Soviet Naval Infantry

My Soviet infantry for the Caucasus 1942 project needed some reinforcements. I couldn't face painting another pile of brown Soviets, so I turned to the naval infantry who played a significant role in the campaign. The Osprey campaign book has a great colour plate featuring them defending the Proletary cement factory.

The Soviet Navy contributed almost 100,000 sailors to roughly 30 infantry brigades fighting on land. As the war progressed, these naval infantrymen were assimilated into regular Red Army formations. However, in the Caucasus in 1942 they were primarily naval personnel transferred into land formations. Often with minimal training, they learned on the job. They also had fewer support units, particularly artillery, than normal rifle brigades.

My figures are from the Battlefront range. The basic uniform was black, although many also had blue shirts. A nice quick paint job for these four squads. There is enough in the pack for four more and some sub-machine gun squads.

And onto the tabletop. I haven't tried the new Flames of War rules, but they are a set that need a lot of playing and I don't do much 15mm WW2 these days. So I returned to Iron Cross, a much simpler fast play set of rules for the period. There are some gaps, but a bit of common sense can plug those.

The German mountain troops with tank support struggled to make progress up this river valley, particularly after the Soviet ATGs quickly knocked out the tanks - hurra!