Biggles Prangs His Kite

But it's OK, he landed in a giant meringue which broke his fall.

Bolt Action RAF Pilot

Wolf In Shadow

This my next novel published by Baen and distributed world-wide by Simon & Schuster in July 2013.

The superb artwork was by Dave Seeley and the layout was by the talented Jennie Faries who also laid out Into The Hinterlands.

The blurb is below:


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Description

Contemporary fantasy adventure. An ordinary young woman finds a haunting and dangerous world of demons and shapeshifters on the streets of modern day London.

Urban fantasy in one of the world’s greatest cities.

Rhian, a girl from the Welsh valleys on the run from tragedy and herself, finds a new home in the modern East End of London, where the world’s largest financial center spins a web of money and power from glistening towers of chrome and glass. Beneath the digital façade lurks the old East End where the layers of two thousand years of dramatic and violent history slide over one another like glaciers, spilling out in avalanches that warp the real world.

As bodies begin to litter the East End streets, The Commission dispatches its best enforcers to deal with the situation: Karla is not human, and Jameson left his humanity behind in pieces in Northern Ireland and Afghanistan. Rhian makes new friends, dangerous friends; and where Rhian goes, the wolf is always in her shadow, just a heartbeat away.

Among the bankers and traders of the East End walk demons in human form and who is to say which are the monsters? London is a magical bomb waiting to explode and somewhere a fuse is hissing.

About John Lambhead’s Lucy’s Blade:
“Swashbuckling heroines and romantic subplots.”—Publishers Weekly

About John Lambshead and David Drake’s Into the Hinterlands:
“Drake and Lambshead combine politics, military expeditions, and deep-space exploration into an intriguing tale…Recommended for all SF collections.” –Booklist

Bolt Action: BEF

Just what you need to stop a tank, an overgrown rifle called Boyes.

3D Printing

The Telegraph ran one of their 'all this modern stuff is rubbish' articles by one of their 'angry old white men in ties' about 3D printers that specifically mentions wargaming. You wouldn't think 3D printing was a political issue but apparently in the strange world of the Telegraph, it is:

"handful of Lefty academics thrilled by the idea of abolishing property"

At this point he presumably stopped to swallow some tranquilisers. Not sure what Lefty academics have to do with 3D printers, other than conceiving them but still....

I came across this model offered on eBay UK which apparently comes from the Shapeways printing service.

At the moment, the technology is not quite there: see above. Either the model is grainy or expensive and the cheapest printers are about £2K. Now my first laserprinter cost £2.5K of 1980s money. My latest one cost two hundred quid and is better: wireless for one thing.

3D printers are in their infancy.

The article burbles about piracy and offers the opinion that 3D printer piracy will never be a threat to toy soldier companies because it will always be cheaper to manufacture using traditional methods. Now that may be true but it completely misses the point.

It's not the cost of mass production of models using traditional methods versus 3D printers that is the issue BUT the cost to the private individual of buying a model retail versus knocking it out on their home printer. And that may be a very different kettle of aquatic vertebrates.

When a private individual can run some photos through basic cheap CAD/CAM software and 3D print out his own models to whatever scale is desired then model-makers like GW are in the doggy do and no 'stop the world I want to get off' articles from the foaming at the mouth brigade will stop it.

Decorating a tank

A bit o' cosmetic can improve appearance no end, as any starlet will tell you. I have added a couple of packs to my Stuart from the Tamiya 1/48 accessory pack.

Real tanks were absolutely festooned with junk: very little room in the boot. Combat pictures seem to show them cleaner, presumably because of the fire risk.

Bolt Action: Burma Tanks

I have built a couple of Bolt Action 28 mm tanks for my Burmese armies. Above is a Type 97 Chi Ha tank. This piece of junk is what the Imperial Japanese Army seriously considered to be a medium tank suitable for 1944.

It was characterised by tin can armour, a low velocity small howitzer as a main weapon and a two man turret. It was a 1938 production tank which made it a contemporary of a PzII and T26.

These Warlord Games tanks are made from a light resin very like the GW material. It cuts easily with a sharp blade has no bubbles but superb detail. I think I prefer them to plastic kit models as they are more robust.

This is a British Army comtemporary vehicle: a Stuart M5 light tank. Considered obsolete in Europe, it was more than a match for the Chi Ha with better armour and a better gun.

Fight for Le Twittierre: Bolt Action

Sitrep: It's Normandy 1944, a few days after D-Day, Oeration Overlord. A small battle-group of the Wessex Division, the Westcountry infantry probes into the French village of Le Twittierre up the main road to Caen. It consists of a two section depleted platoon supported by a Sherman '75 and a PIAT Team in a bren gun carrier. On hearing from the locals that German troops are in the noth end of the village, the infantry debuss from their lorries and the battle-group takes up a combat formation.

Kampfgruppe Murphy takes up position straddling the road using the rubble created by a naval bombardment for cover. They include a depleted infantry platoon supported by a Hanomag for the platoon HQ and a STUG III assault gun.

The Sherman advances up the road covered by fire from a Vickers gun to keep back panzerfaust men. The STUG crests the hill and opens fire. The Sherman halts and a tank duel starts. Neither vehicle can land a killer punch for shot after shot.

To break the deadlock, the British throw forward an infantry section and the PIAT team moves forward to stalk the STUG. The other British section supported by the Carrier and the Vickers pin down the bulk of the German infantry on the German left flank.

Crisis: The British infantry start taking losses. The PIAT team rush the STUG and open fire but miss. The STUG doesn't, its Spandeau cutting down the tommies. Spandeau fire from the German left takes out the Vickers.


Victory: The STUG blows a track of the Sherman but return fire sets the STUG on fire and its crew bail out. The German position is now hopeless as the Sherman dominates the road splitting the German platoon into two groups and the British infantry can roll up the German right flank.

Kampfgruppe Murphy retreats but it has bought time and inflicted irreplacable losses on the British infantry for the loss of a STUG.

Afterthoughts: (i) Spandeaus are bloody vicious and a terrible threat to allied infantry. (ii) In a small game (about 700 pts) the tank duel decides the game.