Hello readers, Shadyrush back with a brand new article. It’s been a while since I last wrote one, time didn’t allow me to make new ones but with the holiday starting, now’s a good a time as any to publish a new one. This article won’t be as lengthy as the last one, so it’ll be a light read.

As you probably guessed, this article will be about the Wilton-Fijenoord Overvalswagen. This design had the honor to be the first type of armoured car to serve with the Dutch army.(although very briefly) So why is it so unknown? Well, only 3 were made and there isn’t much information on these vehicles. Another thing to note is that they were designed and produced by a shipyard. The shipyard shared its name with the armoured car: Wilton-Fijenoord. This company was established in 1929 out of a merger of two Rotterdam shipyards, Wilton and Fijenoord. After the merger many activities were concentrated in neighbouring Schiedam, home of Dutch jenever distilling. In the early 1930s W-F acquired a licence to produce Bofors guns. Because this shipyard was one of the few arms manufacturers in the early 30’s the Dutch minister of colonies ordered two 6 wheel armoured cars to be built on the Krupp 22H143 chassis.

This vehicle would be known as the Wilton-Fijenoord Overvalswagen

Continue reading “The Wilton-Fijenoord Overvalwagen – Forgotten by time” →

Good day to you readers, ShadyRush stopping by for a new article. As you can probably guess, this article will be about the Panzerkampfwagen IV or simply Panzer IV to keep the typing simple. Be sure to strap yourselves in before reading, the article is quite lengthy.

The Panzer IV has to be one of the most underrated and least recognized tanks of the war. It had no official Sobriquet like the “big cats” in German service and to be honest, the name wasn’t even that catchy in German; the name roughly translated to “armored fighting vehicle no. 4”. But, even though the tank wore a unoriginal and boorish name it was still the backbone of the Wehrmacht, especially during the early years of the war. In the later stages, it lost a lot of recognition. Why? Because to the American GI, every German tank was a Tiger.

Now, let’s go back to a year long before 1944 and the D-Day invasion. I’ll take you to the year 1934, the first prototype of the Batallionsfuhrerwagen (battalion commander’s vehicle) was constructed by Rheinmetall-Borsig. It was a simple tank, featuring a 5-man crew consisting of a crew commander, gunner, driver, hull machine gun operator and a radioman. The tank featured a low velocity 75 mm gun, the 300-hp Maybach HL 120L gasoline engine and Krupp’s suspension system of leaf-springed bogies. The suspension configuration consisted of four pairs of wheels and four return rollers. Does this tank sound familiar yet? It was the very first version of the Panzer IV.

Continue reading “The Panzerkampfwagen IV – A tank with no name” →

Hello readers, my name is Shadyrush, your average Dutch university student who lucks out by having access to a database filled with awesome reports and documents. While I have been lurking around TAP for a while, this will be the first article I’ll be writing for you guys. And hopefully, many more will come.

This article will be about (you guessed it) the Future Combat System or FCS for short. The FCS project is currently suspended, but after looking into it, it can be said that the US MBT philosophy was shifting to the one Germany had in the 1950’s. To explain what I mean by this, I’ll take you into the project itself.

Continue reading “The US Future Combat System – A new philosophy on MBT’s” →