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I never saw so large and so beautiful a construction’ Luca di Masa degli Albizzi, Florentine Captain of the Galleys, 1430. The greatest of all medieval ships, Henry V’s the Grace Dieu was a remarkable vessel of a similar size to HMS Victory, although with her towering castles she looked very different. Launched in 1418, she was more than two…
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In May 2013, President Barack Obama gave a long-anticipated speech at the National Defense University, at Fort McNair in Washington,…
Cockpit check-thumbs up-switches on-press the starter button. A few turns of the two-bladed airscrew, blue-grey smoke puffs from the exhausts…
Desperate Soviet PoWs struggle to lap up water from a semi-frozen stream. The brutal neglect of their captives by the…
When the Civil War began, leaders in both the North and the South thought that it would be a short war, but the two sides had very different military strategies regarding how to bring about…
Following the attack on Fort Sumter and the secession by the Confederacy the Union devised a strategy to limit the length of the war. Lincoln had no desire for further bloodshed and thus wanted a…
The entire goal of the American Revolution including the penning of the Declaration of Independence was to gain the colonists and the newly formed American nation legitimacy internationally. The Declaration of Independence was written to…
Agricola’s battle formation at Mons Graupius. In AD 84 Agricola aimed to lure the tribes of the Scottish Highlands to…
When Princess Maria Volkonsky sped across Russia from Moscow to join her husband in exile in 1827, it took 23…
Rogers (right) receives a map of New Providence Island from his son, in a painting by William Hogarth (1729). They…
In Western countries, typically known as the Red Air Force-one of the largest and most powerful air forces of the…
Regarded by many as the best British fighter of World War 1, the Royal Aircraft Factory SE5a was less nimble than its frontline contemporary, the Sopwith Camel, but could out-dive and out-climb its `rival’, sustain more combat damage and yet remain intact despite performing high-g manoeuvres. As the fastest British…
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)…
How do ideas change? The shift can be abrupt or gradual; it can affect one individual or a nation. Sometimes, an old idea is merely re-stated and presented in a new way, adapted to fit a new time. Sometimes, it is deliberately distorted and given meanings it was never intended…
The Battle of Bunker Hill by Percy Moran In eighteenth-century conventional linear warfare, the regimental infantry officer took part in four main activities: he motivated his men, directed them, kept them in good order, and engaged in personal combat. At least on European battlefields, perhaps the first of these four…
415–413 b.c. Forced Engaged Syracusan: Unknown, although probably roughly equal to Athenians; included 4,400 Spartans. Commander: Gylippus. Athenian: Approximately 200 galleys and 45,000 to 50,000 men. Commander: Nicias and then Demosthenes. Importance Athenian defeat broke the naval dominance of the eastern Mediterranean by the Athenians, led to their downfall as…
PAYING TAXES TO ROME The Jews first inhabited the city that would become known as Jerusalem and the area known as Judea—a fertile strip of land along the Mediterranean, at the junction of numerous land and sea trading routes—in the tenth century BCE, when the Israelitribes under King David conquered…
CARTHAGE Showing naval port. Carthaginian Tetrere: The Marsala ship. Reconstruction by Michael Leek Punic hepter. The dimensions of the holds of the military port of Carthage permitted only vessels of 4.80 m wide, the size of a trire, in the islet of the Admiralty with the exception of two holds…
Development, Construction, Technology U-boat Type XXVII B/5 or Seehund (seal) was the most successful small-scale submarine designed and operated by the Kriegsmarine. In contrast to all its forerunners which, with the exception of Hecht, were mere submersibles, Seehund was a straightforward U-boat. Made operational in numbers earlier in the war…
British coastal assault on St Cast in Brittany in September 1758. A German map, published…
Schnellboot S-80 torpedo boat Camo Operations with the Kriegsmarine S-boats were often used to patrol…
American Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR 1941–45. Soviet historiography is mocked in the West, where…
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