Category: Military History

First World War ambulance trains

First World War ambulance trains

by | Sep 28, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 6 minutes
The railways, and the men and women who worked on them, made a significant and varied contribution during the First World War. Some railwaymen joined up to fight, and others helped to run the railways in France and Belgium, delivering men and supplies to the front line. One requirement considered early on in 1914 was the necessity of having to treat sick and wounded servicemen urgently, and the task of moving them away from the Front to hospitals and other places of recuperation.

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Ukraine war: how Gorbachev’s 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin

Ukraine war: how Gorbachev’s 1987 INF missile treaty has limited the arsenal available to Putin

by | Sep 27, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 4 minutes
Thanks to the final Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, who has died aged 91, a disarmament treaty has denied Vladimir Putin thousands more missiles which he could have ordered to be used against Ukraine. Russian forces attacking Ukraine have not been able to use land-based missiles with ranges of between 500km and 5,500km because this entire category of weapons was scrapped under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which the former Soviet leader was instrumental in establishing.

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Maths swayed the Battle of Jutland – and helped Britain keep control of the seas

Maths swayed the Battle of Jutland – and helped Britain keep control of the seas

by | Sep 21, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
If you’re about to fight a battle, would you rather have a larger fleet, or a smaller but more advanced one? One hundred years ago, on May 31 1916, the British Royal Navy was about to find out if its choice of a larger fleet was the correct one. At the Battle of Jutland – as the major naval battle of World War I is known in English – these choices were unusually influenced by mathematics.

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The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)

The story of HMT Empire Windrush (1930–1954)

by | Sep 18, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
This june will mark the 75th anniversary of the arrival of HMT Empire Windrush at Tilbury Harbour, carrying on board some 800 passengers who gave their last country of residence as somewhere in the West Indies, and many of whom would migrate as workers and would settle in Britain and help steer its economic recovery after the Second World War. But this was only one journey in the vessel’s history and this article examines its colourful, chequered, and varied life since its maiden voyage was made in 1931 to its sinking in 1954.

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Have humans always gone to war?

Have humans always gone to war?

by | Sep 5, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The question of whether warfare is encoded in our genes, or appeared as a result of civilisation, has long fascinated anyone trying to get to grips with human society. Might a willingness to fight neighbouring groups have provided our ancestors with an evolutionary advantage? With conflicts raging across the globe, these questions have implications for understanding our past, and perhaps our future as well.

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Pickett’s Charge: What modern mathematics teaches us about Civil War battle

Pickett’s Charge: What modern mathematics teaches us about Civil War battle

by | Aug 31, 2023 | , , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The Battle of Gettysburg was a turning point in the American Civil War, and Gen. George Pickett’s infantry charge on July 3, 1863, was the battle’s climax. Had the Confederate Army won, it could have continued its invasion of Union territory. Instead, the charge was repelled with heavy losses. This forced the Confederates to retreat south and end their summer campaign.

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Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943

Black troops were welcome in Britain, but Jim Crow wasn’t: the race riot of one night in June 1943

by | Aug 28, 2023 | , | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
More a mutiny than a battle, it led to the death of Private William Crossland in nearby Mounsey Road, and four other injuries to black American soldiers in a five-hour confrontation which spread from the thatched Olde Hob Inn at one end of the town to the Adams Hall army camp, where from early 1943 the US Eighth Army Quartermaster Truck Company, a black company apart from a few white officers, had been based. The event was officially downplayed, in order not to undermine morale on the home front, but the events of that night led to the conviction of 27 black American soldiers.

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Remembering Long Tan: Australian army operations in South Vietnam 1966–1971

Remembering Long Tan: Australian army operations in South Vietnam 1966–1971

by | Aug 22, 2023 | | 0

Reading time: 5 minutes
The anniversary of Long Tan reminds most Australians that despite winning that iconic high intensity battle, the Australians and New Zealanders lost the Vietnam War. In fact, the First Australian Task Force (1ATF) fought at least 16 big battles, and through superior firepower from artillery, armor and airpower, won them all, sometimes by a narrow margin.

But most of the struggle in Phuoc Tuy province and South Vietnam was a prolonged low intensity guerrilla war. The big battles only mattered if the US and her allies had lost them, as big battle success allowed the allies to stay in the War. Enemy defeats just forced the enemy to revert to low intensity guerrilla war, which the allies had to control if they were to win.

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