A wargaming trip to Constantinople 1453 - Part one, the Ottoman castles on the Bosphorus

In 1453, the Ottomans under Mehmet II conquered Byzantine Constantinople later renamed Istambul. 

Before the conquest and even before Mehmet II the Ottomans built two castles at the entrance of the Bosphorus, one on the Asian and another on the European side, in order to anticipate the future conquest of Constantinople and to stop the Genoese from the Black Sea settlements  from helping the Byzantines. 

The one on top is called the Fortress of Anatolia and its construction began in late XIV century. The access on that day was complicated so I took only this picture and moved to the much bigger Rumeli Fortress. 

If you cross the big Sultan Mehmet II bridge to the European side you have the Rumeli fortress. The Turkish flag can be seen everywhere, as always in Turkey, but recently even more due to failed July coup against the government.

A view from the new mosque built recently in the central yard of the fortress.

The main tower, center right, is almost 30 meters tall.

The construction resembles the western way of building castles and accessing gates and walls. Clearly both Ottoman and Christian way to build castles influenced each other.  

The south tower. 

The walls in many places are 7 meters (!) thick. Of course they handled pretty well a big earthquake that shook Istambul in 1509.

Some more details about construction.

Plant and drawing.

Next, lets move to the conquest of Constantinople itself.

A wargaming trip to Assos

In fact it was not a wargaming trip but a cultural one sparked by the fact that Aristotle lived and married there. But as its ruins have plenty of  military interest I glued 'wargaming' to the title. 

Assos was the first Greek city built in nowadays Anatolia. From its heights you can see Lesbos island, old Pergamon or the Ida Mountains. 

The city is in ruins as it was conquered in the 4th Century by the Persians who killed King Hermias. Later it was reconquered by Alexander on its big campaign to the east.

Still standing there are some of the more than 30 towers that circled the city. 

As the main attraction you have a Doric temple devoted to Athena, much similar to the one in Athens but much smaller. 

As usual in such places you can find much of the art of Assos in the Louvre and the USA...

Apparently the towers were big enough to have string artillery.

You can find both rectangular and half-round towers some 14 meter high.

The towers have layers of different materials also probably placed in different periods in order to strengthen them.

Overlooking the Aegean sea you have a big amphitheater that could hold up to 5000 people.

The bridge at the entrance of Assos is already from the Ottoman era.

The city can become a nice diorama or wargaming table center piece. More can be found in books and in the web so feel free to feel inspired.

A very good one you can obtain as a Google book is
'Hellenistic Fortifications from the Aegean to the Euphrates'. Go for it.

Rapid Fire! Modern Wars in Africa - Mixed bunch of Angolan, Portuguese and South African units.

This new series will show my armies for the long suffering African continent since the beginning of the Portuguese Colonial Wars in 1961 and the conflicts between UNITA, the SADF and MPLA in Angola up to nowadays.

This post was fueled by some well done FB pages on the African modern wars.

Probably I won't be making many updates as this models were built some years by now but we can never know when the African mosquito bites again.

Some Airfix G-91 in Portuguese service. The models were built straight from the box with scratch built rockets. This aircraft was used in the Colonial wars instead of the much faster F-86 Sabre which was had its usage prohibited by NATO. 

After the end of the Portuguese  Colonial wars in 1974, Angola continued receiving Soviet weapons and built its own air force many times operated by Cuban pilots. 

Here you can see two Mig-21 from Fujimi. 

SU-22 from Italeri. 

SU-7 from KP.

Mil-Mi 8 from KP.

Mil-Mi 24 from Airfix.

Aerospatiale Gazelle from Heller with scratch built HOT missiles.

For the MPLA infantry I used ESCI modern Warsaw Pact, Vietcong and also the Spetnaz boxes. The soft hat and berets of the figures of ESCI Nato infantry and ground crew provided the adequate cover for the strong Angolan sun.

Some WWII figures and weapons were occasionally used as crew for mortars and HMGs.

Up to now 3 battalions of RF! MPLA already made. In the future probably some new rounder basing will change its appearance as I want 2s and 3s in each stand in order to move them faster on the table ( "what for you jerk, you never play!").

All figures received a strong coat of PVA as protection and it really works.

Finally a lonely Mirage III from Heller is the only thing the South African air force can use up to now.

Rapid Fire! Russian Contemporary Wars in 1/72nd scale - Smerch from Warmaster

As I enjoy a small break from the beach here comes the BM-30 Smerch, a 280mm Russian missile system in service since the 80ies. The model is a Warmaster Die-cast ordered directly from China through AliExpress. 

Very few changes: some lights and flag painted, added antennae and new weathering to match my usual base.

Rapid Fire! 20mm, French aviation 1940, Aircraft up to the moment.

Before continuing the recent Russian Contemporary Wars series I was forced due to piles of dust and humidity to make new shelves and place glass on some of the cabins holding parts of my collection.  By doing so some cleaning became necessary and I took the opportunity to take pics of some planes. Let's start with  the French from 1940. 

It must have been a nightmare to supply parts to French military aviation in the late 30's and during the German invasion of may 1940 as there were an enormous amount of aircraft performing the same function. 

If you want to see the rest of my french Army for 1940 please open the label France 1940 and then lets get back to BleuVille. 

These Heller  Dewoitine D.520 were some of the most modern fighters in the world but not many reached the war zone.

The Bloch MB 152 was more numerous, but older and not as fast as the Dewoitine. To the left is a SMER model and the one to the right is an Altaya Die-cast.

Other fighters (to help the work of the maintenance crews...) were the American built Curtiss H-75A-1  and the wooden light fighter Caudron C.714. Not sure but I think both are Heller. 

The Morane-Saulnier 406 was the mainstay of the French Airforce shooting down between 190 and 270 German aircraft. Altaya Die-cast model. 

The Potez 630 was a heavy reconnaissance airplane and here once again the french produced a great number of different models with the same characteristics. Heller again.

Even some few Italian Caproni Ca.313 bomber/reconnaissance aircraft were bought. This plane is a Supermodel model (Supermodel is the brand...).

The old ANF Les Mureaux 113 was the most numerous reconnaissance aircraft of those days, again by Heller.

The  Bloch MB 174 (Heller) was one of the best and newer machines of the French air force and intended to replace the Breguet 693.

Another aircraft for observation and reconnaissance the Potez 63.11 (Heller).

I made some 30 of these stands. By using the Altaya plastic black stand you can glue a piece of acrylic and, on top of it, glue the tip of the Altaya stand. Drill a hole the same size on the under part of the plane and here you have a nice and convincing stand.

These older Breguet 693 by Heller ground attack aircraft, also used for reconnaissance.

The Potez 540 (SMER model) series was an old design that first saw service with the Spanish Republican Airforce, earning the reputation of the 'Flying Coffin'. When WWII hit the French they were only used for transport, mostly in the colonies.

I still have some 10 French aircraft models to build, some are only for numbers but others are new ones like the LEO 451 bomber. Hope to show you some of them soon.

Rapid Fire! Contemporary Russian Wars in 1/72nd scale - The T-80 and T-90, comparing Modelcollect and Revell

Believe me I looked. I looked in several sites, asked friends and searched in shops. I found two in OLX but they wanted to sell the whole collection. Besides my e-bay account doesn't work...

What is he talking about? Is he still under some mysterious substance influence after the awesome win of Portugal in the Euro 2016?

No. I'm just talking about my quest for finding more Die-cast modern Russian tanks and AFV's. Tired of looking I drove to Maceda, in the north, to a nice Model shop called Bigcat, and brought a big supply of model kits both Modelcollect and Revell.

Well, of course you get a more detailed model than Die-cast but each takes two days of your life, with such small pieces so enervating that they look like the extra-time of the Euro 2016 final - that Portugal won by the way.

After opening the boxes you get 100 to 150 pieces each and you start to feel sorry for not having tried harder the Die-cast solution. On the other hand these models are expensive, between 17 euros for Revell and 25 euros for the most expensive Modelcollect, so stop crying and start gluing the damned things! You can order Modelcollect from China directly and much cheaper but post cost levels the final price.

It is funny how after building hundreds of Airfix, Matchbox, Esci and alike you get more lazy because of the recent flood of Altaya and such Die-cast models...does the same happen to you?

The problem - or advantage - is that nowadays models can be scaled down from 1/35th scale without loosing detail. That drives you crazy as you try to to glue 6 or 7 pieces just to have the turret machine gun!

Stop complaining, Portugal was European Champion of Football! (did I already mentioned it?) And lets try a small review.

In the above picture you have the Revell T-80BV to your right and two Modelcollect T-80BV. The Revell model already has some years. Years ago I bought several of them which I turned into T-72's serving Saddam Hussein. It's a simple kit but not very detailed. On the contrary the Modelcollect is all about detail, too much some times, enhanced by PE  and really thin parts.

Both T-90's, Modelcollect to the left and Revell to the right, are similar in accuracy and detail as the Revell model belongs to the more recent fashion of downsizing the bigger scales on the contrary of their T-80. The ModelCollect offers the new tracks you can glue with normal plastic glue and a metal one-piece down hull. But this makes the Modelcollect more expensive in some 5 euros.

The Modelcollect T-90MS to the left is fortunately the least complicated model of the collection, mainly due to the simple lines Merkava type of the real thing. The Revell T-90A to the right is again a nice model with clever and simple hard tracks that you only need to dip into hot water before gluing. 

I turned one of the Modelcollect T-90 into the K version for command with an extra antennae and two figures from WWII models. I'm nowadays making all arms of tank crew with GreenStuff in order two avoid having tank crew that looks like puppets in a string or Karate athlets. Like this the arms sit beautifully doing whatever you want.  

Modelcollect new tracks and metal hull.

One last thing: Revell instructions are more clear than Modelcollect and you need have some years of modelling practice to build the later.

As a final conclusion only from these seven models I can say Modelcollect is more detailed, more modern in solutions like the track and hull but it's more expensive; Revell keeps a good level of detail, better instructions and it's cheaper which for wargaming is very important. Important is of course the win of Portugal in the Euro 2016 with nothing less than 11  players formed in Sporting some of them not very well known like Cristiano Ronaldo, Nani, Rui Patricio, Moutinho and many others. 

Next: T-72 fleet, BMP-3 and new variants of the T-80.