Operations
“The Prestige Objective” Part I
The interaction between strategic ends and means is no more obscure when cities are concerned than in any other form of warfare. Sometimes, this interaction is much faster, more intense, and more immediate than it might be if a city were not involved. The battle for Berlin in early 1945 illustrates this interaction as few other city battles could. Some…
Most Recent
After Okinawa 1945
Haruna at her moorings near Kure, Japan, under attack by U.S. Navy carrier aircraft, 28 July 1945 Wreck of Tone at Kure The Heavy Cruiser Tone, sister of Chikuma survived many battles and was sunk at anchor in Kure harbor by US carrier aircraft on July 24th 1945. Her hulk…
Operation Lüttich – Considered
While Patton’s Third Army was racing through Brittany and towards the south the U.S. First Army under Hodges continued its offensive in an easterly and south-easterly direction in order to widen the corridor of Avranches. General Hodges’s VII Corps took Mortain with its commanding high ground. A pivot had been…
Operation Tonga Part II
Map of the assault on the Merville Gun Battery 6 June 1944 The lengths the Germans were going to in order to protect the battery, combined with the information provided by the Resistance, was enough to convince Morgan that the guns at the battery must be of 150mm calibre. When…
Battle of Wołomin
Tiger I of SS-Division “Totenkopf”, stands ready in a forest assembly area to move up to the front to neutralize a Soviet armoured incursion near Warsaw. After the Soviet reconnaissance units reached Warsaw in late July, on 1 August 1944 the Warsaw Uprising started. Starting from an area south of…
Operation Kutuzov
The direct aspect of that development began on July 11. It involved a still-overlooked operation that is arguably better evidence of the Red Army’s progress than the so frequently cited battle to the south. When all is said and done, Kursk, seen from a Russian perspective, was a traditional Russian…
The Legacy of Unternehmen Barbarossa I
As far as high-speed mechanized troops are concerned and their location on the forward zone, one has, in general, to see the threat of their sudden concentration in the mere fact of their existence. These motorized troops, having carried out a march of up to 100 kilometers on the day…