Innholdsfortegnelse for No. 148 i History of War

During the 1950s the Taiwan Strait became the Cold War’s deadliest flashpoint and a potential theatre for a nuclear showdown. Since 1949, when the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to Formosa (Taiwan) and other offshore islands, the communists in Peking (Beijing) slowly overwhelmed these garrisons. The greatest prize was the capture of sprawling Hainan in 1950 just months before one million Chinese troops, dubbed ‘people’s volunteers’, attacked UN forces in Korea. By 1951 President Harry S Truman’s administration pivoted back to supporting the KMT after its abandonment in the late 1940s. The cherry on top was assigning the US Navy’s 7th Fleet to sail its aircraft carriers across the strait separating the main island of Formosa from the Chinese coast, which effectively blocked any invasion attempt. The Truman administration, then the Dwight…

Military helicopter operations came of age during the war in Vietnam in the late 1960s. The NBC evening news broadcasts beamed into US homes in the evenings showed fleets of UH-1 Hueys, with the familiar ‘slap’ of their blades echoing across the jungles as they hovered over clearings. At the same time, soldiers jumped from the helicopter skids and ran into battle. It was the age of ‘search and destroy’ tactics, with troops no longer having to march to where the fighting was taking place – they could now be taken directly to it, engage, before being picked up and taken back to the safety of their base. The concept of the helicopter air assault was continuously developed and adapted during the war. It saw the creation of the 1st…

It’s not possible to consider a British victory without the huge commitment made by millions of men and women from across the Commonwealth, especially in pre-partition India. In April 1945 the number of Allied service personnel in South East Asia Command (excluding those in India Command) totalled an incredible 1,304,126. Of this number the British Commonwealth provided 954,985 men and women, of whom 606,149 were soldiers in the fighting brigades, divisions and corps of 14th Army. Of this total of 606,149, 87 percent were Indian, three percent African and 10 percent British. Victory in Burma in 1945 was largely an Indian one. Indian soldiers were to win 22 of the 34 Victoria and George Crosses awarded during the Burma Campaign. India’s armed forces increased from 194,373 in October 1939 to…

In early 1966, US President Lyndon B Johnson learned of a Senate plan to interrogate and potentially scupper his planned troop build-up in South Vietnam. At the head of the sabotage mission was his anti-Vietnam War nemesis, Arkansas Senator J William Fulbright, a fellow Democrat, who had scheduled a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing. The president hastily scheduled a conference of his own, to be attended by South Vietnamese leaders. Held at the US Marine Corps’ Camp Holland M Smith, Oahu, Hawaii, from 5-8 February that year, the conference had no agenda and no objective other than to subvert Fulbright’s hearings. In his meetings with South Vietnam’s Chief of State Nguyen Van Thieu and Prime Minister Nguyen Cao Ky, Johnson repeatedly returned to one of his main themes: the economic…

The Franco-Prussian War was over four decades before 1914, but Germany’s rapid and unexpected victory shaped the Schlieffen Plan’s commitment to a short and decisive war. The French Army also understood the need for rapid mobilisation and the concentration of forces. Tales of the French Army’s disintegration, replaced by informal civilian forces, passed down by German soldiers’ fathers and grandfathers, contributed to atrocities in the west. Churchill argued: “The Germans were preconditioned to believe that every French or Belgian civilian would try to kill them.” Russia entered the Great War less than a decade after the Russo-Japanese War. This humiliation inspired sweeping military reforms. The army abandoned its frontal assault doctrine in favour of manoeuvre warfare. Russia updated its officer training curriculum to include the practical and critical thinking necessary…

Manx National Heritage (MNH) has opened a new exhibition at the House of Manannan in Peel displaying Leonard McCombe’s war photography. McCombe toured Germany and Poland in the Second World War’s final months. A pioneering photojournalist, he was renowned for his ability to capture human experience, and after the conflict he worked for Life magazine in the United States. The exhibition follows his family’s discovery of his many undeveloped negatives shortly before his death. These images have been displayed at exhibitions in Europe and New York. Matthew Richardson, MNH Curator of Art & Social History, says: “It is unusual in this era to uncover a completely forgotten archive, but that is what the McCombe family appear to have done. Leonard was a man who did not court publicity, indeed in…

On 28 October 1811, Major General Rowland Hill launched an unexpected dawn attack at Arroyomolinos during the Peninsula War. His 5,000-strong combined British, Spanish and Portuguese forces took on General Jean-Baptiste Girard’s 3,000 men. The coalition’s attack came as a surprise, as the French pickets on duty had their backs turned against the poor weather. The clash became known as the Battle of Arroyo dos Molinos. The French force collapsed and retreated up the rocks of the Sierra de Montánchez, abandoning their kit as they ran. Hill’s men pursued, looking to capture prisoners and loot, and vicious hand-to-hand combat broke out among the boulders. Among the discarded equipment were French drums of the 34ème Régiment d’Infanterie de Ligne. The 34th Regiment of Foot - ‘The Cumberland Gentlemen’ – took five…

NUPTIALS UNDER SIEGE 1995 A young Bosnian couple celebrates their wedding while protected by an armed groomsman during the Siege of Sarajevo in the Bosnian War. The siege, which had begun in April 1992, ended after 1,425 days following Operation Deliberate Force in September 1995. NATO’s sustained air campaign, in concert with a United Nations ground operation, involved 400 aircraft targeting Bosnian Serb positions around Sarajevo. These operations forced the Bosnian Serbs to withdraw heavy weapons from the city’s exclusion zone, ending the encirclement. Nearly 14,000 people were killed during the siege, including 5,434 civilians. NAVIGATING TO PEACE 10 August 1945 Minoru Wada helps guide an American bombing raid on the island of Mindanao in the Philippines. Wada was born in the United States and had been studying in Japan…

HOW TO CATCH A RUSSIAN ARMS DEALER Viktor Bout’s meeting with Ricardo and Carlos of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) was drawing to a close. “I want to finish off these gringo sons of bitches,” Ricardo blurted out across the Bangkok Sofitel conference room. “They’re not going to kill us in our sleep anymore!” Bout, known to many as the ‘Merchant of Death’, responded: “We’re together, and we have the same enemy… it is not business, it’s my fight. I’ve been fighting the United States for 10 to 15 years.” These words would lead the Russian arms dealer to spend the next 32 months in a Thai prison, followed by 12 years in US custody, convicted on narco-terrorism conspiracy charges. Ricardo and Carlos were informants in a sting…

Robert D Handy was one of the more enigmatic CORDS operatives. Born in Eau Claire, Michigan, on 6 March 1941, Handy graduated from high school in 1959 and attended Michigan State University for a year before enlisting in the US Navy to “see the world”. A foot injury ended that adventure in 1964. Undeterred, Handy travelled to Australia, where he worked in construction. For reasons unknown, Handy went to South Vietnam sometime in 1966. He first popped up on the military’s radar on 30 April 1967, during the brutal Khe Sanh Hill Fights. As Marines prepared to attack Hill 881-North, a young man wearing civilian safari-style attire approached Staff Sergeant Edward F Crawford. “Mind if I tag along?” the stranger asked casually. Pegging him for a reporter, Crawford shrugged and…

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In 1941 the US Navy commenced building one of its most successful and iconic designs. America’s formidable industrial powerhouse produced 175 Fletcher Class destroyers during an emergency construction programme. Built to counter the Japanese ‘special type’ destroyers of the 1930s, they took part in almost every naval engagement in the Pacific, from the Solomon Islands onwards, serving at Leyte Gulf, Okinawa and Iwo Jima. The Fletcher Class saw further action after the Second World War in the Korean and Vietnam theatres and a small number remained operational into the 1990s, a testament to their superb design. The most numerous of any destroyer type produced by any navy, the Fletcher Class, although considered ‘general purpose’, was adapted to counter the threat of the Imperial Japanese Navy’s aviation and provide a close-in…

WAS THE DAILY MAIL’S STAR REPORTER A DUPE, A CYNIC OR A NAZI SYMPATHISER? Author: Richard Evans Publisher: The History Press Price: £22 (Hardback) On Sale: 28 August 2025 Tall, well-educated and distinctive-looking, for much of the first half of the 20th century George Ward Price was the world’s best-known journalist – the writer Ernest Hemingway described him as “the monocled prince of the press”. For many he was not just a reporter for the Daily Mail, he was the Daily Mail. If there was an exclusive to be had, Ward Price was the man on the spot to report it. He wasn’t afraid to put himself in harm’s way, reporting on the First Balkan War, surviving the crash of a German airship, taking part in an Italian bombing…

2 AUGUST 216 BCE BATTLE OF CANNAE Hannibal’s Carthaginians surround and annihilate a substantially larger Roman army commanded by Lucius Aemilius Paullus and Gaius Terentius Varro. The slaughter of Roman soldiers has been put on a par with British losses on the first day of the Somme. Panic spreads in Rome, where two people are buried alive as human sacrifices. 1-3 AUGUST 1798 BATTLE OF THE NILE Napoleon Bonaparte’s expeditionary force evades Horatio Nelson for over two months to successfully land in Egypt. The French fleet anchors in Aboukir Bay, where Nelson strikes. His ships trap the French in a crossfire and batter them for three hours. Only four of the 17 French vessels escape. 1 AUGUST 1944 WARSAW UPRISING BEGINS Thousands of Polish Home Army forces rise up in…

Aden, on the southeastern coast of today’s Yemen, has always been a prisoner of geography. The ancient Greeks labelled it Arabia Emporion (Arabic trade port), and it was well-known from biblical days as commanding the southern entrance to the Red Sea. Later, it was an important British air and naval base between Egypt and India, and crucial for safeguarding access to the Suez Canal and Middle Eastern oil wells. A British colony since 1839, by the 1950s it had replaced Cyprus as the headquarters of UK Middle East Land Forces, and was therefore of great strategic importance. Aden city used to be the capital of South Yemen until its unity with North Yemen in May 1990. The former capital rings a vast, natural harbour that constitutes the modern port; its…

The reconquest of Burma in 1945 was the result of Lieutenant General Bill Slim’s determination to follow up on the retreating remnants of Lieutenant General Renya Mutaguchi’s 15th Army, after their defeats at the great battles of Kohima and Imphal in mid-1944. However, until Slim actually crossed the Chindwin river in December 1944 there was no plan to reconquer Burma and to recover it in its entirety for the Allies. This came about as the result of a brilliant campaign by the 14th Army that effectively unstitched the Japanese defence of Burma by outflanking the main force of defenders along the Irrawaddy at Mandalay. The 14th Army did this by attacking the key Japanese supply base southwest of Mandalay, all the while pretending to be attacking exclusively from the north.…

Two Japanese sentries came within 150ft (45m) of where they were laid up, and at least four positions had been observed, but they had orders not to open fire until the main attack went in. Consequently, the men were probably a bit bored, waiting for what seemed like an interminable time, especially as the night drew swiftly in. The dark and the jungle may have put other men on edge, but these men remained comfortable but alert, watching, patient. Below them, the Yu River joined the mighty Chindwin, and they observed fires made by the enemy on both sides of the river. It was the night of 14 January 1944, and these soldiers belonged to P Force. The ‘P’ stood for Peacock, the officer in charge of this irregular unit.…

WORTH OVER £370! The festival that brings “Tanks, talks and tankards!” (in the words of co-founder Al Murray) is back with another packed line-up of Second World War history. Now in its fifth year, We Have Ways Fest returns to the Blackpit Brewery, Buckinghamshire, with a speaker roster including Antony Beevor, Roger Moorhouse, James May, Dominic Sandbrook and more. The weekend also features re-enactment demonstrations, including live-firing (two-pounder to 3.7in HAA) and military displays. Rare and iconic WWII vehicles will be taking to the arena across the weekend, including Cromwell, Sherman and T34/85 tanks, as well as Crossley trucks and Guy Quads. Festivalgoers can also experience the Vickers Machine Gun Research Group’s infantry weapons display, 25-pounder night-fire exercises, a unique line-up of Universal Carriers, and the SAS Rogue Heroes collection. In…