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A Southern Biff's Return to Modelling
- Thread starter Themanwho
- Start date
SPROCKET321
LE
like your Pak 40, I'm making the mobile version of it on a Lorrain tractor, sort of German fix em up, they were so short of Mechanised transport, 90%horse drawn or so I hear.
You could always see about sticking it on a Universal Carrier, something like this:
SPROCKET321
LE
well I never!
SPROCKET321
LE
every day on Arrse a School day, thanks for sharing.
Fascinating read, I never knew the history behind them. Thank you.
Daz
LE
Looks like somebody failed to keep up with the various carrier threads on here
Seems like a German Hobart almost.
Not quite - Hobart pursued a programme of specialist armour based on a range of allied equipment designed to meet a specific requirement.
Becker, bless him, was making ad hoc systems from a whole bunch of bastardised captured equipment.
Laudable but yet another reason the Germans lose at war.
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Hence the almost, agreed the German mindset seemed to make the supply lines as complex as possible.
Hobart didn't have that much (if anything) to do with designing the specialist armour. He seems to have been a Home Guard NCO who shouted loudly. I get the impression (albeit, from very brief reading) he was a bit obnoxious.
I also have my suspicions he was one of the founders of the myths about pre-war armour policy, such as how everyone wanted to do away with the mechanisation and get back to proper soldiering with horses, apart from his visionary ideas that were thwarted by the clique of old fashioned staff officers... and all that bollocks.
It's one of oddities, I've read quite a lot about 1920's-1945 armour development. Certain names are missing, such as Hobart and Hart... And then suddenly looking at Wikipedia guess who have both shown up! Well well well there's a surprise.
I contend that the reason for these myths are because just after the war a few ex VSO's wrote books. Obviously they had to be the good guys. Yet they had to explain away how our tanks had done so badly initially (they hadn't, but we'd lost the France, which means they had done badly in the public mind).
So the only way to avoid this is to create the 'Well if they'd listened to me!' answer. This was also pretty much the only sources people had back then, so the idea becomes entrenched.
SPROCKET321
LE
Agreed, your link to wikipedia above highlights Becker's personal strengths, being Bravery in Combat, good leadership and loyalty to his men, even to where he circumvented a very frightening system to save them by bringing them back from Stalingrad, His Strengths also include Engineering and Organization skills, all in wartime during an oppressively red taped system. My only surprise is that apart from your link, I'd never heard of the Man.
The first two bits of kit, the M5 Recce and the PAK 40 are now ready:
I'm in a bit of a quandary now. I'm having second thoughts about the diorama and its composition; I still like the idea of the PAK40 position being abandoned with Brit troops bypassing it, but the layout I originally planned doesn't feel quite right, it's a little contrived:
I need to get my thinking cap on.
I'm in a bit of a quandary now. I'm having second thoughts about the diorama and its composition; I still like the idea of the PAK40 position being abandoned with Brit troops bypassing it, but the layout I originally planned doesn't feel quite right, it's a little contrived:
I need to get my thinking cap on.
PAK 40 position with a M5 stopped beside it with the crew inspecting/looting the position?
Possibly, with a carrier & infantry passing on a road maybe...
Or maybe a Churchill as well?
Weeeeell lets see what we can do for pictures of columns of British stuff advancing to the front.
SkippedOnce
LE
Weeeeell lets see what we can do for pictures of columns of British stuff advancing to the front.
Complete with 'looted' 251/1 Ausf.D.
QRK2
LE
I think obnoxious is a very good descriptor along with dogmatic and opinionated. He was one of the advocates for 'grand fleets' of tanks between the wars sweeping across the countryside like a Navy. A good trainer but I'm surprised he lasted as long as he did before being sacked off to the Home Guard. He was lucky that he got reinstated to a command in which he didn't have a 'command' role in the classic sense.
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