Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 81 i History of War

Despite Sweden’s ultimate defeat in the Great Northern War, its decisive victory at Narva was a key early battle that ensured the conflict would be prolonged and bloody. The war had begun on 22 February 1700 when a coalition of Russia, Denmark-Norway and Saxony-Poland-Lithuania launched an unprovoked attack against Sweden. Their aim was to weaken the Swedish Empire, particularly in the region of what is now the Baltic States. The Swedes had not fought a conflict since the Scanian War of 1675-79 where they had suffered a serious defeat and loss of territory in Pomerania. Their current king was Charles XII who had ascended the throne in 1697 but was still only 17 years old in February 1700. The coalition expected an easy victory against the Swedish teenage monarch but…

As German forces rapidly advanced, the British-held supply base at Arras was in danger of being surrounded. On 21 May 1940 the British launched a counter-attack with just 2,000 infantrymen and 74 tanks. David Willey explains, “General Harold Franklyn was in charge when Rommel’s 7th Panzer Division passed south of Arras. He was ordered by Lord Gort to cut off the German advance to give Arras breathing space. Most of the British forces were in Belgium and they couldn’t risk a major rear base being cut off. Franklyn ordered an attack with his available forces. British tanks in Belgium were rushed back. “Tanks were usually transported by train but they had to drive back. They were worn out when they arrived on the night of 20 May below Vimy Ridge.…

On the 10 May 1940, the Germans commenced their attack on the Netherlands, Belgium and France. The main thrust of the attack was going to come through the Belgium Ardennes and head towards the French coast. The Germans wanted to trick the Allies into concentrating their forces in northern France and Belgium. The 3rd and 4th Panzer Divisions were given the task of being the spearhead of the faint by crossing the Dutch and Belgian borders near the city of Maastricht and driving on to the Gembloux Gap, southeast of Brussels. The incredibly deep and wide Albert Canal was built in the early 1930s. The Belgian builders hacked through sandstone hills and left very steep cliffs on each side of the canal. In this area, the border with the Netherlands…

When the cry of the wounded rises above the din of combat, the medical orderly is compelled to respond. Amid the chaos of the opening minutes of Operation Varsity, the Allied airborne crossing of the River Rhine, Corporal Frederick George Topham was no different. By the spring of 1945, as the end of World War II in Europe drew near, Allied armies had advanced from their Normandy beachhead to the frontier of the Third Reich. Poised to cross the great river, the last natural barrier between the Allied forces and Germany itself, 21st Army Group, commanded by the legendary Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery, launched a coordinated assault to breach the Rhine. Operation Plunder, begun on the night of 23 March 1945, unleashed the British Second and American Ninth Armies…

‘IN CASE OF EMERGENCY’ The National Army Museum’s website is a superb place to explore stories of Britain’s land forces as well as a relevant new study of peacetime operations The National Army Museum is a leading authority on the British Army and its impact on society from the British Civil Wars to the present day. A key component of the NAM is its aim to share stories of ordinary people with extraordinary responsibilities through its vast collection of over one million objects and archives. In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, the museum’s doors may be closed but its website is an excellent substitute. Its ‘Explore’ page has a huge range of articles that are divided into accessible ‘Themes’ such as: ‘A Soldier’s Life’, ‘Army Structure’, ‘Around the World’,…

Patented by Irish-Australian inventor Louis Brennan, his eponymous torpedo was a maritime first. The term ‘torpedo’ had been in use since the American Revolution to describe a towed maritime explosive charge. During the American Civil War, ‘torpedoes’ described contact mines that used an air-filled demijohn. Austro-Hungarian naval officer Giovanni Luppis had developed a self-propelled torpedo prototype in the 1850s that was effectively a clockwork fire ship but the concept was limited. Brennan’s 15-foot (4.6 metres) long torpedo was innovative because it was wire-guided. Designed for harbour defence, its two steel drums carried several thousand yards of wire that were connected to shore-based, steam-powered winding engines. These engines could provide sensitive control over the wires to steer the torpedo towards its target. It had a consistent depth of 12 feet (3.7…

Before the Narva campaign, Peter the Great formed several new regiments, which required 12 banners each. A colonel would command a regiment and his banner would be white with a golden finial that depicted a Russian eagle. Company flags were coloured and manufactured within the Kremlin in Moscow; 345 were produced for 14 regiments during 1700 and made from Chinese silk of varying quality. This was an improvement on previous flags that had been made of cotton or linen. The styles of the banners varied slightly with the Russian Order of Saint Andrew being depicted in black or white. All of them included religious motifs, including a cross, the Holy Lance and Sponge, the Virgin Mary, the double-headed eagle or Saint George slaying a dragon. Despite their artistic detail, it…

One of the most formidable military projects in history, the Maginot Line was designed to prevent a repeat of the carnage of WWI, let alone a German conquest of France. A series of concrete fortifications, obstacles and weapon installations, the Line was constructed during 1929-38 and named after André Maginot, the French Minister of War (1929-31). Constructed on the French side of its borders with Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland and Italy, the Line was impervious to most forms of attack, including tank fire and aerial bombings. Its statistics were remarkable with a length that was hundreds of miles long and costing the French government 3.3 billion Francs to build. It consisted of 142 bunkers, 352 casemates and 5,000 blockhouses. Around 1.5 million cubic metres of concrete and 150,000 tons of steel…

The blue-coated Prussian soldiers marched south over hard frozen ground blanketed with a light dusting of snow towards the nondescript village of Sagschutz, at midday on 5 September 1757. A string of low hills masked their march from the watchful eyes of their Austrian foe arrayed for battle less than two miles to the west. “YOU’VE GOT THE ENEMY IN FRONT, AND ALL OUR ARMY BEHIND. THERE IS NO SPACE TO RETREAT, AND THE ONLY WAY TO GO FORWARD IS TO BEAT THE ENEMY!” Prussian King Frederick II ‘The Great’ believed his army had a strong chance for success in the coming battle that would decide whether Prussia retained Silesia or lost it to the Austrians. He intended to send his well-trained infantry against the Austrian flank in what was…

As the Reformation (1517-1648) plunged the rest of Central Europe into mayhem, a new empire was born on the Baltic coast. The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth had a remarkable cohesion undisturbed by religious differences and its territorial extent was only limited by natural barriers. Towards its southern fringes, in the uninterrupted steppes free from the menacing Ottoman Empire’s clutches, a warrior nation of Orthodox Christians came to be. It was King Stephen Bathory, of the Hungarian bloodline that ruled Poland in the late 16th century, who first recruited the roving horsemen to act as a buffer separating his kingdom’s prosperous farmlands from invasion. To exercise control over these auxiliaries King Bathory kept a ‘Register of Free Cossacks’ whose members were given rare privileges, such as the licence to fight on behalf of…

“IN THOSE SEVEN MINUTES EVERYTHING CHANGED IN WHAT WAS REALLY THE AMERICAN TRAFALGAR AND WHICH SAW THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE FLEET ANNIHILATED” At 10.20am on the morning of 4 June 1942, the United States was losing the war in the Pacific. At 10.27am, it was winning. In those seven minutes everything changed in what was really the American Trafalgar and which saw the Imperial Japanese Fleet annihilated in a spectacular confrontation that was dramatically unexpected. It’s an incredible story and it’s no wonder it has become the subject of a new movie. When the Japanese entered the war with their assault on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on the morning of 7 December 1941, it’s important to understand what it was they were trying to achieve. There was certainly no grand plan…

ROYAL REFUGEE The Dutch royal family arrived in London after fleeing the German invasion of the Netherlands. The family eventually relocated to Canada, where they remained until the liberation of occupied Europe. Pictured is Prince Bernhard, future consort to Queen Juliana, carrying his daughter Princess Irene in an anti-gas crate. Bernhard would later return to the UK and in 1944 was made commander-in-chief of the Dutch forces, working alongside Allied commanders during the campaign to liberate the Netherlands. A NEW PRIME MINISTER After the invasion of France, Belgium and the Netherlands on 10 May, Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain met with King George VI to resign, and advised that Winston Churchill should be called upon to form a government. Chamberlain’s government had been under intense pressure in parliament as a result…

A LUCKY ESCAPE Taken: September, 1936 French journalist Raymond Vankers dashes across the International bridge over the Bidasoa river, from Irún, Spain, to Hendaye, France, to save a baby during the Battle of Irún, during the Spanish Civil War. Located in the northeastern Basque region, Irún was a key point through which the Republicans were transporting supplies and arms from neighbouring France. EN GARDE! Taken: c. 1940 Chinese recruits of the Wang Jingwei collaborationist regime perform bayonet drills in Nanking. After the fall of Shanghai in November 1937, just months into the Second Sino-Japanese War, Japanese forces quickly marched west, towards the Chinese capital. The city fell in less than two weeks, after which began the Nanking Massacre.…

“ST PETERSBURG BECAME FAMOUS AS PETER THE GREAT’S ‘WINDOW TO THE WEST’, A SYMBOL OF A BURGEONING EMPIRE THAT WOULD REMAIN DOMINANT, FOR BETTER OR WORSE, FOR THE NEXT 300 YEARS – AND REMAINS SO TODAY” In 1703, Tsar Peter the Great of Russia founded the city of St Petersburg on the site of a captured fortress in the province of Ingermanland. His army had taken the territory from Sweden, and his vision to vanquish Russia’s northern rival finally appeared possible. Still, the Great Northern War was to last more than two decades, from 1700-1721. Coalition warfare ebbed and flowed as the nations and principalities of northern Europe sought to throw off the yoke of Swedish military, political and economic dominance that had existed for a half century since the…

In May 1940, the world turned upside-down when Nazi Germany launched a campaign in Western Europe against the Low Countries, and most critically, France. Then a major power with a large colonial empire, France had a huge number of armed forces at its disposal. With extensive support from the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) and formidable border defences, it was entirely possible that the Nazis’ expansion would be stopped in the West. Nevertheless, in a brief six-week campaign from 10 May 1940, France, Belgium and the Netherlands fell in one of the most dramatic, audacious campaigns in military history. Characterised by rapid ‘blitzkrieg’ warfare, the German victory was largely due to how it deployed its armoured forces. Tanks played a critical role in this campaign, where speed and mobility counted more…

01 SUCCESSFUL FEINT To deceive the Austrians into believing that he intended to attack their centre, Frederick ordered his light cavalry to form into a line of battle in the late morning east of the village of Borne. He then had the main body of the army begin its flank march by passing through this sector in full view of the enemy. Some of these troops stayed behind temporarily before rejoining the main army further south. 02 PRUSSIANS OVERRUN AUSTRIAN FLANK An advance guard of three elite Prussian infantry battalions lead King Frederick’s ‘oblique order’ assault at 1.30pm against the Austrian left flank held by Austrian and Imperial troops. The Prussians storm the Kiefenberg where the weak Wurttemberg battalions are deployed behind abattis. The Wurttembergers fire on the Prussians briefly…

“THE APACHE REMAINS IN SERVICE WITH ARMED FORCES ALL OVER THE WORLD, AND HAS PROVEN TO BE AN INVALUABLE ASSET DURING OPERATIONS IN AFGHANISTAN FOR NEARLY TWO DECADES” Produced by Boeing originally for the US Army, the AH-64D ‘Longbow’ was a huge step-up from the A-class Apache gunship, fitted with a distinctive fire-control radar above its four-blade composite main rotor. This allows it longer-range weapons accuracy, cloaked object detection (both moving and stationary), classification and threat prioritisation of up to 128 targets in less than 60 seconds and greater situational awareness, real-time management of the combat arena and digital transmission of target locations. From 2008, the AH-64D was upgraded to include increased digitisation, a joint tactical radio system, enhanced engines and drive systems, capability to control UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles)…

In August 1966, D company of the 6th Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, was operating in the Long Tan area in South Vietnam, when it encountered Viet Cong forces. What was first believed to be a small platoon turned out to be an entire regiment, putting the Australians against nearly ten times their number. Danger Close is an intense retelling of the ensuing battle, recounting how these conscripts and volunteers – with an average age of just 20 – fought desperately against the odds and in the middle of a monsoon. The filmmakers have not shied away from overt references to classic war films such as Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now or Platoon – all iconic movies now embedded in the mainstream imagination of the Vietnam War. However, Long Tan was…