A boat of VC's

Just before 0700 on 22nd March 1916, Kapitan Ludwig Güntzel was staring through his periscope aboard the German submarine SM U-68. Less than a week into her first war patrol, she was laying off Dingle in Ireland. So far she'd scored no kills, but that was about to change. Through the murk and across the pitching ocean was the 3200 ton collier and tramp steamer Loderer. Kpt Güntzel lined up his submarine and fired a single torpedo. After a few seconds it narrowly missed the Loderer's bow. The tramp steamer continued thrashing her way through the sea unperturbed.
After about 20 minutes Kpt Güntzel ordered the U-boat to the surface. Instead of wasting another precious torpedo he'd sink this steamer with his 4.1" deck gun. Once on the surface the submarine was quickly able to catch the tramp steamer and Kpt Güntzel ordered a warning shot across the Loderer's bow. This brought an immediate response. The Loderer came to a halt in a cloud of blown off steam, and the Merchant Marine crew launched a boat in panic and haste. Wanting to be sure SM U-68 closed the range by about 200 yards. Any of the German Sailors looking at the stern of the deserted Loderer would have seen the Merchant Marine flag being hauled down, and a flash of white raised in its place. Was this a flag of Surrender? No, it was the Royal Navy Battle Ensign. At this moment the sides of the structures on deck dropped and SM U-68 found herself staring down the barrels of five 12 pounder guns, which immediately started to roar. The five guns quickly pumped out 21 shells, several of which struck the submarine. SM U-68 started to submerge, as HMS Farnborough as the Loderer was called after being taken into service, sped up and moved towards the submarine. As she passed she threw a barrel over the side of the ship, this was a brand new never used before weapon; the Depth Charge. The barrel full of explosives blew the bow of the submarine out of the water, as the submarine continued to sink the 12 pounder guns continued to fire scoring more hits on the submarine. Finally SM U-68 slipped under the waves with all hands on board. HMS Farnborough, a former tramp steamer and one of the Royal Navy's new Q-ships had scored her first kill.

SM U-68

For the next 13 months HMS Farnborough continued her patrols without further success. During this period of nothing the Captain, Gordon Campbell, hatched a new scheme. On February the 17th 1917, SM U-83 was to experience the full force of this plan.
Again off the Irish coast HMS Farnborough was sailing alone, when the lookouts spotted a torpedo in the water. Campbell deliberately didn't avoid the torpedo, but let it strike his ship. The explosion blew a large hole in the hold and she began to ship water and list. On board HMS Farnborough the panic party (a group of sailors detailed to abandon ship in order to represent a terrified merchant crew) immediately launch four lifeboats and abandoned ship.
This time the ruse worked, SM U-83 surfaced and approached to within almost touching distance. At which point the crew ran out the White Ensign and unmasked a 6 pounder gun, along with a number of small arms and blasted the submarine at point blank range. The sinking submarine left only eight men in the water, however due to being unpowered HMS Farnborough only managed to rescue two, one of whom later died.
Now faced with a sinking ship of his own Campbell sent a mayday which read "Q5 slowly sinking respectfully wishes you goodbye." Luckily two nearby destroyers picked up the message and came to HMS Farnborough’s rescue. They tried to take her under tow, after picking up most of the ship's company. However during the night several depth charges detonated on board the ship, nearly killing Campbell and the first officer Ronald Niel Stuart. However despite all this, and the explosions severing the tow, the ship was beached at Mill Cove too heavily damaged to return to service.

HMS Farnborough at rest

For this action Campbell won a Victoria Cross.

Most of the crew were then transferred to the collier Vittoria, whom was once again fitted out as a Q-ship named HMS Pargust. Patrolling from Ireland in the same area Stuart was as convinced as Campbell had been, the only way to successfully lure a submarine into the trap was to be hit by the torpedo, and hope that the hold full of wood would keep the ship afloat.
At 0800 on the 7th June 1917, a torpedo was spotted heading towards HMS Pargust, and like before Stuart deliberately let the torpedo hit. This time the ruse was almost blown when the force of the impact as well as causing massive damage to the ship blew one of the gun ports down, which would have revealed the 12 pounder deck gun. Luckily one sailor, William Williams, like Atlas, grabbed the weighty cover and took the considerable weight on his back holding it in place.
As rehearsed the panic party was ordered overboard. They watched as the periscope of the submarine circled the stricken ship at a range of 400 meters. The Germans were well aware of the Q-ships and so the captain of the U-boat was looking for signs of danger. After a while the U-boat surfaced and began to head towards the panic party in its lifeboats. Realising that the Germans wanted to interrogate them, Stuart ordered his lifeboat to head back towards the ship, and round behind the stern of HMS Pargust. Believing the crew were trying to regain their ship the U-boat began to follow them signalling at them to heave to. This brought the U-boat to within 46m of the ship, at which point the White Ensign was run out along with the guns.

Gun hidden on Q-ship

Same gun cleared for action

The U-boat despite several hits tried to flee on the surface and disappear into the mist, however further volleys caused the submarine to halt and the crew to seemingly raise their hand in surrender. Dutifully HMS Pargust halted firing, at which point the submarine started its engines in an attempt to escape. Further shell hits caused the submarine to explode and sink. Of the submarine’s crew two were rescued by the panic party. HMS Pargust was taken under tow back to Ireland.

HMS Pargust

The after action review faced a problem. The entire crew was deemed to have acted with valour in the face of the enemy, which made it impossible to decide on how to award the Victoria Crosses. However the Royal Warrant for the Victoria Cross under Article 13 contains a clause that enables a vote to be carried out amongst the men involved in the action. The crosses were awarded to William Williams and First Officer Stuart.

The ballot system had to be used for a further two Victoria crosses on the next Q-ship commanded by Campbell, HMS Dunraven. A much fiercer battle and one that the Q-ship lost when her identity was revealed. That action involved the crew holding position and waiting for the U-boat to close while the ship was on fire. However the U-boat failed to take the bait and left after causing enough damage to sink the Q-ship.

Image credits:
vrakdykking.com, nickoftimemktg.files.wordpress.com and www.wrecksite.eu

Fido Tweet Meow

Part one

On the 22nd of December HMS Mimi and Toutou were launched, and on the 26th they saw their first action with the third German vessel the Kingani which was a 45 ton steamship armed with a six pounder gun. Like the two Royal Navy ships she could only fire forwards. She had been ordered to conduct a reconnaissance on the Belgian side of the lake, to see what the Belgian's were up too. HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou were launched to intercept her. By lucky chance the Kingani sailed past the Royal Navy boats, so they had cut her off from her base. At first Kingani mistook the two motorboats heading towards her as not Belgian, and thus not a threat. Then she spotted the White Ensigns. Turning as tightly as she could to bring her forward gun to bear, the British launches easily evaded the first German shots, and closed to firing distance opening fire about midday. A swirling dogfight on the surface of the lake then ensued, the British quickly realised that Kingani had no rear facing guns and tried to attack from that direction. Eventually a three pounder round hit the gun shield on Kingani and killed three crew including the captain. Several more shell strikes followed, and the German crew struck their colours. In their haste to capture the Kingani HMS Mimi accidentally rammed Kingani at full speed. The damage nearly sunk Mimi, but she managed to ground herself.  Kingani was then escorted to port.

Kingani

Kingani was repaired and renamed HMS Fifi (Tweet-Tweet in French...), and her six pounder was mounted in the stern while the shore battery loaned the navy a twelve pounder to go on the front of the boat. HMS Mimi was also salvaged and repaired.

On 9th of February 1916 the Hedwig von Wissmann was spotted making a reconnaissance run. HMS Fifi and Mimi were launched to intercept her. Spotting the oncoming boats the Hedwig von Wissmann turned to fight, then seemed to think better of it, and turned away, maybe to lure them towards the Goetzen. HMS Fifi and the Hedwig von Wissmann were evenly matched for speed (the Hedwig von Wissmann had a 1 knot advantage), however HMS Mimi was faster than both, she roared ahead and began to harry the Hedwig von Wissmann.

Whenever the German tried to turn to bring its main gun to bear HMS Mimi used her speed to keep in the Hedwig von Wissmann's rear arc and thus safety. But every time the German boat tried to turn to attack its harasser HMS Fifi gained some ground, until finally after three hours, the German was within range. The recoil from the first shot of the Fifi's gun brought her to  a standstill. The shell flew wide, the sunlight  reflecting on the lake caused an odd shimmer effect, which meant aiming was difficult. Every time the Fifi fired its shell went wide. Then the 12 pounder gun jammed. A frantic 20 minutes followed as the Hedwig von Wissmann began to pull away, the the gun was cleared. In the shell locker only two rounds remained.

HMS Fifi

The twelve pounder belched flame and the Hedwig von Wissmann shuddered as the round smashed the Germans hull and started her flooding. Then the final shell arrived, smashing the boiler and setting fire to the Hedwig von Wissmann. The German captain immediately ordered the setting of scuttling charges and ordered the ship to be abandoned. The survivors were picked up by the British boats.

Short 827, three of which were used by the Belgians

Although the Graf von Goetzen still remained at large, the situation had changed. Unbeknownst to the allies the Goetzen had most of its guns removed and replaced by wooden fakes, as the guns were needed by German land forces. For that reason the Goetzen didn't try any offensive actions, and the allies wary of the immense fire-power they thought the German carried were somewhat hesitant to be aggressive. The Belgian forces tried an air raid against the Goetzen, although results were inconclusive. However the land situation began to grow steadily worse for the Germans. Eventually the Goetzen's home port was abandoned, and the Goetzen was ordered to be scuttled. However the three shipwrights given the job had been the three men who had overseen her reconstruction in 1915, and they decided amongst themselves to try and enable her to be recovered. So with great care they prepared the ship, covering the engines in grease, before scuttling her. She was recovered in 1918, and has since then served as a passenger ship, often transporting refugees in that war torn part of the world. Today she still sails as the MV Liemba.

Image credits:
williamsburglegati.files.wordpress.com

Germany rules the Waves

In the first year of World War One the German forces in the colony of East Africa quickly managed to achieve supremacy over the waters of Lake Tanganyika. They managed this simply by getting there first with the most amount of force. At the start of the war there were only five vessels on the lake capable of being armed. The Germans owned two, Belgium and Great Britain the other three. The German steamer Hedwig von Wissmann was armed with four (or three, sources differ) 37mm Hotchkiss Revolver Cannons. With this armament she damaged the Belgian steamer, and sunk the two British steamers. With this dominance of the lake the Germans were able to launch raids into allied controlled territories.

Hedwig von Wissmann

37mm Hotchkiss Revolver Cannon in Russian service.

With this situation a plan was hatched in April 1915. It was floated by an ex Boer scout, and big game poacher called John Lee. He approached the Admiralty suggesting that two motor launches be dispatched to the lake to beat the German vessels. At this point Admiral Sir Henry Jackson said "It is both the duty and the tradition of the Royal Navy to engage the enemy wherever there is water to float a ship.", and the plan was approved. Two 40ft launches, each armed with a 3 pounder gun and a machine gun were brought. The launches could reach a speed of 19 knots and were powered by a pair of 100 hp engines. The large gun on the foredeck had one slight flaw, the massive recoil meant that they could only be fired more or less directly ahead. If fired to the side the ship's frame wouldn't be able to take the strain and disastrous results would follow.

HMS Mimi or HMS Toutou

These two boats were named Dog and Cat, but the idea of using such names on a Royal Navy warship caused them to be rejected by the Admiralty. So the names HMS Mimi and HMS Toutou were submitted and passed.
In Parisian slang those words translated to "Meow" and "Fido", so the original character of the names was carried through.

The boats and men of the Naval Africa Expedition now had to get to Lake Tanganyika, a landlocked freshwater lake in deepest Africa. The first leg of the journey was on board the SS Llanstephen Castle from London to Cape Town. Then by train to the Belgian village of  Fungurume, where the line stopped. From there the two launches would be dragged by two steam tractors through 100 miles of the Mitumba mountains, and dense brush to the village of Sankisia and another rail head. A place you'd not take a tank, let alone a pair of boats! This line only lasted for 15 miles. The next 500 miles were done by floating the boats down narrow streams, in the middle of the dry season. This meant that the streams were almost gone, and the launches had too large a draught. They had to be lashed to barrels to give them enough buoyancy. After this another 175 miles by train followed with the exhausted expedition reaching Lake Tanganyika on October 26th, only to find the situation had changed.

The Germans had received reinforcements in the shape of the Graf von Goetzen, a 1200 ton steamer that had been built in 1913 in Germany, then had been disassembled, packed into 5000 crates and shipped to Da-es-salam. She had then been carried overland through the bush to the lake and had been rebuilt. Her armament consisted of a 105mm gun taken from the sunken Cruiser SMS Königsberg and a spare Hotchkiss Revolving Cannon taken from Hedwig von Wissmann, after she was re-armed with another of SMS Königsbergs gun. That's not all, the Goetzen also carried a 88mm gun as well.

Graf von Goetzen

This made her the best armed and largest ship on the lake. What could Fido and Meow do agaisnt such odds?

Part two

Image Credits:
www.lead-adventure.de, lzdream.net, www.ibiblio.org, peterbaxterafrica.com, www.africanbyways.co.za and themodelgallery.files.wordpress.com

A busy Week

If you've been following my Facebook page you'll know I've had a bit of a busy week. What with a trip to Bovington Tank Museum, and last weeks book release. For that reason I'm having a bit of a quiet one for today's article.

First the history. We have here an assessment of of the technical aspects of Soviet tanks. As obtained by the British Military Mission I mentioned last week.

As a trip to Bovington wouldn't be complete without some pictures of tanks.

Why is it that this tank, used only by the British, built to a British design, and ordered for by the British is always featured in a US tree in any game its in?

Looks like someone has been attacking this poor Matilda with a paint brush, but the markings are all correct, can you work out what they all mean?

A Tiger's nightmare...

Next group is a series of shots showing the extensive modifications to the Stug IIIG the Finns made to make it into a Stu-40

Logs, drivers visor, enlarged MG opening to use a DT Machine gun, concrete to the super structure.

Extra armour added to the hull sides.

Finally another question for you, no this isn't a miss-click on my camera, but what is the significance of this patch of road?

First Book

You know I said last week life was a bit busy, well here's reason #1 for it. My first book is out, and available to buy!

Before we carry on, I want to be clear: This product is not endorsed by Wargaming or by Overlord. It's entirely my doing.

Click here. 

Its a compilation of the articles I've posted up here. Many have been edited and tweaked, and a few have had new information that's come to light in the time between it first getting written for this blog and publishing.

However I have included a brand new piece that has never been seen anywhere. I interviewed a veteran of D-Day about his experiences as part of the first wave. He's never told his story before, and so its entirely brand new.

Why am I doing this? Well in the last few years I have been doing a lot of research in archives around the UK. I have made discoveries, including stuff from Germany and Japan. These discoveries have been forgotten for seventy years. However to publish these discoveries I need to purchase the copyrights from the archives. To do that I need capital, which is something I don't have.
So if you want to see a whole selection of Japanese tanks that even the Japanese forgot about, or Britain's idea of flying tanks, or the story of  the 250 ton tanks that were to land directly into Germany. Think of buying this book as an investment. You buy this book, it makes the above more likely to happen. You'll also advance the study of history.

This Japanese heavy appears to be actually real...

 Now because I've been waffling on for a bit too long, and you lot do like a bit of history on your Sundays.

In the early 1940's the British sent a military mission to Russia, and the following segment of the missions report, shows you how hard up the Russians were for equipment after Barbarossa. Its from about 1942, I think, maybe as late as 1943.

Its Interesting to note the massive numbers of heavy machine guns, which seems to be an attempt to supplant the deficiencies in other fire support equipment.

Close to port, far from Home

 Just a heads up. The next few weeks are going to be a bit hectic for me. So articles might be a bit shorter than usual.

Also reason for this appearing late is my Computer decided to go on strike, and needed some careful pummelling to get it back up and running.

 

Finally my thanks to Mr0Buggy for his help with the Polish sources.

Lieutenant Euge­niusz Wciślicki had graduated from the Polish Naval School in 1938. As a junior officer he'd served in the Polish Navy until Poland's fall, and subsequently made his way to the UK where he joined the Polish Navy in exile. On July 19th 1940 he took command of the Motor Gun Boat S-2, a rather uninteresting name for a ship. The "S" came from the polish word "Scigacze" which translates as Pursuer which she certainly was. S-2 was built before the war for the Polish Navy at the British Power Boat Company in Southampton. Equipped with a pair of 2200hp petrol engines she powered her 24 tons across the water at a speed of 40 knots. S-2's unofficial nickname was "Wilczur" which translates as "Wolfhound". Whilst commanding Wolfhound, Lt Wciślicki became well known in the coastal forces, the British were having trouble with pronouncing his name and so they nicknamed him "Capitan Whisky".

Lt Wciślicki is the one lying down.

On 11th February 1942 with Lt Wciślicki in command Wolfhound covered MTB's attacking the German battleships during their channel dash. Armed with a 20mm cannon and a pair of both .50 and .303 machine guns there wasn't anything else she could do apart from keep enemy E-boats away from the MTB's putting in the attack.

 

Then on 22nd of June came her most famous engagement, one which won Lt Wciślicki a DSO and a Polish medal, the Virtuti Militari which is Poland's highest military award.

On the 21st of June 1942 Wolfhound and her sister ship S-3 or "Pointer" were on patrol near Dungeness, as part of a screen for a convoy. At 2255 Pointer had a engine fail, and with only one engine she was forced to turn for home. Lt Wciślicki elected to continue on his mission of screening the convoy alone.
Later on the morning of the 22nd the wakes of six E-boats were spotted. At night the bow wave of a boat moving at speed is easy to spot as its bright white against a dark background. The six E-boats were making a beeline for the convoy.

Lt Wciślicki radioed his contact report to base. Knowing he was utterly outnumbered and outgunned he was ordered away from the area. Lt Wciślicki had other ideas, suddenly forgetting how to read English or work the code book he turned his boat towards the line of E-boats. They powered through the line at full throttle with every gun spitting a line of tracer. The Germans returned fire and a cat's cradle of glowing beads of tracer webbed itself around the boats. Wolfhound burst free and disappeared into the night, she had taken one hit. A single unexploded German cannon shell was lodged in her.

Some reports say the Germans were so confused they continued to fire at each other, however I've not been able to verify that. However the Germans knowing their surprise had been lost turned away, and the convoy was allowed to proceed unmolested.

Lt Wciślicki and Wolfhound survived the war. She was paid off in 1944 and in 1947 was inspected by the Poles to see if they would take her back home and into service again, however, they declined due to the poor state she was in. After that she might have been used as a target boat, and presumably sunk.
Lt Wciślicki stayed in the UK after the war, becoming naturalised in 1949, and living at that time in Ipswich. Some sources suggest he served in the Royal Navy using the name Westkey, but again information is scant and difficult to confirm. To give you some idea of how confused this story is, different sources gave up to three different years (41, 42 and 44) for the action against the E-boats. It was only when I found a date for his award I was able to select the right year.

Image credits:
kresy-siberia.org, www.bettsbooks.co.uk and www.hslmouldings.co.uk (note: HLS do a detailed model of S-2)

Alphabet Soup

The Angolan Civil War was the usual nasty bush war you get when various factions are supported by larger countries. In this particular case it was another war by proxy between the Communist and Western countries. However not all the Western nations supported everyone of the factions. As we'll be talking about a large mechanised battle in this war it seems like a good idea to have a look at the factions involved.

Cubans in Angola

 MPLA: Communist government of Angola supported directly by Cuba, and semi directly by the Soviet Union.
FAPLA: Army of the MPLA
UNITA: Supported by both the South Africans and the United States. These were Anti-Communist guerrillas who had fought alongside the MPLA against the Portuguese before Angolan independence. The US crucially supplied UNITA with Stinger missiles. Of course due to the UN arms embargo they wouldn't support South Africa.
SADF: South African Defence Force, armed with weapons from France and home grown weapons.

Also involved, but not appearing in this article:
FNLA:  supported by the West, sort of.
SWAPO: A large group of communist guerrillas, from Nambia. The MPLA allowed SWAPO to use bases in Angola to launch attacks on South Africa.

The civil war was a bloody affair that kept flaring up into large scale battles and it lasted from 1975 until 2002, although by the late 80's most of the large backers were no longer involved, apart from cash injections. But just before the ceasefire and withdrawal there was a series of large mechanised battles where the SADF and UNITA took on the Cubans and FAPLA. One of these occurred on 3rd of October 1987.

It all started when FAPLA launched a sweep of mechanised forces through the UNITA heartland trying to wipe them out completely. The FAPLA units were backed by armour with about 150 T-54's and a smattering of ancient T-34/85's. SADF and UNITA infantry forces backed by aircraft and pinpoint artillery fire slowed and then eventually halted the advance. One SADF trick to make the FAPLA waste expensive Soviet supplied modern SAMs was to tie tinfoil strips to balloons and release them over the enemy lines.
With the grand offensive halted, the FAPLA forces fell back across the Lomba River. The SADF decided to concentrate on destroying the FAPLA's 47 Brigade before it made it back across the river. To get there the battalion had to cross a marshy area. To facilitate this the 47 Brigade created a road with wooden logs. Unfortunately for them SADF observers were in position to direct artillery onto the log road. This road was finished by the 2nd of October.

The first of 47 Brigades vehicles started across the log road. They were a pair of SA-9 Gaskins. The SADF observer managed to score a direct hit on the second moving vehicle with a G-5 155mm round, blocking the path to safety. Several other attempts were made to shift the wreck, however the artillery opened fire whenever movement was spotted.

The next morning the joint SADF and UNITA forces mounted entirely in Ratels arrived. Most of the Ratels were armed with 20mm cannons, but some were fire support versions with 90mm guns. The approach of the column caused some panic amongst the 47th Brigade's soldiers. Suddenly three armoured recovery vehicles burst from cover, using these like Churchill ARK's from the Second World War they quickly formed an improvised bridge. Several 47 Brigade vehicles made it across, however two collided in a scramble to reach safety, and blocked the makeshift bridge.

This vs a T-54...

With UNITA forces blocking any escape route 47 Brigade was now forced to fight. They turned and sent their T-54's to attack the Ratels. Although the Ratel crews were not happy with being forced to take on the T-54's they had no choice. The FAPLA forces were used to the UNITA forces breaking contact at the sight of tanks advancing on them, so they were really surprised when the thinly armoured Ratels charged at their tanks. The Ratels had no stabilization to their guns so they couldn't fire on the move, however, they were lighter and faster than the tanks. This mobility along with the higher silhouette gave the Ratel's an advantage in the thick brush. The Ratel crews could stand on the hull of their charges, and see the dust plumes of the lumbering T-54's. Then they could either avoid them or get into a better position to destroy them. The Ratel would race towards the T-54, then slam on the brakes and halt almost touching it, then start to fire its 90mm at point blank range into the sides and rear of the tank, before racing off again at full speed into the bush. Some of the T-54's were destroyed from a range of just 15 metres.
Even the Cuban air support failed to hit anything, although the MIG's flew around sixty missions they were afraid to drop to low altitude because of UNITA's US supplied Stinger missiles. And so consequently their bombing accuracy was woeful.

The Ratel's suffered one man killed when a T-54 fired at his speeding vehicle. The round hit the ground and ricocheted up into the turret severely wounding the commander, whom later died. Several more were wounded.
On the FAPLA side the 47 Brigade all but ceased to exist, with a vast list of equipment captured by the SADF forces. Included in this haul was one of the Soviet Union's newest and most secret weapons, an SA-8 Gecko. This was captured intact with all documentation. However this didn't end up in the hands of the west as one might expect. Remembering how the US treated them and some other actions in the region the South Africans kept the Gecko for their own and used it in their weapons research programs.

Image credits:
www.sadf.info

Two Legends

A little while ago during one of the Quiz questions I occasionally write I asked about a shooting record for the SMLE. In the answer I mentioned a Sergeant Major Wallingford who put 37 rounds into the bull's eye of a 12" target at 300 yards, in one minute. To put that in perspective he'd have had to reload the bolt action rifle four times. With that kind of skill it's no surprise that Wallingford had a fearsome reputation during the First World War.

Jesse Wallingford was born in London in 1872. Britain before World War One had a small army, but its soldiers were very well drilled, to the extent that the Germans got a very bloody nose at the battle of Mons. Before the war Wallingford put his considerable talents as a shooter to good effect commenting in various competitions, including the 1908 Olympics. crucially he competed with both pistol and rifle.

Wallingford joined the New Zealand army before the start of the First World War, and taught their infantry to shoot. When the New Zealanders were deployed he went with them, landing at Gallipoli as a machine gun officer. He was responsible for the sighting of his weapons at the Apex on 10th of August 1915, where the Turks launched what can only be described as a human wave attack. Wallingfords machine guns were arrayed to fire across the Turks line of advance. It's estimated that in that 30 minutes of continuous firing the Turks lost around 5000 men. Which brings me onto the next legend the Vickers heavy machine gun.

There are many machine guns in the world, but despite what their manufacturers say most are not sustained fire weapons. I recall speaking to a veteran who once put 3000 rounds through a GPMG non-stop. He said the barrel had a distinct curve to it after that. A Vickers HMG was a true sustained fire weapon due to its water cooling. Here is an account of a sustained fire demonstration with a Vickers gun.

"First day, gauging limits and setting the gun up. (We spent two days hand filing feathers [the square projection] on cross pins to close tolerances so guns and tripods could be assembled without play!) at the end of the day, the instructor told us to draw out one of the guns that we had been working on, [and] one of the lads pulled a gun out of the rack. We were told that this gun was to be fired for the remainder of the course, day and night.

The gun, stores spares, etc, were put onto an Austin Champ and driven onto the range. We mounted the gun onto a tripod in a gun pit. A 4-ton Bedford had been unloaded of a load of ammo. There were stacks of ammo, after cans and barrels. (We had to pack all the rear grooves with asbestos oiled string!) The 2 man crew was relieved every thirty minutes. A third body shovelled empty cases from under the gun with a malt shovel and threw the empty belts clear of the pit. We never heard the gun not firing in anything but the shortest time while the barrel was replaced (every hour). The gun fired 250-round belts without stopping: not in 20, 50 or whatever bursts, but straight through: we could hear it rattling away from the lecture room/workshop, and went to see it between work.

 At the end the gunpit was surrounded by mountains of boxes, belts, cases, debris; a large cleft had appeared in the stop butts where the bullets had destroyed the butts. We took the gun off its tripod and back to the workshop. We inspected and gauged. No measurable difference anywhere. It had eaten barrels, they were changed every hour to 1½ hours, but mechanically [the gun] was unchanged. It had consumed just under five million rounds of .303", non-stop (my notes were for Mk VII, not Mk VIIIz, so I presume zones etc were for Mk VII).

That episode was to show nine armourers the ability of the hallowed Vickers. Only after an excellent course result did my Staff Sergeant boss let me work on our battalion guns, which had smooth water jackets."

Wallingford himself also operated a Vickers gun, during an earlier occasion at Gallipoli on April the 27th the ANZAC's were pinned down, outnumbered and in danger of being over run. Wallingford determined that the ANZAC's only chance was to launch a spoiling attack. So he lept out of the trench and charged forward. As he advanced through the Turkish fire he found a disabled machine gun with a single wounded crewman in a small patch of dead ground. He quickly brought the Vickers into action, between himself with his rifle and the wounded man on the machine gun they kept the Turks at bay for several hours until a relief force moved up. For these actions Wallingford was awarded the Military Cross.

Wallingford also distinguished himself with small arms, dealing with Turkish snipers. If a sniper was causing casualties he would be requested. Upon arriving he would expose himself briefly, and using his fearsome knowledge about musketry would be able to pinpoint the snipers hiding location. Once he'd spotted the snipers hiding place he would engage them. The rapid accurate rate of fire mentioned earlier would soon result in Wallingfords victory. On one occasion Wallingford's sixth sense told him that a nearby bush was acting suspiciously. It was about 60 yards from the ANZAC trenches. When the soldiers with him saw it move slightly they confirmed Wallingfords suspicions. Wallingford hefted his service revolver and said "I think we'll give him a chance!" and fired once killing the Turkish infiltrator.

Wallingford died on 6th of June 1944, having reached the rank of at least captain.

Image credits:
www.clanmacfarlanegenealogy.info, bbci.co.uk, www.mercurynie.com.au and www.forgottenweapons.com

The Artillery Issue

Today I want to do something a bit different and talk about game play and ideas. Next week we'll be back to normal with a history article.

There has been, and always will be an argument about artillery in games like World of Tanks. On one hand you have the ability to utterly one shot people and ruin their game. Part of that issue is the feeling that there was nothing you could do. That issue has been about for many years, many old FPS’s where you had one camping sniper felt the same. Equally it's a kind of jump scare, which makes you feel bad. On top of all that you have the habit of humans to highlight when it happened. As an example I bet most of you can remember the last time your tank just exploded from an arty hit. How many of you remember the shots that missed from artillery? Did you even notice them?
On the other side of the coin you have the poor arty player who is sprinkling his rounds gleefully about the countryside and watching his shells which he sends off and promptly lands in the wrong post code. This is hardly fun for him either.

Perfectly aimed shot

So I've been playing computer games for a lot of years and working with table top war games companies for just as long. So I've had a bit of experience in systems, especially on the wargame system of mechanics that aren't working right within the system. I had a bit of a brain storm and came up with the following idea.

Hip shot!

The idea draws upon artillery from War Thunder, and some ideas taken from the Steel Panthers series. In those games artillery isn't complained about anywhere to the same degree it is in WOT or Armoured Warfare (yes, I spell it correctly…). But is a useful tool. It also draws upon ideas from World of Warships carrier gameplay, introducing a strategy game for those who want it.
Throughout this proposal I'll be using examples to illustrate the point.
As with any plan it never survives first contact with programmers or the enemy. Game engines might just say "nope" can't be done like that. So don't think of this as an exact detailed plan for fixing, more of a general "hey wouldn't it be cool if" idea. Equally any graphics are not intended to be 100% final but are entirely nebulous to show how the idea might look.

I realise this is a significant shift in direction for the arty class. For that reason alone it might be unfavourable, but I feel that at the least this suggestion should be made to get the idea out there, simply because almost none of the game developers seem to have thought of it in this way.

The idea is basically to make artillery an off map asset. Much like throughout the Second World War, artillery was rarely on the front line, unless something went very very very badly wrong. Instead the player drives an observer vehicle, which are always about.

Observer vehicles simply provide a spotter at the forward edge of battle to guide artillery in successfully, leaving combat arm commanders free to fight the battle. They carry the communication, spotting equipment and maps needed for this task as well as the trained specialists in relative safety. To make room for those items the vehicle itself if it is based off a tank often has its guns removed. However to most people they're often invisible. Take the following photograph. It's a famous picture from the battle of Villers Bocage. How many of you have seen it before? How many knew, before now, that this is an observer tank? You can see the wooden dummy gun barrel on the floor in front of it.

You'd drive one of these observer vehicles instead of the artillery gun.

From this vehicle the off map artillery can be directed. However due to certain limitations you will need to drive the vehicle about the battlefield, to the best position to use the artillery. This means there's no camping at the back. Equally you will have to manage the guns within the supporting battery to ensure they don't all get knocked out.
Instead of "gun" modules you'd have upgrades to the number and type of artillery tubes in your supporting battery.

The use of observer vehicles has one major advantage, in many cases they're based off an existing tank within game meaning you're essentially re-using assets. It would save modelling the SPG models, just needing to tweak a few models already in game.
It also allows you to use other off map assets such as air support, which would function similarly to artillery, but have a more exciting visual effect as the attack plane swoops over the battlefield (hey we have to do something with all those WOWP models!). Other options could be multiple rocket artillery salvos. Imagine seeing the streaks of flame and smoke from a salvo launching on the maps sky box and know that someone on your team is about to get some good news?

Chew on this O-I!

To illustrate the ideas I have I've made a crude graphic of what I would think the artillery interface would look like. The elements of it will be explained below.

Yeah, I never passed art class...

The basic core idea is: Artillery acts like that of War Thunder. If you're connected to the War Thunder community, you'll note one massive difference: No one in War Thunder rages about artillery.
 A brief description of their system is: You press a button and a map comes up on screen with a cursor. When you click on the map, an artillery barrage will land on that area in the game world. First a couple of ranging shots will land, giving people a warning artillery is on the way. If that’s too subtle giant red words saying "Artillery Fire!" also flash. This gives the player time to react, if they sit and take it then they only have themselves to blame for any damage. After firing the main part of the barrage the artillery support will enter a cooldown before it can be used again.

To prevent bombardment of spawn areas and to prevent camping the range at which the the artillery can be called in is limited. This is represented by the area of the green circle. This forces the observer vehicle to have to move and keep up with the battle line.

The above is the basic core idea. The parts below are for making life a bit more interesting and introducing a smaller strategy game for the artillery players so they have something to keep them playing the game instead of knocking off to make a sandwich while all their guns are on cooldown.
The basic idea is based around counter battery fire missions. Do you allocate all your guns to on map fire, and risk having them knocked out thus leaving the enemy artillery a free reign? Or do you try to counter and block enemy artillery to defend your own forces? Some of each and succeed at neither? Is the enemy waiting to counter battery you?

On the graphic above you'll notice a panel marked "battery orders" on the top right. Below the title is a drop down menu, one for each gun. Here you can order your guns and their crew to do one thing. Some suggestions would be:

Direct Support
The gun crew concentrates on loading and firing at targets on map. This gives the gun its maximum rate of fire, but will of course leave it vulnerable to counter battery fire.

Shoot and Scoot
After firing a bombardment the gun crew moves their gun a short distance to prevent being knocked out by counter battery fire. This means a longer cooldown time between shots on map, but gives a higher resistance to counter battery fire.

Counter battery fire
The gun crew will not respond to fire missions aimed at the map, instead they'll wait until enemy artillery fires then try to knock them out. As this succeeds then the enemy guns start taking damage (as shown in the bottom left panel, for example Gun #2 has taken two hits).

Should have left it on shoot and scoot orders!

When the player clicks on the map to call in the fire mission all the guns with "Direct Support" or "Shoot and Scoot" orders, that are off cooldown will fire a barrage at the target area. This is an area of effect around the centre point the artillery player clicked on the map.
Like in War Thunder a warning flashes up on anyone caught in the area of effect about incoming artillery, along with a couple of ranging shots. Then a short while later the main barrage will arrive.
The number of guns available for this will determine how deadly the barrage is. After this there is a cooldown period before the guns are available to be used again, these would be affected by the orders.
If a player is clever he can stagger his guns reloading times, so he can get a higher rate of fire up, but each barrage will cause less damage.

In short you get an aspect that actually potentially lowers the amount of modelling work and makes the community happier. On the downside of course it does mean re-working the coding behind artillery, and so is likely more coding work up front.



There are plenty of ideas to go with this, different ammo types and an absolute plethora of weapon types. Each nation had its own school of thought when it comes to artillery, and you can build those int othe system its that flexible. This idea could easily be applied to modern games as well.

So is it an idea, or should I stick to doing history and leave the games design to the professionals?

Courage or Desperation

The crew of U-570 were in an odd mood. First they had the overwhelming belief that they would soon be home with a German victory, but they were also surprised at the amount and range of food available in the UK. They had been lead to believe that the German submarine blockade was so overwhelming, and was choking the UK to her knees. In addition they were glad to be off the U-570. Life on board had never shaped up to the life they were promised by the recruiting propaganda. Equally they were out from under the thumb of their officers. One in particular had been seen as a problem, the 2nd in command of the U-boat, 25 year old  Lieutenant Bernhard Berndt.

Lt Berndt's brief command

An appraisal of him by British intelligence found him arrogant, uninteresting and "a difficult and nagging superior, but neither efficient nor knowledgeable." He unfortunately reflected the crew of the boat, with nearly all being inexperienced. Lt Berndt had joined the Kriegsmarine in 1935. He had served on destroyers until joining the submarines, and after training went directly to U-570. Some sources say it was Lt Berndt whom was responsible for surrendering U-570 when her Captain was incapacitated by gas during her capture.

Grizedale Hall POW camp

After their capture the crew of U-570 were held in London and interrogated by the British after which they were split up and sent to various camps. The officers, not including Cpt Rahmlow, were sent to No1 Camp (Officers) at Grizedale Hall. This was also known as U-boat Hotel, due to the large number of U-boat men imprisoned there. As the story of U-570 had been widely reported by the British press the members of the camp had heard the story by the time the three U-570 men arrived. There was a general air of hostility to the newcomers, and eventually a secret, illegal trial was arranged by the senior members of the camp, despite the British forbidding such activities. The court was presided over by U-boat ace Otto Kretschmer. They added Cpt Rahmlow to the charge sheet, despite him not being present.

Otto Kretschmer

Lt Berndt tried to defend himself, arguing the circumstances and the utter inexperience of the crew lead to the capture, not cowardice. However both he and Cpt Rahmlow were found guilty. The British were aware of such goings on, and took measures to keep the Officers of U-570 safe. Including a three man detail escorting Lt Berndt about the camp during times such as visiting the shower blocks where he might be vulnerable. In a coded letter to Admiral Donitz, Kretschmer informed him of the outcome assuming that after the Germans won the war Cpt Rahmlow and Lt Berndt would be found, tried and executed.

Things took a fateful turn when British newspapers reported that U-570 had arrived at Barrow-in-Furness, a mere 30 odd miles from Grizedale Hall. Lt Berndt proposed a plan to regain his honour. He would escape, make his way to the U-570 and destroy her. Kretschmer was also in charge of the German escape committee, and passed the plan. A number of items were manufactured by the Germans including a uniform of some sort.
The camp at Grizedale Hall was a double line of wire fencing with a few guard towers and a collection of huts for the Germans. On the night of 18th October 1941 Lt Berndt crawled out to the wire and used a pair of homemade wire cutters to make a hole big enough for him to crawl to freedom.

However the camp commander was aware of the escape almost immediately. Had Lt Berndt been spotted by a sentry? Or had someone in the camp informed on his escape? Either way the local Home Guard was alerted and they began patrolling the area. In the morning of the 19th a patrol searching a nearby farm raised the corner of a tarpaulin and looked underneath it, they found a shivering Lt Berndt in hiding. After his arrest the Home Guards started to lead him back to Grizedale Hall, upon realising his fate was to be returned to that hostile environment Lt Berndt broke away from his guards and fled across the fields. The Home Guards fired a volley of warning shots, which Lt Berndt ignored, the next volley was not aimed to miss.

He was buried locally, with full honours at the insistence of Kretschmer. However due to an error and the locals unfamiliarity with German ranks and names, the last part of Lt Berndts German rank of "Oberleutnant zur See" was mistranslated as his first name. This meant that his burial record read "Lee Bernhard Berndt". It's curious to note that despite the thousands of men involved in the entire story of U-570, including several exchanges of fire Lt Berndts is the only death involved with the submarine, including with its three war patrols under Royal Navy Service.

Image credits:
s.hswstatic.com and www.newsandstar.co.uk