We were especially pleased with ourselves when it looked like we were going to run the first ever Stalingrad event in the UK. Stalingrad has always been the holy grail of WW2 airsoft and in August 2011 we obtained permission to use Papermill, a fantastic semi derelict factory that was being leased by Xsite Aisoft but had yet to be played by anyone due to ongoing legal issues. AGS secured use, planned and announced “Battle for Barrikady”, scheduled for February 2012. Unfortunately there also seems to be a curse on Stalingrad events. Numerous organisers have tried to do this scenario in various locations and have all failed for one reason or another. A month after announcing the game, AGS also fell victim to the curse. Just as Xsite were about to go live, the site owners went into bankruptcy and the receivers had little interest in letting anyone play soldiers at the Papermill. On 6th October, permission to use the site for airsoft was withdrawn and we were back to square one.

The idea to run an eastern front event around the Sevastopol battles of 1942 was born partly though desperation and partly through inspiration. We were concerned that people may have already made preparations for Stalingrad and wanted to make sure that our replacement game was on the same date and included a scenario where they could still use any kit they had bought. We also wanted a site that was interesting enough to make a potentially long journey worthwhile, as many of our players have to travel from the north of England. AGS organisers Ian and Jimbo had both recently played a new UCAP site in Kent called The Sandpit, a huge disused chalk quarry that had a variety of great airsofting terrain, including buildings, roads and a big lake. A half-day site visit and a long chat with Andy from UCAP about access and accommodation convinced us that this site was perfect for a Sevastopol event and three days later we had a fully formed plan B: The event would pitch Germans against Soviets around the Maxim Gorky II gun battery and would make use of about a third of the Sandpit playing area.

As we researched period pictures of the battle it seemed as if we’d maybe bitten off more than we could chew. The lake and quarry may look like the Crimea, but in 1942 the real Sevastopol naval base had impressively strong defences and no amount of old milk crates would do the job of replicating those. Instead we decided to make our primary location one of the many outlying strongpoints that circled the port and the main battery. Fortunately the group had already amassed a fair amount of set dressing in the form of plastic barbed wire, pyro mines and tank hedgehogs. Sandy and Neil had both constructed impressively realistic mortars that fired TLSFx charges, whilst Josh from Gunman kindly agreed to loan us his two artillery pieces, a crateload of Soviet uniforms and helmets and a video projector for our pre-event social. All we were missing was a massive fortress gun turret with 12 inch barrels. Neil and Ian put their engineer brains to work and came up with a plan that they assured us was “do-able”, The turret would be made of hardboard on a timber frame and the gun barrels would be two 15 foot lengths taken from the piles of industrial grade plastic piping that had been left behind when the quarry company moved out. The whole thing would be covered in camouflage netting. The plans looked good, but whether even the talented Boshier brothers could actually make it was another matter.

The upside of having a long lead time for an event is that it gives plenty of opportunity for preparation, drumming up interest and generally getting people excited. The downside is that real life has a habit of getting in the way. As the 4th February drew nearer, it became a more and more inconvenient date for many of the organisers as work contracts, house moves and all manner of personal shizzle began to take priority over a weekend of running around with toy guns. In our favour, we had a good number of paid-up players, a chatter of excitement on the forum and a gun turret that was becoming a thing of beauty. Our stock of props was also increasing. We now had two replica WW2 BMW sidecar combos to use in-game and Gordon from the WW2 airsoft forum had once again volunteered to make us some period signage as well as a boxful of wonderfully realistic TNT charges for the German engineers.

Fate threw its last curve ball a few days before game day, with severe weather warnings promising snow and sub-zero temperatures. Our players are a resourceful lot, but the limited appeal of driving hundreds of miles to freeze their nuts off for up to 36 hours was probably causing a fair few to think twice about coming at all. Josh was also half dead with the ‘flu, but still managed to drive all the way to Dartford just to deliver us his promised guns and gear before driving all the way home again. By game day we had only lost four people out of 60 and at 9am on Saturday 6th February I found myself flanked by two menacing NKVD officers and giving a briefing to four rows of impressively kitted Russians and Germans, all of whom were up for action and raring to go.

The tales from the game itself are contained in the forum posts of the players who attended. Punishing assaults, desperate defensive actions, artillery, mortars, mines, barbed wire entanglements and a great big gun turret that went BOOM. By about 5pm we were all pretty much done in, players and organisers alike. The bitter cold had taken its toll on both our equipment and our enthusiasm, and reports of heavy snowfall in the north meant that almost every player took a decision to pack up and head home instead of staying to enjoy a well deserved beer or four. Despite the harsh conditions, all of the post-event feedback was positive. AGS is strictly non profit and all our events are run at cost – actually most end up costing us, but putting on a game that we enjoy running and others enjoy playing makes it all worthwhile. Who knows, one day we may even break the curse of Stalingrad.

Words by Bedsnherts
Photos by Dadio, BedsnHerts, Steinlager and DevilDoll

Scenario

“Damn bad luck in your drops being cancelled these last two days, however the weather has cleared enough to get you and your men over to Holland in the morning.
Now I know you were supposed to land just to the south of Arnhem Bridge, and re-enforce 1st Airborne who were to be holding it, but things have gone a little astray on the ground.
Instead you are to drop around a small town called Driel, and create a link on this bank of the Rhine opposite the positions held by the 1st Airborne. From here you will re-enforce their positions, providing fresh troops and supplies, enabling them to push forward secure the bridge before the arrival of XXX Corps.
We are reliably informed that 1st Airborne are in possession of the Heavedrop ferry, and a swift, lightly opposed crossing is expected.”

Location

To be held at Grange Farm Airsoft, Leicester
Camping available Friday night

Cost

£25 per player

This a Rifles only event, and minimum player age is 18

Forces

Polish Parachute Brigade

Uniform is exactly the same as any British Airborne unit, except the beret is a Polish one, and not a maroon one.
For those without a Denison Smock battledress is perfectly acceptable either un-badged, or badged as for the Polish Parachute Brigade.

Sperrverband Harzer

The German force committed against the Polish landings was known as Sperrverband Harzer comprising:
Machine Gun Battalion 41;
Kampfgruppe ‘Köhnen’ (Kreigsmarine);
Alarm Bataillon ‘Schörken’;
Kampfgruppe ‘Kauer’ (Luftwaffe); and
III./SS-Grenadier Regiment ‘Landstorm Nederland’.
So any Heer, SS, Luftwaffe Field Divison and even Kriegsmarine are perfectly fine for this event. If you have to ask if anything else is permissible I would humbly suggest that your impression may be somewhat too specific.

More information and booking details can be found on the forum: www.ww2airsoft.org.uk

A Comrades in Arms event to be held at Cerberus, Keighley, Yorkshire

Further details: http://www.ww2airsoft.org.uk/php/phpBB2/viewforum.php?f=210

However, the ICS website is now showing a ‘coming soon’ banner. This is backed up by a showcased model prototype M1 Garand on ICS’s stand at the Shot Show 2012 (held in Las Vegas, Jan 17-20 2012). The representative said it would be available in five or six months, would have a real wood stock, is an AEG and takes 8 rounds of 8mm BBs.

The gun isn’t reloaded using an enblock but appears to have a bottom loading magazine, no details are yet available on how it operates but someone who has talked to them face to face has said they haven’t figured out what sort of loading system to employ. Unfortunately the reporter in the video below neglected to ask the questions WW2 airsofters are asking!

All of this seems to indicate that much technicality still has to be developed. Whether this will end up as an electric version of the Marushin 8mm or an adaption of the 6mm Marui M14 system is unclear. What is clear is that airsofters are appalled that 8mm appears to be the chosen calibre and not 6mm, universally adopted for skirmishable airsoft guns. ICS’s Facebook page is being lobbied heavily by the pro-6mm potential purchasers – it will be interesting to see if the manufacturers are listening to their market!

Also seen on this video (skip to 3:08)

The model prototype out of the showcase:

And for comparison, the real thing:

Update

A new video that relates the ICS Garand will be based on an M14 gearbox, semi-auto only and will be offered in both imitation and real wood stock versions:

A group of five airsofters, three of whom regularly played at open days in WW2 kit (of which I was one) got together and called themselves Comrades in Arms and set about working out how a large scale full day WW2 event could be put together. We knew dotted all around the country there were players with WW2 uniform (mostly US airborne) who were itching to use the kit outside of an open day game. The problem was there were too few who had German kit to make a viable opposing side so we put together a ‘looks-like’ kit list that enabled players on all sides to put together kit that looks the part from 20ft away and didn’t cost a fortune.

The surprise was that, come game day, most turned up in very authentic uniform – much of it bought especially for the day! The concept was now proved, the Catch-22 (there being no WW2 airsoft games due to too few players with authentic kit and yet too few players because of the lack of games) was now broken and players were gagging for more WW2 games.

In the intervening five years, more and more games have been organised, both by established airsoft site operators such as Players of War Airsoft, Shoot ‘n Scoot and Gunman Airsoft as well as player groups such as Poor Bloody Infantry and Army Group South. The busy calendar sees regular WW2 games organised in Scotland and games played from Dorset to Yorkshire and all over Wales too.

The advantage of a wide spread of organisers is that every game is different, each with a different emphasis – some might have a very specific and accurate historical basis, others might be a “what-if” scenario; some might be ‘hot’ on uniform accuracy, others might be more accommodating to what you already have in the cupboard.

One thing that has grown is the sense of community – uniforms and guns will be lent to complete strangers to enable others to participate, quite extraordinary when compared to regular airsoft. Even though there are games across the year and across the country, you will never get to a game if you wait for one to come to your doorstep – so some travel is inevitable, and here again fellow players are happy to give lifts to others.

One of the great boosts to the WW2 airsoft genre in recent years has been the increasingly wide availability of cheap and authentic uniforms, and the ever expanding range of WW2 weapons. Back in 2006 for the first ever Comrades in Arms WW2 game just about the only affordable WW2 weapon was the Toyko Marui Thompson and I think we can claim that we had the most Thompsons ever seen in a game at the same time! These days with the advent of Chinese-made guns, MP40s, STG44s and Stens are everywhere along with K98s, Garands, MG42s and a fair sprinkling of more exotic custom-made guns.

As the WW2 airsoft scene has expanded and diversified, so the internet presence has changed. Today, the WW2 Airsoft website (www.ww2airsoft.org.uk) has the latest in WW2 game and kit news and its associated forum (run by the author independently of any organiser, organisation, site or manufacturer) aims to bring everyone together and provide a central hub of information, a focus for the community and links elsewhere. And it is not just used by those in the UK, as there is quite a bit of interaction and flow of information between overseas WW2 players too. There is plenty of information provided by the traditional WW2 re-enactment world as boundaries between airsoft and traditional re-enactment private battles become blurred.

WW2 airsoft has developed a game-style all of its own and this might come as a bit of a surprise to those more used to open day airsofting. The pace is much slower and concentrates less on trigger time and more on teamwork, less on emptying hi-cap after hi-cap and more on fulfilling objectives. Frankly, there isn’t really a use for ‘lone wolf’ players in WW2 airsoft – players are given orders, work in squads, often doing everything possible to avoid contact with the enemy, unlike open days where constant contact is the name of the game. It isn’t unknown for a player to return home after a weekend’s play having not fired a shot in anger yet still buzzing with adrenaline having run the enemy ragged.

Games are run at airsoft sites and Ministry of Defence army training grounds all over the country, hired for the day or weekend. They are chosen for their suitability to a scenario so a quarry would make a great North African or Italian battle, a disused factory becomes Stalingrad, an underground tunnel complex becomes a secret German aeroplane factory, a pine forest becomes the Ardennes. One of the great pluses of following WW2 airsoft games around the country is that you get to play at some truly remarkable and unique airsoft sites.

So, if you feel like giving WW2 airsoft a go, where do you start?

Well, you don’t start by hammering websites with the credit card! And while Band of Brothers and Saving Private Ryan are excellent entertainment, a US airborne outfit will see limited use in WW2 airsoft games.

Generic is the key. WW2 game scenarios span the entire war so ideally you need something along the lines of an unbadged infantryman. Don’t bother with arm badges or other adornments, plain field-grey wools for German, M41 jacket and mustards for American, wool battledress for British, and so on. Then look to your head, a helmet should be next on your list. In WW2 the combatants had distinctly different uniforms from each other and it becomes very easy to spot a Tommy or Landser in the distance by his headgear profile. So much better than red or blue-taped arms to distinguish the sides at open days!

Once these basics are in place THEN start spending money on the useful extras – webbing, gaiters, boots, camouflage and so on. Don’t bother with officer gear, your game organisers will be the officers so no point outranking them! It is easy to fritter cash away on bits and bobs where as it is much better to accumulate cash and buy essentials only – and, as always, if you buy the best you only buy once.

The WW2 Airsoft website has pictorial kit guides that illustrate all the components needed to put together a convincing ‘loadout’ (to use the airsofter’s parlance), along with sources and prices.

And weapons? In an ideal world a wood-stocked rifle would be ideal (K98, Garand, Mosin Nagant, Enfield No4 etc) as rifles predominated in WW2. You shouldn’t feel outgunned using a bolt action but it can be a bit of a leap for former open-dayers to ditch the automatics so Thompsons, MP40/44s and Stens are cheap and considered generic by means of ‘captured’ weapons. Handguns aren’t really needed unless you are using a 350+fps bolt action which has a minimum engagement distance.

The WW2 Airsoft forums are full of bargains for sale, from hard to find bits of specialist kit to full loadouts – so no need to pay full whack shop prices unless you have a fat wallet.

Do remember that what matters most is that you get from behind the computer and off the sofa and participate in the games – pukka kit is very much secondary. Some people get things the wrong way round and obsessively collect kit trying to perfect a loadout and never actually get out and play. To the fighting soldier, a uniform is just his working clothes, no more no less; they had much more important things on their minds.

Don’t feel you have to go with a mate; you will come away after the event with 30 or 40 mates. Your fellow players are often more than happy to lend out spare uniforms or weapons, some organisers even offer free uniforms and hire guns, so there really is no excuse not to dive into the forums, book on the next game and plunge yourself into the immersive and unique world of WW2 airsoft. All WW2 games are held at weekends, either run over one day or two and almost always have a social evening where you will discover that whether you are a first-timer or an old sweat, all are accepted equally and with enthusiasm and you will find the next event can’t come quick enough!

Welcome to the unwinnable battle. (Objectives will get posted closer to the time)

This is a full battle weekend, with CPs in the field, objectives for both sides to complete and only a small part of the big picture. History has told us who wins and how they did it, hence these battles don’t represent the big picture, but take us down to ground and focus on how them men in this part of the battle faired. It means we can have un-historical wins without re-writing history.

This is a full on camping event with a social on the Friday and Saturday night. Both plastic and period tentage are welcome, though plastic will be away from the main camping area :good:

Event times

Arrival from 3pm Friday 16th
Briefing at 9.30am for 10.00am deployment on Saturday 17th (so be ready)
There will be no stop so you will have to eat in the field during the game.
Saturdays End ex will be around 5pm depending on light.
Sunday kick off at 10.00am and finish no later than 2.00pm.

There will be full catering on site, Airsoft shop and battery charging if needed.

Who can come – We ask everyone to try and make an effort to play Brit, Polish, Germans of Dutch Civilians. The US had nothing to do with this battle but if guys insist they wont play anything else I will find a way to write them in. We do have a very large amount of FREE rental kit.

More information can be found on the WW2 Airsoft Forum www.ww2airsoft.org.uk

Amongst the stock will be:
Napoleonic wars “flintsoft”
American Civil War,
Late Victorian/Empire
Wild West/Indian wars
WWI
WWII
Vietnam
Cold War
Modern

So perhaps not a totally airsoft only zone but hopefully a total airsoft and re enactment shopping experience from your boots to your gun and beyond. There’s new stock, just for the shop, and plenty of equipment on display including of course the custom, hand made, Airsoft weapons exclusive to Shoot ‘n’ Scoot.

Opening times are 10am until 5pm from Wednesday 28th December to Saturday 31st of December for the Grand Opening, after that it will be normally be open on Saturdays only, 10am to 5pm (other times by appointment).

For directions call them on 01796 482 582 or put PH9 0LH into your sat nav.

Zeta-Lab have shown pictures on their blog of their gas rifle, to be supplied mid-April 2012 for the remarkable cost of just 160USD. It features a VSR-10 hop-up bucking, VSR-10 inner barrel, and a high flow nozzle with adjustable air flow, the magazine charging in 10 seconds and loads with 36 rounds. The woodwork appears to be just that, not plastic. For additional cost it looks like they intend to supply an accurate replica of the ZF39 scope.



(scope photo from the Zeta-Lab blog looks like an original scope, not their replica)

Source: Zeta-Lab’s blog http://koko13121.militaryblog.jp/

More information on this website here: Fist of Dust
and on the forum here: Fist of Dust forum

Specifications:
Length: 1130mm
Weight: 3.2kg
Number of rounds: 13
Power: Air Cocking bolt
(assumed to mean spring powered rather than gas)
Stock: Oil finished beech wood
Accessories: Slings
Price: ¥134,400
Release date: December 1st 2011

Bolt operation, like a real gun, is designed with reduced bolt rotation (compared with our Mosin-Nagant)

Push the magazine release lever to remove the dummy magazine.

BB magazine revealed with winding gear and safety switch.

You can fire when you insert the dummy magazine.

Hop adjustment hole. Turn right to increase hop, decrease to the left. The factory adjustment is for Marui 0.25g BBs.

The muzzle. Fittings such as front sight and bayonet lug are faithful to the real gun.

Folding rear sight with characteristic over-size peep hole for quick aiming.

When the rear site is raised the peep sight has a small aperture.

Aim can adjust to a maximum of 1,300m just like the real gun although way beyond airsoft range!

Dummy safety catch. Oil stock finish is beech, traditional of the British Empire Army.

Brass butt plate with oil/cleaning kit cover open.

Care taken to ensure close tolerances with lid gaps without gaps.

Characteristic fixed sling swivel angle.

Reproduction sling is included.

Company web page:
http://ktw-co.gonna.jp/lee-enfield_4_rifle.html