Axis
Hungarian Air Force 1930-45 Part II
Meanwhile, German counter-attacks failed to retake Kiev but did push the Soviets out of Zhitomir, where the 1 Ungarishe Jabostafel found a new base and celebrated its 100th kill in December 1943. Through long months of intense combat, it had suffered the loss of just 6 pilots (plus 2 missing) from an original 37 airmen, as proof of their great…
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2 JULY 1942 – ROMMEL TRIES AGAIN Part II
As the story reached the bemused but doubting Germans, British bombers and British tanks added to the woes of the men in ‘The Hotbox’, and Pienaar was reported to have called Auchinleck and said that if he was to be treated as an enemy he could take Alexandria within 48…
Hungarian Armed Forces 1944-45 I
Hitler and the OKH were determined to hold Hungary within the Axis. Hitler was personally fixated on the oil fields at Nagykanizsa, and he was in any case committed to a Haltebefehl strategy in the east in 1944. Operation MARGARETHE thus brought German forces into Hungary on March 19, while…
Hungarian Armed Forces 1944-45 II
On 29 October 1944, the Red Army started its offensive against the city. More than 1,000,000 men, split into two operating maneuver groups, advanced. The plan was to cut Budapest off from the rest of the German and Hungarian forces. On 7 November 1944, Soviet and Romanian troops entered the…
Finnish Air Force WWII
Finnish Air Force: Messerschmitt Bf 109 G-2 fighter at Helsinki Malmi airport in June 1943. The Finnish Air Force (FAF or FiAF) is one of the branches of the Finnish Defence Forces. Its peacetime tasks are airspace surveillance, identification flights, and production of readiness formations for wartime conditions. As a…
Operation Axis
Moltke also said something else that became famous. Writing in his History of the 1870 War (Geschichte des Krieges 1870), he claimed that It is an illusion to believe that one can work out a plan of campaign far in advance and then carry it through to the end. The…
The Malta Submarines
General view of HMS TALBOT, submarine base at Malta. Submarines and harbour craft making a smoke-screen to cover their base, HMS TALBOT. Before the outbreak of war, the Admiralty saw Malta as a base for submarines and other forces able to attack the Italian supply lines supporting their forces in…