W is for Wooden Warriors

The military selection in this wonderful box of Joe's is the clincher for the post-war, but near-war age of the set, with several clues as to why it's from the 1950's or very late 1040's.

The soldiers are generic, not in a 'German' [feldtgrau/field gray] colour and wearing the bloused trousers of the occupation army's GI's or - the then brand new - NATO forces from just about anywhere? The factory would have been sandwiched between the US and French sectors of occupied (or NATO-bulwark!) Germany.

Looking here at the base you can see it's a three-ply, which for a while led me to believe these were larger than they are! The finish however is not smooth, and you would expect rounded edges and smooth surfaces in similar figures today, or from between the wars.

As well as another shot of the vessel; more of an ocean-going tug-boat in a different scale to the yacht, we have a tank, gun and two 'planes along with a selection of similar olive-green soldiers. More clues to date are to be found here.

Again we see signs of austerity in the aircraft, which, as well as looking home-made are both crude and poorly finished, and where you would expect to see signs of lathe-turning they seem to have been tapered by carving and sanding, and the small ones looks to have had its nose shaped with a giant pencil-sharpener!

The tank, which may have been influenced by British 'cruisers' or the American Sherman, actually looks most like an Australian Sentinel in profile, but is probably trying to be a Chaffee, or even an M46/47 Patton?

While the two aeroplanes have the swept-back tail-planes of post war jets but the wings of WWII fighters, indeed, the larger one seems to have borrowed its wings from a Messerschmitt Me.109!

As most post-war aircraft were finished in polished metal or silver-dope, we can consider the two to be airliners, leaving, within the box as a whole, a small military sample mostly in the not-aggressive poses of a garrison, with three chaps on the range, another sign of war-fatigue and post-war manufacture?

Scale/sizing of all the main elements of the military group, along with the aircraft. The gun is relatively in-scale with the figures; the tank however, is a tiddler!