War games: Hobbyists use mini tanks as tool to learn, have fun

As a fierce, afternoon-long rain hammered down Saturday on Miller Park, it was a case of “Tanks, but no tanks” for the local chapter of the Radio Control Armor Club.

“We pretty much sat around under the pavilion all day,” said John Sprouse, who commands the Virginia Armored Division. “You can’t have a tank fight in the rain.”

Not when those tanks are miniature and radio-controlled. On Sunday, however, the battlefield had drained nicely, and the little 10-pound war machines were back in combat again. Manning the remote controls were hobbyists from as far away as North Carolina and Tidewater.

“I got into this a couple of years ago,” said Sprouse, a retired truck driver from Lynchburg. “It can be an expensive hobby, but it all depends upon what you want to put into it. These tanks aren’t cheap.”

Between $500 and $1,000, to be exact. That’s why Zach DeBose was doing battle with a loaner from Sprouse.

“I’m saving up for my own,” he said.

This is, curiously, a Japanese invention — curiously, because Japan probably used the fewest tanks of any of the main players in World War II. But the Japanese company Tamaya started the current mini-tank craze and remains the largest distributor.

“Japan had them (tanks) during the war,” said Sprouse, “but they weren’t anything to talk about.”

Nevertheless, today’s Japanese-built replicas are eerily similar to the real thing.

“The engines even sound the same when you turn the tanks on,” said Kevin Rimrodt, of Norfolk, another participant in Sunday’s tank battles. “The company (Tamaya) went around to tank museums and recorded the sounds.”

The area blocked off for battle Sunday included a mockup of a European village, most of the buildings burned and riddled with holes.

“When we have an urban sort of setup with the buildings close together, the younger people tend to do better with their video game reflexes,” Rimrodt said. “When it’s spread out more, that’s when experience comes into play.”

Mini-tank commanders score victories by hitting their rivals with a laser beam directed from the top of the turret.

“It’s just like a regular tank,” Sprouse said. “Every time you get hit, your power diminishes a little. Eventually, if your tank gets hit enough, it will just stop.”

Direct hits register as red lights, and tanks can connect with their targets from as far away as 300 feet.

“I just sort of make myself hard to see,” said Sprouse, “and hit the other tanks with shots from long-distance. And they’re like, ‘Where did that come from?’”

Tank battle re-enactments are mostly World War II in nature.

“It’s funny,” said Sprouse. “You’d think that we’d have trouble coming up with Axis people, but it’s really the other way around.”

For it was Germany, not surprisingly, that produced the Mercedes of tanks during the last great conflict. Unfortunately for the Third Reich, this insistence on quality slowed down the Nazi assembly lines enough that German tanks were vastly outnumbered by their Russian and American counterparts.

“When people first get into this, they want American tanks,” said Rimrodt, who wore a special-ordered T-shirt that proclaimed “Das Reich” in white letters on a field of olive green. “Then, the more interested they get, they more they get interested in the German models.”

People like Rimrodt and Sprouse use tank re-enactments as a springboard to research how real tank crews lived and fought during World War II.

“We’re always glad to come and talk to history classes in schools about World War II,” Sprouse said. “We think it’s important.”

As he spoke, Allen Provo and DeBose were stalking Chuck Rayburn and Mike Gregorious on a patch of Miller Park lawn delineated by a perimeter of string. The four moved around the edges of the battlefield, trying to get close enough for a killing shot.

“All you really need to do is study Gen. Patton,” DeBose said.

But as he carried his tank off the field of conflict in the palm of one hand, he smiled at the question “How did you do?” and replied: “Not that great.”