Italeri #6120 US Army Infantry WWII
Italeri have stepped up to the plate in the last two years for those of us who like World War Two. Their latest offering is World War Two US Army troops. This after their German Elite infantry, Russian infantry, German Pak 40 with crew and Russian 76.2 cm ATGs.
Later this year Italeri are doing American Army in winter, an Italian heavy ATG, and a multinational AT set.
This set is ever so slightly larger than the other existing WWII American Army troops. In my opinion, they are just within the acceptable size for WWII American Army troops.
The bazooka guy is moving and not as interesting as a bazooka guy shooting, but I hope the AT set will have a firing bazooka team. The radio guy is a good one, more interesting than one just walking around. The radio and particularly the battery was heavy.
If you click on the picture you can see how incredibly detailed these figures are, look at the sling. This is a one piece figure. Awesome. The set has more kneeling figures than I like and they are a bit larger than I like, maybe one millimeter too tall, and just a bit chunky. I like the plastic color, it should be the plastic color for all US Army WWII troops. I seldom paint troops and so plastic color is important to me. I hope the AT set and the American winter set will be good and fill some of the gaps in this set. They need more shooting figures and more standing. I am going to buy a lot of these.
The Italeri WWII U.S. Army infantry set has a pretty good .30 caliber machine gun team. The tripod and gun are two separate parts. The hand grip of the machine gun has the hand of the gunner molded onto it. It fits together pretty well, but I would rather have had a larger base for the gunner and gun. It is nice to get a three man team, it would have been even better to get an ammo belt for the machine gun, a major omission!
The Grease Gunner is one of the few firing poses in the set. A great figure.
This tanker is firing his Colt .45 pistol. The barrel looks a bit short, it may be a Colt Commander, a slightly shorter version. General Patton was a tanker and an Olympic pistol shooter. In the old days duelers used to turn their side towards the other duelist so as to present a thin aspect to their opponent. This stance eventually became popular for Olympic and law enforcement and military shooters.
Several of the figures in this set look like they are on patrol, this little vignette shows the BAR gunner. Pretty good, but it would have been great if the BAR man was looking in the direction he was pointing his automatic rifle.
Two more men on patrol, Italeri seems to like the point the gun left and look right pose. I do not. Troops point the gun where they are looking so they can shoot at what they see. Nice carbine and M1 rifle armed troops. The sculpting of this set is fantastic and the figures very lifelike.
The mortar team has two mortarmen, but the weapon suffers from the same problems as the machine gun. The bipod of the mortar should be mounted on part of the same base as the figure. The number two mortarman is a rather odd pose, but when viewed from this side, his pose makes some sense. He is watching the fall of the mortar round. It would have been nice to have a few extra mortar rounds at his side.
A size comparison between the Italeri tanker and the HaT German MP. The Italeri guy is just a little bit larger. Look at the great level of detail on even the boots of the Tanker. I don't feel a need for an entire fleet of tankers with Colt .45 pistols, so I suspect I may use him as a source for some head swaps with other troops. Tankers often dismounted for scouting or if their tank was hit.
Imex WWII US Army paratrooper from the Easy Company set, Italeri WWII US Army and a Revell WWII US Army soldier. I like the size of the Revell figure the best and the color and sculpting of the Italeri figure best.
Esci WWII US Army paratrooper, two Italeri US Army figures and a Revell US Army figure.
The Italeri US Army set is a bit taller and thicker than the Esci, Revell and Imex figures. They are not so large that they can't blend in okay in a group. This includes figures from all three of those companies.
Later this year, Italeri are planning on a second US Army set and an anti-tank set too with US Army and other troops. I hope these two additional sets will fill out some of the missing items in this set. I still plan on getting about a battalions worth of these guys, thats about 16 boxes.
Submitted by Mike Creek on February 19, 2009
For more from Mike, visit his blog at http://bunkermeister.blogspot.com
