Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 116 i History of War

The M4 Sherman was the most prolific tank deployed by the Western Allies, and served across all the major theatres of WWII, including the Eastern Front. However, as historian Michael Haskew unpacks in this issue, the M4 was far from a perfect design. It even earned the nickname ‘Tommy Cooker’ due to the reported ease with which it burst into flames after receiving penetrating hits. Nonetheless, the design was treated to a litany of modifications across a range of versions, most notably part of ‘Hobart’s Funnies’ and Britain’s up-gunned Firefly variant. This made it a highly adaptable and effective weapon, and an iconic symbol of the eventual victory over the Axis powers. SCAN TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER SUBSCRIBE & SAVE! Take advantage of our fantastic subscription offers and get…

1873 EARLY MACHINE GUN USE The British Army and Royal Navy use early Gatling and Maxim machine guns in colonial wars from the 1870s onwards. This includes the Third Anglo-Ashanti War (1873-74), Anglo-Zulu War (1879), Battle of Omdurman (1898) and the Second Boer War (1899 – 1902). 4 August 1914 OUTBREAK OF FIRST WORLD WAR At the start of the war, the British Army has no dedicated unit for machine guns. It instead provides two machine guns for each infantry battalion or cavalry regiment. These are either heavy Maxim or Vickers machine guns. November 1914 MACHINE GUN SCHOOL 01 With the Western Front turning into a static stalemate, the British Army recognises the emerging dominance of the machine gun on the battlefield. It establishes a ‘Machine Gun School’ at Wisques…

In each cavalry brigade, a brigade machine gun squadron was formed in a similar format to the infantry company – the machine gun section of a cavalry regiment, their machine guns and men, were used to form the new company. There were only three cavalry regiments in a brigade and each of the sections, so a machine gun squadron had three-quarters of the firepower of its infantry equivalent. They were organised into six sections of two guns each so there was more flexibility to support the half-squadrons being used. Cavalry machine guns were moved by limbered wagon but they were able to use their packsaddlery to move alongside the squadrons of the cavalry regiments they supported (infantry companies did also have packsaddlery but this was considered an aid for moving…

A ten-minute drive to the west of the Gretna Green Weddings tourist attraction, on the Scottish border with England, is the unusually named The Devil’s Porridge Museum. It tells the story of HM Factory Gretna, the largest munitions factory of World War I, and the 30,000 people who worked there – of whom 70 percent were women. The ‘Devil’s Porridge’ was the nickname given to the explosive mixture that was used in the manufacture of artillery shells. Working in a munitions factory was hazardous. Handling acids, chemicals and volatile materials meant that the potential for accidental explosions was a constant threat. Nitric acid fumes posed one of the greatest risks to health, and the acid could turn the women’s skin a yellowish tinge. The workers handling these TNT explosives, which…

Located in Camden Town, the Jewish Museum London tells the story of British Jewish life, history and identity. As well as containing an international-level collection of Jewish art and artefacts, the Jewish Museum has also been the home to the Jewish Military Museum since 2015. Containing over 5,000 objects, the Military Museum is a treasure chest of fascinating history and memorabilia belonging to Jewish servicemen and women who fought and often lost their lives serving their country at war. The collection includes personal diaries, letters, medals, uniforms and souvenirs. Key objects include Thomas Gould’s Victoria Cross, which was awarded to him for bravery on the submarine HMS Thrasher during WWII. Other awards include the medals of Corporal Henry Jessell, who fought in the Crimean War. Jessell’s medals from the 1850s…

Author: Joseph Kessel Publisher: Elliott & Thompson Price: £20 (Hardback) Released: March 2023 The remarkable story of Dr Felix Kersten reveals some of the most astonishing and largely unknown inner workings of Nazi Germany and one of its most notorious wartime leaders. Heinrich Himmler, Reichsführer of the Waffen-SS and a key architect of the Holocaust, was a man who could unflinchingly order the removal of 5,000 Allied prisoners of war from their camps to have them summarily executed. This order, happily, was not carried out. Kersten came to be the main restraining force in this fanatical demon’s entourage. He was a Baltic German who found himself reluctantly pulled into the Nazi corridors of power to serve as Himmler’s personal therapist. He gained Himmler’s trust, thanks to his skills that helped…

The quest to create a rapid-firing gun had been underway since medieval times but it was not until the 19th century that machine guns came into being. In 1861, American inventor Richard Gatling patented the Gatling gun, which was the first firearm to offer controlled, sequential firing with mechanical loading. Gatling guns were first used in the American Civil War (1861-65) and Franco-Prussian War (1870-71). The British Army deployed the Gatling gun for the first time in what is now Ghana during the Third Anglo-Ashanti War (1873-74). A British force commanded by General Sir Garnet Wolseley utilised new technologies such as telegraph lines, rockets and Martini-Henry rifles against Ashanti warriors, although it appears that his Gatling guns were not extensively used. The Gatling became a part of the British Army’s…

After the end of World War I, those units in the regular divisions of the army that would form the first British Army of the Rhine in 1919 remained and took on many of the soldiers that had time to serve before demobilisation or wished to continue in the army. The fighting of the Great War had finished but the Machine Gun Corps (MGC) continued to see service in northwest Russia supporting the imperial forces there, in northwest India and Afghanistan until 1921. Their final engagements were in 1922 in Ireland as part of the transition of power to the Irish Free State. The last battalion of the MGC to see service was the 1st Battalion and they returned to Shorncliffe, Kent, for disbandment on 15 July 1922. Those who…

The rising that began on 15 February 1877 had the gravitas and splendour of the Sengoku Jidai (the bygone Warring States period) that roiled Japan from 1457 to 1600. But the circumstances of 1877 were different as samurai in their thousands, armed to the teeth, swept through northeast Kyushu – Japan’s prominent southern island. Outwardly, these fighting men of Satsuma Province announced a long trek to the imperial capital Tokyo as a means for pressing their cause. Within weeks, however, the campaign faltered as a botched siege and a wobbly command structure undermined the rebels. Adding insult to injury, the response from Tokyo was the arrival of army and police regiments in their drab marine-blue uniforms. Leading the imperial forces were aristocratic samurai and courtiers who were determined to uphold…

Author: Keir Giles Publisher: Bloomsbury Price: £20 (Hardback) Released: Out now Russia analyst Keir Giles offers a narrative built around people and historical events that have been directly impacted by Moscow’s ambition to exert power wherever it can. The author emphasises that his book deals with a country, not ordinary Russians living within its borders. He exposes the fact that Russia’s behaviour under Vladimir Putin is returning to what was normal in the Soviet era and even further back into Tsarist times. Giles asserts that Moscow’s Cold War actions ring instantly true today. He makes the point that puzzling out Moscow’s true motivations and intentions remains a key challenge for policy-makers and the problem of ‘mirror-imaging’ has repeatedly caused confusion and misunderstanding among Western leaders. It is revealing that as…

On 9 April 1865, Generals Ulysses S Grant and Robert E Lee met at the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia, to negotiate the surrender of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia to the US Army. The opposing commanders faced each other in the home of grocer Wilmer McLean and used his furniture as they hammered out the details. Lee sat in the chair on the left and discussed the condition of his soldiers while Grant offered generous terms from the chair on the right. The Confederate troops would not be punished for treason and were allowed to go home with their side arms, horses and personal items. Grant used the table to draft the final terms of surrender, which both men signed. This marked the end of the American…

SHOULDER ARMS 1918 Charlie Chaplin sits with other soldiers in a dugout scene from his 1918 silent comedy Shoulder Arms. Set sometime during WWI, the film depicts Chaplin as Doughboy, a military variation of his famous Tramp character. Believed to be the first comedy about war, Shoulder Arms was Chaplin’s most critically acclaimed film up to that point. He faced criticism for not joining the armed forces of America or his native Britain but his films were immensely popular with serving Allied soldiers. PATROLLING CARENTAN 15 June 1944 American paratroopers patrol the French town of Carentan in a captured German vehicle while other US soldiers rest against a building. This photograph was taken the day after the end of the Battle of Carentan, which was fought from 10-14 June 1944…

Until the formation of the Machine Gun Corps (MGC), each infantry battalion had its own machine gun section under the command of a machine gun officer attached to the battalion headquarters. At the start of the Great War, there were only two machine guns (either Maxim or Vickers) in the machine gun section but the development of the war showed that this needed increasing and it was decided to add a further two guns, with the section divided into two sub-sections of two guns each. In an infantry brigade, a specialist officer attached to brigade headquarters coordinated the machine guns of the infantry battalions and sometimes ‘brigaded’ these guns together. In doing so, he was able to consolidate and control the fire of 16 guns. It is this structure that…

The name Hellcat was never approved by the US Army during World War II. The vehicle’s official designation was 76mm Gun Motor Carriage M18, but the publicity department at the Buick Motor Division of General Motors came up with the name Hellcat for its advertising campaign. Buick built 2,507 M18s and it was the fastest tracked vehicle of the war, designed to be a hard-hitting and manoeuvrable tank destroyer. Its thin armour meant that M18 was not designed to be at the front of an attack. In defence it would guard the flanks of a position and scoot to a new location once it had fired at the approaching enemy before they could return fire. It also acted as an emergency resource that could be rushed to deal with any…

Located to the southwest of Andover, Hampshire, Danebury is an Iron Age hill fort. Covering five hectares (12 acres), it was built in the 6th century BCE and used as a military site for almost 500 years. This was a period when the number of hill forts in southern England greatly increased and Danebury itself was remodelled several times to make it a more complex fortification. Extensively excavated by Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe during the 1960s-80s, it is one of the best-studied sites of the British Iron Age. Danebury is now a Scheduled Monument and designated Local Nature Reserve and its history is told in the Museum of the Iron Age in Andover. Situated across two floors, the museum tells the fort’s story using artefacts alongside reconstructions based on discoveries…