Thunderbolt project ressurection

--

--

Hello again and Happy New Year.

In 2013 I was engaged in a project to make models for resin casting. I had the idea of making a series of 28mm fictional tank models which I might sell online. This project lasted for about two years and I thoroughly enjoyed myself, but eventually my lack of casting success and the prohibitive cost of importing all the materials that were required meant that I finally gave up on the idea. It didn't help that I found no one in Denmark who even knew what resin was and that whilst I was painstakingly researching, designing and building my first models, the rest of the world was busy playing with 3D printing.

I did not throw away my models however. I had finished the first one; an assault tank which I named the Suffolk, and which I had used to make my first viable two part mold (at some considerable expense).  I cleaned off the Suffolk and rebuilt the damaged parts (the mold making process was a bit hard on the model) and painted it. You can see it here. 

Another of my fictious tanks was called the Thunderbolt. It was designed to be an infantry support tank that would operate along side the Suffolk. These models were part of a project to create a faux-historical American tank building project following World War One. The idea being that after the war, the Americans saw the British Empire as their primary competitor and anticipating a war along their northern border, designed and built a clandestine armoured force which would spear head the American forces attacking Canada as a part of War Plan Red.  A platoon might consist of three Thunderbolts and one Suffolk - since the Suffolk had a 75mm main gun, it would be used to clear away bunkers, field guns and other fortified positions. The third model I built for this idea, was the Ford Liberty tankette. See here.

Over Christmas, I realised that I was irritated by the thought that I have so many unfinished projects lying about my little room and I decided to go back and finish as many as I can before I lose interest again. The Thunderbolts were designed as far back as 2011 and I started to build them in 2013. They got shelved when other projects captured my interest. I had a previous bout of model making activity a few years ago but the Thunderbolts were not finished then either.

Originally I was going to make one model and then use it to make a two part mold, and then cast myself a full platoon. When that didn't happen, I built two more models and so now there are three Thunderbolts to form a single platoon, along with the Suffolk. Each model has 1,107 rivets made from 0.50mm Evergreen #218 styrene rod. The turret shown below belongs to a different model but is roughly the same shape and design as the turret I have in mind. I shall only build one turret as due to the nature of the polystyrene glue I use, the rivets tend to fall off curved surfaces and I don't want models which keep shedding such tiny parts. I will use the turret to make a one part mold and cast six turrets in resin.

-

---

Tank Movie Reviews

In alphabetical order, here is a list of films which tell the story of a single tank and it's crew.

Fury (USA)
Dir: David Ayer. 2014.
Set in the western European theatre of World War Two, this film about an American Sherman tank probably had highest budget on this list. As is often the case with more contermporary films, a lot of attention to accurate historical details was undertaken, but the story deviated from realism into fantasy on several occaisions, no doubt catering to American patriotic tendences. This is a common feature of war movies unfortunately and it is more or less a staple of tank movies it seems.
Brad Pitt has star billing but the primary character is a young soldier sent to replace a dead machine gunner on the tank 'Fury'. The audience follows the last days of this tank and its war weary crew as it takes part in the invasion of Germany, culminating in a desperate last stand which raised my eye brows a few times and not in a good way. Like almost all WW2 movies, 'Fury' depicts the Germans in a stereotypically stupid fashion. On the whole though this is a decent movie which offers a few moments of inspiration for war gamers. There is an interesting skirmish in the first half of the film where a Sherman platoon takes on a German Pak line which could be inspiration for a good game, and later the same unit meets and is largely defeated by a single Tiger tank - apparently manned by amateurs. 
4/5

Lebanon (Israel)
Dir: Samuel Maoz. 2009.
In an entirely different vein to the other participants in this list, this movie almost disregards the tank, and focuses entirely on the crew with almost the entire film taking place within the vehicle and with only the gunner's view through his scope to show events taking place outside. I was not looking forward to seeing this film since I thought it would be long and dull and I expected the 'psychological drama' aspect to be the usual stuff of war films. It was, but the film didn't drag as much as I'd expected.
On the whole this was an interesting film, though it offers nothing at all for wargamers.
The Israeli conscript crew of a Centurion tank, call-signed 'Rhino', are taking part in a special operation during the 1982 Lebanon War. Assigned to give cover to a small detachment of paratroopers on a mission, the tank crew find themselves witnessing (through their gun sights) and participating in the various horrors and moral ambiguities of war. The film depicts the effects these traumatic events take on the crew within the claustrophobic confines of the tank. There is less patriotism in this film than in the others, and the tankers are depicted as almost being scared beyond reason. 
3/5

Sahara (USA)
Dir: Zoltán Korda. 1943.
By far the oldest offering on this list, this film is pure, naked war propaganda. Starring Humphrey Bogart, the story follows an American M3 Lee tank (nick named Lulu Belle) which has gotten itself lost in the Sahara desert during the aftermath of the Battle of Gazala. As they struggle to make it back to their lines, the crew encounters and picks up a number of stragglers, all of whom come from different national and ethnic back grounds. Eventually the tank is engaged by a German Bf-109. The plane manages to wound a British soldier but is itself shot down and its pilot is captured.
The climax of the story comes when the tank reaches a well, only to find it is running dry. Shortly after this, a German unit, also looking for water, arrives and Bogart being the classic American war hero, a battle ensues.
If you like old war movies, and you don't mind blind patriotisc bias, then this is a classic. Of some interest are the background stories of the various characters and the tensions these give rise to. The final battle is not particularly well done, but it would make for a good skirmish battle in 28mm scale. 
3/5

T-34. (Russia) 
Dir: Aleksey Sidorov. 2019.
One might almost describe 'T-34' as a Russian version of 'Fury', though the Russian love of patriotic bias far outweighs the American and this film suffers from a lot of bias. As it happens however, this is perhaps the best film on the list from the tank-gamers perspective. In particular, the initial battle in the first act is brilliantly well done, with plenty of bird's eye perspectives, slow motion shell tracking and historical accuracy as far as the eye can see. A German unit of Panzer IIs, IIIs and a Panzer 38t attack a Russian village defended by a single infantry platoon and a lone T-34/76. The Soviet tank uses cover and surprise to defeat the Germans in as good a depiction as I've ever seen of the benefits of a defensive posture.
After the initial battle however, things take a turn for the worse. The Soviets are all dead or captured and the main character - the Soviet tank commander spends the next few years in German POW camps, being tortured because he won't give up his name and rank. Apparently this goes on for three years or so. Things start to get really silly when the bearded German commander from the first act returns. Now clean shaved and scarred, he is tasked with training a new generation of German tankers, to be equipped with Panther tanks and to defend the Reich against the coming Soviet invasion. To do this he gets the bright idea of using captured Soviet tankers, in captured Soviet tanks as live fire training-ground targets. Very quickly he finds his old adversary and gives him a captured T-34/85. Since the Germans are also incredibly stupid in this film it turns out that they have overseen six rounds of tank ammunition inside the tank, thus allowing the Soviets to suddenly break out of the training ground and make a run for it. I won't spoil what happens after this, but rest assured, Russian patriots must love this movie!
3/5

The Beast of War. (USA)
Dir: Kevin Reynolds. 1988.
This one is quite interesting since it turns the tables some what and instead of being about how amazingly good 'our tankers' are, its all about how awful the Soviets were. Clearly made with the same romantic sentiments about the Afghan Mujahideen one sees in other 80s films (Rambo, The Living Daylights, etc) the story begins with a Soviet T-55 platoon attacking a village and slaughtering almost every one in it. Why they are doing this is never really explained, but the films goes to some lengths to portray the Soviet tankers as a depraved band of degenerates who will blindly follow any order, no matter how immoral. Things go from bad to worse when after the attack, one of the tanks takes a wrong turn in the hills and gets lost. The tank rumbles into a valley with no other exit and is soon being pursued by Afghan Mujahideen hell bent on revenge.
On board the T-55 are five crew members, one of whom is an Afghan communist, another is a degraded intelligence officer (this one might be described as the film's protagonist), two low IQ tankers who constantly squabble with each other, and the tank commander who is an absolute psychopath. As the film progresses, the commander takes to singling out and killing his own men, for 'reasons'. Eventually the commander leaves the former intelligence officer tied to a boulder with a grenade booby trap under his head. The Afghans find him but due to their Pashtun code of honour they do not kill him and he ends up joining forces with them in order to defeat the tank commander.
In some ways this is a rather surreal film, and if you look aside from the sillier apsects, it does have some redeeming features. The desert ambience and the sense of a lone tank rumbling through a vast wilderness is well done. The premise of the film, one tank in a hostile terrain, versus a group of very mobile infantry - with an RPG - could make for a decent skirmish game, especially in 10mm.
An interesting detail worth mentioning, is that the movie was filmed in Israel and as a consequence of that, the T-55 was a captured Arab tank which the Israeli's had subsequently upgunned with a bigger 120mm main gun.
3/5

White Tiger (Russia)
Dir: Karen Shakhnazarov. 2012.
This one deviates from the rest in a few ways. The titular Tiger is the antagonst which the Soviet crew must find and destroy. With more than a touch of the supernatural, this movie is essentially a Russian version of Moby Dick, only with tanks - as you might expect from Russia. 
Set in 1943, the story begins with the discovery of a Russian tanker who is found sitting inside a destroyed T34 with 90% burns all over his body. No one expects him to live but miraculously he makes a full physical recovery. His mind however has apparently been seriously impacted and he has no memory of who he is. The doctors take to calling him Ivan Naydёnov, and decide that despite his amnesia he is still capable of returning to the front.
Naydёnov it transpires is the sole survivor of a battle in which an entire unit of Soviet tanks has been destroyed by a single Tiger tank in winter camouflage - a Tiger tank which apparently has supernatural powers of combat and maneuvre and which mysterously disapears into swampy terrain after each encounter. The Soviets build an up-armoured T-34/85 and Naydёnov and his small crew are deployed to hunt down and destroy the 'White Tiger'. 
Just as with almost every other Russian war film I have ever seen, this offers a curious mixture of realistic detail and fantastic story-telling and by fantastic I mean of course that this is pure fantasy. If you like Soviet tanks of the Second World War however, this is a film for you. The second half features SU-100s, SU-152s and an entire company of T-34/85s at full charge. This is also the first Russian film I've seen that shows lend-lease vehicles, I guess the Russians never throw anything away!
3/5

1/144 Aircraft Part 3 - Late war aircraft

The British and Commonwealth forces
After Magne insisted on Tigers, King Tigers, Jagdtigers and Panthers, I realised that I was going to have to do as the Allies did, and get myself some serious air power! Naturally, I had to have this personal favourite, what with four 20mm cannon, eight rockets and upwards of ten machine guns, whats not to like!?
Bought from Shapeways, the Bristol Type 156 'Beaufighter' was quite an expensive model, but once I saw those D-day stripes on her I stopped caring about the price tag. Now I just need to use her to full effect. 

Ze Germans
Naturally, Magne didn't care to be on the receiving end of my superior air-power without having some means to fight back and so I bought another Shapeways model, a Stuka. The first one I bought turned out to be an A model and so it was pretty worthless for my purposes. I then bought a second late war model and added a couple of under-wing 30mm cannons to make it into a 'Kanonvogel'.

Magne also decided he wanted more firepower so he bought a Heinkel He-111 from e-bay (which I built and painted for him in a late war camouflage pattern which I found on Pinterest). Over the course of the summer, Magne and I talked back and forth about bombers and fighters and this ended with the idea of creating two 'air forces', meaning two bombers and three fighters for both the Germans and the Allies. This meant a second He-111 and three Bf-109s for Magne and two B-25 Mitchells and three Mustangs for me (I'll post about them later). The B-25s and the second He-111 are currently still works in progress, but the three Bf-109s have been finished, one of which is a lesser ace, named 'Der Rote Teufel', hence the little red imp.

The Reds
Finally, I bought some Soviets too since I have a vague idea of a late war Soviet force at some point. I bought two IL-2 Shturmoviks and a Petlyakov Pe-2. I suppose I should buy some Soviet fighters too, but to be honest, late war Soviet fighters seem a bit boring to me and I doubt I'll bother. I'd much prefer to spend the money on some more Commonwealth planes instead. Some Typhoons or Spitfires perhaps...

For part 1, see here. For part 2, see here.

Machine guns revisited

Machine guns have long suffered from an inherent weakness in our rule system. As it currently stands an element firing a machine gun at multiple targets must divide it's dice and combat factor total between the targets. The original reason for why this was adopted was because we didn't want to make machine guns too powerful in 28mm games where one element could conceivably eliminate half the opposing team in a single round, and yet in reality, when machine guns were used logically they were extremely powerful. In some examples, heavy machines in static mounts were perfectly capable of killing large numbers of advancing enemy infantry. Currently in Bayonet_10, this cannot be done.
In yesterdays game, we also encountered the same problem with regards to two P-16 fighter aircraft strafing a mortar position with good a dice roll but to no credible results. Granted, a strafing aircraft might miss it's target, but that really should be expressed by a poor dice roll, and not the contrary. So, now its time to go back to machine guns and 'make them great again'.

In Bayonet_10 we make distinctions between machine pistols, submachine guns, light machine guns and heavy machine guns. MPs, SMGs and LMGs are essentially infantry weapons, and may be carried by General Infantry, or Irregulars, etc, where as HMGs are static or vehicle born weapons. A static HMG is classed as a Heavy. This distinction should extend the lethality of the HMG as opposed to SMGs and LMGs.

Examples;

---

From left to right; M712 Schnellfeuer. Thompson SMG. MG-34 LMG. Maxim HMG.
Further examples are provided in the Armoury.

Machine pistols and submachine guns are generally characterized by smaller ammunition fed from magazines. Whilst some SMG's can be equipped with high capacity magazines neither of these weapon types can provide the extensive fields of fire offered by belt fed machine guns.

Light machine guns may be either magazine or belt fed. In the case of the former, they are often described as 'support weapons' rather than machine guns, see for example the Browning Automatic Rifle. Unlike Heavy Machine Guns, LMG's and similar support weapons are generally carried by individual infantry and used for mobile fire support. In this capacity they can provide short bursts of fire over a limited arc. Extensive use of an LMG will result in the need to change a barrel lest the weapon over heat. Some LMG's can be attached to a static mount in which case they become HMGs. 

Unless vehicle mounted, Heavy Machine Guns are generally characterized by being static, belt fed weapons, often with some form of cooling system to allow the weapon to function for longer periods of time. HMGs generally fire larger calibre ammunition, and in some cases may even employ armour piercing ammunition. An HMG will generally inflict more damage than an LMG.  

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The combat modifiers remain the same as before.

Machine pistol: +4 [+3] Shooting. 8 LOS. SMG: +4 [+3] Shooting.18 LOS Light machine gun (MG). +5 [+4] Shooting. 36 LOS. Heavy machine gun. +6 [+5] Shooting. 48 LOS.

The suggested change to the rules means a machine pistol, an SMG or an LMG may now engage two or more targets in base contact with eath other, depending on the quality of the element employing the weapon. Each target rolls against the same attacking roll without any division of the total.
Heavy machine guns and LMGs in static mounts may engage all viable targets with a 90 degree forward arc - much like a field gun. Supporting rules remain the same, so if two HMGs are firing over the same field of fire for example, one supports the other and the targets suffer a -1 penalty against the die roll.

Die roll + combat factors, as described in the rules for all infantry-borne weapons: MPs, SMGs & LMGs.

Inferior:  may target one element. Ordinary:  May target two elements in base contact with each other. Superior:  May target three elements in base contact with each other. Exceptional: May target four elements in base contact with each other.

 

Die roll + combat factors, as described in the rules for Heavy.

May engage all viable targets within 90 degree forward arc.

I have run a few tests and these adaptations appear to make sense. A static HMG all but annhilated an infantry charge across open terrain with four infantry elements defeated and two suppressed. A Superior LMG in the same sitaution was able to suppress two infantry elements and defeat a third.

Machine guns on aircraft will subsequently be dealt with in the Aircraft catagory of Bayonet_10.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

https://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/german-infantry-weapons/mg34-machine-gun.html

To Capture Castellanos

Yesterday's game, which was a part of our Venezuelan campaign was played by Peter and Magne and featured infantry, field guns, armoured cars and a few aircraft. Magne played the Venezuelan National Army Colonel Castellanos who had fled to a small hill top army out post and Peter played the Communist armoured company sent to capture him. The general idea of the game was for a weaker force holed up in a hill top fortification facing well equipped mechanised infantry. I took the part of referee, though I also controlled the aircraft of both sides too (the idea being, neither side had radio communications with their air forces). 

--

Though the rules are designed to be simple and quick, the game was actually quite slow since neither Peter or Magne are confident with the smaller details and I spent a lot of time discussing various points of contention with Peter. In the end we ran out of time and so it was a win on points for the communists. 

Rojo Milicia /Communist force	VNA Colonel Castellanos’s force
1 x Infantry commander 1 x Artillery spotter 4 x Mortar teams 2 x HMG teams 9 x Infantry fire teams 3 x LMG teams 4 x BA-6 armoured cars 2 x BAI armoured cars 2 x ZiS trucks w/AA machine guns. 3 x ZiS trucks.	1 x Infantry commander 1 x Out post commander (mounted) 20 x Infantry fire teams 4 x Schneider field guns 2 x AA mount machine guns 1 x Armoured car 1 x Armoured staff car

-

The new terrain worked brilliantly and from the level of the ground forces, the way the hills, hedges and trees give a sense of obscure realism is very satisfactory. 

There were two points of concern raised by the game regarding the rules. The first was land mines, which need to be worked out as they are not really covered in the rules at all - and this despite how often they get used. The second point was strafing. The P-16's attempted to stafe the communist mortar battery but our rules have always been weak with regards to using machine guns against multiple targets and the P-16s were entirely ineffective.

---