A wargaming trip to Bodrum castle

 

Slowly by slowly I´m on the track of the Knights of Saint John castles, after almost 30 years ago of visiting  Malta. Now I had to opportunity of visiting Bodrum castle in southern Turkey. 

Some information on the military activity of the site: 

During the years of 1402 up to 1452, the Knights Hospitaller built in two phases the Bodrum Castle. In fact the task belonged to the Knights of St. John who built it in order to guard that tip of Mediterranean and its northern access  from Turkish expansion, as the castle faced early threats from the Seljuk Turks. 

Between 1453 and 1480, Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror launched naval attacks and bombarded the castle. In 1480 his fleet caused damage to the English Tower and seafront walls, but the fortress held strong and was later reinforced using stone from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus. 

As Suleiman the Magnificent’s forces conquered Rhodes, the Knights surrendered Bodrum Castle in 1522 as part of the peace terms and its fortification process continued. 

In 1773 during the Russo‑Turkish War (1768–1774), a Russian naval detachment under Admiral Elmanov bombarded the castle and landed troops (~1,000+), but the local Ottoman garrison repelled them.

The castle was heavily garrisoned  and later was used as a prison (from 1895), with the chapel converted into a mosque and a minaret added.

In May 1915, the French warship Duplex bombed Bodrum Castle, causing significant damage, forcing the evacuation of prisoners, and damaging the minaret and southern ramparts. 

 From 1915, Italian forces briefly controlled Bodrum and used the castle as headquarters before yielding it back to Turkish control in 1921 (via agreement after the War of Independence).

 

Exhibition Areas

1. Haluk Elbe Art Gallery

2. Cannon Exhibition Area

3. Gateway Tower

4. Amphora Depot Exhibition Area

5. Southern Observation Terrace

6. Turkish Bath

7. Chapel (Castle Mosque)

8. Anchor Exhibition Area

9. Stone Artifacts Exhibition Area

10. History of Underwater Archaeology

10. Amphora Exhibition

10. Serce Limani Glass Shipwreck Exhibition

11. Yassiada Shipwrecks Hall

12. Spanish Tower: Tektas Shipwreck Exhibition

13. German Tower: Bozukkale Archaic Shipwreck Exhibition

14. History of Bodrum Peninsula and Halicarnassus

15. Italian Tower: Early Bronze Age Necropolises Exhibition

16. French Tower: Musgebi Necropolis

16. French Tower: Pedesa Ancient City Exhibition

17. Halicarnassus Eastern Necropolis Exhibition

18. Carian Princess Hall

19. Late Bronze Age Shipwrecks Exhibition

20. English Tower: Knights of Saint Jean Exhibition

The castle stood initially in a small island that had to be connected to the main land making it into an artificial peninsula. 

The 1st phase of the Knights of Saint John build created most of the visible structures that can be seen today. 

Best explained here, as the previous text can only be understood by the large numbers of my Turkish followers (which in fact speak a language that is not easy for most of the european language speakers). 

The 2nd phase of construction by Knights of Saint John saw a secondary line of walls and two more more small towers (Carretto and Gatineau). 

As usual with Ottomans a minaret and Turkish bath was added. 

And this is virtually the looks of the castle today, an impeccable work of art and a place of respect for History as the Turks are very good at preserving their history, even if part of it comes from Greek, Roman or Christian origin. 

A bit of text for the later events. 

 

A minaret of the Ottoman period was destroyed by a French ship during the preparation of the Gallipoli campaign and later rebuilt to the actual state. 

The most important parts of the castle - excluding its walls, obviously! - are the towers, each of the Langues of Knights contributed with one. So each of the main nations has its own tower: there is a  Spanish, an Italian, a French, an English and a German tower. The one above is the Spanish tower.

Another view of the Spanish tower.

The steps leading to the Italian and French towers.

The French tower.

Another view of the French tower. Its topped over the harbor and exhibits the Müsgebi Necropolis and the ancient city of Pedasa.

The Italian tower, the tallest of them all, hosts the Early Bronze‑Age Necropolis hall and the Carian Princess burial displays

The English tower has some nice heraldry and foot soldiers equipment. 

There is a moat between the two layers of walls. 

Here you can see the two layers distinctively. 

                 

The English tower with its Knights armor and equipment. 

As you're exiting, you may be passing through the main gate complex, and you’ll likely see the insignia of the Grand Master Philibert de Naillac (served 1396–1421), who initiated the construction of Bodrum Castle in 1402, together with the insignia of the Knights of Saint John. 

Next: Guadalcanal, part 1.

Impetus rules, Mohacs 1526 in 20mm (Part 2), The Ottoman army

In this second part of the Mohacs battle of 1526 you can see the Ottoman army. Models are Zvezda, Italeri, Lucky Toys and StreletsR. As usual there are plenty of conversions, specially on the Sipahis. This project is still halfway but all types of Ottoman soldiers are already here.

Impetus rules, Mohacs 1526 in 20mm (Part 1), The Hungarian army

One of the pleasures I have is to visit battlefields and then to model the figures, terrain and material for it aiming at wargaming the campaign. This Mohacs battle is another of these cases. I´m making these two armies (next is the Ottoman) for some years by now, using mostly conversions from Zvezda, Miniart, RedBox and Caesar copies. I also used some of Takács Krisztián excellent figures and hopefully will continue to do so in the future as this kind of army is never finished.

Impetus Rules - Mohacs 1526, part 14 - One more Rumelian Sipahis stand in 20mm

One more stand of Rumelian Sipahis for the Ottomans. This time they all got basically the same equipment, pennants and painting for the sake of speed as I had other stuff on the table. 

 

The usage of the same colors on different figures is as quick way to produce these conversions and get a somewhat diverse look. 

The horses and figure´s body are Italeri. Some, like this one, got an Esci head from the Muzlim set with a Greenstuff turban. Plastic shields  were glued and lances were drilled in the hands after squashing slighlty these last ones in order to provide a better and easier drilling surface. 

Next: The Dieppe castle in 1942

Impetus Rules - Mohacs 1526, part 12 - Hungarian Hussars in 20mm

 

Some badly needed light cavalry for the Hungarians (CL Hungarians or Serbians)  is on the way to the shelves of Mohacs (in fact transparent plastic drewers). The models are metal and made in Hungary by Takács Krisztián. 

The models have five parts, horse, cavalryman body, head, lance and shield. The shields, heads and lances are different allowing plenty of variations. Two of the figures had flag poles and I was also given two beautiful Hungarian flags. The horses were glued with electric glue to the base for extra sturdiness. 

The Hussars were the most numerous cavalry in the Hungarian army and a few more stands have to be added. 

Next: a bunch of pine trees for the Ardennes. 

Impetus Rules - Mohacs 1526, part 11 - Revell conversions for Ottoman artillery in 20mm

 

RedBox or Mars are really hard to find these days so, in order to have some artillery for my XVI century Ottoman army, I made some conversions on the figures of the Revell box of the 30YW artillery. 

These consisted on large Greenstuff trousers and sashes on many of the figures as well as several of  the obvious turban and Fez. The Fez was made by simply cutting the brim of the hat all around . As there was plenty of Balcanic influence in Ottoman artillery I left some of the figures with the original trousers and wide hats making some cuts here and there for it to look with some contemporary images.  

Here you can see (?) the GreenStuff applied on the headdress but not on the trousers and sashes as these ones were a later decision. 

Next: The British Infantry in Metropolitan uniform for Gallipoli. 

Impetus Rules - Mohacs 1526, part 10 - A batch of Ottoman infantry from Lucky Toys in 20mm

Lucky Toys have a nice box of Ottomans mixing both infantry (less the Janissaries) and cavalry. The figures are some of the best I´ve seen in 20mm and their faces are true works of art (Lucky Toys is affiliated with Caesar somehow). The figures are best for the previous century and for the campaign that led to the fall of Constantinople but they fit reasonably well for the campaign of 1526. My Lucky Toys cavalry was made years ago already and the swords and maces were replaced by spears, a more proper weapon for the XVI century. 

 

These heavy infantry figures belong to the Kapi Kulu corps and will be placed close to the Janissaries. Most of the shields were bent with fire for more frontal protection. I thought about replacing the axes and swords with spears but maybe i´ll do it in a next batch I find. 

These Yayalar were some of the most common Ottoman infantry together with the Azab. The figures with the spear to the front got a plastic shield. 

Only one position for archers but even so a very nice figure.

These two command stands have a commander thats transpires Turkish from all pores and also an European looking figure that may be inspired in the Balkanic allies.  

Next: WWI Turkish

Impetus Rules - Mohacs 1526, part 9 - Ottoman Light Cavalry in 20mm

 

The Turcoman archers shoot at the Hungarian lines with their own  'Caracole' tactic while protecting the arrival of the Akinjis. In fact the only thing noticeable about this post is the position of the Turcoman archers inside the stands. 

By placing them by side on the stands they can simulate the 'Caracole' with a central stand shooting its arrows and the two others mostly recharging and getting ready to shoot again. 

The figures are all StreletsR and all of them are different which makes the group pretty lively. 

The Akinjis in fact are figures from the Muslim Cavalry box by StreletsR but, with a different painting, stressing red and green, they make reasonable Turkish Akinjis. Most of the horses came from Italeri as the original migrated to the Norman army at Hastings. 

Next: More Turkish for Mohacs 1526 or  Gallipoli 1915.

"New Kingdom" Egyptian army in 20mm for Impetus rules

The nostalgia wave continues with the revamping of old and some new builds for this Atlantic force. Atlantic was an amazing Italian brand from the 70´s. Most of its HO stuff was around 1/87th scale like the 20th century figures and Far-West, with vehicles and landing craft sitting somewhere from 1/144 to 1/60! In this childhood days whatever fish that came to the net was eagerly played with and I spent hours around all their stuff. But a different story has to be told about their ancient range - Egyptian, Trojans, Greeks and Romans - were beautiful 1/72nd scale models even if with poetic and Hollywoodized details. 

The brand then decided to move to Lebanon and was caught in the middle of the Israeli invasion of 1982 and many of its moulds were never seen again. Nexus came after and continued for a few years with the survivors but somehow Atlantic - like Atlantida - was lost forever.  

I used three boxes of infantry for this host. The Atlantic boxes were not only cheap and made of excellent plastic (no broken figures after 40 years) but also had more than 60 figures inside. This Egyptian set is great for Old and Middle Kingdom as no figure has armour with nice shields and a correct choice of weapons. The only problem here is the small number of archers (one pose only) which should be half of the total infantry. The standards were made from GreenStuff modelled into broom sticks and glued to the a relatively immovable pose. I left the figures with the Pharaoh´s Deshret crown like that and they became officers which is not correct but looks good. In the old Egyptian armies the officers fought from the back of the phalanx and I did the same here. 

The archers came from the infantry box and the three poses of archers from the chariot box. Some of the figures are the Pharaoh from the chariot but his head was modelled in order to have only hair without the Pschent Pharaonic headdress. You can´t get many archers unfortunately from Atlantic and other brands will have to come to rescue in the future like Zvezda and Caesar. 

The only reason I can call it a "New Kingdom" army is because of the chariots. These were introduced by the Hyksos and thus this new weapon can only be used by New Kingdom Egyptians. The chariots were usually accompanied by skirmishers as you can see here - probably very fast runners!! So here Atlantic mixed different periods of Egypt history but I have some plans to upgrade the last few boxes of Atlantic Egyptian (old/middle) infantry ...

This chariot is meant to be Ramesses II at Khadesh (obviously!) fighting the Hittites  and for that the golden armour of Ramesses was painted in his torso. In fact this gave me the idea how to place linen protection in the Atlantic Egyptian infantry converting them to New Kingdom Egyptians... damn, I just unveiled the "plans to upgrade" the Egyptian infantry, you big mouth!!

Kept for some 40 years in my basement was the Egyptian boats box. Up until last week I was convinced that this box had standard bearers and rowers inside due to the beautiful box artwork but in fact the standard bearers are the one from the Pharaohs´ court box and rowers are conversions from infantry positions. 

The rowers are conversions from the figure holding the small Khopesh. Arms were bent to position and a piece of plastic sprue gave the rows. 

This kind of cover, even if with some rather strange boats, was making us dream when we were kids and I think they contributed for my love for history.  And her you have the "fake" rowers and standard beares (left boat) not present on the box. 

This Sphinx was also waiting painting and basing for a few decades and finally it was done. Its funny how Atlantic portrayed the Sphinx in stone color while it was found more recently that its was painted as it had some vestiges of paint in the back of the ears. 

This was the full series of Atlantic Egyptians of which you can see four in this post (infantry, chariots, boats and the Sphinx). I still don´t have the court, the Pharaohs' boat and the temple and I hope to find them one day at reasonable prices mainly for the sake of nostalgia. Well, while there is life there is hope! 

Next: Impetus rebased Saxons.