Researching the Tatchanka - help needed

[Admiral Benbow]

The RCW machinegun wagon, also known as Tatschanka or tchanka, is not very well represented in scale for 28mm figures. The Eureka one is tiny and could only work with 20mm figures, and there is another obscure 1/72 scale plastic kit by Aer (?), but this shouldn't be useful for 28 mil figs either. So I'm thinking about constructing my own from scratch, maybe even looking for some casting possibilities, but that's far away in the future ...

There is a basic article in Wikipedia here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachanka, as are some pics on the net, but most are very small and not very useful for construction purposes. With so many BoB brains around here, it should be possible to get some more pictorial references, perhaps even an old drawing or something.

So, if you know about original photos, paintings or drawings of Tatchankas, please let me know.

Thanks for your interest and support.

[sukhe_bator]

Wikipedia has a couple of good images of the conventional horse carriage
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tachanka
An image search on google threw up a couple of interesting variants – what looks like a Child’s buggy pressed into service
http://museum.votkinsk.ru/im/big/Tachanka.jpg
and a wagon/cart
http://www.russianwarrior.com/STMMain.htm?1917vecindex_maximcart.htm&1
as well as a couple of actual museum exhibits
http://www.modelizm.com/cmvsphoto.htm
http://www.ratomka.ru/images/tachanka/2.jpg

[Driscoles]

why not ordering one from Peter Pig and reconstructing it for 28 mm

http://www.peterpig.co.uk/tchanka.jpg

[Schogun]

The Eureka tchanka is slightly smaller, but fits fine with 28mm figs:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/schogun/2247110092/

A lot easier than building your own!

[Doc Twilight]

I agree that the Eureka is fine for 28mm (well, for my purposes, anyway.) It would be positively -huge- for 20mm troops.

-Doc

[Admiral Benbow]

Well, Shogun and Doc, if the Eureka thing is ok for you, that's perfectly fine. For me it's looking like some kids riding a Bobby Car drawn by younger Shetland ponies, so I think I'll build a proper one ...

Thanks anyway to all of you for your suggestions, maybe the one or other will have some more pics ...
 

[Mark Plant]

I hesitate to post. I contend that some of the photos you see of tachankas are in fact just pictures of machine-guns in carts. The russianwarrior one strikes me as not a tachanka. Its a MG the infantry are carrying around in a cart, which was common practice.

A tachanka that can't keep up with cavalry is worse than useless. Only a decent sprung wagon will do the job for any length of time, especially once off road.

However, while the carriage has to be sprung it doesn't have to be large. There's a tachanka in the Latvian War Museum in Riga that is tiny. Sukhe_Bator has posted one above that is also quite diminuitive (the votkinsk one). A Bobby Car look is not wrong at all.

So the Eureka tachanka carriage is just fine. The horses I can't speak for, but it is not unusual for horses not suitable for mounted work to be used for carriages.

If you pm me I can send a few pictures.

[HerbyF]

Looks to me that there wasn't any kind of standardization of either the carts or the weapons. So it would seem that mounting any machine gun available to the armies at that time in any kind of horse or pony cart would do. Scratch build or Kit bash what ever works for you and you feel fits with your figures.

[area23]

The Ukrainian Makhnovists insisted being the inventors of the Tachanka as a mobile weapons platform. As a poor army having no access to motorised vehicles let alone armoured cars.

This proofed to work well and was adapted by the Red Army.

Later on in soviet propaganda the Tachanka became part of revolutionary mythology and inventiveness of those fine chaps of the bolshevik vainguard. The image of the spring carriage manned by bolshie elite warriors with pointy hats became part of soviet culture.

The early Tachankas often were simple carts. While probably true they werent very fast, the initial surprise effect would've been devastating. Good enough for surprise raids anyway. And they were easy to hide in barns of friendly farmers nearby. Just bury the machine gun somewhere nearby and no-one can proof a thing.

I've got some pics on a disc somewhere that I found on the net five years ago. Should dig that up, to post here.

[brigadegames]

The Eureka one is scaled for small 28mm figures and indeed the figures are closer to 25mm than 28mm. It still works though and easier than building one. Since the gunner is scaled with the MG it works as a piece mixed with 28mm minis on a table.

[carlos marighela]

The Eureka one is scaled for small 28mm figures and indeed the figures are closer to 25mm than 28mm. It still works though and easier than building one. Since the gunner is scaled with the MG it works as a piece mixed with 28mm minis on a table.

Oddly enough the dismounted gun crew that you can buy with this seem slightly bigger. I've mixed them in with my Copplestone's with no complaint. As for the Tachanka, it's the only game in town in this scale and it can be height adjusted with a little bala/card, it's a lovely model and no where near 20mm for figure scale.

[Mark Plant]

To be a tachanka it has to be attached to a cavalry unit. Otherwise it is an MG on a cart. Since infantry moved MGs on carts on a regular basis, it is hardly surprising there are some photos.

I can post photos of an MG on a WWI artillery caisson. All that proves is that once during WWI they moved MGs around on artillery carriages.

Museum pieces, monuments, period paintings and descriptions from the time are quite consistent about what sort of carriage was used. Isaac Babel calls them britzka, the kind you would see some cleric or petty official riding in.

No-one would last half a day riding at cavalry pace across country in a peasant cart.

[area23]

Interesting!

But from what I've read (but by no means I'm that well informed) the Tachanka as a concept was first used in raids, not full scale battles.

Still, you may be right about those pics I found. Possibly they were just transports, interpretated as tachankas.

[Svennn]

Tatchankas were also used as part of Armoured train units - scouting the tracks and supporting infantry skirmishes launched from the carriages.

[Mark Plant]

But from what I've read (but by no means I'm that well informed) the Tachanka as a concept was first used in raids, not full scale battles.

From the start of WWI cavalry units went into battle with MGs. They dismounted to fire, but the basic concept is the same. Makhno made them famous, but the basic concept was an evolution, not some radical discovery.

(I don't believe that you can hit a thing from a moving cart, so I reckon tachankas stopped to shoot except when trying to get pursuers to go away. I've seen it argued, quite forcefully, that much of the time tachankas dismounted to shoot. Standing on a cart on the steppe makes one a pretty obvious target.)

All the early battles of the Russian Civil War were tiny, so the distinction between raids and battles is not big. Makhno avoided pitched battles with all his troops. That he used tachankas for raids is not surprising - the nature of his troops and their lack of equipment meant drawn out fights were a losing proposition.

Tachankas were a staple on the Southern and Polish fronts from 1919. Any unit that needed mobile firepower had them. Cavalry obviously. Armoured trains makes sense. Horse artillery too.