Military parades in Chile

Since I broke my leg six months ago, I have become quite a devotee of YouTube, so much so that I have even started my own YouTube channel. Recently I discovered a number of videos from Chile that show its armed forces undertaking formal parades ... and they certainly go if for impressive displays!

For historical reasons, the Chilean Army has a very Prussian style when it comes to its dress uniforms, its music (including using the Preussischer Präsentiermarsch), and the way it mounts its parades. Its troops even use the traditional goosestep or Stechschritt (literally, 'piercing step') as the following photographs show:

Troopers of the 1st Cavalry (Horse Guards) Regiment 'Grenadiers' in their dress uniforms.

Soldiers from the NCO School still wear the German steel helmet (stahlhelm) on parade.

Gunners of the 1st Artillery Regiment in their dress uniforms. Note that the traditional spike on the pickelhaube helmet has been replaced by a ball, just as it was in the Prussian Army.

Only a few weeks ago, the Chilean public broadcaster, TVN (Televisión Nacional de Chile), broadcast a parade that lasted just under three and a half hours! (The first fifty-five minutes is a celebration of Chilean culture and features folk dance and music.)

It featured units from across the Chilean armed forces and was entitled Gran Parada Militar de Chile en el día de las Glorias del Ejército – 2024 and can be seen on YouTube here. It was interesting to see that some of those troops marching past wore uniforms that looked as if they dated from the Chilean War of Independence.

Watching this parade (and several others) certainly gave me a few ideas for uniforms for late nineteenth and early twentieth century imagi-nations.

Madasahatta, the prequel

Due to my ongoing mobility problems, I was unable to the to ‘The Other Partizan’ last weekend. Luckily for me, my old friend and fellow blogger David Crook did go … and was able to take some photographs of the League of Gentlemen Anti Alchemists’ anti-slavery game.

I understand that the driving force behind the game was Chris Hardman, who – along with Eric’s son William, David Crook, Neil Fox, and myself – took part in Eric Knowles’ Madasahatta Campaign, and it was great to see that he used it as a setting for this wargame.

Eric's original Madasahatta map. Click on the image to enlarge it.

A recently re-drawn and coloured version of the Madasahatta map. Click on the image to enlarge it.

The Royal Navy action against the slavers took place forty years before the Madasahatta Campaign took place, and featured some typical Knowlesian characters:

Royal Navy Landing Force

• Major Boote-Necke (Royal Marines)
• Sergeant Wilson (Royal Marines)
• Captain Povey (Royal Navy)
• Lieutenant Phillips (Royal Navy)
• CPO Pertwee (Royal Navy)
• Lieutenant Strange-Wayze (Royal Marine Artilery)
• Major Bloodnok (Zanzibarian Army)

Zanzibarian Slavers

• Mustafa Leikh
• Shufti Khush
• Ali Oop
• Abdul the Terrible
• Bungdit Dhin
• Randhi Bhugah
• Omar Bhang

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Please note that the photographs featured above are © David Crook and Chris Hardman.

Dad's Game: Old School Tabletop Wargaming Rules

Just before I broke my leg, I bought a copy of Patrick and Earl Boal’s DAD'S GAME: OLD SCHOOL TABLETOP WARGAMING RULES but never got around to reading it until now as it had been left on my worktable in the toy/wargame room.

The book is mainly scanned images of the rules written by Earl Boal in the 1980s. Most of the text is typed – although there are some handwritten annotations – and survived because they were kept in plastic ring file pockets. The book ends with the text of a letter containing a battle report that was sent by Earl to his son (Patrick) along with a number of black & white photographs of a wargame they had fought some months earlier.

As to the rules … well, it is stated clearly in the introduction that they were based on the rules in Charles Grant's THE WAR GAME.

However, the Boal's adapted them so that they could use the wide variety of figures in their collection. This is borne out by the photographs of one of their wargames which shows Napoleonic soldiers fighting troops armed with pikes!

I bought these rules out of simple curiosity … and I thoroughly enjoyed reading the short booklet that contains them. In my opinion, the price – which is £3.22 from Amazon – is very reasonable and any wargamer who enjoys using Charles Grant’s rules should enjoy reading this publication.

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DAD'S GAME: OLD SCHOOL TABLETOP WARGAMING RULES was written Patrick and Earl Boal and published by them in 2023 (ISBN 979 8 3978 8259 0).

I bought a new laptop …

… and it’s taken me ages to set it up!

My laptop has done me excellent service since I broke my leg and was no longer able to get up to my desktop PC. However, I originally bought it to take on cruises and its screen is a little on the small side for regular everyday use, so, when I saw a slightly bigger, new, laptop with a 14-inch screen was on sale during the recent Amazon Prime event, I bought a new one. It is a Hewlett-Packard 14-inch Laptop with an Intel Pentium Silver N5030 Processor, 4 gigabytes of random-access memory, and 128 gigabytes of solid state memory, and it cost me £179.99 instead of the usual pre-event £299.99.

My new laptop was delivered on Saturday evening, and I spent quite a chunk of yesterday setting it up, installing the software I habitually use, and adding my email accounts. In fact, it took me so long that I didn’t finish doing all the tasks I have to do and I will be trying to complete the job today.

The new screen is much easier to use thanks to its increase in size, and the operating system (Windows 11) seems to work faster than it did on my older Windows 10 laptop. I hope that I’ll be able to use new laptop in place of my existing one and my desktop PC. This will certainly make life easier for me and will hopefully free up space in our small home office.

South American Battleships 1908–59: Brazil, Argentina, and Chile's great dreadnought race

In the run up to the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, there were two international naval arms races taking place: the one between Britain and Imperial Germany and a second that saw Argentina, Brazil, andChile competing with each other for naval supremacy on the South American continent. SOUTH AMERICAN BATTLESHIPS 1908–59: BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, AND CHILE'S GREAT DREADNOUGHT RACE tells that story in a quick and easy to read way.

The book is split into the following sections:

• Introduction
• Design and Development
• Enter the dreadnought
• Brazil starts an arms race
• Argentina and Chile join the race
• The race unravels
• Operational History
• World War I
• Between the Wars
• World War II and afterwards
• The ships
• Minas Geraes class
• Rio de Janeiro (later the Turkish Sultan Osman I and then HMS Agincourt)
• Riachuelo
• Rivadavia class
• Almirante Latorre
• Almirante Cochrane/Eagle
• Bibliography
• Index

This naval arms race provides lots of opportunity for those naval wargamers who like to fight 'What if ...?' battles, especially if one includes the battleships that were projected but which never saw service with a South American navy (e.g. the Riachuelo and the Almirante Cochrane).

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SOUTH AMERICAN BATTLESHIPS 1908–59: BRAZIL, ARGENTINA, AND CHILE'S GREAT DREADNOUGHT RACE was written by Mark Lardas, illustrated by JB Illustrations (Julian Baker) and Johnny Shumate, and published in 2024 by Osprey Publications (ISBN 978 1 4728 2510 0).

Aircraft for my Belle Époque project

Now that I can access my toy/wargame room, I’ve begun to think about doing some work on my Belle Époque project. I wanted to add some early aircraft to the armed forces of the larger imagi-nations, and a quick search on eBay led me to purchase two Corgi diecast models of the Blériot Type XI monoplane in which he crossed the English Channel in 1909.

The Blériot Type XIs entered service with the Italian and French armed forces in 1910, and in 1911 some were used by Italy in North Africa during the Italo-Turkish War. This was the first use of heavier-than-air aircraft in a war. By 1912 the French and Spanish had used Blériot XIs to bomb Rif tribesmen in Morocco and the Royal Flying Corps had taken delivery of its first Blériot XIs.

By the start of World War I military versions of the Blériot XIs were in service with eight French, six British, and six Italian squadrons. They were mainly used for observation duties and as trainers, but some single-seaters served as light bombers that could carry a bomb load of up to 55lbs/25kg.

The Blériot XI’s characteristics were:

• Crew: 1
• Dimensions:
• Length: 7.62m (25ft)
• Wingspan: 7.79m (25ft 7in)
• Height: 2.69m (8ft 10in)
• Wing area: 14 sq m (150 sq ft)
• Empty weight: 230kg (507lbs)
• Propulsion: 1 × Anzani 3-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine driving a 2-bladed Chauvière Intégrale propeller
• Performance:
• Maximum speed: 75.6km/h (47.0mph, 40.8 knots)
• Service ceiling: 1,000m (3,300ft)

The History of Coast Artillery in the British Army

As any of my regular blog readers who have visited my YouTube channel will know, I have an interest in coastal defences. Toby Ewin - the noted naval wargame historian - recommended that I buy a copy of the reprint of Colonel K W Maurice-Jones' THE HISTORY OF COAST ARTILLERY IN THE BRITISH ARMY. I did so ... and I could not have asked for a more detailed history of British coastal defences.

The book is over three hundred pages and contains seventeen maps that show the location of the coastal defences built by Britain to defend the coasts of the British Empire. The book has a Foreword (written by General Sir Cameron Nicholson GCB, KBE, DSO, MC), Preface, Bibliography, List of Abbreviations, Introduction, and twenty-six Chapters.

The chapters deal with blocks of history as follows:

1. 1540 to 1603
2. 1603 to 1667
3. 1667 to 1716
4. 1716 to 1748
5. 1748 to 1763
6. 1763 to 1774
7. 1774 to 1783
8. 1774 to 1783 (concluded)
9. 1784 to 1793
10. 1793 to 1815
11. 1793 to 1815 (continued)
12. 1793 to 1815 (continued)
13. 1793 to 1815 (concluded)
14. 1815 to 1856
15. 1856 to 1914
16. 1856 to 1914 (continued)
17. 1856 to 1914 (concluded)
18. 1914 to 1918
19. 1914 to 1918 (concluded)
20. 1918 to 1939
21. 1918 to 1939 (concluded)
22. 1939 to 1945
23. 1939 to 1945 (continued)
24. 1939 to 1945 (continued)
25. 1939 to 1945 (concluded)
26. Conclusion

The book contains several charts and ORBATs that list the numbers and types of guns located at each coastal defence site at different times and a breakdown of the units manning them. This alone makes the book a very useful sources of information for anyone interested in Britain's coastal defences from 1540 until the abolition of the Coastal Defence branch of the Royal Artillery in 1957.

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THE HISTORY OF COAST ARTILLERY IN THE BRITISH ARMY was written by Colonel K W Maurice-Jones DSO and originally published in 1959 by the Royal Artillery Institution. It was republished in 2009 by Naval and Military Press in association with Firepower, the Royal Artillery Museum (ISBN 1 84574 031 9).

The Empire of Scandinavia vs. The Empire of the Baltic: An ironclad naval battle

Donald Featherstone’s NAVAL WAR GAMES: FIGHTING SEA BATTLES WITH MODEL SHIPS was published in 1965 and I bought my copy in the late 1960s.

One battle that stood out at the time was the one described in the chapter devoted to fighting naval wargames set during the later nineteenth century. It was fought using rules written by Walter Gurney Green and saw the fictional Empire of Scandinavia take on the Empire of the Baltic … and win (just!) after a flurry of ships ramming each other.

The ships involved were as follows:

The Empire of Scandinavia

• Battleship Denmark: 4 x 12.5-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 20-inch armour; 12 knots
• Battleship Sweden: 4 x 12.5-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 20-inch armour; 12 knots
• Battleship Hotspur: 1 x 10-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading gun; 3 x 64-pounder Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 10-inch armour; 12 knots*
• Battleship Huascar: 2 x 10-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 3 x 64-pounder Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 10-inch armour; 12 knots*

The Empire of the Baltic

• Battleship Latvia: 2 x 12.5-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 2 x 64-pounder Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 18-inch armour; 10 knots
• Battleship Lithuania: 2 x 12.5-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 2 x 64-pounder Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 18-inch armour; 10 knots
• Battleship Devastation: 4 x 10-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 14-inch armour; 14 knots*
• Battleship Dreadnought: 4 x 10-inch Rifled Muzzle-loading guns; 14-inch armour; 14 knots*
• Screw-sloop Crown Prince: 28 x 11-inch Smoothbore Muzzle-loading guns; No armour; 10 knots

Some of the ships were based on real warships (indicated above by *) and the others were imaginary designs. I’ve long hankered after recreating this battle … and it might be a nice little project for me to undertake in the near future.

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The ‘real’ ships that took part

• HMS Hotspur

• Huascar

• HMS Devastation

• HMS Dreadnought

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The fleets in action

The Empire of Scandinavia's fleet (the light grey ships) under attack by ships of the Empire of the Baltic's fleet (the dark grey ships).

Both sides engage each other at short range.  The Hotspur was heavily damaged but managed to torpedo and sink the Latvia and Lithuania. She was then sunk by a torpedo fired by the Crown Prince.

Hare & Hounds: Maudlin Jack Tar's latest developments

Maudlin Jack Tar has continued to develop his version of the Hare & Hounds mini-campaign board and has come up with some really great ideas that he has shared via his blog Projects and Procrastination.

He has used the conditional formatting function on MS Excel to produced a spreadsheet that will automatically produce terrain maps for both 3 x 3 and 6 x 6 PORTABLE WARGAME tabletops ...

... and his maps include hills, woods, wooded hills, lakes, and built-up areas. In my opinion the results are impressive and very useful and I can see this being adopted by many other wargamers.

Furthermore, he has begun to use a Hare & Hounds mini-campaign board to fight an Ancient campaign ...

... and he has already fought the first battle of the campaign. For further details, please visit Maudlin Jack Tar's blog.

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Please note that the images featured above are © Maudlin Jack Tar.

Euphoria … tinged with the need for care

Yesterday I managed to spend over an hour in my toy/wargame room. I thoroughly enjoyed myself and even managed to get some of the stuff on my table sorted out and either thrown away or stored where it should be. Hopefully, by the end of the week I’ll be able to use my table to either run some trains on my rather neglected 009 model railway layout or get some figures out of their storage boxes and fight a battle with them … or even both!

I have – however – discovered a problem for which I need to find a simple but safe solution. I am currently using crutches to get around, and I’m even practicing walking with just one … but trying to pick something up whilst I am using them is proving to be far more difficult than I expected. I can stand unsupported for up to five minutes … but I cannot move without my crutches. I can twist around at my waist a bit, but I have to be careful how much as my sense of balance is not good.

The chair in my toy/wargame room does have castors, and I can – with some effort – move it so that I can sit down next to a cupboard or bookcase I want to put something into or take something out of … but standing up afterwards is difficult unless I have pushed the back of the chair up against something that won’t move. I have to use the arms of the chair to stand up … and if the chair can move, there’s a possibility that I will lose my balance and fall over.

I am having to learn a whole load of new ways to do what used to be simple tasks, and I know that this is going to take time … and probably longer than I would have hoped. Until I have a proper prognosis, I have no idea if I will ever stop having to use crutches to get about. As a result, I am taking things slowly – quite literally one step at a time on occasions – in the hope that I can learn the new skills I will need in order to live as normal a life as I can.