1/72nd scale Airfix WW1 Romanian Soilders

[Ursulescu]

I thought I would finally paint my old Airfix 1/72nd (1/87th) scale French Army figures as Romanians. I've had Airfix figures since the 1980's, but never finished them compleatly. Now is the time!

During WW1, the Romanian government signed a treaty with the Allies on August 17, 1916 and declared war on the Central Powers on August 27. The Romanian Army was quite large, over 500,000 men in 23 divisions. However, it had officers with poor training and equipment; more than half of the army was barely trained.

France provided Romania with uniforms, weapons and aircraft. The only thing I really needed to change on the Airfix French figures was the flag.


The Flag bearer. This is one of my first 4 painted troops. Note the eyes. I thought I'd try a little harder with my paint job than I did with the Dacians.


The back view of the flag bearer. I improved the background for the following pictures.




Infantry 1st Lt #1. Airfix gives the customer two of these figures. Note the medals on the hat and chest. They're hand painted.



Infantry 1st Lt #2. Same figure but painted with black leather gloves and moustache.




Here's the front line observer with his black telescope. I thought of painting the telescope in brass, but realized that it would reflet the light too much for the Austro-Hungarians to see.

[Ursulescu]

The Romanians charging into enemy lines.

On the night of August 27, 1916, three Romanian armies (First, Second and Northern), deployed according to the Romanian Campaign Plan (The "Z" Hypothesis), launched attacks through the Carpathians and into Transylvania. The attacks were initially successful in pushing weak units of the Austro-Hungarian First Army out of the mountains.


The same picture as if it was taken in 1916.


From the opposite angle.



And in Black and White.



Finally, here's all the 48 figures from the box.

Among the regular foot soldiers are two bicycle riders, a bugler, a pidgeon messanger, two soldiers digging a trench, two soldiers marching, two soldiers throwing hand grenades, three bandaged troops, and two dead troops.

I actually have 47 soldiers, so I have no idea what #48 is. He's MIA.

[King Arthur]

Hello Ursulescu,

Very nice models!
You did already what i'm planning to do...

Maybe you can find your missing model at this very usefull website:

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Review.aspx?id=37

http://www.plasticsoldierreview.com/Index.aspx

Best wishes and please show more pictures of the total finished army,

marco

[21 inf]

Hi, Ursulescu! Nice job!

I just want to give you some hints (no criticism), if you are interested in historical acuracy: in 1916 there were no helmets to romanian army. Helmets were introduced only since 1917.

All leather equipment (belts, ammo pouches, backpacks and so on) was of black colour in ww1 in romanian army.

Soldier didnt had high boots, but only short boots, weared with putees, or "opinci" with putees.

[Ursulescu]

ThanX! I think I ended up somewhere between these two pictures and the actual French uniform these guys are molded in:



My flag bearer has the right coloured pouches, but the others don't.

This post has been edited by Ursulescu on February 23, 2010 08:55 am

[21 inf]

Ursulescu, if you want more specific info about romanian army's uniforms, weapons, equipment and history, you can join romanian reenactment forum from http://6dorobanti.ro/forum/YaBB.pl

There are some specialists there and at International forum you can post your questions, as there are some forum members who fluently speak english.

In the pictures above the soldier weares longer boots than in reality from ww1 and he is depicted with no putees, which was rare in 1916 and first part of 1917.

Also the romanian uniform from ww1 was inspired from the french one, but it has no blue colour as the french one, but rather a gray-green colour.

[Ursulescu]

The only problem is this web site is primarily Romanian. I can't speak the language (yet).

Time to re-do these guys!

[Ursulescu]

Interesting how many people looked at this thread!