Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 123 i History of War

The accolade ‘fighter ace’ is much debated by military historians, and one that takes a broad sweep at categorising the best, or ‘deadliest’, pilots who flew predominantly during the world wars. It’s a term that, while instantly understood, glosses over much of the nuance and fascinating details behind the legends of these skilled aviators. This issue, Dr Victoria Taylor uncovers the short yet fascinating career of Hans-Joachim Marseille, dubbed the ‘Star of Africa’. Though he was far from the highest-scoring ace of the war, Marseille was one of the Luftwaffe’s most successful pilots versus the Western Allies, with a record in the air matched by his renegade reputation on the ground. CONTRIBUTORS DR VICTORIA TAYLOR Victoria is an award-winning aviation historian and lecturer at the University of Hull, specialising in…

20 August 1970 The cast of the BBC comedy series Dad’s Army pose during filming for a feature film of the same name. Of the seven actors, five were military veterans. Arthur Lowe, John Le Mesurier and Clive Dunn all served in the Second World War, with Dunn spending four years in an Austrian POW camp. John Laurie and Arnold Ridley fought on the Western Front in the First World War – Ridley was severely wounded at the Battle of the Somme. Laurie and Ridley later served in the real Home Guard during the Second World War.…

On 14 April 1922, approximately 200 Anti-Treaty IRA militants occupied Dublin’s Four Courts. The main seat of Ireland’s judiciary, the Four Courts was considered a symbol of British authority and the militants hoped to provoke the remaining British troops into battle. The aim of the militants was to resume the War of Independence and reunite the IRA against a common enemy, but Collins was unwilling to dismantle the gains achieved by the Free State. Under pressure from the British Government but desperate to avoid civil war, he left the Anti-Treaty IRA garrison inside the Four Courts for months. Weeks later, on 22 June 1922, IRA gunmen assassinated Field Marshal Sir Henry Wilson in London. A prominent Ulster Unionist MP, Wilson’s death greatly angered the British. Prime Minister David Lloyd George…

I was used to losing men; that was war. But Marseille was special, like a small boy playing war. He never took it too seriously, and his smile, which was less evident as time progressed, was infectious when present.” Oberst Eduard Neumann’s recollection of his former wartime mentee, Hans-Joachim Marseille, epitomises how the fallen ‘Star of Africa’ never lost his lustre with the Luftwaffe. Credited with 158 aerial victories overall against Allied airmen during the Second World War, Marseille was the most successful German fighter pilot in North Africa. On paper and in newsreels, he was Nazi Germany’s perfect knight of the air: young, handsome, chivalrous yet deadly. To his superiors, he was a loose cannon, an ideological renegade and a flamboyant playboy who strained their patience to the limit.…

Brigadier-General Stand Watie, a prominent Cherokee politician, was the last Confederate general in the field to surrender to the Union, over two months after General Robert E Lee, and one month after General Edmund Kirby Smith. The Cherokee Nation was allied to the Confederacy during the American Civil War (1861-65), and Watie was the only Native American to attain the rank of general in the Confederate Army. His military career was marked by both successes and setbacks, as were his private and political lives. He was born in Oothcaloga, Cherokee Nation, on 12 December 1806. His parents were David Uwatie, a Cherokee and wealthy planter who held African-American slaves, and Susanna Reese, who was the daughter of a Cherokee mother and white father. Watie’s Cherokee name was Degataga, meaning ‘standing…

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The T-72 main battle tank is the most commonly employed armoured fighting vehicle in the world today – a relic of the Cold War that is still in frontline use in war zones such as Ukraine. Emerging from Soviet design instructions that would leverage existing technology available in the late 1960s and incorporate financially feasible improvements, the T-72 was a concurrent project along with the T-64 main battle tank. While the T-64 was intended for frontline Red Army troops to counter NATO forces in Europe, the T-72 was a cheaper alternative that was intended to equip further Red Army units and Warsaw Pact nations while providing a strong entrée into the global arms export market. The T-72 was the result of a design competition that pitted Leonard Kartsev and the…

Painted: c.1422 Fought on 25 October 1415 during the Hundred Years’ War, the Battle of Agincourt is one of the most famous battles in English history. King Henry V’s unlikely victory against a numerically superior French army was immortalised by William Shakespeare’s 1599 play Henry V but the battle was considered legendary from the beginning. This elaborate, if gory, depiction of Agincourt is a miniature from The St Albans Chronicle by Thomas Walsingham. It was created around the year 1422 – the last year of Henry’s reign.…

OCCUPATION OF THE FOUR COURTS 01 Two-hundred Anti-Treaty IRA militants occupy the Four Courts – Ireland’s most prominent judicial building – in Dublin. Michael Collins delays retaking the Four Courts to prevent civil war. 14 April 1922 6 December 1921 ANGLO-IRISH TREATY The British Government and representatives from the Irish Republic sign a treaty that ends the Irish War of Independence. The island is divided between Northern Ireland (which remains in the UK) and a new Irish Free State – a self-governing Dominion within the British Empire. 16 January – 5 December 1922 PROVISIONAL GOVERNMENT A provisional government is established for the Free State but the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is split between those who accept the Anglo-Irish Treaty and those who do not. A key issue for the Anti-Treaty…

One of the first and most significant assassinations during the Irish Civil War was that of Sir Henry Wilson on 22 June 1922. Wilson was an Anglo-Irish MP for North Down who had previously been a field marshal in the British Army during the First World War. He was a big supporter of Irish inclusion in the United Kingdom, which made him a bitter opponent to Lloyd George’s Dominion status idea in the Anglo-Irish Treaty. Wilson had been fanatically against the IRA and their campaigns during the Irish War of Independence and wanted Britain to reconquer Ireland. On the morning of 22 June Wilson was at Liverpool Street station in London, unveiling the Great Eastern Railway War Memorial, all while dressed in his full military uniform. After this, he made…

During the Second World War, the Luftwaffe counted history’s highest-scoring pilot aces, or Experten, among its ranks. Prior to the outbreak of the war, under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles, Germany was forbidden from having an air force, which forced the Nazis to improvise by training their pilots abroad and concealing their build-up of military planes and personnel under a commercial guise. This pretence ceased in 1935 when the existence of the Luftwaffe was officially recognised – the secretive training programmes meant it began with many experienced aviators. This included veterans of the Condor Legion – Hitler’s expeditionary force sent to fight in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) – but soon many young pilots, brought up through the ranks of the Hitler Youth, were making their name in…

The armed forces of the United States comprise one of the most formidable military powers in the modern world. Of course there are the Marines and the Navy Seals, but, like a number of countries, the US also has need for military units that can conduct more clandestine operations, away from the full-scale engagements expected of regular troops. For this, one unit in particular has become shrouded in myth and legend: Delta Force. Created to battle an ever-increasing terrorist threat, Delta Force is a highly secretive elite squad that operates in the shadows and has been involved in some of the US’s most daring missions… Origins of Delta Force Delta Force, officially known as 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment Delta, came into being in 1977 at the behest of Colonel…

For several minutes, with German bullets and shells shredding the wavering Canadian lines, it seemed that much of the advance toward Passchendaele hinged on three men. In front of Lieutenant Hugh McKenzie, Lieutenant JM Christie and Sergeant George Harry Mullin – alongside clusters of some 40 surviving comrades under intense fire – was the German pillbox atop Meetcheele Ridge. The offensive actions of Nos 3 and 1 Companies of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry (PPCLI) that morning on 30 October 1917 had already cost almost all their officers, and much-needed leadership responsibilty had been thrust upon the remaining NCOs, who had struggled on through the ocean of mud. Craters and corpses littered the quagmire, but the men had made slow progress until reaching the Meetcheele spur that loomed over the…

1943 A worker wearing a red bandana and blue overalls, ‘Rosie the Riveter’ became one of the Second World War’s most iconic poster images. ‘Rosie’ represented the millions of female American labourers who worked to keep industry going in the US. While she was depicted as white, half-a-million ‘Rosies’ were African Americans, including the worker pictured here. She was photographed drilling rivets into a Vultee A-31 Vengeance bomber at a factory in Nashville, Tennessee. Despite working tirelessly, the African American ‘Rosies’ received little recognition after the war.…

The Irish Civil War was bloody and brutal, but it was the personalised nature of this brutality that made the war such a dark moment in Irish history. Members from both sides had been comrades fighting side by side against the British during the Irish War of Independence from 1919-21. Many members from the Provisional Government, or the Free State, had even been members of the IRA during the war, helping shape its strategy, war plans and run its operations. The level of familiarity that many government leaders such as Michael Collins had with the IRA and its operations inhibited the IRA’s war efforts. The IRA began the conflict using the same tactics that had proven successful during the fight for independence, which were already well understood by the Free…

THE RIVER GRANICUS (THE BIGA ÇAYI, ÇANAKKALE PROVINCE, NORTHWESTERN TURKEY) LATE SPRING/EARLY SUMMER 334BCE In spring 334 BCE, the 22-year-old Macedonian king, Alexander III (reigned 336-323 BCE), invaded the vast Achaemenid Persian Empire with a small yet elite army of some 30,000-43,000 veteran infantry and 5,000 cavalry. This invasion was the culmination of almost a century of pressure for a Greek commander to punish Persia for its own invasion of Greece during the fifth century BCE. Persia had also continued to seriously meddle in Greek affairs, affecting the end of the Peloponnesian War in 404 BCE and with the King’s Peace in 386 BCE. The mantle of leadership for this proposed invasion had passed from the Spartan king, Agesilaus II (r400-360 BCE) to Athenian and other statesmen and then to…

Authors: Jonathan Krause & William Philpott Publisher: Pen & Sword Price: £25 (Hardback) Released: Out now Written by eminent historians, this is an excellent, thoroughly researched book, documenting the lives, strategic war aims and careers of 12 French generals during the Great War. It sheds much needed light on their personal strengths and weaknesses, their often-complex relationships with allied commanders, and their struggles with interfering politicians. Collectively, French generals are portrayed as intelligent strategists, adept at adjusting their decisions to fit the circumstances of industrial warfare, based on their training, experiences and personal perceptions. However, each commander had their own ideas of how the conflict should be pursued, and their importance at the helm. Commander-in-Chief General Joseph Joffre, for instance, while rightly acknowledging that this was “an engineer’s war”, later…