Interesting facts of military history

The Philippines' claim lines:

 

Like nazi Germany We should stop the evil in its footsteps. If you let Putin continue he will come back. He will think the west is weak. Is that what you want? Your family, your lifestyle, your everyting if you give up. Then you can already give everything to Putin. WC would then puke on you for saving the world from the nazis!

 

Songs from the front war during 1939-45...my personal favourite is the Eldanka lake ice...

 

When war broke out in 1939 Sir Walter ( Cowan ) offered his services "in any rank" and was appointed as a liaison officer with an Indian Army unit fighting against the Italians along the Libyan coast. In the course of this he was captured, reputedly while firing his pistol at a tank, but within a few months was repatriated in a prisoner exchange after the Italians decided he was "too old to be dangerous". On his return Cowan was attached to the Commandos with whom he would win his second DSO forty-six years after being awarded the first.
England´s last war against France by Colin Smith

 

Air Commodore Lionel Evelyn Oswald Charlton, CB, CMG, DSO (7 July 1879 – 18 April 1958) was a British infantry officer who served in the Second Boer War. During the First World War, Charlton held several command and staff posts in the Royal Flying Corps, finishing the war as a brigadier general. Transferring to the Royal Air Force on its creation, Charlton served in several air officer posts until his retirement from the air force in 1928. Most notably, Charlton resigned his position as the RAF's Chief Staff Officer in Iraq as he objected to the bombing of Iraqi villages.

Lionel Charlton - Wikipedia



On 2 February 1923, Air Commodore Charlton took up the post of Chief Staff Officer at the headquarters of the RAF's Iraq Command. It was at this time that the RAF employed the bombing of Iraqi villages with the intent of pacifying tribal opposition. Charlton opposed this policy and he went on to openly criticize such bombing actions. Within a year of his arrival, Charlton resigned from his post in Iraq. In the same month he arrived, Charlton visited the local hospital in Diwaniya, and was shocked by seeing the wounds of Iraqis injured in RAF bombing raids present, later writing in his memoirs that "indiscriminate bombing of a populace... with the liability of killing women and children, was the nearest thing to wanton slaughter."

On his return to Great Britain, Charlton expected to be summoned to see the Chief of the Air Staff, Hugh Trenchard. The summons never came.

Although Charlton was barred from further postings in Iraq, he went on to serve as Air Officer Commanding No 3 Group. Charlton requested early retirement, which he was granted.

In recent years, the memory of Charlton was taken up by opponents of the present war in Iraq, and specifically by British opponents of their country's involvement in that war, who hold him up as an example to be emulated by present-day officers.

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Well, well, well....

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Commentator Mike Marqusee in The Guardian expressed the opinion that Charlton should have had a monument erected in his honour at London, rather than his fellow RAF commander Arthur "Bomber" Harris who conducted the bombings of Iraq without compunction and went on to bomb the German cities in World War II.

 

Something Putin forgot about the Russian Victory day:

Eastern Front (World War II) - Wikipedia

Among other goods, Lend-Lease supplied:

• 58% of the USSR's high octane aviation fuel
• 33% of their motor vehicles
• 53% of USSR domestic production of expended ordnance (artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives)
• 30% of fighters and bombers
• 93% of railway equipment (locomotives, freight cars, wide gauge rails, etc.)
• 50–80% of rolled steel, cable, lead, and aluminium
• 43% of garage facilities (building materials & blueprints)
• 12% of tanks and SPGs
• 50% of TNT (1942–1944) and 33% of ammunition powder (in 1944)[52]
• 16% of all explosives (from 1941 to 1945, the USSR produced 505,000 tons of explosives and received 105,000 tons of Lend-Lease imports)

 

No womder the Germans were scared of the Sudetenland Czech bunkers. Bought a German military photos with bunkers they DID not have to face. So Sudetenland 1938 bunkers, I think they took material from the bunkers to Germany´s western norder bunker line from here.

 

Some more...So now you know....



It seems some were expoled by the Germans.

 

I read an article recently that noted that during the defence of Moscow around 30% of the tanks in Soviet units around the city were British-supplied

 

Well,
Likely to be aborted, the Numbers will go up and down so far...

 

Supposedly, this applied to medium & heavy tanks. However, the author includes British Tetrach(sp?) Tanks in his calculations.

The author uses the number of British tanks shipped, not the number the Russian accepted for use(a somewhat lower figure).

Ignores that roughly 50% of the British tanks were out of service at any given time during the battle for want of parts or Soviet unfamiliarity with LL British tanks.

Discussed well here.
LL Tanks 'critical' in the Moscow fighting. - Axis History Forum

 

Very interesting, thanks.
I may need to find the article I read, as I remember it rather differently from the article discussed on AHF. From memory (always dangerous) the author actually cited the tank strengths of the various units directly around Moscow, rather than looking at production numbers etc or totals for fronts.
Can't promise I'll find it again, as I was searching for something else at the time and simply remembered the gist rather than the details

 

I discovered that there was a joint Arab-Jewish unit with the BEF. It was pretty small, and was a logistics unit not a fighting unit.
I found part of their war diary at the PRO in Kew, they spent most of the Phoney War playing other British units at various sports and losing badly at them all

 

JR 200
The Estonian volunteer unit

 

Weird stuff....: Ostfront 1944 by Bruno Friesen.

To be respected within the fraternity of the tank drivers, a man had to master, more or less, the tank drivers´ fart. Whenever drivers got together in good times, they would, sooner or later, stage a special kind of contest-a tank drivers´farting contest.
Preparation for a good Panzer driver´s fart required the kind of food and drink that were guaranteed to generate the requiired flatus. Well prepared nutrionally, each contestant would be seated on a chair-at the tank driving school he would sit on a standard four-legged stool- and extend his legs so that his heels rested, ahead of him, on the floor.

Panzer gunner by Bruno Friesen

 

Swedish vs Russian rule over Finland: 600 years vs 100 years.

Birger Jarl decided that a full effort was necessary to bring Finland into the Swedish sphere; in 1249 he led an expedition to Tavastia (now Häme), an area already Christianized. Birger built a fortress in Tavastia and some fortifications along the northern coast of the Gulf of Finland, where Swedish settlement on a mass scale began. Swedes also moved to the eastern coast of the Gulf of Bothnia. In 1293 Torgils Knutsson launched an expedition in an attempt to conquer all of Karelia and built a fortress in Viipuri. The war lasted until 1323, when the Treaty of Pähkinäsaari (Nöteborg; now Petrokrepost) drew the boundary between the Russian and Swedish spheres of influence in a vague line from the eastern part of the Gulf of Finland through the middle of Karelia northwest to the Gulf of Bothnia, and the crusades were ended, with Finland a part of the Swedish realm.

Under Swedish sovereignty the Finnish tribes gradually developed a sense of unity, which was encouraged by the bishops of Turku. Study in universities brought Finnish scholars into direct touch with the cultural centres of Europe, and Mikael Agricola (c. 1510–57), the creator of the Finnish literary language, brought the Lutheran faith from Germany. As part of medieval Sweden, Finland was drawn into the many wars and domestic battles of the Swedish nobility. In 1581 King John III raised Finland to the level of a grand duchy to irritate his Russian rival, Tsar Ivan IV the Terrible. Dispute over the Swedish crown, combined with quarrels over social conditions, foreign policy, and religion (Roman Catholic versus Lutheran), led to the last peasant revolt in Europe, the so-called Club War, in 1596–97. The hopes of the Finnish peasants were crushed, and, even when Charles IX, whom the peasants had supported, became king (1604–11), the social conditions did not improve. In the course of the administrative reforms of Gustav II Adolf (1611–32), Finland became an integral part of the kingdom, and the educated classes thereafter came increasingly to speak Swedish.

On its eastern frontier Finland was harassed by constant warfare, and the danger became more serious when Novgorod, at the end of the medieval period, was succeeded by a more powerful neighbour, the Grand Duchy of Moscow. In 1595, however, by the Peace of Täysinä, the existing de facto boundary, up to the Arctic Ocean, was granted official recognition by the Russians. By the Peace of Stolbovo (Stolbova; 1617), Russia ceded Ingermanland and part of Karelia to the kingdom of Sweden-Finland. The population of the ceded territories was of the Greek Orthodox faith, and when the Swedish government began forceful conversion to Lutheranism many fled to Russia and were replaced by Lutheran Finns. After Stolbovo, Sweden found new outlets for expansion in the south and west and developed into one of the leading powers of Europe. Though Finnish conscripts played their part in making Sweden a great power, the role of Finland in the kingdom steadily decreased in importance.

In Charles XII’s reign, Sweden lost its position as a great power. During the Great Northern War, Russians occupied Finland for eight years (1713–21), and, under the Peace of Uusikaupunki (Nystad) in 1721, Sweden had to cede the southeastern part of Finland with Viipuri as well as the Baltic provinces. Sweden’s capacity to defend Finland had weakened, and the years of hostile occupation had given the Finns a permanent feeling of insecurity.

In the course of the next Russo-Swedish War (1741–43), the Russian empress Elizabeth declared to the Finnish people her intention of making Finland a separate state under Russian suzerainty, but she failed to follow up the idea and at the peace settlement of Turku in 1743 contented herself with annexing a piece of Finland.

Swedish strategic directives of 1785 implied that, in case of Russian attack, Swedish forces should retire from the frontier, leaving Finnish detachments behind, and that under extreme danger the whole of Finland should be evacuated. This strategy was put into effect in 1808–09.

Sweden ruled Finland 6 centuries.

Finland and Sweden share a long history, similar legal systems, and an economic and social model. Finland was part of Sweden for almost 700 years from around 1150 until the Finnish War of 1809 after which Finland became an autonomous part of the Russian Empire as the Grand Duchy of Finland.

What Russian historical rule over Finland? Sweden 600 years- Russia 100 years. No competition there.

 

Did you know, well if you were not born by then you probably don´t. Here it is...

 

Another interesting conflict...



Mao knows what parts of Russia belong historically to China.. Ha-ha-ha Putin....cancel this....

 

Another " Ancient" Russian land area....

The Sino-Soviet Border Conflict of 1969



The above map shows the region gained by the Russians in the mid 1800s and the newly drawn border along the Ussuri River.