Bolt Action Unboxing: Tetrarch Light Tank
October 31, 2017 by johnlyons
This week John and Justin discuss the Tetrarch Light Tank for Bolt Action from Warlord Games.
This small, lightweight tank was designed to support airborne troops and were carried by specially designed gliders. Although many successfully landed they did not fare well in combat due to their inferior armour and firepower.
This kit from Warlord comes with three separate barrels allowing assembly of different variants of the model.
Do you like the idea of airdropping tanks?
The adaptor on the muzzle of 2-pdr is called a Littlejohn
Tetrarchs were made from 1938 – 1942. And the reason the barrels look small is because it is a 2pdr gun. With 14mm armour, the 3 man drews were really brave going up against Panzer 4’s. Fun fact: There were only between 100-200 made… some of which were DD varients.
Sheridan out the back of a transport
https://youtu.be/RcmoHRNrWXI
You don’t need to come up with a “what if” scenario for Pegasus Bridge, later on the day they air landed a bunch of them just a few km away to the east to support the paras between the Orne and the Dive rivers. Not sure how much use they saw, it apparently took a while for some to get of the landing area as their tracks got stuck on abandoned parachutes if I’m not mistaken.
They were pretty useless especially the ones landed by glider in Normandy. Though if recreating the invasion of Madagascar is your thing you’ll nevertheless happy at this release
And with a little googling I found you can use them in Russia on the Caucasus front in the winter of 42-43
Remember not all battles were fought between Tigers and Fireflies 🙂
Pretty sure these were only used twice and only 5-6 tanks each time …
1) Operation Ironclad (invasion of Vichy-held Madagascar, November 1942)
http://www.beastsofwar.com/groups/historical-games/forum/topic/desert-war-additional-photos-maps-discussion/?topic_page=4#post-132028
(includes a handful of Tetrarchs) 😀
2) Dropped behind Normandy near Pegasus Bridge I believe (a day or two after the famous bridge seizure, I believe).
… as @torros says. 😀
More modern / Cold War Soviet stuff includes ASU-85 air transportable assault gun.
And of course there’s the M551 Sheridan John mentions.
Wow, just read up on Operation Ironclad, did not know that action. Thanks for bringing this to my attention 😉
Yeah, @neves1789 – we mentioned it very briefly in the original Desert War article series (even though it wasn’t really a “desert” battle – it was part of the wider African theater). Some people requested more information on it so I put a little spotlight on it in the support thread. 😀 Definitely one of those “peripheral gems” a lot of people don’t know about. I think I ran that Panzer Leader game just so I could say I’ve honestly used the Tetrarch in a live wargame (my whole Commonwealth force included just the one historical platoon, so one counter… Read more »
the Tetrarch was a 3 man crew
Weight 16,800 pounds (7,600 kg)
Length 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m)
Width 7 ft 7 in (2.31 m)
Height 6 ft 11 in (2.12 m)
Crew 3 (Commander, gunner, driver)
good for surprise attacks.