Tuesday, April 23, 2013

A Butterfly flaps a lazy wing

I don't know if this is a butterfly or the mere revival of a very old project.

I became interested a long time ago (1986?-93?) in "Case Green", Nazi Germany's plan to invade Czechoslovakia at the time of the so-called Munich Crisis.
I involved myself in ridiculous amounts of ferreting for details on German war plans, orbats for both sides, the Czech fortification systems and so on. I made the happy acquaintance of the Fujimi 38t and Esci 35t tank kits.
I ran across Richard Marsh's Slovak Rapid Brigade in an old copy of Wargames Illustrated and started to track down this company called "Raventhorpe" with their inelegantly sculpted, seperate head Slovaks who I intended with all cunning to paint as Czechs per the plate in the Funcken on WW2.
Happy days. Eventually though it all fell apart due to a lack of readily accessible information.
Times though have now changed and I have been doodling with some Barbarossa modelling brought about by Pegasus Minis fast builds and am quietly working away on my Slovak Fast brigade.

However it does occour to me that Alzheim is not unlike Bohemia-Moravia geographically and that way back then, I really enjoyed building my old Czech aircraft from those KP kits (which I still have a few of and are fairly cheap and abundant on eBay). I am also struck by the amount of Aero, Avia and Letov aircraft Alzheim bought from 1934 on. Her use of LT vz 35 tanks and OA vz 30 armoured cars is documented only in a few extremely grainy photos from the period, but the information is there. A little bird also tells me that Alzheimer troops wore uniforms very like those of the Hungarian or perhaps the Romanian armies of the time as well. Internet searches have given me a better understanding of the types of light and heavy "objects" which made up the Czech Alzheimer fortifications.

It may well be that Alzheim was not absorbed into Germany in 1866 after all.

Which brings me in my roundabout way to my purpose. Does anyone own a copy of Command Magazine #24? It's main feature is a hypothetical scenario on Case Green. I used to own it, but seem only to have retained the hex map and the tokens.



2 comments:

Rob Young said...

Can't help you on the mag, but if you are looking seriously at Czech tanks, try to get hold of a copy of Czechoslovak Armoured Fighting Vehiucles 1918-1945 by H.C.Doyl and C.K.Kliment - dates back to 1979 and was published by Bellona. Masses of black and white pictures and photos, camouflage/operational/production info including technical data and weapon stats.

Rob

Neil Patterson said...

I have had similar ideas in the past; there was once talk of a CD scenario/campaign involving the Czechs & Soviets V Germans & Poles.

Have you seen:

http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?138192-Czechoslovak-army-1918-1938

Lots of interesting stuff.
Neil