The Era of the GUPPY Part II
Running in parallel to the time-bearing plot, another team of plotters used the same sonar bearings at discrete intervals to geographically trace the progress of bearing drift. The bearing drift appeared as spokes in a wheel. Lieutenant Joseph Ekelund and his colleagues saw that with an accurate target speed ruled as distance on a plastic strip, the plotting party could…
WUNDERWAFFEN
The Ju 287 project started in June 1943. The aircraft was to have had swept-back wings and four turbojets, one beneath each wing and one on either side of the forward fuselage. However, the low speed stability problems of swept wings had at that time not been solved, so in order to retain the high-speed capabilities of sweep, while at…
AC-130J Ghostrider Gunships
Air Force Special Operations Command’s brand-spanking-new AC-130J Ghostrider Gunships. The AC-130J Ghostrider’s primary missions are close air support, air interdiction…
The Franco-Prussian War (1870–71) – North German Federal Navy
The Battle of Havana on 9 November 1870 was a single ship action between the German gunboat Meteor and the…
CASPIAN SEA MONSTER
Lun-class ekranoplan MD-160 The Russians built the first large-scale WIG craft in the 1960s. The 500 tonne, so called, Caspian…
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Outremer’s Demise
Salah ad-Din, or Saladin as he is known in the West, had been born in Tikrit in modern-day Iraq in 1137. Saladin’s forces besiege the walls of Jerusalem. Having set to rights the last of Nur al-Din’s legacy, Saladin faced a Frankish problem rather different from the one that had…
German Schnellboot (S-boat)
Schnellboot S-80 torpedo boat Camo Operations with the Kriegsmarine S-boats were often used to patrol the Baltic Sea and the English Channel in order to intercept shipping heading for the English ports in the south and east. As such, they were up against Royal Navy and Commonwealth (particularly Royal Canadian…
Borodino class
In 1904 Moscow dispatched the 2nd Pacific Squadron, commanded by Admiral Zinovi Petrovich Rohdzsvenski, from the Baltic to the Pacific, halfway around the world, to salvage the desperate situation in the Pacific. Rohdzsvenski’s main units numbered eight battleships, three armored cruisers, and three hopelessly obsolete armored coast-defense warships. The core…
Motobomba FFF
The Motabomba, or more properly the Motobomba FFF (Freri Fiore Filpa), was a torpedo used by Italian forces during World War II. The designation FFF was derived from the last names the three men involved with its original design: Lieutenant-Colonel Prospero Freri, Captain-Disegnatore Filpa, and Colonel Amedeo Fiore. The FFF…
Operation Airthief – the plan to hijack an Fw 190A
Armin Faber’s Focke-Wulf Fw 190A-3 of III/JG 2 at RAF Pembrey, June 1942. In June 1942, Oberstleutnant Armin Faber was Gruppen-Adjutant to the commander of the III fighter Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 2 (JG 2) based in Morlaix in Brittany. On 23 June, he was given special permission to fly a…
Fw 190 – Entry into service In March 1941
Oberleutnant Otto Behrens assumed command of Erprobungsstaffel 190 based at Rechlin- Roggenthin. The unit received six pre-production Fw 190A-Os and its brief was to test the new tighter under service conditions. The pilots and ground crews assigned to the Erprobungstaffel were drawn from II. Gruppe of Jagdgeschwader 26, and the…
The War of Austrian Succession: 1740-1748 – In Italy
The death of the Chevalier de Belle-Isle, Battle of Assietta. In October 1740, Emperor Charles VI died. In his youth he had held title as the Archduke Charles, claimant to the Spanish crown and for whom the Habsburgs waged the War for the Spanish Succession. He left a single heir,…
Polyxenidas
Polyxenidas a Rhodian general and admiral, who was exiled from his native country, and entered the service of Antiochus III the Great, king of Seleucid Empire. We first find him mentioned in 209 BC, when he commanded a body of Cretans mercenaries during the expedition of Antiochus into Hyrcania .…
Post-war Spitfire XIV
The final Spitfire variant, the Mk 24, was similar to the Mk 22 except that it had an increased fuel capacity over its predecessors, with two fuel tanks of 33 gal (150 l) each installed in the rear fuselage. There were also zero-point fittings for rocket projectiles under the wings.…
The Spartan Anomaly
Sparta was the one city-state in Greece that deviated from the pattern of warfare described above. By the sixth century BCE, the Spartans had established the only real standing army in Greece, training hoplites who can be classified as professionals. Sparta’s deviation from the norm stemmed from a war fought…