Big Spanish Civil War Project Part 2: Dinamiteros

I finished these off ages ago, but only got around to writing them up now. They're very characterful figures from Peter Pig. 

Dinamiteros were militia who fought using nothing but homemade explosives and slings, the most simple of all ranged weapons. I have had trouble finding many primary sources, but this article provides a lot of information. Time Article

I've read secondary sources which claim Dinamiteros were also used by the Nationalist faction, but can't find any evidence to support this.

The claim that captured Dinamiteros were executed immediately by the Nationalists does not seem particularly unusual to me. This level of aggression towards captured Republicans seems to be fairly universal. Hugh Thomas argues that both leaders and rank and file Republicans were executed without much thought in "The Spanish Civil War", (1986). He uses an acvount in which Franco was said to have ordered three ordinary militiawomen to be shot as an example of this brutality. 

Many sources I've read strongly associate Dinamiteros with Asturias, a region notable in this period for its mines and unionised workers. The mines were a ready source of explosives.

However, they seem to have been more widespread than just Asturias. At the 30 second mark of this footage, you can see a group of Dinamiteros fighting at the siege of the Alcazar in Toledo: Footage

In this photo, the banner identifies the Dinamiteros as "Vascos" (Basques). Some appear to be wearing slings tied around their necks. Image here

This photo (and others) by Gerda Taro show Dinamiteros during the Siege of Madrid. Image

Since "dinamitero" means simply "dynamiter", I don't think slings were used by everyone in the above sources. There's no denying that explosive slingers make great gaming units though. 

Enough historical nonsense! On to the models themselves 😊

The whole group. Four bases of two-man teams. 

Some close ups

Big Spanish Civil War Project Part 1: International Brigade

 For several years, I've been really interested in the Spanish Civil War. It's a really interesting era of history, with so many different ideologies and personalities clashing. It's perfect for wargamers, both for these reasons and because of the range of unusual troops players can use.

A few months back, I decided I'd make a Spanish Republican army for Hordes of the Things, as it's my major ruleset. It wasn't long before I had another idea, though. I decided I was going to paint both sides of the war. I'll probably use them for solo games, but not exclusively. The models I'm using are 15mm Peter Pig. 

As a goal, I've decided to paint enough models to fight the example scenario at the end of the Osprey rulebook "A World Aflame". This is the Battle of Jarama, in February 1937. 

The first batch of models I painted was a company of International Brigade troops. These were people who came from all over the world to fight for the Second Spanish Republic against the Nationalist rebellion. They were organised by the Soviet Communist Party, something which would make France and Britain view the Republic in a negative light. They're particularly interesting to me because they represent the British Battalion at the Jarama, which contained many volunteers from my own country, Ireland.

A group picture of the whole company

 

Each group of figures is on a 3cm square base. It's a fairly generic basing scheme, as I'd like to try different rulesets. They are based in the same way as the Balagan Blog recommends for Crossfire. I've also made labels for each base in a style similar to his. Thank you for these ideas 😊

Individually based figures

Since A World Aflame is the ruleset I'm going to try out first, I based some models individually. These are message runners, medics, forward observers (for Crossfire) and squad leaders. 

Company Commander and HMG

Like most of my stuff, I painted the flag on the command stand. I first made the structure of the flag from an aluminium drink can. Then I printed the flag I wanted to replicate, and painted over it to give it a "scale lighting" effect.

Three squads / platoons.

Not much to say about these really. I'm really happy with them.

At the start, I wasn't mad about Peter Pig figures, but as I've painted them I've started to really like them. They are quite small, even for 15mm, but they have excellent detail. The faces are especially good, and are even better on the batch of Nationalists I've just started working on.

In relation to the Spanish Civil War, today is the anniversary of the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica (Gernika). This was an outrage which was unfortunately only the first of many of its kind.