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'A gaping silken dragon,/Puffed by the wind, suffices us for God./We, not the City, are the Empire's soul:/A rotten tree lives only in its rind.'

Wednesday 12 December 2012

Tsar Boris...

... and his merry men, plus Roco Minitank:


Makes a change, and rather in keeping with a theme that has developed here of late - tanks in unusual finishes and in the 'wrong' hands.


Without anything to give it scale, the Minitanks Stug III looks quite the thing:


My source for this finish, and especially for the interesting black (but I do wonder if, in fact, it was panzer grey) gun barrel is this book:


Kaloyan Matev, Equipment and Armor in the Bulgarian Army; Armored Vehicles, 1935-1945 (Knigomania, Sofia, 2006). A rather poor translation from the original Bulgar (but, then, I can't speak a word of Bulgarian, so I oughtn't to complain), but with a mass of fascinating photographs, and some good colour plates:

The temptation is, of course, to reproduce the Bulgarians' wide variety of imported kit in all its varied finery.

Tsar Boris went, of course, not long after the Soviets declared war on Bulgaria. Geography, and size, really does matter. And what does a Tsar do when all the countries about him are losing their heads?

6 comments:

  1. I am enjoying this theme very much indeed.Another fascinating looking book you have there too.

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    1. Thanks, Alan. Yes, I think I may well continue with one offs in odd colours/under other flags. The book is a real rarity - I bought it from a re-enactor dressed in White Russian kit while standing in a Viking village, with me dressed as a International Brigades' Commissar...

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  2. I was looking at the Balkan states not so long ago and I was quite agog at the equipment they had, or was passed down to them, other than the obvious German types.

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    1. Yes, an amazing variety of kit - lots of French, bits of Polish that escaped, Italian, interwar British... It's all a terrible temptation.

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  3. The model came out very well and a Bulgarian army sounds very interesting. I look forward to more.

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    1. Cheers, Ben. The Bulgarians were pretty rotten in the bits of Greece the Germans gave them to police, but, in terms of kit, a very interesting range of stuff. I can feel myself being drawn into another project - aieeeee.

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