1958 Tank Biathlon

[Markus Wilding]

Invitations have been sent worldwide to all nations currently out of quarantine, inviting them to visit Stockholm not just for a vacation, but to send their elite armored crews to the Tank Biathlon. Devised in 1952 as a training aid for Swedish tankers, the Swedish government has decided to host a worldwide event, away from warfare and national politics in order to promote friendly competition and martial prowess.

The rules were simple, and provided with each invitation:

• Participating nations are to send two (2) crews, one to serve as the main and the other an alternate in case of injury or emergency. One tank representing the nation's military standard was to be sent with the two crews.
• All participant crews and vehicles must be registered in Sweden prior to the event. Swedish mechanics will be on-hand to assist in emergencies, but primary maintenance responsibility is on the participating nation to ensure.
• Ammunition to be used in the competition must be in Sweden at least one week prior to the event. Any unused ammunition will be shipped back to the nation of origin. Tanks will only be loaded with ammunition immediately prior to beginning an event, and will be unloaded immediately after.

Furthermore, details on the event were also included:

1. Tanks and crews were to race, one by one, on a 3 lap route 10km long. During this first lap, crews fire at targets with the main gun at distances of 1,800 meters, 1,700 meters, and 1,500 meters.
2. In the second lap, different targets simulating an anti-tank rocket launcher team and an infantry unit were to be fired on with the tank's secondary or coaxial machine guns at a distance of 600-700 meters.
3. In the third and final lap, the crews fire on targets simulating an anti-tank gun using either a turret-mounted machine gun, or if one does not exist, the main gun with high explosive rounds, culminating with traversing over obstacles and various terrain. Improperly traversing or missing obstacles adds a 10 second penalty to the crew's final time. Missing any target leads to an extra penalty lap 500m long.

OOC: Essentially, detail several things in your post:

- What tank you are bringing
- Anything that could give your tank and crewmembers an advantage, such as recent combat experience, prior intensive training, higher maneuverability, lighter weight, etc.
- Name of at least one crewmember and short background

After enough participants have posted, I will apply advantages as necessary and start rolling. In the interim, feel free to have tankers converse with others, check out the other tanks, and generally make a story for why all these tankers are in Sweden hanging out with each other.

[Cataphrak]

The Republic of China's entry to the tank biathlon arrived not on one, not on two, but six transport planes.

This wasn't due to any sort of arrogance or insecurity on the part of the competing team, or even the government which had sent it, but due to simple fact: no aircraft available to the RoCAF could carry a thirty-tonne medium tank by itself. So the two vehicles had to be disassembled into gun, hull, and chassis, and given three vehicles each to carry them, being reassembled only when they were carted off the runway in Sweden.

The mechanics and crews were picked as much as a representation of the Republic's own recent history as anything else. They were two vehicles from the 3rd Dragoon Guards, an originally British unit which had been stranded in Burma, folded up into the National Revolutionary Army, and which had seen almost constant action through the whole time. The commander of the delegation, Captain Yue, was Han Chinese. The commander of the first tank, Sergeant-Major Oldroyd, was English. The head of the mechanics, 1st Warrant Hong, was Hakka.

And combined, the three of them had about forty years' combat experience - not army experience, mind, but fighting experience, most of it in tanks, some of it very recent indeed. Oldroyd's driver had only recently come out of hospital with a shrapnel wound taken during the fighting for Guangdong.

Their vehicles were as much kludged together old soldiers as the men driving them. The Type 46 Medium Tank had once been an American Sherman and still possessed most of the reliability, ruggedness, and relative agility of the original article; but years of combat and even longer periods of wear and tear had forced the replacement of almost everything. The road wheels were new builds, out of a factory in Yunnan. The old gasoline engine had been replaced by a larger, more powerful diesel. Even the treads had been swapped out, bit by bit. Oldroyd, an irascible geezer with a surprisingly polished sense of honour, had even named his tank the Ship of Theseus, though he then proceeded to scowl a great deal when nobody got the reference.

But it was the gun which was the real centrepiece of the Type 46, for it was not a replacement, but a full-scale improvement. The old 75mm short-barrelled cannon the original mounted was fine enough against the piddly tin cans the Japanese had called tanks, but over the past year, it had been replaced with an altogether different beast. This gun too, was 75mm, but it was nearly twice as long and boasted nearly twice the muzzle velocity. It had rendered sterling service in Guangdong, and clearly, it was hoped that it would do the same here.

And it would have to.

Everyone who knew anything knew it now: the world had passed the Republic by during its decade cut off from the rest of the world. The other contestants would be bringing what made up the cutting edge of tank design, the very best this new world had to offer. The Republic of China team was not only under orders to compete, but to observe, and see just how far experience and expertise could make up for technological inferiority...

[Alucard Tobor]

Master Warrant Officer Kyung-tae Kuan watched as his T48 Centurion - Jade Dragon, named after his gunner's (ex-)flame - being unloaded from the transport aircraft that had flown them here, halfway around the world, to demonstrate their skills.

Kuan held somewhat less optimism than his superiors had - certainly, his crew and platoon scored consistently at or near the top of the Pyongyang Armoured Regiment's training exercises, and they had more or less invented a large chunk of the current Korean armoured playbook - but they had never seen real, true combat.

On one hand, that meant nobody was shooting at his countrymen. On the other? He held no illusions that his trained-but-green crew would stack up particularly well against the by-now veteran armoured corps of other nations. That said, his orders were to do his level best to win, and so he would do precisely that.

Sergeant Jimmy duVall - his aforementioned gunner and frankly foul-mouthed token (ex-)American, wandered over. "Warrant."

"Sergeant."

"What're our odds, do you think?"" the man asked, lighting up a cigarette.

Kuan flicked a glance at the man. "Sixty percent, say. We've got a good vehicle and good crew, but many of the other teams have experience."

"Looking forwards to seeing how the gun stacks up with... is that a Sherman?"

The warrant officer turned to look where his subordinate was pointing - and lo and behold, it was indeed a Sherman. "Indeed. What that gun is, though, I'm not certain. Doesn't look quite like an E-eight or Firefly..."

"Well, we'll see soon enough. I'm gonna take my sorry ass over there and see what there is to see, ay?" With a brief wave, the short man started off, curious gaze roving over the odd vehicle on the field.

Kuan, for his part, simply returned his attention to his own vehicle. Someone had to ensure the air farce hadn't broken anything in transit.

[Cataphrak]

"Good God."

Warrant Hong looked up from the gun stabiliser assembly. "Something wrong, Lao ye?"

Sergeant-Major Oldroyd shook his head. "I dare say it is the most beautiful thing I have ever seen."

Gavin Oldroyd's first tank had been a Matilda, Black Bess, all the way back in '41. To Oldroyd, she had been the most marvellous creature he had known. Black Bess had been knocked out in '44, during the desperate fight for Imphal. They'd moved onto Shermans after.

The tank which he beheld now was not what Black Bess had been, but what he remembered her as. Not the piddly 2 pdr gun, or the lurching sluggishness of her drive, but an amalgamation of smooth, low-slung lines and stark lethality.

One of her crew was coming over now. Oldroyd pulled himself up, straightening his coveralls as if they had been the pieces of a tuxedo suit and he had been bound for a hot date.

"Ho there!" he called out. "that 'un yours?"

[Markus Wilding]

Sgt. Lucas Beckenbauer and the crew of the Blockbuster, famous if only within the 3rd Armored Division for literally knocking down several buildings with HE rounds to clear the way for the liberation of Washington D.C., had a nature that almost betrayed his grim trade. In contrast to most of his crew, the friendly, jovial good-ol-boy from Florida looked - and sounded - more like he was more at home greeting guests at a hotel than commanding a tank, but here he was anyway. He and the other men that formed the crew of the SRA's newest M48A2 Patton shipped to Sweden more than ready to show what real combat experience against a near-equal nation translated to.

"Hey, Beckie! Is that a fuckin' Sherman?"

Beckenbauer glanced over at the olive drab tank, oddly familiar and yet not at all at the same time. "Yeah, reckon so. That ain't no USA star though. What's that, that a Core-rean tank?"

"Shit, I bet you it is. Figure ain't nothing faster than ol' Blockbuster here!"

[Alucard Tobor]

"That she is." duVall replied. Strolling up to the Sherman's side, he looked back at his own ride. "Type Nineteen-Forty-Eight Centurion MBT. Finest fighting vehicle I have ever had the privilege to lay eyes on."

Extending a hand up towards the Chinese crewman, he grinned. "Sergeant Jimmy duVall, Pyongyang Armoured Regiment. Pleasure to meet you."

[Cataphrak]

"Sergeant-Major Gavin Oldroyd, 3rd Dragoon Guards, the same."

The rest of the crew had gathered around now. Trooper Zheng, in particular, was eyeing the Korean tank with undisguised appreciation.

"It must take a lot of power to move that much armour and gun. How much does she put out? 500, 600 horsepower?"

[Alucard Tobor]

"Six-fifty." duVall answered with a nod. "Not the fastest thing out there, but damn good power-to-weight. Plus, eighty-four millimeter gun. We're expecting an upgrade to one-oh-fives next year. Not much to complain about, really."

Turning, he looked over the not-Sherman in front of him. "But what's this critter? Sherman upgrade of some sort? Can't say I've seen this one before."

[Cataphrak]

"That's it," Oldroyd replied. "The boffins call it a Type-46, but it's just a Sherman with a new gun really."

He glanced back at the Korean tank sitting next to them, and then at the third vehicle which had made it to the blacktop, a big bugger with a funny-looking rounded turret. Suddenly, his own machine seemed rather small, even toylike.

"Old dog, of course, but I figure we've still got a few tricks in us yet."

[Markus Wilding]

The inaugural entrant for the international pat of the stage was China, following Sweden's time-setting lap of 17 minutes and 42 seconds to engage all targets. Owing to recent combat experience in Asia, the Chinese team was expected to do well, though the Swedish judges did have some doubts as to the accuracy of the Type 46's gun compared to other designs

In all, though, the Chinese team performed rather admirably, coming in just short of Sweden's time on the first lap at 20 minutes, 15 seconds, having accurately hit each target with no penalties levied upon the team.