AIRCRAFT (7) AIR MARSHALL EDWARD VIII

Quite apart from the bothersome business of being King (or "kinging", as he liked to put it), upon his accession, Edward VIII automatically became the senior Air Marshall of the RAF:

Air Marshall Edward VIII, Chief of the RAF. A contemporary postcard
recording his inspection tour of 8th July 1936.

Sunglasses on to view the flypast at Northolt. Behind the King, the Duke of York

This Pathe newsreel records some events from the morning inspection at Northolt (including the King "sneaking a fag" while supposedly closely inspecting his air force) and is complementary to the Pathe newsreel flagged up in this previous post.

The July 1936 RAF inspection was, of course, one of the last occasions upon which the King and the Duke of York were seen in public together before the outbreak of the VBCW. By July 1936, the King was already looking forward to his summer cruise aboard "The Nahlin" in the company of Mrs Simpson (as she then was), which holiday alerted the world (if not then the British public) to the forthcoming crisis in the British monarchy, and thereafter the country. See HERE.

PS. It is unknown how much "air support" the Duke of York presently enjoys within the VBCW. Following his return from Canada, the Duke is instead gathering "popular support" for the Albertine cause in South Wales - and Ross-on-Wye.

AIRCRAFT (6) VBCW "MONGREL DAY BOMBER"

Our piece of "cheep Chinese plastic", as used in the Modelling Challenge 2020, may be many things (check back on this thread using the label "Aircraft & Anti Everything"), but it is clearly more of an "air superiority fighter/ground attack fighter" than a "bomber". For the purpose of VBCW "air fleets", this posed a significant problem that could only be solved by - well, doubling down with another piece of "cheep Chinese plastic", as purchased from Ebay:

As long as you don't look at the underside of the fuselage, it's, er.....ok. What do you want for 80p inclusive of P&P?

This particularly fine example of the Chinese plastics industry is made of rather softer plastic than our Vickers Venom job, but it is still workable and takes paint kindly enough (over a plastic primer). And it actually "scales" rather nicely with the Vickers Venoms, so all is not at all lost.

But what kind of 1930s plane is it? Originally, it was purchased in the hope that - with its long canopy, elongated nose and single propellor, it would bear a passing resemblance to that wonder of 1930s British Aircraft Industry, the Fairey Battle "day bomber":

Introduced to service in 1936, by 1940 the Fairey Battle was fulfilling its grim role of being shot up by marauding Me 109's (when not being shot down by ground AA fire).

And to a certain extent, it does. But closer examination reveals the horrible truth - the front end and wings appear to be an oversized (and mangled by constant copying over the years) species of Spitfire, while the canopy and tail appear to come from an (equally mangled early variant) Stuka! If this was to be a Fairey Battle, it would be a fairly "bastardized" version! 

Camouflage painting may hide many "problems", but this was time for a more significant intervention : the ever helpful VBCW 'backstory'. Hence can be presented - the Elstree Industries "Mongrel" day bomber (although actual manufacture may have been sub-contracted to Messrs. Woolworths & Woolworths of Enfield) as designed by Elstree's most famous aircraft engineer, Sir Reginald B'stard (knighted in the 1938 Honours List for services to the VBCW aircraft industry). For those unfamiliar with his technical work (quite why he is ignored in almost all the 'history' books, in favour of Camm and Mitchell, remains a mystery), he is probably now best known for being the grandfather of that public spirited Member of Parliament of the 80s and 90s, Alan B'stard:

Alan B'stard MP, grand-son of the VBCW aircraft designer responsible for the Elstree "Mongrel"

The Elstree Mongrel, once introduced into VBCW service, will complement the RAF's existing "heavy transport/bomber" fleet:

This well armed transport was recently seen in action at The Second Battle of Shobdon

A squadron of RAF Heavy Bombers at an airfield "somewhere in the West Midlands".
(The model is a "snaptite egg scale" Lancaster by Meng Kids)

AIRCRAFT(5) THE KING'S VENOM

From "British Aviation : Ominous Skies" by Harald Penrose (p.92):

"The full panopoly of the [aircraft] industry's latest designs was on view at the A&AEE Martlesham Heath on 8th July [1936] when the King [Edward VIII], in RAF uniform, accompanied by Air Chief Marshall the Duke of York, make a tour of four stations of his Air Force. In his Royal Rapide, piloted by Flt. Lt. "Mouse" Fielden, he flew first to Northolt to inspect the Fury and Gauntlet Fighter Squadrons, then visited No.11 Flying Training School at Wittering, afterwards to Mildenhall to inspect Hind and Heyford Bomber Squadrons, and so to the A&AEE ["Aeroplane & Armament Experimental Establishment"] where he was received by Air Commodore R.H.Verney and the Station Commander, Grp. Capt. A.C. "Cissie" Maund. On the tarmac, backed by the original World War 1 hangars, were the Spitfire, Hurricane and Venom, all with gun muzzles aggressively protruding, the hitherto unrevealed Bristol Blenheim medium bomber, Westland Lysander, Fairey Battle, Vickers Wellesley, Vickers Wellington, Handley Page HP52 Hampden (nicknamed the 'flying panhandle') and Armstrong Whitworth Whitley. The King went aboard the Wellington and received a dissertation on gun turrets, spending five minutes personally operating the nose turret. Thereafter, Sqn Ldr "Ted" Hilton, Officer commanding the bomber Test Flight, demonstrated the Blenheim, and Sqn Ldr D.F. Anderson, Officer commanding the fighter Test Flight, flew the Spitfire. Reported Flight [magazine]:

'The Spitfire roared past the Royal Standard at well over 300mph, followed by the Blenheim, the speed of which was a revelation of what a modern monoplane bomber can do. We certainly have a bomber which can outfly any fighter in service in the world today....'"[note1]

The only Blenheim prototype, K-7033, which had made its first flight only in June 1936, just weeks before
Edward VIII's inspection tour.

Blenheim Mk.1 and Spitfire in company. A view Edward VIII may well have had on 8th July 1936.

British Pathe, as ever, was on hand to film Edward VIII's inspection of the Fury and Gauntlet fighter squadrons at Northolt - see HERE - but it appears (perhaps for security reasons) that they were not invited along to Martlesham Heath to film the new generation of fighters "all with gun muzzles aggressively protruding" - Spitfire, check; Hurricane, of course; Venom.....Venom? What on earth was a Venom?

A contemporary cigarette card gives a good view of the Vickers Venom prototype
"painted in cream for exhibition purposes...with RAF roundels". The marking
PVO-10 was a "Private Venture" registration, and the Venom would subsequently
be marked with a large "3" on the fuselage (although there was only ever "1" prototype).
The "3" designation was used at the 1936 Hendon Air Display as the aircraft's "new types
number", enabling the public to identify it from the list of aircraft

within their display programmes.

The 1937 popular "part work" magazine, "Aero Engineering" carried a data sheet on the Vickers
Venom and the (now, not then) better known Vickers Wellington 1....

....and here is that 'Data Sheet', with the prototype Venom photographed with its fuselage "3".
 For the 1937 readers of "Aero Engineering", the Venom was just
 one of the RAF's new eight gunned interceptor fighters...

An earlier colour scheme for the Venom, which was unveiled in 1936 "in natural polished metal
and silver dope on the fabric control surfaces" at the Society of British Aircraft Constructors display.
This display took place at De Havilland's airfield at Hatfield.

Regular readers of the blog will recall the mystery aircraft captured on film ("just after the prototype Spitfire") at the 1937 Hendon Air Display - see this earlier BLOGPOST. Whilst there has been some (VBCW) speculation that the mystery aircraft was an "Elstree Aeronautics prototype", in fact it has now been positively identified as the Vickers Venom in flight.

Which takes us back to the VBCW, and the 2020 Modelling Challenge. Once our piece of "cheep Chinese plastic" - with its prominent radial engine - is converted into a monoplane (a matter of seconds), it makes for a pretty fair (well, at least with a fair wind) wargamers' resemblance to the "Vickers Venom". The Venom was, after all, the ultimate British development of a radial engined fighter (powered by the Bristol Aquila as opposed to the Spitfire's inline Rolls Royce Merlin), and the model competition field is threadbare - there has only ever been one 1/72 kit of the plane, the now very OOP Magna Models metal and resin version:

The Magna Models 1/72 kit assembled and painted by
Peter Burstow. See:
https://modelingmadness.com/review/preww2/gb/burstven.htm

In any event, why did the Venom remain only a prototype and not go into production? Why was it Spitfires and Hurricanes defending our shores in 1940 - and, given the hopes and illustrations of 1936/1937, not fleets of nimble Venoms? [note2]. Some of the factors that seem to have told against the Venom were:

(1). Supermarine, the manufacturers of the Spitfire, was a subsidiary of Vickers, the proposed manufacturer of the Venom. The same congolomerate producing two different designs for the same role, i.e. fighter interceptor, would have been somewhat problematic; particularly as Supermarine had well known issues with Spitfire production that required urgent resolution by management;

(2). apart from Spitfire manufacture via its Supermarine subsidiary, Vickers was also producing the Wellington bomber. It's production was at full capacity, which would have meant the Venom either being produced under licence, or by a sub-contractor, or an entirely new 'shadow factory' being constructed. None of these were straightforward prospects;

(3). there were significant "cut out and fade out" problems with the powerplant around which the Venom had been designed, the Aquila AE-3S radial engine, which problems were never really resolved;

(4). the Venom lacked all armour protection. While "the possibility of fitting 600 pounds of armour to the Venom was...briefly investigated" it was "swiftly dismissed as the airframe would have to be completely redesigned to take the additional weight".

These problems saw the Venom relegated swiftly from its once prominent position as part of the 'new generation' of British fighters. However, there was a flurry of "fresh interest" in the Venom programme in mid-1937, apparently based on its relative cheapness, prospective ease of manufacture and maintenance, and the possibility of sub-contracting manufacture to enable potential sales to friendly foreign countries. This "last flurry" died out soon enough, however, and the British aircraft industry instead concentrated entirely on the Spitfire and Hurricane.....

But as for the VBCW......all these same factors - cheapness, ease of manufacture and maintenance, sub-contract manufacture - combined to make the Vickers Venom highly attractive as a fighter plane for the contending factions, and 1938 soon saw a number of 'shadow factories' set up by both the RAF and the BUF, the latter particularly designed to supply "Air Wings" for use on newly acquired carriers such as the Charles A. Lindbergh....

Notes:

[1]. The maximum speed of the Blenheim was, in fact, 266mph (at 11,800ft). See HERE. Flight magazine's opinion was therefore mere puff - the Blenheim could not outfly the Spitfire, nor even the Hurricane Mk.1 (316mph at 16,200ft). In fairness, however, the Messerschmitt 109 was only introduced to the Luftwaffe some eight months later, in February 1937, and even then could not reach the Hurricane's speed until the introduction of the "E" series in late 1938/early 1939.

[2]. The Venom had a top speed of 312mph at 16,500ft, a service ceiling of 32,000ft and a rate of climb of 3,000ft a minute. It was therefore in the same class as the Hurricane Mk.1 in all respects, and quite as capable of dealing with a Blenheim. By way of contrast, it clearly outmatched the Gloster Gladiator (still in service during the Battle of France 1940 and, at least as to one squadron, the Battle of Britain, thereafter in Greece, the Middle East and Malta), which had a top speed of 253mph at 14,500ft and a rate of climb of 2,300ft a minute.

Additional Notes:

[1]. Edward "Mouse" Fielden's biography can be found HERE. For the Dragon Rapide of the King's Flight, see note 5 to this EARLIER BLOGPOST.

[2]. Air Commodore R.H.Verney's biography can be found HERE, and Group Captain "Cissie" Maund's HERE.

[3]. This page is particularly useful on the Vickers Venom, specifically on its potential use as a navalised fighter. This YouTube video demonstrates the Venom's undoubted ease of maintenance.

BAE Systems brief history of interwar Vickers experimental designs can be found HERE

SUPER SHODDY!

Another quick post to point up the "Shoddy Tank" building activities of Lead Adventure Forum member "Bearwoodman", who has taken the 2019 Modelling Challenge and translated it, through space and time (and as already mentioned HERE) into the 40K universe, resulting in the first recorded example of a "Super Shoddy":

Moshe Dayan approves! (see this LINK)

It remains to be seen whether any variant of "Super Shoddy" will make its way on to the Hereford VBCW 1938 battlefield, although there is already a great deal of popular pressure within Ludlow for a fully equipped armoured division of "Super Shoddies" ("We want eight and we won't wait!). With the development of the "Bearwoodman variants", however, there must now be concern that Hereford is falling significantly behind in the worldwide (indeed, universe wide) AFV development race. Such concern is allayed only in part by intelligence received of the construction of at least one new very strange vehicle by HM Government during these last few weeks (blogposts to follow)...

Full LAF link HERE!

VBCW HEREFORD - THE BATHTUB HYPOTHESIS (1)

Being the first in a series of speculative posts…..

              

A long time ago, back in 1986, Frank Chadwick and Games Designers Workshop (“GDW”) published a new set of WW2 miniatures rules, “Command Decision” (“CD”). CD was designed as an “operational - level” set of rules for combined arms engagements, where one “stand” of 2 figures represented a platoon or equivalent, and a model vehicle represented a platoon of approximately 5 “real life” equivalents. The overall effect was to enable players to command representations of brigades or even (in larger games) divisions on the tabletop, consisting of 2 - 6 battalions with supporting arms. While many WW2 rules were then (and remain) pitched somewhere around a “command level” of Platoon Leader or at most Company Commander, CD required tabletop Generals.

Command Decision by GDW

A couple of years later, in 1988, GDW published another Frank Chadwick product, titled “Barbarossa 25”. This was nothing less than an incredible attempt to enable 20mm WW2 wargamers to refight the entire WW2 Eastern Front campaign in a manageable way. Frank Chadwick’s introduction explained:

“…….I have never experienced more pleasure in a campaign or in individual games than I did playing Barbarossa/25 or ‘Bathtub Barbarossa’ as we came to call it…..the principle behind the bathtub campaign concept is contained in the title….Barbarossa/25 is the Barbarossa campaign scaled down 25 times. We began with the maps for GDW’s Europa game (“Fire in the East”) - which has 16 miles (or 25 kilometre) hexes and used each hex to represent one kilometre instead. With ground scale reduced 25 times, we then scaled down the Orders of Battle (i.e. the troops) by 25. The result was a good, proportional representation of the combatants which retains a nice feel for their capabilities but remains manageable for campaign purposes. Finally, time was scaled down by (roughly) 25, with each month reduced to a day, and the half-month game turns converted to morning and afternoon. There is no night turn……everyone rests at night. In the campaign which we played, our little war had much of the sweep and drama of its larger counterpart, and remained an exciting and challenging gaming experience throughout……”

Barbararossa 25 by GDW

Why did this game come to be called “Bathtub Barbarossa”? Apparently, Frank Chadwick reproduced the “Soviet Navy” for his original Barbarossa campaign - with an already small force scaled down 25 times, and then somewhat roughly modelled, a fellow player commented that, far from the “Soviet Navy”, the result looked like “something suitable for sailing in a bathtub”. In the way of wargame campaigns, the joke kept being repeated, and hence, “Bathtub Barbarossa”.

Why 'bathtub' at all? The concept of 'bath-tubbing' simply bridged the divide between available resources and outrageous expectations. In other words, Frank Chadwick's wargames group (the Central Illinois Tabletop Wargamers) already had large 20mm armies built and organised for ordinary "CD" brigade or divisional level games. To wargame the entire Eastern front, however, required not brigades or divisions, but whole armies. Instead of keeping the "CD" rule and Orders of Battle as they were (which would have been one approach, requiring years of effort to add more and more 20mm divisions to the model order of battle, and then finding a huge area of desert finally to wargame 'the Eastern Front'), Frank Chadwick simply 'scaled down' everything (troops, area and time) to make the "Eastern Front" fit the available wargame resources ("CD/25") The existing model "platoons" therefore no longer represented "real" platoons on the tabletop, but battalions; in the same way, existing model "divisions" no longer represented 'real' divisions on the tabletop, but whole armies.

Now, all this might be historically interesting (if you’re interested in the history of wargaming, that is, which is admittedly a somewhat esoteric taste), but what does it have to do with the Herefordshire VBCW? Well, while we’ve staged “Big Games” (using 3 x 6ft by 8ft tables) to represent small parts of the County (i.e. Shobdon, or Mortimer’s Cross), the “bathtub concept” might allow us to stage “The Biggest Game of All”, i.e. fighting across the whole of the County of Herefordshire on one tabletop! Instead of a player taking the part of a Platoon Commander fighting over small fields, hedgerows and country barns, in “The Biggest Game of All”, players would become “Army Generals”, fighting over all of the County’s towns, villages and hamlets, all in a swirl of action around the ultimate prize, the historic City of Hereford!

Is this even possible, and if so, how? Would it not require wholesale changes to everyone’s well-established “Went the Day Well” Platoons, with all the fuss and bother that such entails - and which must at all costs be avoided? The ‘short answer’ to these proper questions is: if the Central Illinois Tabletop Wargamers could represent the entire Soviet Union in their 1/72 (or 20mm) wargame scale and keep to their established (20mm) “Command Decision” tabletop rules, it should be possible to represent Herefordshire in 28mm with the WTDW rules. It’s surely just (a small?) matter of changing the ‘representation parameters’ of the WTDW game - but without changing the number or organisation of the troops available! So much for the short answer; the ‘long answer’ and all "bathtub ramifications" will be developed over a series of irregular blog posts to follow….