Interesting facts of military history

On 4th April, 1939, a meeting took place between the Secretary of State for Air ( Sir Kingsley Wood ) and the French Air Minister ( M. Guy le Chambre ) to discuss amongst other things , French aircraft production. During the meeting the French "Plan 5" was considered. This had visualised a production of 1,800 aircraft in the period between April 1938 and march 1939, but concern was felt as only 716 aircraft had actually been produced. The same plan also envisaged the production of 3,000 aircraft in the following year, but the rate of production at the time of meeting was only 100 per month, rising to 150 per month in the summer of 1939 and 200 per month in the Autumn.

M. Guy le Chambre explained that their figure in the plan of 1,800 was only a goal to be reached under optimum conditions! He further explained that the French Air Force at that date consisted of 1,200 aircraft, which were out-of-date, with a further 5,000 aircraft obsolete but which could be used for other military purposes! Their fighters were only capable of 240 mph and the bombers were too slow to be used except at night or with cloud cover.

From "Blitzed!" by Victor Bingham

 

Sanjurjo instead of Franco? What would have happened differently, or not?

José Sanjurjo Sacanell (March 28, 1872 – July 20, 1936) Marquess of the Rif and general, was a Spanish army officer who was one of the chief conspirators in the military uprising that led to the Spanish Civil War.

Sanjurjo died in Estoril, Portugal, in a plane crash when flying back to Spain on July 20, 1936 in an aircraft piloted by Antonio Ansaldo. One of the main reasons of the crash was his very heavy luggage. Ansaldo warned him that bags were too heavy, but Sanjurjo answered him:

I need to wear proper clothes as the new caudillo of Spain.
Ironically, Sanjurjo chose to fly in Ansaldo's small airplane rather than a much larger and more suitable airplane that was available. It was an 8-passenger de Havilland Dragon Rapide, the same one which had transported Franco from the Canary Islands to Morocco. Sanjurjo apparently preferred the drama of flying with a "daring aviator".

When Mola also died in an aircraft accident, Franco was left as the effective leader of the Nationalist cause. This led to rumors that Franco had instigated the deaths of his two rivals, but no evidence has been produced to support this allegation.

José Sanjurjo - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Sanjurjo died in a DH80 Puss Moth http://cdn-www.airliners.net/aviation-photos/middle/3/8/9/1205983.jpg

Of course this is a whatif but in any case the Rebels were extremely lucky as Francisco Franco certainly proved to be a more than competent war-winner, a canny politician and a better-than-most administrator. What would have happened with either Sanjurjo or Mola surviving we can speculate only, but at least FF had proof.

 

Poor piggy...

Pig War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Pig War was a confrontation in 1859 between American and British authorities over the boundary between the United States and British North America. The specific area in dispute was the San Juan Islands, which lie between Vancouver Island and the North American mainland. The Pig War, so called because it was triggered by the shooting of a pig, is also called the Pig Episode, the San Juan Boundary Dispute or the Northwestern Boundary Dispute. The pig was the only "casualty" of the war, making the conflict essentially bloodless.

That would make a great "war" movie:

"For several days, the British and U.S. soldiers exchanged insults, each side attempting to goad the others into firing the first shot, but discipline held on both sides, and thus no shots were fired."

 

Different types of troops have always had a healthy contempt for their fellows in other branches of the service. An unknown british infantryman in Wellington's army remarked that, "The thing you have to understand about cavalry is that most of the brains is in the horse."

History HUB | Anecdotes

A British Admiral with the Royal Navy in the Baltic during the Crimean War, ordered a new Russian mine brought aboard the flagship for examination. Remarking that, "This must be how you set the devilish thing off", he struck it on one of the horns....

 

BEF in WW1

The Kaiser had apparently described the force as "contemptibly little", referring to its size, but it got reported as "contemptible". The name stuck and the BEF proudly referred to themselves as the 'Old Contemptibles'.

No evidence of such an order was ever found in the German archives after the war, and the ex-Kaiser denied having said it:

"On the contrary, I continually emphasised the high value of the British Army, and often, indeed, in peace-time gave warning against underestimating it."

The order was, it seems, created by Frederick Maurice in the British War Office for propaganda purposes.

British Expeditionary Force - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Regarding the PEF (Portuguese expeditionary force) in WWI:

Did you know, tale tells that our artillery was the most feared troughout the war?
While all the others fell as barrages more or less concentrated ours was rather "random" so the enemy never knew where our shells would land... And neither did us. A mate of mine who is in the artillery branch of the army once told me an old saying common Portuguese infantry has: "Deus nos salve da nossa artilharia que com o inimigo podemos nós bem!" wich roughly translates to "God saves us from our Artillerie cause the enemy we can handle!"
Also, we gave everyone nicknames
I don't recall all but the french were called "Poiliu" and the Germans "papa Chucrute" (Sauerkraut eaters)



Cheers...

 

MacArthur and Patton in WW1 ( one version at least )

Army History Research

On September 12, beginning at 0100 hours, Allied guns unleashed a five-hour artillery barrage across the salient. Immediately following the bombardment, the doughboys of the 42nd, supported by Patton's 327th Tank Battalion, started toward their objectives.

MacArthur personally moved forward to maintain control of their units on the battlefield. By 0630, MacArthur was in the Sonnard Woods, 800 yards into enemy territory, where he was pushing forward elements of the 84th Brigade. At about that same time, Patton was advancing his command post to the town of Seicheprey, about 300 yards southwest of MacArthur's position. With reports coming in that some of his tanks were bogging down on the battlefield, Patton began heading northwest to assess the situation. His reaction to being shelled along the way was: "I admit that I wanted to duck and probably did at first, but soon saw the futility of dodging fate."

As Patton headed northwest to the town of Essey, MacArthur was making his way north through the Sonnard Woods to the same place. Halfway between the woods and the town, near a farmhouse, Patton spotted MacArthur on a small hill and walked over to him. It was then that the barrage started towards their position, and it was there that they stood, while everyone else ran for cover.

What they said to each other as the barrage approached has been a matter of controversy ever since. The participants themselves give varied accounts; the further from the incident, the more varied, and the incident has also been enriched by imaginary conversations. A careful analysis of the various accounts reveals an unfortunate tendency to accept fictitious accounts without question.

According to Patton's account, which he wrote four days after the encounter: "I met General MacArthur commanding a brigade, he was walking about too. I joined him and the creeping barrage came along towards us, but it was very thin and not dangerous. I think each one wanted to leave but each hated to say so, so we let it come over us. We stood and talked but neither was much interested in what the other said as we could not get our minds off the shells." Patton wrote this account as part of a six-page letter to his wife, which, despite all it's bombast, managed to be magnanimous to MacArthur's unwillingness to seek shelter: "I was the only man on the front-line except for General MacArthur who never ducked a shell."

MacArthur's version of the story is more convoluted. In his memoirs, Reminiscences, completed forty-seven years after the fact, MacArthur dedicates only two sentences to the story: "We were followed by a squadron of tanks, which soon bogged down in the heavy mud. The squadron was commanded by an old friend, who in another war was to gain world-wide fame, Major George S. Patton." MacArthur's memoirs are a bit self-serving and tend to mention everyone's failings but his own. Thus, it is no surprise that the only thing he mentioned about Patton were his tank problems. He also erred by referring to Patton as a major when he was actually a lieutenant colonel. As for calling Patton his "old friend," historian Martin Blumenson suggests that the old Army was so small that most officers referred to other officers as 'friend' even if they had never met.

However:

The chance encounter between Patton and MacArthur is one of those unique scenes of war recorded for history. It is easy to envision these two giants of military history standing among the explosions while all around them, men ran for cover. Unfortunately, exactly what Patton and MacArthur said to each other that day as the German shells rained down will always remain a mystery.

 

Good luck was on Franco's side in his approach to Germany to send transport planes. His initial request for German aid had been coolly received by the Foreign Office. He decided to make a direct appeal to Hitler. A German businessman, Johannes Bernhardt, the head of an export arm which had close dealings with the Spanish army in Morocco and a member of the Nazi Party Foreign Organization (the Auslandsorganisation, or AO), had offered his help in mediation to Franco.

Hitler 1936-45: Nemesis by Ian Kershaw | Books | EducationGuardian.co.uk

 

THE USE OF MUSIC IN PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS

 

Battle of Guadalajara - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Guadalajara (8 March–23 March 1937) saw the Spanish Popular Army defeat Italian and Nationalist forces attempting to encircle Madrid during the Spanish Civil War.

Strategically, the Republican victory prevented the encirclement of Madrid, ending Franco's hopes of crushing the Republic with a decisive strike at its capital. On German advice Franco decided to adopt a new strategy of chipping away at the Republican territories, starting in the north.

More than anything, the Guadalajara was a severe blow to Italian morale and a personal loss of prestige for Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, who had personally orchestrated the deployment of the Italian army at Guadalajara in order to benefit from the glory of a successful offensive.The Italians lost some 6,000 men and a considerable number of light tanks and planes.

The tactical lessons of the battle were ambiguous and widely misinterpreted. The failure of the Italian offensive was thought to demonstrate the vulnerability of massed armoured advances in unfavourable conditions and against a coherent infantry defence. The French General Staff, in harmony with existing beliefs in the French Army, concluded that mechanized troops were not the decisive element of modern warfare and continued to shape their military doctrine accordingly. A notable exception from this view was Charles de Gaulle. The Germans escaped this conclusion by dismissing the Guadalajara failure as the product of Italian incompetence.

 

1937 November General Kutiepov, chief of the former Nationalist Russian Army in exile, is kidnapped by Communist agents on the streets of Paris, taken to Moscow and executed.

1937 December-January General Miller, General Kutiepov's successor, is kidnapped in Paris and later executed in Moscow.

Timebase Multimedia Chronography(TM) - Timebase 1937

 

Battle of Alesia - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Battle of Alesia or Siege of Alesia (September, 52 BC) took place around the Gallic oppidum of Alesia, a major town centre and hill fort of the Mandubii tribe. It was fought by the army of the Roman Republic commanded by Julius Caesar, aided by cavalry commanders Mark Antony, Titus Labienus and Gaius Trebonius, against a confederation of Gallic tribes united under the leadership of Vercingetorix of the Averni, and was the last major engagement between Gauls and Romans, marking the turning point of the Gallic Wars in favour of Rome.

At one point in the battle the Romans were outnumbered by the Gauls by five to one....

 

Following the decisive blow to Napoleon in 1815, a Morse-like message (delivered with powerful light beams), flashed across the English Channel: "Wellington defeated"!
Panic swept through the British nation and its Board of Trade collapsed. The cause of the terror? Much of the intended message - "Wellington defeated Napoleon at Waterloo" - had been obliterated by fog.

Anecdotage.Com - Thousands of true funny stories about famous people. Anecdotes from Gates to Yeats

 

Well, what do you know....

Post-war trial and Manstein:

"After four years in British custody without trial, Manstein was finally brought before a British military tribunal in Hamburg last August. Britons raised a £1,620 fund to help pay for his defense; Winston Churchill contributed £25."

The Last Defendant - TIME

 

Mukden Incident - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Mukden Incident of September 18, 1931, known in Japanese as the Manchurian Incident, occurred in southern Manchuria when a section of railroad owned by Japan's South Manchuria Railway, near Mukden (now Shenyang), was dynamited.The Imperial Japanese Army accused Chinese dissidents of the act, thus providing a pretext for the invasion of Manchuria. The incident represented an early event in the Second Sino-Japanese War, although full-scale war would not start until 1937.

And then...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo_Bridge_Incident

 

Saw a document on Roman emperor Constantine.

Interesting battle as it did so much to make Christianity the main religion in Western Europe...

Battle of the Milvian Bridge - Constantine at the Battle of Milvian Bridge

Maxentius opted to give battle and advanced his army to the Tiber River near the Milvian Bridge outside of Rome.On October 27, the night before the battle, Constantine claimed to have had a vision which instructed him fight under the protection of the Christian God. In this vision a cross appeared in the sky and he heard in Latin, "in this sign, you will conquer."

Advancing over the Milvian Bridge, Maxentius ordered it destroyed so that it could not be used by the enemy. He then ordered a pontoon bridge constructed for his own army's use. On October 28, Constantine's forces arrived on the battlefield. Attacking, his troops slowly pushed back Maxentius' men until their backs were at the river.

Seeing that the day was lost, Maxentius decided to retreat and renew the battle closer to Rome. As his army withdrew, it clogged the pontoon bridge, its only avenue of retreat, ultimately causing it to collapse. Those trapped on the north bank were either captured or slaughtered by Constantine's men. With Maxentius' army split and decimated, the battle came to a close. Maxentius' body was found in the river, where he had drowned in an attempt to swim across.

 

Mussolini

Benito Mussolini


His first international crisis as head of Italy made him an Italian hero. The crisis was a border dispute between Greece and Albania. Mussolini sent several men to the area representing Italy as part of an International Commission to dispute the issue. On August 23, 1923, all the Italians were murdered and discovered in Greek territory. In a rage, Mussolini sent the Greek government a list of demands, including a public apology, immediate inquiry into the killings, death sentence to those convicted and payment of 50 million Lira within 5 days. The Greeks refused the demand, since they did not know if it was Greeks who committed the murders.

Mussolini ordered the Italian navy to bombard Corfu (Kerkyra) off the Greek coast. The shelling was then followed by an amphibious landing of Italian marines. After the League of Nations condemned the act, Mussolini threatened to pull Italy out of the League.

France, wanting Italy's support over the mineral rich Ruhr Valley, sided with Italy. As a result, the Conference of Ambassadors endorsed most of Italy's position. The Greek government gave in and agreed to Il Duce's demands. This victory was immediately followed by Mussolini sending elements of the Italian Esercito into the city of Fiume and annexing it from Yugoslavia. Mussolini was eventually made a British Knight of the Bath, but that was canceled in August of 1940.

 

On 5th September 1914, the underestimated U-boat was finally able to show its deadly potential and draw first blood. With the first life torpedo fired by a submarine in wartime, Kptlt. Otto Hersing from SM U 21 hit the British light cruiser HMS Pathfinder (3,000 tons) off the Firth of Forth on a calm, sunlit day. The cruiser sank within minutes with heavy loss of life. Hersing, who was to become one of Germany's leading U-boat aces, remained in command of SM U 21 for 3 years and conducted 21 war patrols, during which he sank 36 ships, including two battleships and two cruisers. Considering the continuing strain and stress connected with the unique position of a U-boat commander, this achievement must be regarded as outstandingly remarkable.

This striking first appearance of the submarine in war time history was even surpassed on 22nd September 1914, when SM U-9 (Kptlt. Otto Weddigen) sank the three cruisers HMS Aboukir, Hogue and Cressy (12,000 tons each) off the Hook of Holland in 75 mins.
1,460 British sailors died in this world shattering demonstration of the U-boat's terrible capabilities.

uboat.net - The History - World War One

When the year 1914 came to an end, U-boats had sunk eight secondary warships and ten merchants (20,000 tons) at the loss of 5 U-boats.

 

Some nice insignia and the usual pilot humour as well....

STORMO! Camouflage and Insignia of FIAT CR 32s in the Balearic Islands Part I by Stefano Lazzaro