Interesting facts of military history

I thought this document was quite amazing on the Gallipoli sea battle phase, and definitely the losses due to the mines were horrible. Anybody else seen this?

Deep Secrets: The Ballard Gallipoli Expedition | Meet Dr. Ballard | National Geographic Channel

 

Joseph Fouché - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Fouché, 1st Duc d'Otrante (21 May 1759 Le Pellerin, near Nantes - 25 December 1820 Trieste )

....in 1814, Fouché had joined the invading allies and conspired against Napoleon. However, he joined Napoléon again during his return and was police minister during the latter's short-lived reign (Hundred Days). After Napoléon's ultimate defeat (Battle of Waterloo), Fouché again started plotting against his master and joined the opposition of the parliament (after the defeat of Waterloo) and headed the provisional government and tried to negotiate with the allies. He probably also aimed at establishing a republic with himself as head of state. These plans were never realised, and the Bourbons regained power (July 1815). And again, Fouché's services were necessary: as Talleyrand, another notorious intrigant, became the prime minister of the Kingdom of France, Fouché was named his minister of police: so he was a minister of King Louis XVIII, the brother of Louis XVI.

Ironically, Fouché had voted for the death sentence on Louis XVI. Thus, he belonged to the regicides, and ultra-royalists both within the cabinet and outside could hardly tolerate him as a member of the royal cabinet. Fouché, once a revolutionary using extreme terror against the Bourbon supporters, now initiated a campaign of White Terror against real and imaginary enemies of the Royalist restoration (officially directed against those who had plotted and supported Napoléon's return to power)....

 

In the British Army´s seniority list of 1914, 100 names were preceded by a "von" title."

From " Field Marshal von Manstein, a portrait " by Marcel Stein

 

About WW1: "...there was also the craving for the return of Alsace-Lorraine.Until the Allied victory in WW1, the Strasbourg statue on the Place de la Concorde in Paris remained covered with a dark cloth."

From " Field Marshal Manstein, a portrait" by Marcel Stein

 

"In all, from 1967 to 1986 400,000 -800,000 concrete bunkers - each reinforced with thirteen layers of steel- were constructed, one for every four to five Albanians. This was domination pyschology in extremis, even to the point that the maintenance of bunkers was the responsibility of individual families, thereby 'binding local communities into an infrastructure of authority extending all the way to the centre, in Tirana'."
Schofield, John: Combat Archaeology; material culture and modern conflict p110. (London. Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd. 2005)

 

Jean-Baptiste Sipido - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jean-Baptiste Victor Sipido (20 December 1884 – 20 August 1959) was a Belgian anarchist who became known when he, then a young tinsmith's apprentice, attempted to assassinate the Prince of Wales at the Brussel-Noord railway station in Brussels on April 5, 1900.

Accusing the Prince of causing the slaughter of thousands during the Boer War in South Africa, the fifteen-year-old leaped onto the foot board of the royal compartment right before the train left the station, and fired two shots through the window. Sipido missed everyone inside and was quickly wrestled to the ground.


The assassination attempt and the following trial is notable mostly for the acquittal of Sipido, despite the facts of the case being mostly clear but based on his being below the age of sixteen. The jury "held that by reason of his age he had not acted with discernment and could not be considered doli capax" or legally responsible.

The acquittal caused a very hostile reaction from Britain with the Leader of the British House of Commons calling it a "grave and most unfortunate miscarriage of justice".

 

Catfirth seaplane base, Shetland was Britain's most northerly permanent seaplane base in WW1-
Catfirth - Airfields of Britain Conservation Trust - UK

 

During the Third Rif War in Spanish Morocco between 1921 and 1927, the Spanish Army of Africa dropped chemical warfare agents in an attempt to put down the Riffian Berber rebellion led by guerrilla leader Abd el-Krim.

These attacks in 1924 marked the first time mustard gas was dropped by airplanes, a year before the Geneva Protocol for "the Prohibition of the Use in War of Asphyxiating, Poisonous or other Gases, and of Bacteriological Methods of Warfare" was signed. The gas used in these attacks was produced by the "Fabrica Nacional de Productos Quimicos" at La Marañosa near Madrid; a plant founded with significant assistance from Hugo Stoltzenberg, a chemist associated with the German government's clandestine chemical warfare activities in the early 1920s who was later given Spanish citizenship.

Chemical weapons in the Rif War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

It seems that the French troops under General Lyautey also used mustard gas in their fight in the RIF war.

 

British Army recruitment in the war of 1812-
"Regulations in 1802 established some uniformed standards for what recruits would be allowed. However as the war with France dragged on these standards were lowered. The regulations stated:

In the Infantry, Men enlisted...are not to be taken above Twenty-five [Thirty] years of Age, nor less than Five Feet Six [Five] inch high; but growing Lads from Seventeen to Nineteen Years of Age, may be taken as low as Five Feet Five [Four] Inches.... The Lads and Boys are to be enlisted as Privates, without any Promise or Expectation being held out to them that they are to be of the Band, or put on Drummer's Pay. *(the numbers in [ ] are the changes made later in the war)"
Recruiting in the British Army during the War of 1812​

 

"A sheltron (also sceld-trome, schiltrom or shiltron) is a compact body of troops forming a battle array, shield wall or phalanx.
The term sheltron is obsolete, but is most often associated with Scottish pike formations during the Wars of Scottish Independence in the late 13th and early 14th centuries."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheltron

 

First flight by a turbojet aircraft was by the Heinkel 178 of August 27th, 1939-
Jet aircraft - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

"One of the first purpose built heavy bombers. The design order was issued by the Admiralty for the RNAS at the end of 1914, but the 0/400 did not enter active service until March 1917, when it was used against German U-boat bases. It was then used against Germany shipping and ports, and had an increasing impact as the number of aircraft in operation increased. In addition to service on the western front, one 0/400 was sent to the Aegean, where it operated against the Turks for three months before engine failure forced it out of action, and another was sent to Palestine to help General Allenby, again against the Turks, where its size made as much impact as its bombs. When the RNAS and RFC merged to form the RAF, the 0/400 became its standard heavy bomber, but despite efforts to turn the 0/400 into a transport plane, they had all gone out of service by the summer of 1923. "
Handley Page 0/400

 

The great and famous Hunk papa Sioux War Leader Crazy Horse (yes the same Crazy Horse that defeated Custer) was a US Army Sgt.
Four months before his death he enlisted in the Army as a scout and was awarded the rank of Sgt.
This item is found in an excellent book, Fort Robinson and the American West (Nebraska Press, 1999) by Thomas R. Buecker, curator of the Nebraska State Historical Society’s Fort Robinson Museum. Other books that corroborate this fact are the two volumes of the Interviews of Eli S. Ricker (Nebraska, 2005), and the most outstanding account of the warrior chief’s life, Crazy Horse, a Lakota Life, by Kingsley M. Bray (Oklahoma Press, 2006).

 

"Lebel Model 1886 rifle was a French 8mm-caliber, bolt-action rifle which was the first military rifle designed to use smokeless powder cartridges. The Lebel also featured a bolt head which locked into the receiver with two opposed front locking lugs. A cammed surface on the rear of the receiver bridge provides positive extraction when the bolt is being opened. The Lebel rifle was first to introduce in 1901 a boat-tailed bullet as standard military ammunition."
Lebel M1886 Rifle | History Wars Weapons

 

Just visited Stuttgart and went to the Porsche and Mercedes museums and of course...

"In 1923, racing in Ravenna, Enzo Ferrari acquired the Prancing Horse badge which decorated the fuselage of Francesco Baracca's (Italy's leading ace of WWI) SPAD S.XIII fighter, given from his mother, taken from the wreckage of the plane after his mysterious death. This icon would have to wait until 1932 to be displayed on a racing car. It is interesting to note that the Ferrari emblem matches that of the city of Stuttgart and is similar to the center of the Porsche emblem."

Enzo Ferrari - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

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"In the early 17th Century the matchlock musket was a cumbersome, slow loading weapon and the musketeers required the protection of soldiers carrying long, wooden-shafted pikes to shield them from enemy cavalry and footsoldiers during the lengthy reloading process. As the century progressed, more emphasis began to be placed on the use of the musket as a primary weapon of the common soldier and as a result, the pike was gradually phased out. In former times, the usual practice when engaging at close quarters was to fire the musket and then follow the pikemen as they closed on the enemy wielding the musket as if it were a club. A sword or long knife was also carried as a secondary weapon. The use of the gun in this way was far from effective and the idea was hit upon to jam the tapered handle of a belt knife in to the muzzle, temporarily converting the musket to a short pike. This "plug bayonet" produced a far more effective weapon than the clubbed musket and in time removed the need for large numbers of pikemen.
The term "bayonet" is thought to have derived from the French town of Bayonne, famous for its cutlers and may have originally referred to a type of long knife or dagger which was carried by soldiers of the time.
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[TD]The obvious disadvantage of the plug bayonet is that once fixed, the gun cannot be fired until the bayonet is removed.
In the late 17th Century experiments were carried out to address this problem and the short- lived "ring bayonet" was born. This was affixed to the barrel by two rings, but seems not to have found favour and was replaced shortly after by
the socket bayonet - a pattern which would last until after WWII."
http://thearmouryonline.co.uk/BayonetHistory.htm[/TD]
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November 28th 1854. Dutch troops crush a Chinese uprising in Borneo.

 

"At the start of the First World War the standard rotary engine was the 80hp Gnôme Lambda. The rotary engine was ideal for early fighter aircraft – compared to the often more powerful water-cooled engines it was lighter and more robust, lacking vulnerable cooling equipment. Rotary powered fighters dominated the skies over the Western Front into 1916, powering perhaps the most famous of all First World War fighters, the Sopwith Camel. However, by 1917 rotary engines had reached the upper limits of their performance. As engine speeds increased, more and more of the power produced went into to moving the cylinders and less into move the propellers. One solution was the counter rotary engine, produced by Siemens, but that appeared too late to have any significant impact on the war.
Rotary engines disappeared quickly after the end of the First World War. Although the engines themselves were cheap, they were expensive to run, using large amounts of fuel and lubrication. By the mid-1920s they had almost completely disappeared, replaced by more powerful air-cooled radial engines. "
Rotary Engine

 

"The Ten Years' War (Spanish: Guerra de los Diez Años) (1868–1878), also known as the Great War and the War of '68, began on October 10, 1868 when sugar mill owner Carlos Manuel de Céspedes and his followers proclaimed Cuba's independence from Spain. It was the first of three liberation wars that Cuba fought against Spain, the other two being the Little War (1879–1880) and the Cuban War of Independence (1895–1898). The final three months of the last conflict escalated to become the Spanish–American War."
Ten Years' War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

The Opi is a Malaysian sword with a straight blade and a horn hilt, which is normally decorated with tufts of hair. The scabbard is made of wood wound with rattan.
Opi