Monday, October 20, 2025

Operation Archduke - The Landing

 

The Plan.

For years before the opening of hostilities between Azuria and Ruberia, the latter's High Command had been planning - and rehearing far from prying eyes - a quick surprise landing somewhere upon Azurian shores. Of course, such a design could scarcely be kept secret, but flooding Dame Rumour with a plethora of misinformation, disinformation and obfuscation at least force Azuria to form its countermeasures contingent upon a wide range of possibilities.


So it was that, when the landing Armada approached the Portesable Bay they were to find that they would have to fight their way onto the beaches. The shore to be crossed included and stretched either side of the considerable town of Oualmentville-sur-Mer. The landing area was divided into three beaches, styled, east to west:
  • Gemstone - east of the town, but including a shore artillery emplacement: 1st Brigade, I Army Corps, in landing barges
  • Jupiter - the town itself, plus the short stretch of beach east of Petitruisseau river mouth: 19th Brigade, in transport ships
  • Scimitar - west of the Petitriseau: 15th Brigade, in landing barges
Behind the first wave of three brigades awaited a fourth: 24 Infantry Brigade, plus Army Corps artillery, machine guns and cavalry. 



First Brigade was to storm Gemstone Beach, carry the defence works, and exploit on to the heights inland, thence, by nightfall, the village of Venus-la-Tour. They could count on RMS Warrior to silence the shore battery.

The transport ships carrying 19th Brigade were boldly to range up to the wharfs along the waterfront and decant their passengers directly into the town. The bay forming a pronounced bight, it seemed likely that this landing could not be effected until the flanking Brigades were fairly ashore. By which time, it was supposed, gunfire from the Warrior, Earnslaw and Eurydice having suppressed the shore batteries might do the same to anything that might inhibit the landings in the town. That proved rather an optimistic view, and 19th Brigade were to have a hard time of it. 

Fifteenth Brigade's objectives were the Heights crowned by the village of Nonstreham and the shore guns on the point, thence to cross the Petitruisseau stream and take, carry or seize the Petiteville.



Opposing the landing was 114th Coastal Brigade - a formation of semi-civilian draftees of whom the question of their military value was to be answered emphatically in the event. Supporting this Brigade were the shore batteries sited at the town end of Gemstone Beach and upon Nonstreham Point. The Brigade also possessed a battery of ancient rifled pieces emplaced at Venus-la-Tour, and, in Petiteville, the machinegun company attached to 342nd Battalion around Nonstreham. Another MG company was established near Petiteville. This belonged to 31st Rifle Brigade, the main body of which had been billeted in several villages well inland.

Gemstone Beach.


Surprise achieved to the extent that 1st Brigade was close to the shore by the time the defenders were alerted to the attack, 3rd Battalion was ashore quickly and moving across the sand to storm the infantry lines flanking the east shore battery. Second Battalion soon joined the first, followed by the 3rd. Landing in front of the shore battery, 1st Battalion attacked straight out of the boats. The brought a halt to RMS Warrior's bombardment of the strongpoint - woefully ineffective as it was. Not that the shore gunnery was any more damaging!
General view of the approach of the 
Invasion fleet.

I'll pause the narrative here, for the next eight pictures, and then resume.



















Third Brigade were fortunate to land pretty much unscathed. They raced across a wide section of beach to storm the earthworks beyond, whilst 2nd Battalion attacked the shore battery position. First battalion soon joined that assault, straight off the barges.




Although the defending 339th Regiment were soon driven with loss out of their entrenchments, 3rd Battalion had taken such heavy losses that barely 25% remained in action. Second Battalion found themselves pinned down in front of the shore battery. Hoping to surround the battery and to force the survivors of 339th Regiment well away from the beaches, 1st Battalion fetched a sweep through the warehouse district of the town to emerge on the flank of the 339th.



The enemy infantry proved stubborn defenders, driving 3rd Battalion back to the beach and inflicting loss upon the 1st.



All the same, heavily outnumbered as the were, 1st and 3rd Battalions between them, at considerable further cost, were eventually able to scatter the remnants. Meanwhile, at the end of the day, 2nd Battalion were still held up by the gun battery. 



Scimitar  Beach

The wide beach in this sector narrowed at its eastern end rapidly to point upon which stood the second shore battery behind fortifications. 

Forty-third Battalion was the first to land, at the western end, where the beach was widest. They had, therefore, the farthest to run upon disembarking under not only the rifles of 342nd Coastal Battalion, but the Coastal Brigade's mitrailleuse company as well. Under that lash, barely half of the unit reached the ridge upon which the defenders were dug in. Ahead of the 44th, 45th Battalion swung off to the left to attack the gun emplacement on the point. That installation was at that time engaging in a deadly gunnery duel with the two light cruisers, Earnslaw and Elizabeth.



Rapidly closing upon the shore battery, 45th Battalion's flank attack dispatched what remained of the crews, then switched front to attack in flank the dug in infantry about Nonstreham. By that time, 43rd and 44th had taken considerable stick from their frontal attacks, between them taking 50% casualties. 



The irruption of the 45th upon the defenders' flank unhinged the whole defence of the Nonstreham heights. Overrunning the mitrailleuses, the whole 15th Brigade forced the 342nd Battalion back past the village, and bade fair to push the enemy right off the feature.



The Coastal Battalion were not, however to be hustled. Conducting a slow, fighting retreat, they made 15th Brigade pay heavily for their 'victory' - if victory they could claim. At the end of the day, barely a third of the Brigade remained in action (4SP out of 12). Although the shore battery and mitrailleuses had been lost, the Coastal Battalion still retained half its original strength.

Commanding in Chief the Ruberian Expeditionary Force (REF) General B.L. Montgeremy concluded at the end of the day that 24th Brigade should be landed, and, if time allowed, committed to the battle.  To reinforce the depleted 15th Brigade, 70th and 71st Battalions were directed to land on Scimitar Beach. Seventy-second remained to reinforce 19th Brigade in the town.




Jupiter Beach (Oualmentville-sur-Mer).




The ships carrying 19th Brigade were expected, under the cover of gunfire from the light cruisers to pull up along the Oualmentville-sur-Mer waterfront, and to disgorge their battalions straight into the fight for the town. The gun armed ships were ordered to ignore the incoming from the shore batteries (which, fortunately for the invasion force, proved remarkably inaccurate, for the most part), and to pound the shorefront buildings in the hope of forcing the defenders - 340th Coastal Battalion - away from the waterfront itself. 



In this they enjoyed no success, and the three attacking battalions found it difficult to maintain even the meagre toehold they established at the outset. A toehold at least the defenders could not hope to have prevented, but, even at three to one odds in their favour, the attackers found it a struggle to penetrate beyond the esplanade.



They could count themselves fortunate, perhaps, that 341st Coastal Battalion for a long time remained, unengaged, within their earthworks between the town and the stream. There was some reason for this, as the REF still had the 24th Brigade waiting in reserve well offshore. But 340th were doing well enough on their own.



In fact, for a goodish while it seemed that 340th might well drive 19th Brigade back onto their ships or  into the sea. Outnumbered three to one, they were inflicting losses at a rate of four to one. Had 341st intervened now, it might have been all up with the 19th Brigade, and possibly even the whole invasion. 



Gradually, the attackers began to get the upper hand, at last driving the defenders back, away from the waterfront. Rather late in the day calling in the assistance of 341st Battalion the Coastal Division Commander Ermine Rommeau managed to halt 19th Brigade at the southern edge of the town.




The invasion stalled within stone's throw of the beaches, Montgoremy brought in 24th Brigade. Seventy-second Battalion came in to land at the section of Jupiter Beach left undefended by the departure of 341st Coastal. 



By now the day was well advanced and the late afternoon sun dipping well towards the horizon. The losses taken by the invaders were such as to obviate any further attempt to push inland. Exhausted by the day's fighting, the troops needed a night's respite to reorganise. For their part, the shattered wrecks of 114th Coastal Brigade pulled back to the Petitville-Venus-la-Tour line. 



Overnight, 114th Coastal Brigade was relieved by the regulars of 36th Brigade, which formation took up positions around the two villages. If they could hold for a day or two, perhaps larger formations would be on hand to drive the invaders into the sea. 

Perhaps.

Acknowledging that the beach landings had fallen short of their stated objectives, General Montgoremy ordered that, on the morrow, the bridgehead be expanded to include the two villages to the south. He needed the room to land the other two Corps of his Army. The issue was still problematical, but he was beginning to feel confident that he could maintain his army in the field upon enemy soil.

To be continued ... sometime.

My apologies to readers for the length of time it has taken to produce this narrative, and there is a sequel, but after that, I may have to place this particular project on the back burner for a while. To be added is the D-Day+1 battle, and a small naval mini-campaign, part of the Little Great War, that I will call 'The Far East Command'. The first of these battles has been fought...


Thursday, October 9, 2025

Building a Chubby Armoured Cruiser...

ANS Amiral Charner - a small armoured cruiser 
just off the slipway...

A question arose in my last posting: how did I create the 'tumblehome' that features among my Azurian war ships? I hadn't actually considered that point, and, unsure whether I could satisfactorily answer the question even to myself, I thought to myself: 'Why not make a small warship for Azuria - a second cruiser? Take pictures of the process.' Note that my Azurian ships are based on historical French types. The Amiral Charner class seemed a fine choice.

Good idea, though I will admit right now the first picture was done very poorly, worse luck...

The overall boat shape I scribed onto a piece of 6mm thick balsa, then, before cutting out the shape, scribed an 'inner shape' about 3mm from the edge. I also scribed a line about 3mm down from the upper edge (obscured in the pic, unfortunately). Then shaved away the 'upper-outer' bit to create a bevel edge.

In the rather blurry picture, I have cut and shaved out the top edge, leaving the bottom edge as drawn. You will notice the inner line is continued until it touches the outer, before again diverging very close to the bow. The 'bevelling' is adjusted according. The front end was something of an experiment here, as I wanted to create something like the ram-like bow that the French favoured.

The above shows the hull, cut out and sanded (actually filed). Sanding or filing will round the edges and smooth out irregularities caused during the cutting/ shaving process.
The 'elevation' view. The ram-like cutwater is none too pronounced, but that is the way I wanted it. You can see the tumblehome slope doesn't go right down to the waterline. Near the bows the tumblehome is reduced to a vertical sides over a short distance before reappearing just before the point of the bows. The 'ridge' that you see along the side of the hull can be rounded off gently with a file or fine sandpaper.

Not sure what you call this shaping near the bows. Astern of those incised bits there will be sponson-mounted secondary guns. Along the lateral line will be the front of the main superstructure.



Shapes to be cut out for the secondary gun sponsons. In the above picture the sternward pair seem misaligned. Actually they aren't, and in the picture below they don't look it.




Gun sponsons cut from cardboard drinking straw favoured these days by various fast food outlets. Dry run for 'fit'.



Roofing the sponsons by gluing them to thin card, roughly cutting into separate mountings, and, when the glue dries, cutting to shape using the sponson itself as the cutting guide. Note from the pic that I have used the same drinking straw to create the single-gun turrets for the 7.6-inch main guns.





Another dry run for turret placement.



Above: something I failed to do in previous models: ink in the inner areas that will be difficult to come at when painting. I also painted the hull the characteristic Azurian blue at this point, rather than later. I ought to have done the deck as well. Too bad.


Almost finished. Bridge (mostly guesswork, this, but I'm not very fussed about getting the thing exactly right), funnels and masts with fighting tops. Funnels rather taller than they should be, and I have omitted the 'fiddly' bits... The forward mast has been finished; the sternward needs its top mast (a shirt pin). The 5.4-inch gun sponsons yet to be fitted in.



... and here she is, a very small armoured cruiser (the historical equivalent was less than 5000 ton displacement), of the Amiral Charner class. Perhaps I'll add lifeboats between the midships and rear sponsons. I don't think I'll be giving her an admiral name though. ANS Bruix or Chanzy are fine names, as is Latouche-Treville even if the 'e' of 'Tre-' is lacking its acute accent. One of the benefits of building single vessels of a 'class' of several vessels, is that if it is lost in battle, there is always a replacement!



Its waterline dimensions are 9.2cm x 3.0cm (I was rather generous with the beam scale - the original class were quite slender vessels). Using Bob Cordery's Portable Colonial Wargame convention for determining Flotation Points, this comes out at 10FP. A bit light for an armoured cruiser, but not ungenerous given this ship's diminutive size.

Now it just awaits its paint finish.

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Chubby Marine Ship-building

Whilst the narrative of the Norromandy Landings - Operation Archduke - is only gradually advancing, I have been somewhat distracted by the desire to round off my Chromatic Wars navies, especially those of Ruberia (RED) and Azuria (BLUE). They have finally been completed, apart from a little bit of cosmetic work. I thought I would include some 'work in progress' pictures - not by way of a tutorial, you understand, but more to illustrate how the ships are put together.



Azurian Armoured Cruiser Dupuy de Lome
escorting a tanker. The book seems to be a suitable 
'studio'...

In the Dockyard - HMS Centurion


Preliminary sketches for the three pre-dreadnought
ships to be added to the fleet.

In the above picture you will see a plan of SMS Radetzky, and Austrian pre-dreadnought of c.WW1 vintage. The thing was deliberately distorted to 112mm length and 46mm overall beam dimensions - scales roughly 1:1200 length and 1:600 beam. However the  superstructures, gun turrets and guns had to be 'restretched' in the construction for 'the look of the thing'.

SMS Radetzky as built. It is now the flagship
of the Izumrud-Zeleniya Navy (
GREEN).




Work beginning on HMS Centurion. The hulls for Majestic and Canopus marked out on 6mm thick balsa sheet. Note that, unlike the Radetzky, I have not traced out the hulls as continuous curves, being straight amidships for up to half the ship's length. The decision was entirely arbitrary, just to keep things simple. The bow is pointier than the stern, the curve to the bow and stern beginning 30mm and 20mm respectively. I actually leave a slight transom in the stern that gets rounded off in final sanding or filing.







Superstructure and guns added. The main superstructure is from 5mm balsa sheet. These pieces of balsa were, by the way, gifted to me by a certain 'Evil Uncle Brian' before he left for a dream job in the Other Island. Had it not been so, these navies would probably never have been built.



The main turrets are carved out from 6mm sheet, the turreted secondaries from cardboard drinking straw capped with thin card cutout, and the sponsons from semi-round balsa beading. The main guns are plastic tube from hoarded used cotton buds (I have had chronically itchy ears for over half a bally century! You didn't need to know that, did you?).  The lesser guns are bits of toothpick.

The final gun layout. I usually dry-run the placement of the guns to check on their placement/ arrangement before finally gluing then into place. Lifeboats and fighting tops await their turn.



More superstructure, lifeboats added, beginning of the bridge tower(?). Toothpick masts sorted with fighting tops and slender top masts added. They will wait until the fore and aft command towers have been emplaced (I don't know the correct nomenclature for these elements).




Gradually building up the superstructure, their appearance based upon my impressions of the real thing from pictures. I've placed the funnels upon a small plinth to be placed athwartships behind the main command tower.







The final touches. The forward mast is really too tall, and the fighting top ought to be below the height of the funnels, but I have decided to leave it the way it is.



Finishing off the fleets...





Azurian battleships Suffren (left) and Republique, construction complete, and with their dockyard undercoat finish. Close by, two recently built 'C'-class '30-knotter' destroyer torpedo boats from the Ruberian Navy. Below, the reverse angle.





Below, the finished units.

ANS Suffren 

ANS Republique. The rearward mast seems to have been knocked.

Probably the Republique is more cognate to Liberté, having 10x7.6-inch broadside guns, rather than 18x6-inch. Under the Portable Gridded Wargames I use, Republique is a very formidable unit indeed - a match for HMSS Agamemnon or Commonwealth in my Ruberian navy. Had I used the historical ships' displacements as a measure of flotation strength, this would not be the case. But these navies, though owing a great deal to history, aren't really historical.

Ruberian Torpedo Boat Destroyers


Ruberian Navy: 17th Destroyer Flotilla.
2 'C' class 30 knotters and a Destroyer leader
based in 1893-built HMS Havock.

The craft that make up this 3-boat flotilla have been much more carefully designed from the historical precedents. For that I have to thank the fine diagram posted in Bob Cordery's blog about a week or so ago. The torpedo tubes I've 
had to shorten to ridiculous 'lengths`, but otherwise they look more or less OK. 


H17 (Havock)


Now, the 'C' class vessels are a little anachronistic for my 'period', being of 1913 vintage. But I haven't worried overmuch about 'chronisticism' in these navies. But I wanted a 'Destroyer Leader', and HMS Havock was an early example. But I discovered that my scale convention would have made Havock - or H17 as it was to become - would have made the leader smaller than the vessels it was supposed to lead. So I adjusted the scale: 1:960 length; 1:480 beam. Instead of 48mm length, I made it 60mm.



Incidentally, these small vessels don't look as 'cartoonish' as the big units. But that is due to the pencil slenderosity of the originals. Reducing the length:beam ratio from 10:1 to 5:1 leaves a reasonably realistic looking craft.

C22 and C26

Ruberian Navy



Finally, the last three Ruberian capital ships built a week or so ago:
starboard to larboard as you see them:
HMSS Majestic, Canopus and Centurion


I an unable to explain why, but somehow these vessels look a deal more ... I don't know - dramatic? than my previous efforts so far. Mayhap it has something to do with inconsistency in my designs.