Russell Phillips's Blog, page 8

Lidice Thunderclap and Giveaway

I’ve set up a Thunderclap to help raise awareness of the Lidice atrocity, and the work of the North Staffordshire miners to rebuild the village. To encourage people to support it, I’ve set up a Rafflecopter giveaway. One winner will win a copy of A Ray of Light, in paperback, audiobook, and ebook formats. Four...

A Ray of Light short listed for the inaugural Arnold Bennett Literary Prize

The Arnold Bennett Literary Prize has announced the short list for its inaugural year, and I’m proud to say that A Ray of Light is one of the ten books on the list. The winner will be announced in September. This new prize is administered by the Arnold Bennett Society in partnership with the Sentinel...

Getting Kids Started in Wargaming

For some time, I’ve been planning to introduce my nine year old son, Doug, to wargaming. He likes playing board games, including some aimed at adults, and he’s interested in history. We’ve now played a few games, and so I thought I’d write about the lessons I learned, to help anyone else wanting to introduce...

The CIA did not try to force Britain to hand the Falklands over to Argentina

Last week, The Sun ran a story about how the CIA wanted to force Britain to hand over the Falkland Islands to Argentina and force British citizens living there to relocate to Scotland. The Daily Mail published a similar story. At best, the stories are sensationalist. At worst, they’re deliberately misrepresenting the truth. The document...

Winter Offensive Sale

The Wargame Vault Winter Offensive sale has started. All participating books (including all of mine) are available at 25% off. If you’d like to be notified of sales like this in future, join my mailing list. Mailing list members get advance notice of sales and new releases, as well as a free ebook.

Remembrance Day 2016

Today is Remembrance Day in the UK. I have a red poppy, and I shall be observing the two minute silence at 11:00. For me, Remembrance Day is a time to remember everyone that has been harmed by war. Any war, any nationality, civilian, military, whatever. That’s a lot of people, and so each year...

Bridging the Gap: Warsaw Pact River Crossing

During the Cold War, the Warsaw Pact armies studied the disposition of rivers in western Europe. It concluded that they would have to cross water obstacles up to 100m wide every 35 to 60km. Every 100-150km, they would encounter a water obstacle between 100m and 300m wide. Every 250-300km they would encounter one that was...

AFV Alphabet: Z is for ZSU-57-2

The ZSU-57-2 entered service in 1955, providing the Warsaw Pact armies with a self-propelled anti-aircraft gun that could accompany the advancing armies.

The hull is based on a lightened T-54 chassis. The armour is much lighter and it has four road wheels instead of the T-54’s five. Two air-cooled 57mm S-68 guns are fitted in a large, boxy, open-topped turret. 300 rounds of ammunition are carried, in a mix of armour-piercing, fragmentation-incendiary, and fragmentation, all of which had tracer. A tarpaulin cover is provided for protection against inclement weather.

The turret has powered traverse and elevation. Unlike the later and more successful ZSU-23-4, the ZSU-57-2 has no radar. This effectively means that it’s use is limited to clear weather conditions. It has optical sights (initially with no rangefinder, though a rangefinder was later added), which are configured to allow use in a secondary role as a ground support vehicle. Maximum effective range of the guns is around 4,000m. Armour thickness is between 8 and 15mm, and the vehicle has a top speed of 31mph, with a range of 260 miles.

Obviously, this is the last of the AFV Alphabet series. It was interesting to research and write, I hope it was also interesting to read. My thanks to Tim Gow for the inspiration.

Photo by VargaA via Wikimedia Commons (CC-BY-SA)

Don’t cut conventional arms spending to fund nukes

Jane’s has reported that the UK is having to cut spending on conventional arms, in order to pay for the new Successor class ballistic missile submarines.

HMS Vanguard, a Trident missile submarine

I believe that the money spent on the nuclear deterrent would be better spent on the rest of the armed forces. One reason given for continuing Trident is that a lot of jobs depend on it. I don’t want those people to lose their jobs, but I’d much rather they were employed building and maintaining nuclear-powered attack submarines, such as the current Astute class, instead of ballistic missile submarines.

Ballistic missile submarines have one purpose. They stay hidden until called upon to deliver a nuclear strike. Nuclear-powered attack submarines, on the other hand, can perform a variety of roles, and can be of use during a conventional war. They can even help to defuse situations so that war is avoided. In 1977, Argentina pushed its claim to the Falkland Islands, and an armed invasion looked likely. The deployment of a nuclear attack submarine along with two surface ships helped to defuse the situation.

In 1982, nuclear attack submarines once again proved their worth during the Falklands War. The simple announcement that they were being deployed restricted the Argentinian navy’s freedom of movement. They provided useful reconnaissance for the British task force, and HMS Conqueror sank AMA General Belgrano. Trafalgar-class submarines have launched Tomahawk cruise missiles against targets in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya. Ballistic missile submarines were of no help in any of these conflicts.

Well-trained and well-equipped conventional forces are versatile in a way that ballistic missile forces never can be. They could even be used to mount attacks on nuclear research or launch facilities, should that be considered necessary. Spending on conventional forces should not be cut in order to keep a nuclear deterrent.

New Book: A Ray Of Light

My latest book is now available – A Ray of Light: Reinhard Heydrich, Lidice, and the North Staffordshire Miners

In March 2013, I was at the Potteries Museum in Stoke-on-Trent with my son. We were asked if we’d like to see a film about the Czech village of Lidice, destroyed by the Nazis during the Second World War.

Hitler had ordered that Lidice was to be utterly destroyed. He wanted the memory of the village to die along with its inhabitants. The miners of North Staffordshire in Great Britain, however, had other ideas. Led by a local doctor named Barnett Stross, they organised a fund-raising campaign to pay for a new village to be built once the war was won.

During the Cold War, relations with Czechoslovakia became strained, and the story was largely forgotten. The story that should be widely known, and I’m pleased to be able to do my part in spreading awareness.

It is available now in paperback and ebook (Kindle, iBooks, Kobo). It will be available from other ebook retailers shortly.