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As part of their World War One exhibition at the Tank Museum they have a Mark I tank attacking a trench.
It’s complete with mud and all. I can’t begin to imagine the shock of being at the receiving end of such an attack.
You get to really understand how massive and threatening these machines of war were.
This was one of the many displays at the Tank Museum in Bovington, which I saw when I visited the wargaming show there in 2016.
With the gas masks and all, it was rather creepy and threatening.
This 20mm Western Desert was one of the display games at the 2016 wargaming show at the Tank Museum.
You can see a range of tanks and trucks in these photos. As well as artillery pieces.
This Middle Eastern game was one of the display games at 2016 wargaming show at the Tank Museum.
The Schützenpanzer Lang HS.30 (also Schützenpanzer 12-3) was a West German infantry fighting vehicle developed from 1956 to 1958.[1] It was a Swiss Hispano-Suiza design, with a Rolls-Royce engine.
This was parked in the car park at the Bovington Tank Museum in 2016.
It was armed with a 20-mm cannon, which was an unusually powerful weapon for an armoured personnel carrier of the period. Its design proved to have many flaws and drawbacks.
The SPz 12-3 first entered service with the Panzergrenadier battalions in 1960 and was replaced by the Marder infantry fighting vehicle from 1971.
At the entrance to the Bovington Tank Museum is a Challenger 1, when I was there in 2016 it was hiding…
Outside the Bovington Tank Museum is an Alvis Saracen.
The FV603 Saracen is a six-wheeled armoured personnel carrier built by Alvis and used by the British Army. It became a recognisable vehicle as a result of its part in the policing of Northern Ireland as well as for its role in enforcing apartheid in South Africa.
The Mark IX tank was a British armoured fighting vehicle from the First World War. It was the world’s first specialised armoured personnel carrier (APC).
During the first actions with tanks, it became clear that infantry often could not keep up with the tanks, It wasn’t that the soldiers were too slow, the early tanks themselves could only move at a walking pace, but because soldiers on foot remained vulnerable to enemy machine gun fire. In many actions, positions gained at great cost were immediately lost for lack of infantry to consolidate.
At the end of the Great War only three had been finished, out of a total ultimate production run of thirty-four, following an order for two hundred.
These metal monsters designed in an era when they didn’t really know what they were doing and there was a lot of trial and error. The Mark IX reminds us that the APC is as old as the tank.
The Tank Museum is a collection of armoured fighting vehicles at Bovington Camp in Dorset, South West England.
Outside the entrance to the car park at the museum is an A22 Churchill Mark I.
The Tank, Infantry, Mk IV (A22) Churchill was a British heavy infantry tank used in the Second World War, best known for its heavy armour, large longitudinal chassis with all-around tracks with multiple bogies, its ability to climb steep slopes, and its use as the basis of many specialist vehicles. It was one of the heaviest Allied tanks of the war.
The origins of the design lay in the expectation that war in Europe might be fought under similar conditions to those of the First World War, and emphasised the ability to cross difficult ground. The Churchill was rushed into production to build up British defences against a possible German invasion. The first vehicles had flaws that had to be overcome before the Churchill was accepted for wide use. After several Marks had been built, a better armoured version, the Mark VII, entered service.
The Churchill was used by British and Commonwealth forces in North Africa, Italy and North-West Europe. In addition, a few hundred were supplied to the USSR and used on the Eastern Front.
This A22 Churchill at the Tank Museum appears to have been completed as a Mark II but has since been altered to resemble a Mark I.
One of the games at the wargames show at Bovington that I did a good look at was this 15mm 1946 game complete with a range of alternate German and Allied tanks that were designed, but either were too late for action, or never got further than the drawing board. I have to admit I never got round to checking what actual models were represented on the table, but there were E-100 and E-50 tanks as well as Panther IIs.
This photograph shows a Sarissa Precision Factory. I really do like this model (and the huge one for 28mm too). Around it are finished and partly finished tanks of a variety of types.
A large tank on a railway wagon. The table also had a lot of HO 1/87th scale buildings that did not seem out of place on the table. There are a range of HO buildings that would be ideal for 15mm games, especially those of the industrial variety.
Here is another Sarissa Precision factory with a couple of JagdTigers outside. As with the other, it looks like the RAF has been busy trying to stem the production of these new German tanks.
Here is a overview of the table. There were TT scale trains, wagons and track (which are just about an appropriate scale for 15mm).
In the box to the side of the tables were 15mm models of the Black Prince, the Tortoise and Centurion Mk1 tanks.
All of these could be found (for real) in the Tank Museum itself.