Alternative History Armoured Fighting Vehicles Part 4
- Thread starter Claymore
- Start date
Smashing model and I love the backstory! I get the feeling that you might have wanted to employ / use the Excalibur during your service.
Thanks. You never know… 🤔
Amazing model, warms the heart of an old AA gunner
I was an Instructor of Gunner (Air Defence) myself - amongst other things - in a previous life and so wanted the Excalibur to feel as close to a viable system as possible. Hopefully, I came somewhere close to the mark. 😉
Thanks mate. Yup, the more I got into the model the more I realised we (UK) should have done something along these lines years ago… The only real issue would have been the viability of the missile and whether or not it could have been successfully altered to give it a practicable ground-launched capability. Fortunately, in the world of AH, my aerospace engineers are bloody good at what they do!!! 😉😂
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Very interesting
On what systems were you working?
Primarily Rapier B1(M) although we studied Javelin S15 (Starburst) and HVM Starstreak too on my course at RSA Larkhill back in 1991. Then on to 26 Sqn RAF Regt (Rapier B1(M)) and Rapier FSC, next the RAF’s Surface to Air Weapons Operational Conversion Unit (SAWOCU) (Rapier FSC) and, lastly, an interesting tour with the Air Warfare Centre out of RAF Spadeadam on SA-6, SA-8, ZSU-23/4 and various simulators. After that, promotion and a move away from air defence into the world of CBRN but that is another story for another time! 😉
Excellent.
'My' kite was the twinned 30mm gun M-53/59 on the Prage V3S armored car; the particular #10998 that I was serving on is depicted here, during the 'Slovenian war'.
Yes indeed.
BTW - see here for the SP 122mm howitzer on the vehicle (just one prototype?), while some cannons have found it's new home aboard the river-going ships of the Serbian military.
Great model and a convincing back story.
Iran may also have been interested in such a system at the time. Not a Red Top user, but we were selling them stuff.
ooo... now I see "iran Iraq war", Iranian Chieftains escorted by this...
Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Vespa Caproni Armoured Car of 1942. 4 wheels in a losange, 2 men, 1 machine gun.
I say it's a perfect steampunk vehicle, and needs to exist in massed numbers...
I say it's a perfect steampunk vehicle, and needs to exist in massed numbers...
Everything in this phrase is wrong, says my strong personal biases against the term 'Steampunk', misuses/misapplications thereof, and my personal history with late 19th Century technology to which the accursed term is nominally supposed to apply.
However, everything in this phrase is correct and I agree entirely. More of these delightful armoured bumpercars, please!
For me "steapumk" means any weirdo mechanical contraption dating pre-1940 (or that looks that old...)
20th Century designs, anything with an internal-combustion engine really, falls under 'Dieselpunk' until you get to that wonderful era of 50's-60's scifi, 'Atompunk'.
Steampunk is supposed to be exclusive to Victorian/19th Century industrial aesthetic and social/class issues, not a catchall bucket for 'it's mechanical and strange to me'.
Sorry for being peevish but it's one of those things that drive me up the wall, like calling a fan of post-war Soviet aircraft a 'Wehraboo' or calling Babylon 5 a Star Trek ripoff.
[Grumble grumble, everyone forgets the PUNK part anyway, grumble grumble]
I know... but I hate the term dieselpunk... it just feels so wrong, brings up images of trucks and locomotives... for me all of it is steampunk or nothing...
(and if anyone hears me saying "Babylon 5 a Star Trek ripoff" feel free to have me arrested/thrown into a lunatic asylum...)
I'm just imagining the streamlined version like in the late 1930s book my ex-inlaws used to have which depicted blitzkrieg with sleek and rounded tanks. So basically get rid of the angles and add some styling and we've an Art Deco military masterpiece.Ladies and gentlemen, may I present the Vespa Caproni Armoured Car of 1942. 4 wheels in a losange, 2 men, 1 machine gun.
I say it's a perfect steampunk vehicle, and needs to exist in massed numbers...
As for the steampunk version, for me it would need a discrete funnel behind the cabin (bridge?) plenty of big rivets (preferably copper), some extraneous tubing and coils and little spurts of steam emerging from random locations. And either a water jacket for the Maxim or a multibarreled gun.
