Amphibious Warfare WWII
It was the Allies who demonstrated true mastery of the amphibious art. In the end, they landed more than 4 million troops in five major amphibious assaults, dozens of tactical landings, and countless raids along German-occupied coasts of Europe. Amphibious operations provided the western Allies with their only means of taking the ground war to the European Axis countries. In…
Manchurian WWII Air Force I
Until just five years ago, Manchurians were little more than backward bandits squabbling over pieces of torn fiefdoms. Today, we operate our own air force against all the enemies of a modernized Manchukuo. -Nobuhiro Uta, 1st Lieutenant, Doi ManshuTeikoku Kugun’ In 1640, Ming Dynasty control over China was falling apart. Widespread crop failures, followed by starvation on a scale too…
Ballistic Missiles at War: The Case of Iraq I
Al-Hussein missiles displayed in their erector-launchers. Baghdad arms exhibition, April–May 1989. The Soviet “Scud” missile family. The United States and…
Johann Georg, (1611–1656)
Portrait by Franz Luycx (1652) Elector of Saxony. Although a Lutheran prince he maintained an unusually close relationship with Ferdinand…
Most Recent
TOR-M1
9A331-1 combat vehicle Intended for effective defense of troops, civilian and industrial facilities from current and future air attack weapons, primarily high-precision weapons, as well as from aircraft, helicopters, cruise missiles, guided aerial bombs and remotely piloted vehicles. TOR-M1 air defense missile system which succeeded the OSA-AKM ADMC is one…
Resistance to the French Revolution, 1793-9 Part I
Although many provincial fédérés had taken part in the storming of the Tuileries, the fall of the French monarchy had very largely been the work of the insurrectionary commune of Paris. The very idea of a national Convention to give France a republican constitution also originated in the Paris sections.…
Resistance to the French Revolution, 1793-9 Part II
First to waver was Marseilles, all the more shockingly in that the great Mediterranean port had been a watchword for radicalism ever since 1789. The sansculottes remembered with admiration the arrival of the militant Marseillais fédérés in July 1792. But Marseilles’s radicalism was in many ways the response of a…
Resistance to the French Revolution, 1793-9 Part III
Marseilles and Lyons, already in revolt, were much encouraged by this response to an event that anti-Jacobins in both cities had long been predicting. They were already co-operating between themselves: one of the first steps of the Lyons insurrectionaries had been to send fraternal delegates down the Rhône to co-ordinate…
Russia Buks
Buk-M1-2 air defence system in 2010. Command post 9C470M1-2, TELAR 9A310M1-2 and a TEL 9A39M1-2 from the backside. The Buk-M1 (SA-11 Gadfly to NATO) can be used by minimally trained operators to deliver a lethal attack, without the safeguards built into other comparable GBADS, an Aviation Week analysis shows. It…
SEND IN THE DRONES
The Lockheed Martin P-175 Polecat was a worthy successor to the reconnaissance aircraft projects that had come to Groom Lake from the Skunk Works through the decades. The first X-45A, with its weapons bay door open, dropped its first bomb in March 2004. The Phantom Ray, the successor to…
NAPOLEON’S ‘SECRET PART’ I
We name the ‘secret part’ everything relating to espionage. Nothing is more important in an army than the organization of this service. General Paul Thiébault, 1813 From the battlefield to the bedroom, almost every facet of Napoleon Bonaparte’s life and career has been trawled over by battalions of historians. However,…
NAPOLEON’S ‘SECRET PART’ II
Anne Jean Marie René Savary One of the little-known stories of the Napoleonic Wars is of a spy who went by the name of Francesco Toli. Like Angelo Pico, Toli appears to have been one of the Turin ‘Patriots’ – a young barrister who idealistically embraced their cause but was…
X Flight
Six X Flight members stand by the wreck of the downed Rumpler. X Flight’s camp at Akaba. Much has been written by and about Lawrence of Arabia but little has ever been written about the handful of aircraft and personnel of X Flight, which was set up to give…
TACTICAL AIR POWER I
The term tactical air power is one that brings certain images into the minds of those who either use the term or hear others speak of its role. It does, however, suggest that the effect that air power has in this context is purely at a local level. In fact…