We would like to thank Gary C. Cox for sponsoring the Soft Skins modeling category at the 13th Annual Sproo-Doo Show that will be held on September 21, 2013 at the Arkansas Health Center.
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Tanks were invented by the British, incidentally, during the First World War, as a means of breaking the stalemate that had been created by barbed wire and the machine gun in that bloody conflict. Although the Allied blockade of Germany did more to bring about the end of that war, the development of the tank did ultimately insure that the next world conflict would not be a static, dug-in affair. The reason for this was that the invention of the armored fighting vehicle and the concept of armored warfare, meant that future wars would be wars of movement. Armies that were slow and ponderous would be swiftly outmaneuvered, cut off, and surrounded, and hence defeated, often by a numerically inferior enemy. So how were armored vehicles used in battle to the defeat an enemy? The British may have created the first tanks, but it was the Germans who put together the theories of the most advanced military thinkers during the years between the World Wars, and came up with the idea of Blitzkrieg, or “lightning war.” In its classic form, this type of warfare is best typified by Germany’s attack on France in 1940. In May of that year, German armor was hurled, en masse, at a relatively small portion of the Allied defensive line. That mass of armor penetrated the Allied line, and then did a thing unexpected by the old standards of warfare – it kept going! In less than two weeks German armor and motorized infantry moved across southern Belgium, through northeastern France to the Channel coast, thus separating the Belgian army, the British Expeditionary Force (BFF), and part of the French army from the bulk of Allied forces in the rest of France. There were several things new and revolutionary about this attack. As previously mentioned, the assault unleashed by the Germans was a war, above all, of movement. One of the foremost problems of the Allied defenders was to even determine where the Germans were at any one time. Never before had entire divisions advanced forty or more miles in a single day. Another new and terrifying development was the use of ground-attack aircraft, in this case the famous Stukas, in close cooperation with attacking army units. In the First World War, airplanes had mostly fought each other and left the embattled armies alone. Now all that changed. Screaming dive-bombers were used as flying artillery in order to destroy enemy strong-points, attack enemy supply columns, and lines of communication. In this way the role of the tank became to break the enemy’s line at a weak point, and then to advance along the path of least resistance through the enemy’s rear areas, severing supply lines and communications. This was the most startling thing about this new kind of war. In previous wars, the object had been generally to meet the enemy head-on and defeat him in a strength vs. strength fight. Blitzkrieg, on the other hand, sought to avoid the enemy’s strongest points. German tanks did not seek out French and British tanks to fight. Instead, they looked for enemy infantry to overrun, and once they had done so, they proceeded on to shoot up trucks and wagons full of fuel, ammunition, food, medicine, etc. they also took every opportunity to send columns of retreating enemy soldiers and civilian refugees flying in terror before them. In May 1940 the mere rumor that German tanks were coming was more than enough to cause Allied defenses to collapse. As I said in the first of these efforts, I have been involved with IPMS and modeling clubs regularly since the mid-70s. That is 36 years, longer than many of the folks in this club have even been alive, let alone built models or participated in a club or at model contests and shows. I’ve been part of clubs that were just getting started, clubs at their peak and clubs that were slowly on the ebb. During those many years the one thing I did noticed was that every club has a group of members that are the do’ers; the movers and shakers, the driving force behind the club. When clubs are at their zenith that group is larger and more active, they also bring in those on the periphery to get involved and to help the club grow. As the clubs wane I saw that these movers and shakers, this driving force began to get burned out. They lost interest in pushing the club to host shows, to bring in new members and to participate in community projects. Slowly this core lost interest and drifted away from the club, not from modeling itself but from the club. You can attend a CASM meeting and you’ll learn quickly who constitutes that group. If you can’t attend a meeting in person you can take part in a meeting on the web. You can also take a minute to check out the club forum to get an idea of who some of the members of that inner circle are. Just like the other clubs I have been part of, this inner group, this driving force, is not made up of just the officers in the club. During my 12 years in CASM I have seen most of the original members, including those that founded the club, move on. Some have moved on because of family, while others left due to careers and others still because they thought the club was moving in the wrong direction. CASM has been lucky over the years because as that small group of leaders has moved on we have had a good group of strong-minded and strong-willed individuals that were capable of and willing to step up and take the reins tightly in hand. I sit and watch the members at the meetings and I look at the forum and I find myself wondering more and more: Is there another group ready to step up? Or has CASM begun to reach that downhill slope? It’s up to all of you to answer that question. |
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