Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 128 i History of War

The Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 saw a huge shift in fortunes in the Pacific theatre. It heralded the return of American forces to the Philippines after their withdrawal in the face of an overwhelming Japanese invasion in 1941. Now, just under three years later, Imperial Japan turned to an unthinkable method in order to combat the formidable US Navy, sending its pilots to crash deliberately into American ships. As Michael Haskew explores this issue, the Kamikaze was a desperately tragic tactic that drew on militaristic fanaticism, indoctrinated into unquestionably courageous pilots. It signalled the tragic beginning of the end for the war in the Pacific. SCAN TO GET OUR WEEKLY NEWSLETTER FOLLOW THE HISTORY OF WAR TEAM /HISTORYOFWARMAG @HISTORYOFWARMAG SUBSCRIBE & SAVE! Take advantage of our fantastic subscription…

The singer, dancer and actress Lola Falana is pictured performing for US troops during Bob Hope’s United Service Organizations tour in 1970. Falana was a huge name, making her American film debut and winning a Golden Globe New Star of the Year award that year. Hope’s variety shows, beginning in the Second World War, were known for drawing big stars, and troops arrived up to eight hours early to secure a prime spot. However, he struggled to curate a packed line up for his shows in Vietnam because many anti-war performers refused to join him.…

“FEARING IT MIGHT ENCOURAGE OTHER REPUBLICS TO SEEK SECESSION, YELTSIN AND THE OTHER NEW LEADERS IN MOSCOW BEGAN TO LOOK FOR WAYS TO REEL IN THE UPSTART CHECHENS On 31 December 1994, after a week-long bombardment, Russia’s ground forces prepared to enter Chechnya’s capital, Grozny. The indiscriminate onslaught had caused thousands of civilian casualties and had pounded the city into a smoking ruin. General Pavel Grachev, the head of Russia’s 25,000-strong ground forces, was expecting a swift victory over the estimated 3,000 Chechen fighters under the command of Aslan Maskhadov, who were still defending the city. Little did he know, as he ordered his first tanks in, that his troops would soon be ensnared in a vicious battle for survival, or that the conflict history remembers as the First Chechen…

Regardless of who was behind the bombings in 1999, Putin now had the support of the Russian people to prosecute a second war in Chechnya. As he’d promised them, the conflict began with a massive aerial bombing campaign. Hundreds of sorties were flown throughout September 1999. Grozny airport was rendered inoperable and oil refineries, bridges, telecommunication centres and power stations were all hit as the country’s infrastructure was gradually destroyed. Civilian areas were targeted, too, resulting in hundreds of deaths and approximately 100,000 refugees, many of whom fled to Georgia or Dagestan. Eventually, on 1 October, Putin signalled the start of the ground offensive by declaring Chechen President Aslan Maskhadov and his government to be illegitimate. Around 80,000 Russian troops now crossed the border. They met with little resistance –…

The Battle of Leyte Gulf was a major naval engagement fought on 23-26 October 1944 across a wide expanse of the Pacific Ocean off the Philippine Islands. One of the decisive naval battles of the Second World War, Leyte Gulf may also be considered a series of engagements, collectively recognised as the largest naval battle in history. The Battle of Leyte Gulf occurred just after American troops landed on the Philippine island of Leyte and General Douglas MacArthur made good on his famous promise: “I shall return!” In response to the American landings, the Imperial Japanese Navy enacted a complex plan designated Operation Sho-Go, hoping to destroy the US transports and escort ships that provided logistical support to American troops on the invasion beaches. The US Navy narrowly avoided catastrophe…

Much Canadian blood had been split on the long road to Ortona. The cruel path had begun on the shores of southern Italy back in September 1943, before snaking across winter-ravaged countryside by November, all the while pushed back by ferocious German resistance efforts. Hitler had one chief goal: to make the Allies pay for every inch of ground. Attached to the British Eighth Army as it clawed its way northwards, 1st Canadian Infantry Division – commanded by Major-General Chris Vokes – had arrived at the south bank of the Moro River by early December. There, over several days, attempts to gain a foothold on the far side had proven costly as the 90th Panzergrenadier Division held firm, in spite of their own losses. Only on the 9th were the…

There was a fleeting moment, during the One Hundred Days battles that ended the First World War in France, in which successful all-arms manoeuvre by the British and Commonwealth armies, able to overturn the deadlock of previous years of trench stalemate, was glimpsed. But the moment, for the British Army at least, was not understood for what it was. With hindsight we can see that it was the birth of modern warfare, in which armour, infantry, artillery and air power are welded together able successfully to fight and win a campaign against a similarly equipped enemy. Unfortunately in the intervening 20 years the British Army forgot how to fight a peer adversary in intensive combat. It did not recognise 1918 for what it was: a defining moment in the development…

British soldiers enjoy a song played on their gramophone, a Christmas gift from friends at home. At the outbreak of war the gramophone and phonograph played a key role in recruitment, with numerous patriotic songs encouraging young men to sign up. And from 1915, British soldiers began to bring their own portable gramophones to the front to provide entertainment for their comrades. Playing much-loved records from home would’ve been a welcome sliver of festive joy amid the grim reality of the trenches.…

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In the December 1903 edition of the Strand Magazine, science fiction author HG Wells penned a dark vision of the battlefield of the future. Mammoth armoured fighting vehicles dominated the landscape, rolling inexorably forward against the enemy, spewing a heavy volume of fire. Wells called these war vehicles “ironclads” and described them as “…essentially long, narrow, and very strong steel frameworks carrying the engines, and borne upon eight pairs of big pedrail wheels, each about ten feet in diameter, each a driving wheel and set upon long axles free to swivel round a common axis. This arrangement gave them the maximum of adaptability to the contours of the ground. They crawled level along the ground with one foot high upon a hillock and another deep in a depression, and they…

Captain Thomas Wildman served as an aide-de-camp (ADC) for Henry William Paget, the Earl of Uxbridge, during the Battle of Waterloo, 18 June 1815. During this period, each British general officer was permitted to have at least one ADC, acting as a personal assistant, secretary and confidant. Wildman was splattered with blood while at Uxbridge’s bedside, helping with the procedure to amputate the officer’s leg, shattered by French artillery. At Waterloo, Uxbridge was in command of 13,000 cavalry and 44 guns. He led multiple charges at Napoleon’s infantry, with reportedly nine horses shot from under him. Fighting valiantly until the end of the battle, a deadly canister shot from one of the last French cannons fired that day struck him. The shot, one of several small metal balls that had…

The winter of 1940 was a terrifying time to be a Londoner as strategic German strikes on individual targets were gradually replaced with large-scale, indiscriminate bombing raids. Rationing had been in place since the start of the year but, as pictured, some Londoners still enjoyed the festive tradition of a live turkey auction. In this joyful chaos, punters could earn a cut-price Christmas dinner and beat the rations. However, the seasonal cheer did not last as the Blitz continued to intensify. Four days after Christmas Day, the city suffered its worst air raid yet, named the ‘Second Great Fire of London’.…

October 1991 CHECHEN INDEPENDENCE After his election as president of the Chechen Republic of Ichkeria, Dzhokhar Dudayev declares unilateral independence for the Chechen-Inguish Republic. Meanwhile, Ingushetia opts to join the Russian Federation. Dudayev fails to consolidate power in the remains of Chechnya after dissolving parliament and struggling to fend off attacks from Moscow-backed militant opposition groups. November 1994 – March 1995 01 FIRST BATTLE OF GROZNY War breaks out with the Battle of Grozny, which ends in a pyrrhic victory for Russia. The battle culminates in a fierce bombardment of the Chechen Presidential Palace followed by attacks on the Chechen headquarters in the south of the city. By late January, Dudayev decides to pull most Chechen forces back to a temporary capital. 7-8 April 1995 02 SAMASHKI MASSACRE After Chechen…

Despite being designed in the early 1930s, with its first flight in 1935, the Catalina was the most-produced amphibian of the Second World War. It entered service with the US Navy in 1936 in limited numbers, with the early types being pure flying boats without wheels. The introduction of the PBY-5 in 1939, with retractable wheels, led to the largest US Navy aircraft order since the end of the First World War. The integral undercarriage made the type much more versatile. It could operate on remote shores or undeveloped islands without extensive support equipment. For a nation preparing for a potential war in the Pacific, this was a valuable advantage, and Consolidated had to double the size of its production line to cope with demand. In March 1941 PBYs entered…

The very nature of warfare changed forever on 15 September 1916 with the debut of the tank at the Battle of Flers-Courcelette during an Allied offensive on the Somme. The Great War was moving towards its third year, and Allied grand strategy envisioned a concerted effort to breach the German lines along the axis where the French and British armies met in Picardy, near the River Somme. However, the German offensive at Verdun altered the Allied plan as the French were required to transfer reinforcements to the south. The Somme offensive was subsequently modified into an effort to relieve mounting pressure on the French defending Verdun. In the event, the Somme offensive itself became one of the bloodiest military encounters in history, and after more than four months it had…

Director: Laurent Nègre Production company: Sovereign Films Released: Out now “The only thing to fear from the past is that it will destroy the future,” ambassador Heinrich Zwygart, based on the controversial Swiss diplomat Hans Frölicher, says as he burns images of his time in Berlin. Yet Zwygart’s attempts to remove himself from the past fail, and he returns to a country that wants to forget its challenging neutral past and a family which became relatively impoverished during his near decade-long absence. Zwygart is frustrated by his failed attempts to pull himself back into the higher echelons of Swiss political life, becoming a symbol of the close relationship between the Third Reich and Switzerland that the new political establishment is keen to forget. He is the epitome of the band…