Army Men, Part VII - Rolling Thunder

 The final segment of this series on the Hobby Lobby Civil War Value Pack focuses on the included artillery pieces.

These cannon are a very good representation of the Napoleon 12-pounders used extensively in the war by both sides.

These models are well detailed, with working wheels which are easily removable.

The best part is that each field piece comes complete with an attachable limber carriage.

The limber is detailed with an ammunition chest just like the real thing. It also features the hitch rail to which horse teams can be attached.

The 12 pounder Napoleon was a definite workhorse artillery piece in the Civil War. Most batteries had at least one or two in their line-up.

It had a bronze barrel weighing a little over half a ton, 5 and a half feet long, with a four inch diameter barrel size.

The piece was capable of propelling a 12.3 pound iron ball at a little over 1400 feet per second. The accurate range was in the 1600 yard distance, with a maximum range of 2000 yards.

All manner of ordnance was used with the guns: solid ball, timed-fused shells, spherical case shot, grapeshot, and canister. 

The guns were highly mobile and could be moved quickly on the battlefield using a team of six horses. Along with each piece and limber was an additional caisson, a four-wheeled carriage that transported two additional ammunition chests. These were also pulled by a 6-horse team.

Typically, a crew of six or seven artillerymen was required to operate one of the guns, each man having his own specific task. In addition, there were two drivers tasked with moving the pieces, one for the gun/limber, the other for the caisson.

This concludes my assessment of the Value Pack offerings. Overall quality is very good, and the set is perfect for regular play.

As pointed out in the past few posts, some modifications may need to be made for those who wish to use these soldiers for historically accurate dioramas.

All in all, I'm very pleased with the set.

Cheers!

Army Men! Part VI - Flags and Officers

 This part of my review of the Hobby Lobby Civil War Value Pack focuses on the additional figures.

First, the mounted horsemen:

Both the Union and Confederate mounted figures are well done. These are great for representing either regimental colonel or even brigadier generals.

The Union officer is typical, wearing a sword and a kepi for headgear.  

The Confederate officer is also well-rendered. Same riding configuration as the Union version, except that he wears a slouch hat, much like the infantry figures in the set. 

The horses are well modeled, featuring such details as a bridle, harness, saddle, and blanket roll.

The flag carrying figures are OK, but there are some issues here.

On the rebel side, the staff seems to be a bit too short, and the flag itself is rectangular. The typical Confederate flag was 4x4 square.

On the Federal side, the glaring error is that the color guardsman is carrying a 50-star flag!

What's up with that?  

$7.99 Chinese-made set, no doubt.

More to come....

Army Men, Part V, Billy Yank

 The soldiers in this set which represent the Union army are very well done.

No complaints here. 

The uniforms are pretty much correct, all of them are wearing forage caps, and no knapsacks are being worn in combat mode. 

Unlike the Confederate soldiers, these men have varying facial features: some are bearded, and others clean shaven.

Well done!

Army Men!! Pt. 3 The Civil War Set

 Oops, I goofed!

This post was supposed to come before the last one.   Senior moment...

Anyway, here goes. 

The Civil War Value Pack from Hobby Lobby has been opened and is ready for examination.

In a nutshell, the set consists of 34 soldier figures (17 each Union and Confederate), 2 horses, 2 cannon and 2 limbers.

At first glance this is an awesome little set.

There are enough individual poses to make things interesting.  It is my understanding that these packs are populated with random quantities of the various poses. It's very cool that the the poses of the soldiers are not duplicated between the two armies.

Viewed from a few feet distance, the soldiers and features are quite representative of the typical Civil War soldiers.

Here are photos of the two opposing sides all set out:

And the artillary:

There were no missing or broken pieces in the bag.  The only issues are that some of the muskets are bent. 

A quick, careful hit with a hair dryer gun can take care of that.

Overall, this set is not a bad buy at the $7.99 price point. I will likely head back to Hobby Lobby and purchase a second bag.

This will give me enough soldiery on each side to comprise a 'Company' unit.

In Civil War unit hierarchy, a company was supposed to be a group of 100 men. The majority started out with those numbers.

10 companies made up a regiment (1000 men). As the war progressed, most companies that were combat-ready at any given time typically numbered between 30-50 individuals. This was due to attrition from battle casualties, enemy capture, illness, and desertions.

Companies were given designation letters A through K. The letter J was not used, as it was easily confused with the letter 'I'.

Companies were typically led by Captains, their subordinates being the non-commissioned officers - sergeants and corporals.

So now that I've given a short history lesson, here is a fun fact:

If I wished to set up a somewhat historically accurate diorama of Pickett's charge at the battle of Gettysburg, it would require 706 of these Value Packs at a cost of $5,650.00 before tax.

General Lee sent over 12,000 men on that ill-fated assault on the Union center.

Next post: A closer look at the soldiers in this set and why a lot of it is not historically accurate.

Cheers!

Army Men!! Part IV

 In today's post, I will focus on a number of the individual pieces in the Civil War Value Pack.  This assessment will be through the lens of historical accuracy.

I'll start with the soldiers of the rebel army.

It doesn't take a close scrutiny of the Confederate figures to notice a number of problems.

First, all of the figures are clad in what I call 'Senior Officer' garb. These are supposedly rank and file infantrymen, but all of the figures are wearing long officer-style clothing, riding boots, and narrow-brim slouch hats.

All of the figures also have a knapsack strapped to their backs.

In reality, the typical Confederate regular infantry soldiers wore a huge array of different clothing. Jackets, usually shorter in length, were in various shades of gray or butternut, many being home-spun. Same thing with trousers - there were many different variations - some soldiers wore gray or light blue army-issued, others wore loose trousers in butternut, brown, red, blue, pretty much what ever they could get ahold of. 

Headgear consisted of a mix of slouch hats and army forage caps, again, in various colors and forms. The slouch hats were not the prim officer style, rather wide-brim farm-type affairs that could be bent down to provide better shade for the soldier's face.

High-top boots were definitely not a feature of the typical rebel soldier. The vast majority wore whatever shoes they could acquire. As the war dragged on, many of the Confederate troops had to settle for no shoes at all, instead resorting to wrapping rags around their feet, or even going barefoot.

As for the knapsack, this would not have been a common feature of the Confederate soldier. At the beginning of the war, Southern units were issued packs in many forms, but as time went on this practice stopped as the army supply resources dwindled. Rebel soldiers largely resorted to wearing blanket rolls around their necks, in which they carried whatever extra clothing and personal effects they had. These were affectionately called 'horse collars'.

In both armies, backpacks were virtually never carried into combat, due to their weight and bulk. Officers commanded that backpacks be left piled in the rear before soldiers were moved into battle formation.

Doubtless, many of the packs were lost, stolen, or never retrieved after a battle.

One final issue I have with the Confederate soldiers in this offering is that every single figure has the exact same facial features: a long mustache and beard!

Overall, this group of so-called infantry soldiers has the appearance of a company of clones of some brigadier general!!

It is definitely obvious that the mold designer(s) for this set had no clue of what the rank and file Confederate soldier looked like.

Hint: the bottom of the figure bases are stamped with "Made In China". 

That might be a clue.

This is, after all, a $7.99 Value Pack....

Anyway, next post will be all about the Union troops.

Stay tuned...

Army Men!! Part II

 It frequently seems that interaction with my grandkids tends to spark new or renewed interest in toys and activities that I either did as a kid or have never encountered before.

That's exactly how my involvement with LEGO building got started a little over a decade ago.

Since I have recently been enjoying spending time with my youngest grandchild immersed in army man play, I've sort of rekindled an interest in that particular subject.

Yesterday, I ducked into the local Hobby Lobby and was delighted to find a 'Value Pack' of American Civil War plastic soldiers.

Since I am an avid student of Civil War history, this set is square in my wheelhouse!

Can't wait to tear into this bag.

Jeez, I'm becoming a 70-year-old 8-year- old!

A review of the set will be the subject of my next post.

Cheers!

Army Men !!

Recently, my wife and I have been spending Mondays watching our soon-to-be 4 year old grandson at our home.

It turns out that this young lad is quite interest in playing with toy plastic soldiers.

As soon as he enters the house in the morning, the first thing he asks is to play with army men.

So, to accommodate this request, I have pulled out my shoebox of vintage green U.S. army soldiers. These date back to the early 1970s and are the typical green guys that every kid from that era had.

The soldiers of my collection are all solid veterans of many battles! Over the course of the past several decades, they've definitely been knocked over countless times by rubber bands (small arms fire), and heavy artillery (Nerf gun bullets)!

My own kids and grand-kiddoes have also played with them over the years, but I'm usually around to insure that they don't get treated too roughly or lost. 

The soldiers, that is.

So, just the other day, my youngest grandson and I built a large fort out of many-colored Mega-Bloks and spent the entire morning setting up and knocking down my beleaguered vintage green army!

Cheers!