of brown and green in it. It is not well represented in the GHQ color patches. The best bet might be to use the Khaki Drab, and mix in some amount of Dark Green. Conversely you might try the Olive Drab, and then mix in some amount of the Dark Brown.

But as with the Soviets, the Romanian summer cotton uniforms faded quite quickly, so by late summer the GHQ Khaki Drab would be a pretty good approximation of the color one might expect of Romanian tunics. However, unlike the Soviets, the Romanians kept their woollen pants throughout the year, and so one of the distinguishing characteristics you could expect of Romanian troops in the summer is a notably lighter tone to their tops than their bottoms. This is visible even in black-and-white photos.

It seems to me from the first-hand accounts I've read (not clear from photos I've seen) that it was the green tone that bleached out fastest in the cotton clothes. So as they lightened, they become more tan than green.

So if I were painting Romanians with GHQ colors, I would try mixing the Khaki Drab about 50/50 with Dark Green for the pants, and for officers (even junior field officers got wollen tunics for summer wear). Then I would do the tops of the troopers with just the Khaki Drab, or with far less dilution.

As with the Soviets, Romanian uniforms make good choices for the imprecise art of mixing hobby colors. Any pictures of Romanians in the field in WW2 shows a motly collection of colors and tones. So if you paint up a couple, and decide the color wasn't quite what you wanted, there is no need to re-paint. Just adjust, and keep going. Your units will look better for the imperfections.

Thanks Mk1 for the info. I will consider your suggestions as I begin to tackle the Romanians and French. You gotta get those Romanians Mk1 and get them in the line between those Germans and Italians and get ready for another Stalingrad

Hey CA-68! I will keep you posted when I actiually put a game on at the Warzone in the Cleveland area. In addition to getting these Romanians ready for battle, I am currently working on Winter scheme german infantry and white washed german and russian vehicles. I plan on putting on an after Stalingrad scenario with Mansteins attempt to reestablish the German line and retake the City of Kharkov. I need a lot of Winter german uniform infantryman to acomplishe this task and I am not quite there yet. Life keeps getting in the way if you know what I mean.
Carl out

Thanks Carl, i would like to see that scenario. I know all too well how life gets in the way, my ships just refuse to paint themselves. Hard for me to get motivated enough to paint a battleship or cruiser....a bit easier on my laziness to paint a couple single color german or russian tanks or some infantry...but seems i still have about 2/3 of my last batch of panzer IIIs unpainted.

Yeah, i probably should do some winter infantry and whitewash a few of these tanks myself. Now to just actually DO it.

Carl:
Any chance you could tell us slow-pokes what we'll find in the Romanian heavy weapons packs? I still have to get my "Holiday" order in...
Thanks,
Jim R.

The heavy wepons pack contain what appears to be a Skoda light machine gun with crew. For the heavy machine gun the crew are manning a Soviet heavy machine gun on a wheeled carriage. I guess this would be ok for when the Romanians switched sides and started fighting with the Russians, but I was a dissapointed that another heavy machine gun from the Skoda works was not selected. There is also a light mortar crew in the prone position. In the infantry packs a submachine gunner would have been nice, but there is only basic infantry, a nice rifleman firing from the standing position, another advancing and one throwing a grenade. All in all not too bad I'm just happy we have the Romanians now.

Thanks DAK.
Also very glad to have them; if rather disapointed in the choices.
I'm guessing a ZB-30 lmg and maybe the 50/60mm Brandt mortar from the sound of it.
No 81mm mortar either?

I really expected the ZB-53 and/or Austrian Schwarzlos hMG's myself- they started issuing the ZB-53 in "41", so i'd have been happy with either one...
(as long as they do the Ausrtian MG in a Hungarian pack )
I don't recall ever seeing it, but was there a wheeled mount for the Schwarzlos?
It would look very much like a russian maxim if there was...
Ah well, we make do.
Jim

Jim

I concur with DAK with the exception being the unique Romanian Helmets they could very easily pass as germans in the original set.

Nice to see a new set of German infantry out to vary the poses,

Carl

Carl67 wrote:Thanks Mk1 for the info. I will consider your suggestions as I begin to tackle the Romanians and French. You gotta get those Romanians Mk1 and get them in the line between those Germans and Italians and get ready for another Stalingrad

Yep. Just had to get to it. Ordered mine today.

But I'm somewhat ahead of the game on getting ready for eastern front action. I've already got R2 tanks (Pz35t), and R35 tanks to build my Barbarossa Romanian armored force. I've got a couple StuGs for later-war heavy metal, as well as BA-10 and SdKfz222 Armored cars for my later-war recon elements. I have some Bohler 47mm ATGs for my infantry to use, Malaxas (UEs Chennillettes) or Horst light trucks to move them, and Laffley scout cars, Laffley prime movers, and Renault heavy trucks to provide some measure of mobility to the infantry. I've also got Skoda 100mm howitzers to back them up.

I'm looking forward to the Schneider 47mm ATGs to give them a little more punch, and may get some Pak 38/97s from the other guys to give even more AT protection.

I had already acquired some Italian infantry to use as Romanians, but haven't managed to get them painted up yet. So now I am left with the extra Italians, and I'm thinking maybe I'll do them up for western desert action (my current Italian infantry are all in the Gray/Green continental uniforms).

Now squeezing them in between the Germans and the Italians is an interesting idea. But in fact the Germans wound up squeezing the Italians in between the Romanians and the Hungarians. Seems that if these two "allies" were placed beside each other, they would wind up fighting each other rather than the Soviets. So the Germans used Italian troops as a buffer.

As to the HMGs ... hmmm. Too bad. I would have thought the Schwarzlos to be the best choice.For my own HMGs, I'll probably use some that I already have. When I bought French infantry from a brand X supplier they came with water-cooled HMGs. Never did figure out what those blokes had in mind, as I can not find any case of a water-cooled MG in French service, even during WW1. So I have them in the extras bin, and I figure the helmets are close enough that they can serve as Romanians.

And no, I've ever seen a wheeled mount for it. But the Romanians did use Russian Maxims reasonably often, as with many items of Russian kit they collected in 1941. They used GAZ trucks quite extensively, 45mm and 76mm guns, and BA10 armored cars were part of the regular TO&E for A/C units. They even used a few M3A1 Stuart and M3 Lee medium tanks that were nicked off of the Soviets.

But they did not get them from the Soviets late in the war. Quite the contrary, the Red Army confiscated all captured equipment as part of the terms of their armistice with the Romanians. Except that they somehow managed to keep the 45mm AT guns they had squeezed into their R35 tanks.

Well, maybe getting these new figs in will give me the kick I need to get started painting all that Romanian stuff I've collected. If I can just clear out the backlog of French and US-in-Tunisia stuff first, that is.

Is that the Gorjunov SG-43 HMG in the Romainian HW pack thus:



Or is it (gasp! ) the water-cooled Maxim.


I have converted the SG-43 to the vickers but it is a pain - much simpler to add a Russian helmet to the Romainain body.

Troy

It appears to be the water cooled maxim the same heavy machine gun that is in the soviet heavy weapons pack.

Hmmm...my Russian HW packs all have the Gorjunov SG-43 HMG...am I missing a new kit!?!?

Troy

I must need a stonger pair of glasses/

The pictures are now on site,
Hopefully my order for these will arrive soon.

WWII Romanian Individual Heavy Weapons



WWII Romanian Individual Infantry




Chris.