The Download Munkey : Download This, Download That :)

Many WWII tank enthusiasts probably have heard of Waffen-SS tank ace Michael Wittmann and his famous assault on elements of the British 7th Armoured Division (Desert Rats) at the Battle of Villers-Bocage mainly because accounts of the battle were widely available in books and the .NET.

French tank commander, Capitaine Billotte and his exploits at the Battle of Stonne will be far less familiar for most I believe. I just read that Capitaine Billotte, commander of a Renault Char B1 bis tank ‘Eure’ of the 1/41e BCC (Bataillon de Chars de Combat) managed to advance into the town of Stonne frontally and destroyed a column of 13 German tanks - 11 PzKpfw III and 2 PzKpfw IV from the 10. Panzer-Division as well as two 3.7cm PaK anti-tank guns in the town without casualties. His heavily armoured tank with 60 mm and 46-55 mm armour for the hull and turret respectively, according to The Book of Tanks, received 140 non-penetrating hits. In contrast, an early variant PzKpfw IV only had armour of 30mm thick on the hull and turret front and 15mm on the sides.

A detailed day-to-day account of the Battle of Stonne (15 - 18 May 1940) can be read in David Lehman’s fantastic post at the Axis History Forums.

Image from Wikipedia.

While heavily armoured, the Char B1 bis was slow and its configuration of a fixed larger calibre main gun (75mm) in the hull and a smaller gun (47mm) in the turret was of an obsolete interwar design. However, it was precisely this design which allowed the ‘Eure’ to simultaneously destroy the lead and end vehicles of the German armoured column with the turret and hull guns respectively.

© Tamiya

Only chanced upon this account after visiting the Tamiya website where photos of a recently released 1:35 kit of a Char B1 bis kit were displayed. Unfortunately the kit does not provide decals for the legendary ‘Eure’ because it was half destroyed (probably by its crew) after damage to its sprockets according to the excellent French site www.chars-francais.net (Google translation) .

www.chars-francais.net also happens to contain a meticulously prepared list of all Char B1 bis tanks complete with names and photos as well as an article by Antonie Misner on markings (Google translation) for the Char B1 bis (including side profile for Fleurie, also of the same 41e BCC as ‘Eure’)

© Games Workshop

As a sidenote, I think the Leman Russ tank of the Imperial Guard (Warhammer 40,000) bears more than a passing resemblance to this French tank

Read more about the exploits of the ‘Eure’ @ the Axis History Forums.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
The Book of Tanks
Motofumi Kobayashi - WWII Tank Art
Kyoshi Harada’s 3D Renders of WWII War Machines
WinSPWW2 - Free Turn-based WWII Armour Warfare
Sega Tiger I Paper Model

An regularly updated military history blog with a knack for posting articles on interesting yet little-known topics from both major and minor military conflicts.

Reached this site not once but twice while researching the facts behind historical accounts of Polish cavalry charging German panzers during WWII for this post on Japanese military artist Motofumi Kobayashi and again on Sturmgruppen fighter tactics after encountering John Wallin Liberto’s richly detailed artwork of Sturmgruppen Dahl (More in a future post ).

All images below taken from War and Game and are copyright of the respective artists involved.

There’s a lot of little gems if you take the time to trawl though the massive military history archives of War and Game. Topics on helicopters, flying boats and horse cavalry seem to be especially well represented at this site. While I’m not an avid enthusiast of ancient and medieval cavalry, articles on seemingly obsolete horse cavalry units in WWII are quite an eye-opener, like the article on the notorious 8. SS-Kavallerie-Division Florian Geyer and of the infamous myth of the Polish cavalry’s valiant charge against German armour.

Other interesting reads include obscure topics often briefly mentioned in WWII history books like the air war in China, the Battle for Kufra, Libya 1941, a summarized combat history of the 12th Guards Heavy Tank Regiment (above), German U-boats operating in the Far East in WWII, hunting the Japanese heavy cruiser Haguro, No.148 (Special Duties) Squadron and Operation Lusty to famous operations like the audacious German raid to rescue Mussolini from imprisonment at Hotel Albergo Rlfuglo. For WWII topics closer to home - read up on the Japanese invasion of Malaya and the Japanese 5th Infantry Division which was assigned to invade Malaya.

There’s also a ton of military weapon and equipment articles dealing with commonly-seen equipment like British WWII military transport and German armoured vehicles (above) to rarely seen vehicles like the Canal Defence Light - tanks with their turret replaced with a powerful searchlight as well as posts on tactics such as Tank vs plane.

Post-WWII events of interest include the tense standoff between American and Soviet armor at Checkpoint Charlie between East and West Berlin (Oct 1961) , a detailed list of US Navy aircraft involved in Cold War incidents, the CIA-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba (Cuban FAR Sea Fury above), the Salvador–Honduras War of 1969 and the combat history of the Mil Mi-24 ‘Hind’ in the Soviet-Afghan War.

While I have highlighted most articles related to WWII, there’s plenty more to be read at War and Game spanning ancient (Roman Army of Augustus Caesar), medieval (see Mongol Siege of Baghdad in 1258) and modern day conflicts.

Get your daily military history fix @ War and Game.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
The Book of Tanks
John Wallin Liberto’s WWII Military Aviation Art
Motofumi Kobayashi - Japanese Military Artist
Free Military History Books @ Focal Point Publications

Japanese CG artist, Kyoshi Harada, has updated his Polygon Model website with 4 new 1280×960 wallpapers of WWII war machines.

© Kyoshi Harada

The first wallpaper depicts a submarine of the Imperial Japanese Navy Sen Toku I-400 class, the largest submarines of WWII. Read in the book Codename : Downfall (Thomas B. Allen & Norman Polman) that the Japanese actually intended to use these massive submarine carriers to launch their internally-carried floatplanes on one-way kamikaze missions to disperse plague-infected fleas over California & other cities on the American west coast under Operation Cherry Blossoms At Night (page 257).

© Kyoshi Harada

The second wallpaper is of the ‘workhorse’ of the German Army in WWII, the Panzerkampfwagen IV (PzKpfw IV) tank. The tank in this wallpaper is the earlier Ausf D/E/F1 variant with the short 75mm KwK L/24 cannon for infantry support.

© Kyoshi Harada

The third is a cutaway model of the Type 3 Chi-Nu medium tank of the Imperial Japanese Army. It’s rare to find high resolution 3D renders of Japanese WWII armor on the .Net and even rarer to see high-quality cutaway models like this:)

© Kyoshi Harada

The last wallpaper is another cutaway model of the radical-looking Kyushu J7W1 Shinden interceptor. The devastating armament of four nose-mounted Type 5 30mm cannon can be seen clearly in the render.

Download these wallpapers @ Kyoshi Harada’s Polygon Model website. Do note that the past wallpapers are not archived at Polygon Model and will disappear permanently from the site once they are replaced by newer wallpapers.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Tom Clancy’s EndWar Concepts & Renders
High-res Israeli Merkava Mk III Baz 3D Renders
High-res 3D renders from Combat Mission : Shock Force
T-72! Balkans on Fire Renders and Wallpapers

© Motofumi Kobayashi

Motofumi Kobayashi does cover art for several military-themed magazines (e.g Strike And Tactical Magazine) (above) and manga publications (a list of works can be found at Wikipedia). For selected works at his official site, visitors can the view the simplified process from the initial concept line art to the finished cover. While notes accompanying each step are unfortunately only available in Japanese, you can use Google Translate to get the rough idea of the process.

© Motofumi Kobayashi

Jan 2001 illustration of the German advance during the early days of Operation Barbarossa done in Photoshop in 20 hours. View the original images here.

© Motofumi Kobayashi

Cover art depicting North Korean troops for a 2006 magazine

Some of my favourite pieces come from this 185 page book on the German armoured forces of WWII (Panzerwaffe) illustrated by Motofumi Kobayashi and put up for perusal at the official site @ genbun.net. It traces the origins and development of the Panzerwaffe with illustrations of their weapons, equipment and uniforms. Interspersed between the chapters are pages of manga with scenes from major battles like Kursk and the Ardennes Offensive.

© Motofumi Kobayashi

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel directing his troops from his command vehicle, possibly his well-known halftrack Sdkfz 250/3 Greif.

© Motofumi Kobayashi
German Tigers and Russian T-34s slug it out during Operation Zitadelle.

© Motofumi Kobayashi
German troops panic as a lumbering British Mark IV tank approaches during WWI.

© Motofumi Kobayashi
Polish cavalry under attack from German panzers during the invasion of Poland in 1939.

Found this talented artist via Alvin Lee’s website for local WW2 re-enactment group, the 5th Japanese Infantry Division which I discovered from an article on the secretive Singapore-based Oka 9420 unit linked to the notorious Japanese WWII human experimentation unit 731, featured on Osprey Publishing’s official blog not too long ago.

Visit Motofumi Kobayashi’s official site or go directly to the main gallery, the aviation art gallery or the Panzerwaffe book.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
Osprey Publishing’s Military Art “Advent Calendar”
DIA Military Art Collections
Code Guardian - Military CG Short Film
Max Grundy - Fear is the New Beauty
Dick Kramer - Military Artist

A labour of love by David Ferris, who has generously provided his research on tanks around the world in the form of PDFs for each country. Currently, the PDFs for France, Italy, Russia and Japan are available for download.

David has already done much of the research poring over books and compiling the data for each individual tank as well as taking photos for various tanks over a span of several years. Statistics like speed, number of crew, weight and armament are available for all entries. Some entries also include further details on the armour thickness and armour slope for each side of the armoured vehicle.

However, these PDFs are by no means complete since an exhaustive listing of the specifications of all tanks in the world would probably take years of full-time research to collect and collate photos and varying information from different sources.

Anyway, they are still a handy source of reference information for anyone interested in tanks. The main section PDF also contains a well-commented 8 page bibliography of 100+ tank books. I only have less than 5 books in the list

© David Ferris

The interesting vehicle on the bottom right is a Canon de 194 Mle GPF sur Chenilles, a pre-WW2 self-propelled artillery piece.

Download The Book of Tanks.

MORE @ THE DOWNLOAD MUNKEY:
WinSPWW2 and WinSPMBT - Tactical Armour Wargames
High Resolution Merkava III 3D Model
OPFOR Worldwide Equipment Guide
Osprey Duel Website
Armada International Complete Guides