Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 77 i History of War

“A good navy is not a provocation to war. It is the surest guarantee of peace”. President Theodore Roosevelt made this remark at the cusp of a watershed moment in maritime history, just a few years before the launch of HMS Dreadnought. Arguably one of the most significant battleships ever developed, Dreadnought was bristling with almost three-times as many cannons as previous designs, out-gunning every other vessel at the time. Rather than guaranteeing peace Dreadnought’s emergence triggered an arms race, and global powers sought to match this new level of naval capability in the buildup to the First World War.…

“USS CONSTITUTION WAS ONE OF SIX HEAVY FRIGATES THAT FORMED THE CORE OF THE FLEDGLING UNITED STATES NAVY” Naval power enabled nations to build, develop and defend empires, projecting military might across the globe during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic periods. The fates of nations rested on the outcomes of great battles, and naval heroes set standards of dedication and conduct while serving on their decks. Early warship types gave way to swift, heavily armed frigates and majestic but menacing ships-of-the-line, mounting 100 or more guns. Nations, both preeminent and emerging, recognised naval might as the front line of deterrence and defence against invasion, as well as a source of tremendous prestige. Warship construction, seamanship, gunnery and firepower were substantially improved and increased in an era of global competition and expansion…

An SS officer and qualified doctor, Mengele was the chief camp physician of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) from 1943. He became notorious for conducting genetic research on human subjects with no regard for their welfare or safety. He experimented on twins and people with physical abnormalities with the supposed intention of proving the biological supremacy of the Aryan race. Many of his victims died during cruel invasive procedures while others were subsequently dispatched to the gas chambers after a few weeks. Hornick remembers Mengele as a well-dressed figure who casually dispensed murder, “Dr Mengele, who was known as the ‘Angel of Death’ used to walk around very often. He was a good-looking man and immaculately dressed with boots and buttons that were always shiny. He always carried a pair of white…

In 1419, four years after the renegade preacher Jan Hus was burned at the stake, his followers, the Hussites, found themselves at war with the combined might of the Holy Roman Empire and the Catholic Church. Despite inferior numbers, training and equipment, they endured five successive crusades before succumbing to infighting. With an army largely consisting of peasants and farmers, their very survival depended on finding a way to stop the mounted knights in their tracks. They found their answer in the form of the ‘Wagenburg’, or ‘Wagon Fort’ – the Medieval world’s very own tank. The strategy was devised by the one-eyed Hussite leader, Jan Žižka, a former captain of the Bohemian King Wenceslas’s palace guard, who had also fought as a mercenary against the Teutonic Knights in Poland.…

ARIZONA IN LONDON The Imperial War Museum has been donated a piece of a US Navy battleship that was sunk during the attack on Pearl Harbor On the morning of 7 December 1941, Japanese aircraft attacked the US naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii. Their intention was to destroy as much of the US Pacific Fleet as possible before it could respond to Japanese operations against British, Dutch and American territories in southeast Asia. In the first five minutes of the attack, four battleships were hit, including USS Arizona. Its ammunition stores exploded within minutes after bombs penetrated the armoured deck, which ripped the battleship apart. 1,777 of the ship’s crew were killed and fierce fires burned for days before she sank. Although many damaged ships at Pearl…

The 19th century witnessed a dramatic change in naval warfare. Whereas navies previously had been dominated by ships that relied upon the wind or oars for movement, the advent of a new technology, steam, made it possible to manoeuvre regardless of the wind, and faster than any human crew might row. The first steam engines were built into old-style sailing ships, and outwardly, these vessels would not have looked all that different from their purely sail-driven predecessors – but for the smoke emerging from their stacks. This changed with the appearance of the French Gloire and then its British counterpart, HMS Warrior (now docked at Portsmouth, UK). Steam power also made it possible for ships to be fitted with heavy iron plates for armour. These ‘ironclads’, as the ships were…

Solomon Schonfeld (1912-84) was the head of an Orthodox Jewish community in London. Before 1939 he procured help from the Home Office to secure visas for German rabbis and synagogue officials to come to Britain with their families. After Kristallnacht, he organised individual ‘Kindertransports’ for Jewish children and organised their shelter as well as fundraising. During the war, Schonfeld oversaw the religious welfare of Jews in the British Armed Forces before organising more Kindertransports for children who had survived the Holocaust. He personally travelled to Europe to help survivors and around 1,000 children were rescued in the immediate post-war period. Hornick was one of those who were able to come to Britain with Schonfeld’s help, “My Birmingham uncle visited him in London. Schonfeld said, ‘If you can give her a…

01 THE BRITISH RESIDENCY Located in the heart of the city of Lucknow, the Residency was a collection of buildings covering some 60 acres and assigned to the British commissioner. It became the focal point of the defence of Lucknow in 1857, where almost 1,700 European and loyal Indians became besieged. 02 ROUTE OF HAVELOCK’S FORCE Following Havelock’s first failed relief attempt, the general fought his way through to the Residency on 25 September. The advance was made through narrow, heavily defended lanes and involved close-quarter combat which accounted for the majority of Havelock’s losses during the First Relief. 03 GENERAL JAMES NEILL KILLED During Havelock’s rush to the Residency, Brigadier-General James Neill, commanding officer of 1st Brigade, is killed by a gunshot wound to the head near to the…

THE ART OF WAR Taken: May 1945 The 101st Airborne’s makeshift exhibition at Berchtesgaden. After the liberation of the area in 1945, troops discovered valuable paintings and sculptures hidden in nearby caves. They had been taken by Hermann Goering from occupied nations during the war. Some of the liberated art on display included Franz Hals’s Portrait of a Priest and a piece by Rubens. LAST CHOPPER OUT OF XUÂN LOC Taken: April, 1975 Two Chinook helicopters hover above a road (likely Highway 1) during the evacuation of supplies and soldiers of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) 18th Division and their families. Located east of Saigon, Xuan Loc was one of the last battles of the Vietnam War. DRESDEN OUT OF THE ASHES Taken: 1950 The ruin of…

The warships of the world prior to the advent of steam power relied upon either the wind or on the muscles of oarsmen to power them forward. Within the relatively sheltered confines of the Mediterranean Sea, the war galley, propelled by banks of rowers, was the arbiter of naval battles during the ancient and medieval periods. The invasion of Greece by the Persians was halted by the Greek triumph at Salamis in 480 BCE, a fight between hundreds of trireme galleys on both sides. The trireme’s larger derivative, the quinquereme, was the workhorse warship of both the Roman and Carthaginian fleets during the Punic Wars. Elsewhere, in East Asia, a rowed warship, the turtle ship, would help save Korea from Japanese conquest in the last decade of the 16th century.…

World War II provided the ultimate test of the future of naval power. While the aircraft carrier reached maturity, projecting the strength of combat aircraft across the broad expanses of the world’s oceans and asserting that no surface ship was impervious to attack from above, the era of the great battleship was emphatically eclipsed. This conflict saw the last actions between these behemoths. During World War II, Allied aircraft carriers decided the fate of nations on the high seas, particularly in the Pacific. The carrier led the fight for air supremacy across the world and brought aircraft to the support of invasions of numerous Japanese-held islands. During the Battle of the Atlantic, carrier-based aircraft complemented the efforts of surface ships, hunting and killing German U-boats that threatened vital shipping lanes.…

Auschwitz is a name that symbolises industrialised terror, genocide and sickening evil. Approximately 1.1 million people were murdered at this camp complex, with the vast majority being Jews from across Nazi-occupied Europe. With its gas chambers and crematoriums, Auschwitz epitomised the monstrous reality of the Nazis’ ‘Final Solution’ and the scale of the atrocities remain difficult to comprehend. 27 January 2020 marks the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by Soviet forces. Despite the passage of time, the Holocaust remains an indelible stain on humanity and for survivors, the horror remains an open wound. One of those who survived was Mindu Hornick who spent six months imprisoned at Auschwitz before she was transferred to Neuengamme concentration camp. Now a tireless and honoured campaigner for Holocaust education, Hornick lost all…

DIVER’S VISION Most tanks in 1938-39 had vision slits cut into the armour plate. The advanced Stridsvagn m/38 tank used optical periscopes and vision ports with armoured covers that were fitted with bulletproof thick glass blocks to protect the driver’s eyes. “THE STRIDSVAGN M/38 (STRV M/38) TANK WAS DESIGNED IN 1937 BY THE GERMAN ENGINEER OTTO MERKER” WEAPONS AND AMMUNITION The Stridsvagn m/38 turret was armed with a 37mm Bofors m/38 anti-tank gun and a coaxial Swedish made Browning 8mm ksp m/36 machine-gun. The main gun could fire armour-piercing rounds, high-explosive shells and white phosphorus incendiary smoke shells. ARMOUR PROTECTION The armour thickness ranged from 6mm to 15mm. In 1938 this was comparable with the German Panzer III Ausf.A to D and Soviet T-26 tanks, but the Stridsvagn m/38 tank…

The city of Lucknow, located on the west bank of the Gumti River some 42 miles east of Cawnpore, was the capital of Oude province. The province itself had been annexed by the British East India Company only the year before the outbreak of the Indian Mutiny, after which and the incumbent ruler, Wajid Ali, was exiled to Calcutta. This caused much resentment among both the people of Oude and the local sepoy army. The subsequent arrival of the insensitive Coverley Jackson as chief commissioner of the province only further inflamed what was already a fragile situation. Long before the mutiny broke out, Lucknow was a hotbed of discontent. Jackson would later be replaced by Sir Henry Lawrence, a man who possessed far greater understanding of the peoples of India…

The Takao-class heavy cruiser had been a threat to US and allied forces throughout the Pacific War. It had been in action since 1941 and participated in many engagements, sinking enemy shipping and supporting landings and evacuations. It had also survived several engagements where many Japanese ships had been sunk. With the sinking of her three sister ships, Atago, Maya and Chokai in late 1944, Takao, although damaged, remained a major threat in the theatre. As the Allied armies advanced towards Singapore, the Takao needed to be dealt with. The Royal Navy launched Operation Struggle on 31 July 1945, to do just that. “DESPITE HIS EXHAUSTION, HIS OXYGEN LEAK AND THE FACT THAT THERE WAS EVERY PROBABILITY OF HIS BEING SIGHTED, MAGENNIS AT ONCE VOLUNTEERED TO LEAVE THE CRAFT AND…