DAK Pioneer and HMG platoons

Continuing with my DAK army, I've finished the Pioneers and HMG platoons I needed to help round out my army. It seems that every time I try to use my DAK list, my opponents always seem to be running tank lists. To help beef up the survivability of my 15. Panzerkompanie, I decided I needed some pioneers.

The pioneers of the Deutsche Afrikakorps are specialist assault engineers, who would prove particularly critical in the 1941 Tobruk battles. Here the Tommies were able to use minefields, miles of barbed wire and the fortifications previously built by the Italians to protect the vital port.  

To defeat these elements and to assist the infantry in attacking the strongpoints that surrounded Tobruk, pioneers were needed.

The 5. Leichte Division had three Pionier companies to undertake these tasks, whilst later the 15th and 21st Panzer divisions each had a Panzerpionierbataillon which each had two Leichte Pionier companies.

On with the pictures:

Now let's talk about the DAK HMG platoon... The Maschinengewehr-34, or MG-34, was the main infantry support weapon of the Deutsches Afrikakorps as well as the main vehicle (tank) machine-gun. The MG-34 was also the first ever true Universal machine gun. It could be used as a light machine gun from bipod, as a sustained fire, medium machine-gun on tripod, as a tank or AA weapon.

The MG-34 was designed in the early 1930s by the team at Rheinmetall. Final design, adopted for service in 1934, incorporated numerous features from experimental prototypes built by Rheinmetall, Mauser, and others. As was requested by German army, it was a truly universal machine-gun, capable of different roles.  

It was put into production in 1935, and remained an official Machine-gun of the Wehrmacht until 1942, when it was officially replaced by the more reliable and cheaper to produce MG-42. Despite this the MG-34 continued to serve until the end of WW2, mostly as a tank machine-gun as it was better suited for the role than the MG-42.

In the Desert, the MG-34 on the medium machine-gun tripod served in the Heavy platoons of the Desert Fox’s army. Along with the mortars they served as the heavy support platoon for the motorised Panzergrenadiers companies.

Now let's see the pictures: