In the 1950s, the British army investigated the possibility of a main battle tank weighing around 20-30 tons. Named the FV4401 Contentious, it was part…
Military history and RPG books
Category: Cold War
During the Cold War, there was a tendency in the West to believe that the Soviet system, and in particular the Soviet army, could not…
During the Cold War, both sides did what they could to hide the capabilities of their military equipment. As Sun Tzu advised, “A military operation…
During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact armies studied the disposition of rivers in western Europe. It concluded that they would have to cross water…
The FV1620 Humber Hornet was an early British ATGM carrier, which mounted two Malkara missiles on a vehicle based on a Humber Pig armoured lorry…
The ZSU-23-4 entered service in 1966, as a replacement for the much less effective ZSU-57-2. The ZSU-57-2 mounted a pair of 57mm autocannons in an…
Military vehicles are often mis-identified as tanks, even by respected media outlets. The caption for this Reuters video states that it “appears to show Syrian…
This interactive quiz has been created as a companion to my “A Tank by Any Other Name” article. Using the information given there, you should…
This article has also been published in the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers Journal.
In 1854, during the Crimean War, a volunteer unit was formed in the Falkland Islands to guard against Russian invasion. This unit was commonly known as the Stanley Volunteers, but had no official title. In 1891 a Chilean steamer, with 200 armed men aboard, called at Port William for repairs. The presence of so many armed men was considered to be a threat to the islands, and so the governor, Sir Roger Goldsworthy, formed the Falkland Islands Volunteers, with an initial strength of 37 men, to provide the islands with an indigenous defence force. The men of the unit were sworn in at a ceremony at Government House in June 1892.
This article has also been published in the Society of Twentieth Century Wargamers Journal.
Background
In the late 1960’s, helicopters with anti-tank missiles started to be deployed, and a new tactic known as a “pop-up” was developed. The helicopter would hover behind cover, then climb just high enough to fire a missile, before dropping down behind cover again. Newer missiles such as the American TOW allowed the helicopter to perform such a manoeuvre quickly, limiting it’s exposure to enemy fire. By 1977, the Soviets had introduced the 9K114 Shturm missile (known to NATO as the AT-6 Spiral), which had a range of 5km.