Saturday 30 October 2010

"Machine Rocket, War"

The latest addition to Her Majesty's forces currently engaged in the Sudan are a couple of Hale Rocket batteries (these are another of the military curiosities that attract me to the Sudan campaigns). The spin-stabilised Hale Rocket, launched from a trough (or Machine Rocket, War) was used by the Egyptian and British armies, but as far as I'm aware there isn't a currently model available in 15mm so I decided to scratch build a few. The tripod is made from florist's wire cut and bent to shape, with a slice of card for the trough. They aren't the epitomy of accuracy, since the tripod isn't quite the right shape, and the trough isn't "trough" shaped as I couldn't find any channel sections that suited, but it should be a simple job to replace if and when I do.

The crew are spares taken from the Essex maxim gun team (the maxims haveing been snaffled for my 1890s era troops. They are a little oversized when compared with the Peter Pig troops that make up the majority of my armies, but not overly so, and they fit in OK. I decided to fill in the relative sparsness of the bases with some ammunition crates and a few rockets.


Purists will of course point out the inaccuracy in the scarlet uniforms, but then again a fair proportion of my 1880s British troops are clad in scarlet, as you'll see when I post on the mounted and dismounted cavalry soon). So they are internally consistent if not strictly historically accurate (and I like them clad that way anyway!)


Finally, a fine illustration from our correspondent on the banks of the Nile, witnessing a live fire demonstration of the mighty Hale!

That covers the Hale rockets for the British. All being well I should have some Peter Pig Egyptian artillery crew arriving in the post soon, and so Hicks Pasha can have his own rockets available in a couple of weeks :)

4 comments:

  1. Nicely done. Eaves trough sections from a model building kit will make a nice launching trough too.

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  2. Ahoy DM - I have a battery of these chaps with my Redcoats campaigning in Zululand. Usually completely bloody ineffective but worth the effort for those rare but spectacular successes!

    Love the new blog and have added it to the blog list at White Wine Sauce - cheers!

    Paul

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  3. I'm a 25mm-28mm colonialist myself but I must say your firing rocket in midair looks quite spectacular indeed! Well done! I may have to raise a battery of these in larger scale for deployment on the North West Frontier.

    Maiwandday.blogspot.com

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  4. I've been browsing for weeks and this is one of my favorites. artillery of any stripe be it on tabletop or on my laptop.

    new fan here. cheers!

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