Plucky Little Belgium (2) A few steps forward, and a few back

More on my forray into the Belgian Airforce in WW1

As the war wore on it became clear the Belgians needed new aircraft

Sopwith 1 1/2 Strutter. Belgium was in dire need of some more modern planes, and received "spare" Strutters from both England and France. This is one of the English sourced ones which were 2 seaters, the French supplied versions (licence built) tended to be single seaters with the weight saved allocated to bombs. The pics of the original show the RFC roundel was hastily overpainted and I have tried for that effect here. Yet another Shapeways model.

Next the RE8. This is an "official" Wings of War model, and the cause of much heartache. The RE8 was supplied to Belgium by Britain as a replacement for the ageing collection of F40s, GIVs etc. The RE8 was at best an obsolete design when it entered British service, by the time it arrived in Belgian hands it had a reputation as an easy kill. The reasons are pretty simple. The British "Higher Ups" thought that an airplane should be stable and easy to fly so that the crew could get on with the important stuff like leaning over the side taking photographs. They built the RE series to do just that, and ended up with slow flying planes that could not evade any enemy that came looking for them. Even worse the RE8 turned out to be flimsy and a bit of a handful to fly, being prone to stalls and badly balanced so that there was a warning on the side that said something like "It is dangerous to try to take off WITHOUT an observer or counterweight in the rear cockpit". The Belgians did try and fix this by replacing the engine with a more powerful Hispano-Suiza. This helped boost speed a bit, and made them far less dangerous to fly. The problem is that Wings of War produced the RE8 in Belgian colours they decided that rather than remodelling the front end with teh Hispano engine they would leave it the same as the RFC version, but remove the prominent exhaust stacks. This leaves the model as a bit of a deadloss - if they had left the stacks you could still use it as an unmodified RE8, but as it is it looks nothing like the Hispano engined Belgian RE8 and also looks wrong as an original. Oh Well.

Luckily Shapeways do an Hispano engined RE8 so I'm hoping to pick one up to show as a comparison.

Next - Fighters!

According to Douglas Adams, its a swear word.

I am of course speaking of Belgium

As alluded to in an earlier post, I quite like the underdog when playing WW1 Dogfights, and there can be no greater underdog then good old "Plucky Little Belgium"

Belgium was definitely the runt of the litter as far as WW1 Entente air-forces went. The problem was that she had almost no aircraft industry of her own, and half the country was overrun by the Germans in short order. Belgium therefore had to scrape and scratch her Aviation Militaire Belge together from what she could obtain from her allies, and as we shall see, this wasn't always top notch. I have a small but growing Belgian contingent for Wings of War.

I'll concentrate on the two seaters first before moving on to the "interesting" subject of fighters

Here's my first Belgian - a Caudron GIV of Escadrille C74. This was an interesting unit in that it was a joint Franco Belgian squadron organised to perform photo recce duties. The model is a 3D print from Shapeways and the decals are from Dom Skelton, crew from Peter Pig. The Caudron GIV was a fairly useful if slow and vulnerable plane. Probably more at home on "Catch the Pigeon" than the Western Front, but lack of suitable replacements meant this obsolete design served a long time in front line service.

Next is another "pusher", this time a Farman F40. This is "Medusa" which served with the Aviation Militaire, again on recce duties. Several Belgian F40s were painted in individual colour schemes similar to the nose art associated with WW2 US bombers including skulls, Chaplain, some nudes and Medusa. Being a bit photogenic there are several pics of these available on line. Another Shapeways 3d print (actually the first I bought and painted). Like the GIV the F40 was overtaken by events and was quickly obsolete, but served on in Belgian service for a long time simply because there was no available replacement.

If You Go Down To The Woods Today....

My weakness of mind was again highlighted last Saturday at the Battlefront Show in Stockton. I was helping out doing demos on the Hawk stand, when I was suddenly taken by a stupid and irrational urge to start a new period.

Typically the seeds had been sown by an old gaming friend Mark Hadman as we talked about gaming trends, and generally bemoaned the state of the gaming world. High on our agenda was the problem of finding opponents and opportunities to play games we wanted. Both of us had come to the same conclusion by different routes - that we had to diversify and play games that are popular, even if we don't particularly have a lot of enthusiasm for them. In passing Mark mentioned he had played Muskets & Tomahawks, and that it was a good, fun and easy to play game.

I never held a lot of enthusiasm for the black powder period. To me, Napoleonics may as well be a funny sort of three coloured ice-cream. the American War of Independance & French Indian Wars also were low on my hit list, although I did enjoy playing Andy Callan's superb "Loose Files & American Scramble" rules. However, Mark's comments also happened to coincide with another club member (John) wanting to play AWI. John has been trying to whip up interest for a year  or so without success. It seemed like maybe I could tie both these threads together, so after some cajoling I also roped my regular opponent Paul in, and we set of to see Dave Thomas to do "a deal". After the usual horse trading cash changed hands and we walked away with a couple of boxes of Perrys AWI ,  some Wargames Factory AWI Militia, and a North Star British Wilderness Starter Force for the FIW. Clearly our planning and coordination were not what they should be as when we finally sat down to assess our haul of plastic and lead we discovered we had forgotten the French!

Part of the plan is to get these painted and on the table fast, so I immediately got to work on some Indians, assisted by loaning a copy of the BBC series "Last of the Mohicans" with Phillip "Dont tell him your name Pike!" Madoc playing Magua, and here they are ! Not the greatest paint jobs but they'll do for me

Six down - still need basing etc bit not a bad start. That leaves me with 16 more British Rangers and an Officer to paint, so watch this space

    

Six years old again

I was "working" the Battleground show in Stockton this weekend doing a demo on the Hawk Wargames stand. Just after arriving I took a stroll around and there, looking up at me from a box of plastic kits, was a bit of my childhood.

It was an Airfix 1:72 Scale Series 5 Handley Page 0-400. This always held a special place in my heart. I think the kit was released somewhere in the late 1960s. When I was a young boy my grandfather would walk me to the newsagents on a Sunday morning and buy me an Airfix kit, which we would solemnly assemble that afternoon. I must have gone through hundreds of kits, but two always stick in my mind, the Sunderland and the HP 0-400. The reason for this is that these two were both on the top shelf behind the counter, and importantly in the section of the shop that doubled as a Post Office. Post Offices were shut on Sundays, so even if I got the chance at a Series 5 (not that it happened often, I was usually restricted to Series 1&2) we couldn't buy it because the Post Office was locked up.

I must have spent months staring up at the box, which showed the HP being attacked by a number of red Fokker Triplanes. The box was enormous, and being out of reach made it even more special. I could go to the shop through the week, but only on Sunday with Grandad, so I never managed to get one...sob!

The kit was re-released in the 1980s in a lacklustre red stripe box. Sadly at this time I was doing the sixth form \ university thing and my mind was elsewhere. It was released again in 2012 but the box was wrong, I needed the original or nothing at all. On occasion I have seen them on ebay bit they go for silly prices.

Anyway, a small amount of haggling later and I was the proud owner of my very own HP 0-400!!! The chap said he thought it was complete bit couldn't guarantee it, but at that point I couldn't care less, it was mine.

So I have it in front of me now.

I can say I feel pretty happy when I look at it. Its great to finally get hold of something you dreamed of as a child, and it brings back some lovely warm memories of my halcyon days with my Grandad. I also have to say the box must have shrunk, because it used to look huge to my childs eyes.

I've opened it, and yes, I think it looks complete, and looking at the number of parts (167!) this is no easy build kit - I shudder to think what me and Grandad would have made of it back then if we ever had managed to get it out of the Post Office.

The thing is, should I try building it, or is it better to leave it as it is as a memento? I'm tempted to do the latter. Sometimes it is good to have unfulfilled dreams, and it wont be the same without Grandad

2015 and all that (1)

GZG have announced their Xmas deal, the weather is starting to get really cold, there's only a few contestants left on Strictly Come Dancing, so it must be that special time of the year beloved of all wargamers, when we make plans and wild promises as to what we will be playing next year.

So far I have committed to more Dropzone Commander, a once a month Impetus meet, ditto Formula De,  a Chain of Command campaign in the Desert, and now a 15mm Sci Fi campaign using Gruntz, plus the carried over "Wastelands" \ Fallout skirmish.

In reality maybe one in three of these projects will actually bear fruit, some of the others will make it half way then get put on the "maybe later" pile, while others will be quietly shuffled into the gaming long grass. Part of the fun is finding out what. This time last year we were all tooling up for a 7TV campaign which came to nothing, even though everyone who played enjoyed it. A similar fate befell our VBCW plans. Of course another joy of wargaming is how quickly you can reheat a project, so maybe 2015 will see the Battle of Greatham (1938)?

Meanwhile my current planning is centred around Gruntz & DZC. We have a skeleton Gruntz campaign written, and four cautious expressions of interest, so roll on January !
 

More Plastic Goodness - Zvezda A13 Cruiser Tank in 1:100

Mark - aka Geordie in Exile seems to enjoy winding me up.

Earlier this week he forwarded an email from PSC announcing they had the Zvezda Art of Tactic A13s available, along with some comment along the lines of "I may have to start looking at 15mm". This was something of a red rag to a bull as I had been extolling the virtues of the new generation of cheap 15mm to him for years but apparently to no avail. Maybe the emails all got sent to his "spam" folder?

As it happens I was waiting for this particular little model to land here in the UK. Zvezda's release schedule is still dominated by the requirements of their "Art of Tactic" game, rather than the requirements of us wargamers. Art of Tactic is a crossover board game with units represented by plastic models. The problem is that they use 1:72 for infantry and guns, 1:100 for tanks and vehicles, and 1:144 for aircraft (or 1:200 for larger aircraft), all priced at around £3.00 for a unit. This is something of a "curates egg". We get good quality 1:100 (15mm) tanks at a very reasonable price, but for us there is also the disappointment in knowing that the guns will never arrive in the "right" scale. The other interesting point is that Zvezda have been rather random in their releases, because they are concentrating on the Art of Tactic game rather than looking at the wider wargames market, they're producing models the mainstream wargaming companies would not look at in plastic, and the A13 is one of those.

OK the pedants will immediately cry out "thats not a Crusader!" and of course they would be right. However given the confused situation of British Cruiser Tank naming, I can understand how Zvezda  may get the Cruiser Tank Mk IV (A13 MkII) confused with Cruiser Tank MkVI (A15). It is a Mk IV, but you could make it a IVA with a minimum of work (cut the coax Vickers and replace with a slimmer Besa) or at this scale just not bother!

The kit itself is very simple and consists of 2 sprues with a total of 7 parts (plus the flag bit that is only used in Art of Tactic). The plastic is a little bit softer than what you would get from Airfix or PSC - I suspect this is to allow the "snap fit" to work.

Initially with Zvezda I didn't glue them, but last week my cat Otto (Carius) knocked a box of them on the floor and though there was no long term damage there was plenty of bits popping off, so this one got some Liquid Poly to hold it together. The assembly instructions are on the back of the box
 

It took less than eight minutes to clip the parts from the sprues and assemble them. The sprues were 100% flash free. Detail is very fine - a feature of many of the AoT kits and as a result they lack the overscale features we come to expect from mainstream wargames models. This is most pronounced in the 2Pdr gun barrel, which is very thin and fine, and has about a life expectancy of a few minutes on a wargames table, so I plan to replace it with some plastic rod before it gets painted, and the tracks and running gear which are frankly superb. The down side is like all AoT tanks there is no way to model them with an open hatch, which is a bit of a disappointment, and the smoke dischargers usually seen on the right hand side of the turret on tanks in a combat area are missing - but that last would take about a minute to fix with a bit of plastic rod..

Proportionally and dimensionally the Zvezda kit looks spot on, and captures the look of the real thing really well.

All in all a great little kit and well worth £3.00. Let me put that into perspective. Flames of War will sell you their multi medium (resin and plastic) version for £8.00. You will get the option to have an open hatch and a commander, but saving £5 a tank is damned attractive. QRF also do an A13 MkIV at £6 each, and Skytrex for £6.50, but still, thats twice the Zvezda price.

Well worth picking up if you want to do either France 1940 or the Early phase of the Western Desert campaign

Remembering

Today is Armistice Day, when we remember the dead of wars and the sacrifice they made.

However it is important we remember the whole story. We can't for a moment allow this to be hijacked by groups seeking to push their own agenda. That's why this is wrong

And this is right

But nor should we allow the glory myth to mask the truth about the sacrifice, or the PR suits to hijack it. The RBL have produced a sanitized version of The Green Fields of France by Eric Bogle. In it's original form it is a beautiful, haunting and thoughtful song that highlights the sacrifice and futility of war, in the new RBL version its a pop ballad featuring some abstract posing by Joss Stone, with the last verse, the one that makes you think, removed.

'Ah young Willie McBride, I can’t help wonder why,

Do those that lie here know why did they die?

And did they believe when they answered the cause,

Did they really believe that this war would end wars?

Well the sorrow, the suffering, the glory, the pain,

The killing and dying, were all done in vain.

For Willie McBride, it all happened again,

And again, and again, and again, and again.'

I believe sometimes there is such a thing as a Just War. There is no such thing as a clean one. If we forget that, we're dooming our children, and insulting our veterans and those who sacrificed their lives on our behalf.