15mm British Cold War Infantry 1958

Sometime back I had gotten the brilliant idea of gaming 15mm British and Soviets forces in my 1958 World War III setting.   I already had Soviet infantry and most of the vehicles that I would need for both sides, but would have to start from the ground up for the British infantry.  

After some help from members on The Wargames Website forums, I settled on Peter pig WWII infantry to use as the basis for the British infantry and started to move forward.  Generally, weapons and uniforms are the same or pretty similar, and while some of the packs and pouches might be out of date, I just decided to go with most of the figs as they are.  The only big exception was that I decided to use US WWII bazooka teams with British head swaps to represent the M20 anti-tank weapons used by the 1958 troops.  The WWII bazooka is way too small, but it gives a clear indication of what the role of the fig is.

Originally, I was going to try to modify the webgear and some pouches, but after losing four monts of hobby time this year, decided to just do the head swaps and go with them.

Colors of both the uniforms and the gear were adjusted for the late 1950s, and probably should have had a lot more variation than what I ended up painting, but as time is my enemy, I opted for fast and more uniform.

In any event, right or wrong, good or bad, I now have a British infantry company for 1958 with a couple of Vickers machine guns and mortars for support.  Here are a few pics:

Above is the entire company, CHQ at the front, followed by 

the arty and mortar forward observers, the three rifle platoons 

with PHQ at the front of each, a pair of 3" mortars left rear, 

and a pair of Vickers machineguns right rear.

With the British infantry done, the only thing that I still need to do for this project is to build a couple of aircraft, and I'll be done with the 15mm version of my 1958 Cold War project for the time being.