Latest from the Blog
Tank Diorama
This time there actually is a diorama featuring in this post. I have been distracted of late with a whole load of other interesting subjects and I have been slow in making progress on my diorama. However, recently I have found time and after a bit of a false start I have finished it. I…
More Thoughts on Tank Gunnery : Firing on the Move
I use the word “error” in this post, to describe the error in the pointing of a gun. An error source or source of error is the thing causing the error. When a gun is pointed to hit a target, the errors all add up to mean it’s not quite pointed in the right direction.…
Tank Diorama (Not!)
It does not take a genius to see that the banner for this post definitely does not show a tank diorama. But go with it for now! This post originated in a birthday present, like my last four. Same gift givers, but different gift. I was given a copy of “Tanks” a few years ago,…
Pepperpot Barrage : Tanks vs Artillery
This is another post inspired by my birthday present from two friends. I have now finished reading about the Sherwood Rangers Yeomanry in “Brothers in Arms”, by James Holland. They were involved in an interesting action at the start of Operation Veritable, I believe I recall reading about it in Robert Boscawen’s book “Armoured Guardsmen”…
Chain of Command : Battle Report
I have only played “Chain of Command” (CoC) a couple of times before, solo games, to get a better grasp of the rules. I am sufficiently novice with the rules that it takes me a long time to play a game, lots of referring to and searching through the rules. The last time I had…
Tiger Hunt – “What a Tanker” Battle Report
It’s been a while since I played a game, solo or otherwise. This was a solo game, hard on the heels of my last post, where I described building a pair of Tiger tanks. I was keen to try one out and found I had some free time. So I set up some terrain and…
Tiger Tiger
“Tyger Tyger, burning bright, In the forests of the night; What immortal hand or eye, Could frame thy fearful symmetry?” – William Blake I would imagine any tank commander in WWII coming across the scene in the title banner would consider the symmetry quite fearful. I have a T-shirt with that quote printed underneath a…
Centurion vs T-62
This is not quite my usual comparison, I have less data than I need but have found some rare and interesting material associated with these Cold War tanks, so thought it worth looking at anyway. WWII tanks are relatively easy to assess, they all have steel armour, use relatively simple gunnery techniques and the ammunition…
Other People’s Figures (1)
When I started this blog, it had not been my intention to show others people’s toys, just mine. As I have so many it didn’t seem like I’d lack material. And indeed, I still have a lot to go at. But I do really like to look at other people’s figures, for interest, inspiration, and…
6mm Cold War : Russians
Hard on the heels of my West German GHQ 1:285 figures, come my Russians! I only have a reinforced Company Group sized force of Germans, giving me an infantry company in Marder IFVs, with a couple of platoons of Leopard 2s and a few extras. My Russian force is larger, with most of a Motor…
6mm Cold War : West Germans
I have picked up an interest in all things Cold War of late. Recent posts have featured Cold War tanks, I’m currently listening to the audiobook of “Team Yankee”, and I’ve been flicking through the rules of “MBT”, a board game of tank warfare set in 1987 West Germany. These details and the fact that…
M48 vs T-54/55
Once I had finished work on the post about the Centurion vs T-54/55, I had a T-54/55 target and I thought, “What else can I do with that?”. I had a notion that it might be fun to do some combat modelling, looking at Cold War rather than WWII tanks. The Fulda Gap sprang to…
So, What is a Tank? – Part 3 Ammunition
Having written a fairly long post about what a tank is, which said little about armour or guns, I wrote another post to cover these topics, here. Having not said much yet about ammunition in either of these posts, this one is intended to address that. There are many flavours of ammunition. The main ones…
So, What is a Tank? – Part 2 Armour and Guns
In my last post, “So, what is a tank?”, I did not say very much about tank guns and armour, so that original post has now grown to two posts. I fully expect that it will grow to three, since this one is already quite long and does not say much about tank ammunition. Following…
So, What is a Tank?
This is a question I get asked when I have gone off on one, having heard people describe any old tracked vehicle with a gun as a tank (so only very rarely then!). I realised the other day that I have dived into this blog malarky but never actually described what it is I am…
Centurion vs T-54/55
I bought a couple of books recently, “Tanks at the Iron Curtain”, the two slim volumes cover 1946-1960 and 1961-1975. I am just waiting for the third, hopefully covering 1976-1990 or thereabouts. They deal with Cold War tanks, as you might guess. Anyway, the first of them gives two comparisons of British tanks and Russian…
Sights and Stuff
This post is a bit of a rant about different odds and sods to do with tank sights. It comes yapping at the heels of these earlier posts, where I revisited my sensor modelling methods after some debate about the performance of sights of different nations, here, and took a closer look at range finding,…
Combat Modelling of Historic Battles – Kraschanitschen Part 2
In an earlier post, here, I described how I found a real historic battle, dug out a load of descriptions of what happened and then tried to rationalise the material into a single narrative. I then recreated the battle as best I could in my combat model and had a look to see what happened.…
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