Egilman

My pleasure Alan, I love the history as well.... and we are here to share....

A slight correction... the tank referenced above has a red heart.. as you read Patton's order he specified black as the battalion color... A bit of explanation and slight correction needs to be made... When Patton was given field command of the AEF's tanks, there was only one tank battalion the 426th.... In a few months they had sufficient personnel to form a second battalion, the 427th.... They now had a need to tell apart the different battalions so Patton adjusted the order to account for this and red was the color assigned to the 427th Tank Battalion... Since the image shows a red heart, the tank is Unit #1 of the third section of the 4th company of the 427th Tank Battalion.... Not the 426th TB... Just in case of any confusion..... (or if anyone actually read the order as posted) {chuckle}

This is an American marked tank..... It doesn't have the playing card flash on the tail panels, The French were the only ones to put it there... The colors and camo pattern is French as they came from the factory painted that way... GS Patton jr in 1918 (he commanded the field portion of the Tank Corps in France) set up the marking scheme for US tanks.... This below is part of the order he circulated.... Tanks: In addition to its registration number, any battle tank carries two brands which one can distinguish the Battalion Group or the Group or the Company or the tank and in the Group or the Company, battery or section of tank. The brand of the Group or Company is formed by a cartridge as defined below: Group 1 or 1st Company - circle 25 cm in diameter. Group 2 or 2nd Company - square 25 cm in diameter. Group 3 or 3rd Company - Triangle 25 cm in diameter. Group 4 or 4th Company - Diamond 25 cm in diameter. The cartridges are painted in white on each side of the tank in half of the upper rear panel. The brand of battery or Section consists of an Ace inscribed in a circle of 15 cm, painted black in the center of the cartridge after the rule below: Battery 1 or Section 1 - Ace of Spades Battery 2 or Section 2 - Ace of Hearts Battery 3 or Section 3 - Ace of Diamonds Reserve (Section d’echelon) - Ace of Clubs French Renault FT units were organised in : Régiment - Bataillon - Compagnie - Section In addition, they would paint a small number next to the designation marking signifying which tank in the section it was.... So Tank #II in the sheet of schemes above is marked for the 426th tank battalion, 4th company, 3rd section, Tank #1..... Not all American tanks were marked like this but the ones in Patton's command were...

Amazing detail for a model so small, very well done....

Hey Brother, there is a product here in the states that is used to prime wood and other materials that has been stained or scorched... it seals in smells as well.... The name is Kilz From my own personal experience it works very, very well..... water based latex sealer primer.... Perfect for MDF..... You can pick it up in England as well.... I used it on my laser cut paint racks that also had that burnt smell to them.... It definitely does the job as far as sealing, and is a great primer takes all paints well....

My Father had a stack as well, got them every two months, and yep when the new one came the oldest went into the kindling bin..... The memories this stuff brings up, older simpler times... JC Whitney was the Sears-Roebucks of the hardware world....

Yep, it's easier to see an irregular surface once it has been painted....

I've cut off sprocket teeth as well, but I hit on an easier solution, I cut off the alignment tabs or square locators and align them with a pair of machinists angles so the blade is vertical... putting a sprocket tooth against the square blade on each side of the sprocket forces the correct alignment and using two on opposite sides forces the two halves to be concentric... It's a bit more work, but eliminates sprocket alignment issues in all cases without cutting off teeth...... You guys do beautiful work.....

I don't believe they are planning on designing one... But there is Murph's models version and the Thai Paper Works version... Not quite up to Halinski standards though.....

Yes it has, many times... one must remember cars were much, much lighter back in those days, at least half the weight of cars 30 years later.... and some of them had a mechanical parking cog that interlocked with the driveline.... When it was set the car would not roll cause the wheels couldn't turn.... About '28 or so is when cars started getting heavier as they became more powerful... What you see in the pic looks quite scary, but in reality, with normal care and attention was quite safe, (for that period) Those two vehicles in the pic, four good strong men could pick one up off the ground.... But the sad story is when they continued to use those techniques on more modern, heavier vehicles, several deaths and the high lift bumper jack was born.... OSHA has a purpose, a well founded one....

Your rendering of it in scale is simply outstanding... Very Very well done!!!

Another one from the VK 6.01 - 9.01 tree.... Didn't they do a Pz II with this type of suspension? I believe they did the "Luchs" they built 100 of them.... Some saw actual combat service if I remember correctly..... Yep the VK 13.03....

Outstanding.......

Did I say west point? Ughhh yeah, I did... Is my memory getting that bad...

Pullin up the easy chair as I type..... I'm in as well...

If Stonewall had been in command at Gettysburg, it would have been a Confederate victory on the first day.... Why? Cause Jackson was a tactician, taught tactics at west point.... He was also a trained engineer/artilleryman.... Jackson would have directly ordered Longstreet to occupy the round tops immediately without any delay and if he had dallied like he did with Lee, Jackson would have relieved him on the spot.... Stonewall Jackson was the Commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, as such he was the top Confederate General... At the time, Lee was Jefferson Davis's military advisor and held no real rank nor command... The loss of Stonewall Jackson at Chancellorsville was the biggest loss the South ever suffered... Without him they were half the army they were with him.... It was after Jacksons death that Lee was offered command of the AoNV, which he very reluctantly accepted the same as he very reluctantly rejected command of the entire union army when Lincoln offered that to him.... Lee's view was that he was supposed to be loyal to his State first, then the Nation, it is why he rejected Lincoln's offer as he could not go against his state, and accepted Davis's offer as his sense of honor and integrity could not allow him to stand by when his state, whichever side it was on was attacked... If Lee had had his way, he would rather not have taken any command at all..... He didn't want to fight against his home state, nor his nation.... But once he took it, he gave everything he had.... He is one of the most tragic figures in the Civil War, right up there with Abraham Lincoln....

Welcome Mike from a Graham modeler...... The GPNW is well represented here.....

The most accurate Documentary of course is Ken Burns Civil War.... Great accurate writing, period music done very well, and actual Civil War historians led the telling of the story.... Even it didn't even cover a tenth of the realities.... There are a lot of strange things one learns when researching history.... The Virginia Historical Society holds in it's collection a Mexican officers cavalry spur..... The story of it's travels is documented by many many pieces of correspondence and personal papers of historical import.... It is known as the Huger Spur and only one remains.... It is a Spanish/Cuban design spur probably manufactured sometime in the early 1840's..... The Huger spur was crafted of steel, probably in the 1840s, with a gold-inlaid band intricately engraved with trailing vines. The multi-spoked rowel, or wheel, is rendered as a flower, with the petals forming the points on the spur. Although its origin is unknown, it was most likely made in Mexico or Cuba, where its first owner, Mexican general Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, was living in exile after the Texican War and before the Mexican-American War..... (some say he was wearing them at the Alamo and the Battle of San Jacinto, but that is unproven and improbable given verified documentation) The first documented account of the Huger spur dates from September 1847 after Santa Anna's defeat at the hands of General Winfield Scott In Mexico City.... Santa Anna surrendered his sword to Scott, who, in a gesture of respect, promptly returned it.... To show his appreciation, Santa Anna removed his spurs and presented them to Scott.... Soon thereafter, Scott gave them to his chief of ordnance and artillery, Captain Benjamin Huger, (grandson of Maj. Gen. Thomas Pinckney) for bravery at Vera Cruz, Molino del Rey, and Chapultepec.... (mexico city) Captain Huger gave the spurs to his son Frank Huger on his graduation from West Point in 1860..... The following year both Huger's resigned their commissions in the United States Army to serve in the Virginia militia and eventually the Confederate States Army..... The elder Huger commanded state forces in Norfolk and eventually gained promotion to major general..... Frank Huger fought with the Norfolk Light Artillery, known as Huger's Battery, and quickly moved up in the ranks after service in the battles of the Seven Days, Sulphur Springs, Harpers Ferry, and Fredericksburg..... In 1863 he was promoted to major and fought at Chancellorsville and Gettysburg..... By the end of that year, he was a colonel in command of his own battalion..... He was captured at Saylor's Creek in April 1865 by Brigadier General George Armstrong Custer, a friend and classmate from West Point..... Knowing that the war was over for him, the Virginian lent his prized spurs to the flamboyant Union Cavalry officer..... Some months after the war, Custer wrote to Huger asking permission to keep the spurs a little longer..... Huger agreed, and Custer took the spurs with him when he went out west to fight in the Indian campaigns from which he never returned..... One of the spurs was reportedly recovered from Custer's body (doubtful, official reports say it was recovered on the battlefield, not his body) after the Battle of Little Big Horn and given to his widow, Elizabeth, who eventually returned the spur to Frank Huger..... It remained in the possession of the Huger family down thru the years until sometime in the late 2000's the society acquired it.... Here's a pic of one of the spurs on one of Custer's boots taken prior to going west and the Little Bighorn.... The Mexican War, worn by Genralissimo de Santa Anna, through many of the major actions of the ACW by colonel Huber, and thru most of the pre Little Bighorn Indian wars by Colonel George Armstrong Custer.... If only it could talk..... That is the most enticing about history, following all the various paths and connections.... General Huger is interesting, why, cause his actions at the Battle of Seven Pines gives insight into Longstreet's personality, Longstreet abrogated command to himself when Huber was the senior officer present and should have been in command, (neither had orders from Gen Johnston at the time as to who was to take command, eventually Johnston ordered Longstreet to take command) Longstreet then ordered Huber to hold his division and await orders, and then complained to General Johnston that the reason Longstreet had failed was because of Huber's slowness to approach the union lines with his division..... Longstreet was a backstabber and a very unreliable officer who carries an undeserved reputation as a great confederate general and leader of men... General Lee didn't see this until after Gettysburg and shipped him and his Corps of Alabamians out west to fight General Sherman..... (which he didn't do to well at either) The stories and complexities of the personalities involved are more interesting that the actual battles..... Sorry bout this again Brother.... (slinking away from the rail switchyard handles)..... I just can't seem to help myself.....

And if Longstreet has succeeded, it would have ended the war, on political grounds not military grounds..... There was a lot of talk going on about a negotiated settlement.... The Confederates seemed to be winning all the major battles..... Military grounds would have taken a lot longer without the political will to fight.... Don't get me wrong, the Union was going to win that war even before it started.... The South was 100% mobilized in the fight, the North was never more than 35% mobilized.... The south needed to take long chances the north didn't, and the war was over when Lincoln found a general that understood this one fact.... Shelby Foote said it well, the North fought that war with one arm behind it's back, when they finally decided to take the other arm out the war was over in less than a year.... At the end of the Civil War the US Army was the largest, most battle hardened, well equipped army on the planet..... And every one on the planet that was paying attention knew it.... And yes I'm sorry as well OC for the de-rail.... The ACW is a subject with many, many facets..... The first truly modern war, at least in it's strategic considerations and how they drove the tactics.... A hard subject not to talk about....

Lee didn't wait, it was Longstreet who waited for the rest of his Corps to arrive after receiving the orders from Lee at about 10:00am, his attack started at 4:00 pm and by that time the Round Tops had been reinforced.... If Longstreet had attacked with half his Corps when Lee had ordered it, the hills would have easily been taken.... And with Longstreet's heavy artillery on them and his infantry fortifying the hills against any counterattack, they would have decimated the Union lines on the ridge.... Even after the wait to get organized, Longstreet almost pulled it off except for Chamberlain's last ditch orders for a wheeling bayonet charge down the hill into Longstreet's flank with the last of his reserves.... Setup a crossfire on the confederates that no army could withstand.... Lee was so angry with Longstreet that he left him out of the battle after that.... The next evening, instead of flanking the round tops he ordered his last reserves, Picketts division, to execute an exposed frontal assault in the morning against the now heavily fortified ridge, and Burnsides troops cut them to ribbons.... It was Lee's fault that he didn't impress the need for immediate action at speed on Longstreet.... And his angry arrogance caused him to make his biggest blunder of the war. Lee wasn't the same after that.....

Lee at Gettysburg is a lot like Nappy at Waterloo, Lee became so enamored at all his successes he lost track of the risks he had to take to achieve those victories, and the third day was a complete waste of very fine troops.... Napoleon at Waterloo did essentially the same thing, he took a huge gamble and lost.... Both wars were lost right there, but unlike Waterloo, Gettysburg wasn't the final battle, but it was the battle that lost the war for the south..... AS far as European scraps of dirt being fought over by armies, I swear there is a military monograph written about every single mound, hillock and valley, and how to either attack or defend it.... Not just the engineers devising plans for a battle, the military historians documenting it afterwards as well.... That's why all the great military schools were located in either France, England or Germany prior to WWI..... I don't believe there is a square inch of European soil that hasn't been fought over by armies at one point in time or another and then analyzed to death a couple of dozen times over.....

Know your terrain, it's drilled into you from the first day of TAC school.... One of ideals they hammered into your brain, trust your maps, learn to use them, all else fails and you don't have a map, scout the terrain..... (or plan on living under it) But then the next ideal they drill into you, follow the plan, with one caveat, when the balloon goes up, (first shots are exchanged) throw the op plan in the trash, it can change in a micro second, prepare to adapt to change.... (that's when ideal #1 becomes most important) Order of priority, your men, your mission, you never forget the two, you never want the troops to gain permanent knowledge of the terrain.... Preserve the first to gain the second.... With the comms used today, the live training they undergo, it's all designed to reduce the confusion on the battlefield...... I don't think there is anyone today who can truly understand maneuver warfare of the early 19th century, most troops today would consider it suicide...

Agreed, the problem with the Russian pilot veterans was they learned to fight in an entirely different type of combat over Russia, most air combat over Russia occurred in the mid altitudes, between 10 & 20k ft... they needed aircraft that could fly well in that environment it's why they loved the P-39's so much, they excelled in that environment, their own aircraft were designed to fly in that environment as well..... The Germans didn't have much in the way of high altitude aircraft and what they did have wasn't being used in Russia.... A different type of combat altogether, much like the P-40 against the A6M over China, they learned to get the most out of the equipment they could using the tactics that worked for them the last time out... They were completely unprepared for the US Airforce and the air superiority tactics learned in the last war...... But the one thing you know about the Russians, they learn fast and adapt quickly..... it wasn't as easy in Vietnam basically because we kinda forgot what we had learned in WWII, (and confirmed over Korea) superior equipment does not compensate for training and experience...

The Mig 15 over Korea was a surprise to US pilots, it was far superior to our F-80's & 84's and anything the Navy had as well... it was smaller faster and more maneuverable.... It's one deficiency was it's armament of 2- 20mm and 1- 30 mm cannon, very effective weapons but minimal ammo loadout... It could not hang in a fight and suffered compressibility problems in a high speed dive.... According to Chuck Yeager, it was a plane you had to pay attention to and stay within it's flight envelope or it would kill you... When Yeager told Russian pilots of his opinions of it, they exclaimed (you dived in it!) they were dumbstruck at why he would risk his life like that... The F-86 was a vast improvement over the F-80's & 84's but still less than what was needed against the Mig 15, so how did the F-86 gain an 8-1 kill ratio against the Mig 15? Superior ACM training... our pilots could fly the F-86 right to the edge of the envelope the Russian pilots (even the aces amongst them) could not... And the air combat tactical doctrines worked out in WWII were still valid.... They knew where the Migs were coming from so they would regularly sweep thru the skies when the bombers were flying missions and intercept them before they could get to the bombers.... Flying high with their superior dive speed they would blow thru a formation of Migs taking out more than a few of them and the Migs could not follow... And they knew they were flying against Russian WWII aces.... The F-86's would stay high, the Migs would stay low, the bombers would stay at medium altitudes until reaching their targets.... For the Russian pilots, this took advantage of the Mig's greatly superior rate of climb and the inability of bomb laden aircraft to manuever.... The F-86's would dive into the oncoming Mig formations and the Migs would usually try and scatter, this is why there are many many accounts of low altitude turning fights between Sabres and Migs.... You dive in on the Mig and make a high speed pass and hope you got guns on it before it turned away and you had to use your energy to run.... This revealed a problem with the early Sabres, if you tried to pull too many G's in a turn you could wrench (twist) the tail out of alignment so low level high speed dogfighting was specifically frowned upon.... What the record really shows is the superior training and experience of our pilots over the Russian pilots, it made up for the deficiencies of our equipment....

51 to be exact 43 of them in the US.... (most are in private hands) Well over 100 on display worldwide.... And the North Korean AF still flies them.... (chuckle)