After another week’s (admittedly intermittent) research and after pouring through the newly arrived book I ordered on the subject, here are my latest thoughts on the “perfect” axis minors set:
1. The field hat actually is not a bad idea. Most of the pictures I was finding of Hungarian and Romanian soldiers in soft hats weren’t showing visors though… and then I realized that many of them actually had folding visors! At the same time, similar hats with fixed visors and without visors (like the classic “overseas cap”) also seem to have been worn and I haven’t been able to get a good idea of what the real ratio of the three types really was, particularly as it’s often difficult to tell which is which when you’re looking at a grainy picture! Nevertheless, it is undoubtedly true that the famous German visored field cap actually had its origins in the Austro-Hungarian WW1-era field cap, which inspired the German Mountain Troops field hat, which, in turn, was modified and adapted into the famous general-issue and DAK visored caps…
2. I still think a Stahlhelm infantry would also be a good idea. I’m still seeing an overwhelmingly helmeted infantry in the pictures I’m finding of battle-bound Hungarians and Finns, and these guys all wear the Stahlhelm. With the widespread us of the design by Spanish, the Chinese and the Bulgarians, having multi-colored Stahlhelm-wearers makes sense. I don’t know, maybe there’s a separate accessory set in there instead… “Ladies and gentlemen, the latest from HBG Industries, a rainbow array of soldiers in Fritz-helmets & Kraut-caps!” :lol:
3. In the realm of tanks, I’m seeing the German tank exports to their allies split pretty evenly between Panzer III’s and Panzer IV’s; as far as other AFV exports, I think we got it right with the StuGIII’s; when the Germans sent their allies tracked AFV’s, this III/IV series seems to be the design generation they went with and it makes sense: they were enough better than what the allies were used to to be an improvement for pretty much any of their allies, so why part with the “good stuff,” the Panthers and Jagdpanthers and beyond…
4. Yeah they had some heavy artillery here and there, but it wasn’t necessarily German stuff anyway: it was more likely to be obsolete (and horse-drawn) WW1-era stuff if and when they had it.
5. In the SP realm, StuGIII’s excepted, it looks like pretty much anything they had was jury-rigged one-offs. The hummel might work as a reasonable facsimile to these sorts of things, but might be a better fit in that “supplemental German vehicle” set you were talking about, I don’t know.
Bottom line: for the best true-to-the-axis-minors accuracy, you might consider ditching the heavy artillery and SP artillery and add in a helmeted infantry and an early Panzer IV, but I think you’re generally on the right track