Good morning. Happy New Year!
In October 2016, I was thinking about a useful navy for a landlocked country, in this case, Bolivia in South America. Without seacoast since 1879, Bolivia has access to the two main South American waterways, the Amazon and La Plata-Parana-Paraguay basins. So instead having a naval force around Lake Titicaca, I built a riverine navy over the Beni-Madeira in the North East, and over the Paraguay in the South-East.
But without political stability this is impossible, so my AU Bolivia begins with the subversive incursion of the Cuban backed guerrillas of Che Guevara in 1967. The guerrillas were defeated, but cuatripartite talk beteween the main political forces and the military begun: Hernan Siles, Victor Paz, and generals Banzer and Obando arrived to a “Governability Accord of 1968”, in which the presidential term was reduced to 4 years, but with the possibility of one (and only one) reelection. So the perpetuation of one party in the government is prevented.
A steady military built up begins. The time line covered the period of high tensions between almost every all south American countries: from close relations between Peru and Chile under Velasco and Allende (both leftist goverments), to an acute confrontation between Velasco and Pinochet in the period 1974-1975. The Beagle Crisis of 1977-1978, the short lived border war of 1981 between Peru and Ecuador, and the Falkland's War.
The naval vessels in FD scale are WIP (well, they are WIP for several months) any comment for improving them will be warmly received. I am very glad to use as starting points the excellent drawings of some of the best artists of the bucket. Thanks to all of them. Cheers.
First, the AU Bolivian Army of 1970s:
... now moving to the air force:
and finally the service which originates this saga, the Naval Force:
Once again, happy new year, and cheers!
PS1: Thanks to llamaman (wild enough?
),! I copied his tricolor paint scheme which was better than the original two tones first selected
!
PS2: The influence of Grnl. V. Rojo is notorius: As the most prominent professional general of the republicans during the Spanish Civil War, he had a deep concern about the multiple calibers and ammo. So, There is only one caliber for the GPMG (7.62x51) and only one caliber for heavy machine guns (12.70 x 108), that is the reason for some rather odd combinations
.