Late War French Pt. 2

Here we go with the next installment of my French and it is quite an update. The troops I've done up so far are predominantly for the Corps Expéditionnaire Français (FEC) which were the troops that deployed in Italy and helped break through the Gustav line before being transfered to France for operation dragoon. The uniforms didn't really change much so these troops work for 1943 on, the predominant reason I went with the Italian campaign was because of how some of the M3 scout cars were painted which I will elaborate on in a minute. 

I'll start with my favorite part of the platoon which are my Moroccan Spahis. The Spahis were horse mounted cavalry in the desert war but with the flow of American equipment they were mechanized with M3 scout cars and M3 or M5 Stuarts and formed the recon element for the FEC. They're my favorite unit visually because most photos show them wearing the French tanker helmet which is my favorite helmet to be developed in WWII.

Even though they were mounted in M3 scout out cars I figured they would sometimes have to do reconnaissance on foot so I put together a platoon of 19, it was supposed to be 20 but one of the miniatures vanished.

I have a 3 man HQ, this was supposed to be where the missing mam goes because they were going to have an attached intelligence officer. All the figures in this platoon are black tree American infantry with heads swaps from ludocortorum, which are excellent sculpts and the customer service is great.

The rest of the platoon is 2 identical squads of 8 men with 5 Thompsons and 3 M1 carbines each. I think technically the most men that would be in an M3 crew is 5 but the practicalities of bolt action mean that I need slightly bulkier squads.

Next up I have the bulk of my regular infantry, these are representative of Algerian or Moroccan Tirailleurs.

I went with warlord USMC as the basis for these so that I could arm them with M1903 Springfields as that was a fairly common weapon issued to French troops and some of the colonial units were issued HBT uniforms. The heads and FM 24/29s are from ludocortorum.

These squads aren't set up in a way I would actually run them, instead I've just distributed the weapons evenly across the three squads pictured. There's 33 men total and each 11 man group has 3 SMGs, 1 LMG/BAR, and 7 rifles. Plenty of versatility in how I can build a couple of squads.

The last of the infantry was the biggest pain in the ass to paint but the most visually striking and those are the Morrocan goumiers.

Nothing crazy as far as loadout goes, it's 24 riflemen with a couple LMGs and SMGs in my to do pile. What they lack in firepower they make up in their ability to be stubborn tough fighting mountain troops and I could run 2 squads of 12 if I wanted to pay the points which is interesting. 

I mentioned earlier I made this an FEC force based on how some of the M3 scout cars were painted and that's because they painted them up in a traditional French camouflage. 

So I just had to do one myself.

The M3 itself came out okay but I don't like the crew much. This is the Rubicon kit but the Rubicon crew were too small for my 3d printed tanker heads from ludocortorum so I went with kepis from empress and my wash went bad on me while i painted so it may get a new crew at some point.

Lastly we have an M10 with crew converted from USMC and 3d printed heads attached. This one isn't quite done yet but it's good enough I've put It on the table a time or two. I still need to paint up more support weapons for the French but for now my infantry needs are well met.