Some weeks ago I ran the design a tank competition. The number of entries was rather low, as in, only two designs. One design came in, on the last day, and is part of the reason for the results delay, as the winner isn't answering his email! This, I suppose makes my life easier as judging is pretty simple. So the only winner I have to show to you is Bob Mackenzie's winning design: Step forward Mr Mackenzie, and give your tank a cool name! The FMBT 2040 is a “light” MBT. Although protected against 155mm shell splinters exploding 5m away, 20mm APDS and AT mines, it is not heavily armo ..read more

Last week I asked if the tank is dead, which it is not. However, I suggested the shape of the tank may well change. But change to what? Well we can all take our guesses as to what a tank will look like, so why don't we? Lets have a competition. Prize: I have sitting on my book shelf, five brand new copies of the second edition of Forgotten Tanks & Guns. This is the paper back version of my first book. As it is the second edition it has some corrections in it, and I've gotten new artwork done to harmonise a lot of the drawings. In the first edition the artwork didn't get done on time, so I ..read more

Events in the Nagorno-Karabakh war back in September 2020 hinted at the new reality of warfare. These truths were thrown into sharp relief during the Ukrainian war, where light forces equipped with modern tank-killing weapons have annihilated Russian armoured columns. Swarms of cheap drones have given precision data allowing the modern anti-tank weapons to find and spectuallry destroy the lumbering dinosaur from the last century. These lighter forces are more mobile, a cheaper platform and more agile with better ability to punch above their weight. They are a transformative option that signals ..read more

Hello Historians, I am still alive and doing history stuff. As you may have gathered, it has not left me much time to do full articles. I do still provide history related content on my social media, with most of it going up on Facebook, but I do put some of it on Twitter (@History_Listy) as well (all dependent on word counts and the like). Today as I have nothing planned, I thought we could have a look at part of my collection. Over the last few years I have been slowly collecting British Bayonets, and as I now have a decent quantity of them I figured a quick post is in order. So let me take ..read more

Over the years (soon to be decades!) I have been writing these articles I have focused on a great many items to bridge elements of the story, be it a tank, warship, location or even weapon system. But today, to span the passage of time, I am going to focus on a bridge. Waterloo Bridge to be exact.    Waterloo Bridge is actually the second bridge over the Thames to stand at this location. The first bridge, made of stone, was opened in June 1817. It was called the Strand Bridge. Over the years the flow of water around the piers caused the mud of the riverbed to be worn away. This caus ..read more

On the 24th of February, 1815, two days before Napoleon escaped from Elba, and four months before the Battle of Waterloo, a huge ship of the line rumbled down the slipway at Bombay. She was named HMS Wellesley in honour of Arthur Wellesley, who at that time had had a distinguished career, albeit was shortly to fight the battle he became famous for. She weighed in at 1745 tons, and was armed with seventy-four guns, in a variety of sizes ranging from 12-pounders all the way up to banks of 32-pounders.  Now I know what you’re thinking, hang on David, this is a bit outside the date range for ..read more

 Hello Historians, and happy new year! I realise I've been very lacking in content of late, and once again I can only apologise. As I am acutely aware of not posting anything for a while, I've grabbed some off the shelf stuff. A few months ago I posted about some intelligence files where the British sent someone to assess Soviet and Chinese equipment captured in Vietnam. In that the inspectors looked at several common tanks such as the T-55 and the Type 59.  Well, today I've extracted the pages for what the British called the M1967 APC. The more common name is the Type 63 APC. This i ..read more

Early in the day, on the 25th of March 1944, Flying Officer Douglas Jackson Turner and his co-pilot Flight Lieutenant Des Curtis were sitting in the cockpit of their Mosquito Tsetse, on the runway of RAF Predannack. Over the preceding three weeks they had been involved in multiple gun fights with shipping in the Bay of Biscay. Mostly these had involved gun battles with surfaced U-boats and their escorts. At this time the Germans were having difficulty getting U-boats into the Atlantic, so they had started escorting U-boats with light warships brimmed with AA weapons to try and discourage Allie ..read more

 On 13th February 1849 a lowly shoemaker living in Tilsit, in Prussia, met his brand-new son. The son’s name was Friedrich Wilhelm Voigt, and he would have one the speediest rises through the ranks of the Imperial German Army. However, Voigt’s early years were somewhat less auspicious. At the age of 14 he was arrested and convicted for theft, and subsequently imprisoned for two weeks. Upon his release he found he had been expelled from school. Thus, with no other option open to him he learned the trade of a shoemaker from his father. Although he had a trade, he continued his criminal ente ..read more

 What I find interesting, and I’m not sure if I’ve said it before, is how Britain studied the effects of German bombing conducted during the Blitz on contemporary life and structures. They quickly discovered the Germans were dropping too small bombs. This meant that even when the Germans did land a stick of bombs in the right place, it had minimal effect and the infrastructure was soon back in operation. This was quickly seen as a worry, as the British bombing efforts were all but identical to the German ones. It was quite sensible to assume that their bombing efforts were as effective on ..read more