Now i know a fair bit about the various conflicts, sometimes buying these books is more a case of looking for something new or "patting" myself on the back for knowing stuff or even more smugly looking for errors - sorry :-(
This large 250 page tome appears to be a good general history of Spain's various attempts to pacify the Berbers, well illustrated and decent text (in Spanish of course).
In the section about armoured vehicles, I suddenly came across a surprise -
St. Chamond Chenillete M-21
In Spain
...
On August 5, 1923, reached 7 units of Chenillette to Melilla . The first task was to move them to Dar Drius. In the course of 75 Km, one of them broke
down and was towed back to Melilla .
The other 6 reached their destination, but all suffered mechanical damage. In Dar Drius, Captain José
Alfaro checked over the machines and made his report. The results were painful: first, only two were
found to be operational units. The engine did not have an access door, so we had to remove
the entire car to access it. No frontal or side peepholes, only for the
driver. Although undoubtedly the most surreal failure was the fact that, since
the driver sat at the front with his open vision port, any bullets fired could get directly into the
tank, and in most cases reached and inflicted injury to the crew member .
His subsequent fate is unclear, but none mentioned in the
official records of the Army since 1924, so it follows that they were
withdrawn. The most accepted theory is that two units were scrapped in Morocco,
and the rest were returned to France .
Interesting vehicle, thanks for the write-up. Vehicles that could use wheels or tracks seem to have been something of an obsession with inter-war vehicle designers.
ReplyDeleteI`m always interested in odd stuff, the fact that I was unaware of the Spanish having this weird vehicle in Morocco, made it extra interesting :-)
ReplyDeleteI agree, the odd stuff tends to be more interesting, if only because you've not read about it 100 times before :)
DeleteParticularly if you are a bit specialist (like me), as an example I`m reading Martin Windrow's "Our Friend Beneath the Sands" history of French Foreign Legion during the conquest period 1850-1935. Now I`m very familiar with this period and have read many of the books he himself recommends, so find I`m only adding the odd line to my own notes whilst reading his 600+ page volume ;) still a very enjoyable book though :)
ReplyDeleteI seem to have a tendency to go for unusual wargaming forces, too. When I built a WWI naval fleet, I went for Austro-Hungarians. My Cold War forces were East German.
DeleteI find them more interesting than the more usual forces. All that said, it was still a joy to see Bovington's Tiger when I visited, and I'm looking forward to seeing it running later this year :)
My Cold War/NATO force is Spanish (talk about left field) :)
ReplyDeleteI didn't know you did any Cold War gaming. Not surprised you've got a Spanish force, though.
DeleteIt started as a small force for Richard Crawley's Andrevian adventures and just grew :) I suddenly notice there arn`t many photos on here I`ll post some - D`oh!
ReplyDelete