Tuesday 26 April 2016

Proofs for Tabletop Wargames


Just been through the proofs for Tabletop Wargames. Very clean copy from Pen & Sword so only found a few and they are probably mine!

Daniel Mersey, of Lion Rampant fame did the layout.

It will be fun to see if readers can detect which bits are mine and which are Rick's.

All on track to be out in September this year.

The book is currently on preorder.

Saturday 16 April 2016

The First New Doctor Who Miniatures

 10th Doctor, Martha & Wilfred

The first of the new Warlord Doctor Who licenced minis have been painted up.

Judoon - the Inter-Galactic Police

Zygon

I don't know the names of the sculptors and painters but......RESPECT!

The scale is 'heroic' 28mm.



Friday 15 April 2016

The First Jets - Spider Crab and Flitzer





Models by Revell, painted and photographed by author.

The ramshackle mess that passed for government in Nazi Germany could not bring itself to admit that they would soon need air defences so fighter aircraft had a low priority and the Me 109, a 1934 design, soldiered on in increasingly hostile skies.

Meanwhile the German fighter designers amused themselves by churning out ever more exotic designs, each seemingly trying to outdo the other in bizarre innovation. Focke-Wulf had two promising jet fighter designs among the myriad paper studies of 1943, the type 5 & 6. The Type 6 was nicknamed 'Flitzer'.

The Flitzer adopted wing root air intakes and a short body reducing the distance from air intakes to  the jet exhaust. Early jets were extremely inefficient if fed by long tubes, which is why the 262 and Meteor had wing mounted engines. The tail plane was mounted on two booms clear of the jet exhaust. Increasing power allowed the use of one engine rather than two.

In July '44, not even the Nazis could ignore the daylight bomber raids and the order went out for the design to a new high performance jet fighter coupled with a cheap Volksjäger.

The Flitzer was one of FW's  bids for the high performance jet contract, using an auxiliary rocket motor to boost the plane to high altitudes quickly to intercept bomber streams. The concept was abandoned in September because the Flitzer required strategic materials in short supply and because it was considered too slow when compared to radical swept wing designs- more about them later.

The irony is that De Haviland in Britain was working on a similar design, the Spider Crab or Vampire as it was later known, in 1943. It was delayed until '45 when the allocated Rolls Royce engine was sent to Lockheed so they could experiment with jet fighters. The Vampire/Venom was a more robust design than the Flitzer and went on to serve in many airforces as a fighter, strike fighter, night fighter and naval fighter (as the Sea Venom).

Incidentally, the Vampire had a top speed of around 550mph, as against the Flitzer's estimated 600mph. But of course the Vampire flew whereas the Flitzer never got past the mock up stage.

The Vampire was armed with four 20mm cannon and had hard points for 1,000 lbs of stores. The Flizter would have had two 300mm cannon - plus two 20mm if it could have carried the extra weight.


Tuesday 12 April 2016

The First Jets - Messerschmitt Myths

A fast moving Me 262 Sturmvogel overshoots a breaking Gloster Meteor.


This never happened, of course, except on the wargames table.

Messerschmitt Myth No 1: The ME262 was the world's first operational jet fighter.
Actually, no: 616 RAF Squadron was operational with Meteors a few weeks before the 262 started operational service with the Luftwaffe.

Messerschmitt Myth No 2: The Me262 was designed with novel high technology swept back wings to make it a fast subsonic fighter.
Actually , no: The 262's wings are slightly swept but no more so than many other aircraft of the period and the reason was to move the CG aft. This method of controlling CG dates back to some of the very earliest pre WWI  plane designs. The 262 was an aerodynamically clean well designed fighter that could get up to Mach 0.86 (circa760 mph at sea level) but it wasn't swept wing. The 1945 Meteor F4 was about 50mph slower but had better engines capable of faster break manoeuvres without flaming out.

A duel between a Meteor F3/4 or 262 would probably depend on position and pilot skill. The 262 pilot would have attempted a firing pass on a dive zoom, while the Meteor pilot would have tried to suck his opponent into a high speed scissors or similar.

The photo was taken by me using Oxford Diecast 1:72 models and Paint Shop Pro.

Thursday 7 April 2016

Doctor Who - The Starship Mary-Rose

The Doctor and Rose board the wrecked Starship Mary-Rose to find a datadump with the location of the Rice Pudding Graveyard. Expecting trouble, the Doctor is accompanied by a small group of World War II reenactors. He has taken the precaution of reactivating their weapons so that they work: in fact they work rather better than the originals!


And trouble is a-coming: a Dalek with pig slave.

The boards are from a new GW game and represent a wrecked ship's interior. So there are lots of vertical walls, corridors and rooms. It's not open space.

A burst from a Dalek Agent's sub-blaster past the Doctor's left ear is the first sign that he has been rumbled.

The real 'Big-Bad' is revealed. The Master is also wants unlimited rice pudding and has sacrificed some of his minions to get into the datadump room. A hail of shots from the reenactors takes out the agent and, astonishingly, a Dalek when a freak shot goes right down it's eye stalk.

'My vision is impaireeeed'

The blinded Dalek drives straight into a corridor wall at high speed and explodes: they do keep doing that.

The Doctor and Rose break into the datadump room but The Master is waiting. The Doctor downloads the data with his sonic screwdriver. Meanwhile The Master knocks Rose down and threatens her with his laser-screwdriver.

'The data or the mayfly gets it, Doctoooor."

A hail of blaster bursts from the surviving reenactors, who have taken out the last Dalek with a grenade down the hatch, knocks down the pig-slave and distracts The Master so that the Doctor can rush him, defeat him in hand-to-screwdriver combat, and rescue Rose.

While the Doctor tends Rose's injuries, The Master recovers and slips away. There will be other opportunities.

Another adventure for Rose and the Doctor ends in triumph.

Ta-ra!