'Finnish' Bofors - Part 3

Crewing the gun
Under the Rapid Fire game rules that I'm using as a guide for my Finnish army collection, the Bofors AA unit needs a crew of three. The Zvezda kit does come with figures, but the WW2 pattern British Army uniform is just too difficult to modify to make passable Finns, so I'm having to look elsewhere.

Finnish Bofors crew in 1941, mostly wearing German M40 helmets. Though, it
seems they were still in short supply as the foremost crewman needs a bigger size!

In order to modify myBofors gun - to look like the Finnish variant - I purchased a couple of boxes of Zvezda's Soviet M1939 37mm AA gun (which itself is a variation of the Bofors 25mm AA gun). This set comes with a couple of Soviet crew, which will be easier to convert into Finnish soldiers (I'll probably use one of the Pegasus Soviet infantry figures I have to create a third member of the crew).

One of the Soviet AA gun crew fitted with the arms from the British Bofors crew.

The good thing about the Zvezda gun crew figures is that they are multipart, with separate limbs (which makes it easier to pose them correctly on the gun model). So, I can swap around arms to make the Soviets fit the British Bofors properly. All I need then is some suitable heads, but I have a plan...

I am going to try out some of Ceaser Model's mid-WW2 German infantry as noggin-doners. The Finns use the German M40 coal-scuttle ('Stahlhelme') helmet as standard during the Continuation War, so I will have to do some brutal transplant surgery.

Figures with the new heads. Just trial fitting positions for the fitting of arms.

There was a slight difference in scale between the Zvezda and the Ceasar figures, the Ceasar heads being a bit small for the bodies I grafted them onto. But I'm hoping this will not be so noticeable as they are in a sitting pose...

Dr, Frankenstein would be proud! :)

Well, they are a bit of a hack job, but they will have to do. Now, onto the painting, though, I may wait a while until I'm ready to paint a batch of Finnish figures (I have a few drivers in the works).