Fifty yards from Richard Nixon’s grave, which sits not quite in the shadow of the modest home where he was born, a series of exhibits at his presidential library describe him as a psychologically unbalanced fool.
The Nixon White House, museum display panels announce, was consumed by “a climate of deep suspicion”. The infamous Plumbers took action against “perceived political opponents within the Federal Government”. A video display allows visitors to choose clips on the theme of Nixon’s “Conspiracy Thinking”. Paranoid, the president mindlessly lashed out at enemies that he hallucinated. This is still the official history, in museum exhibits curated by the National Archives and Records Administration.
On Friday morning, the consistently pro-Nixon docents hadn’t heard about the important Feb. 8 story in The New York Times that describes a plot within the government to spy on the Nixon White House, with Navy Yeoman Charles Radford stealing documents and sending them to the Pentagon as insurance against budget and policy meddling from the person serving as the president of the United States.
The revelation from a newly declassified document, longtime journalist James Rosen concluded, “bears directly on allegations by President Trump and his supporters about the existence of what was once called the permanent bureaucracy, better known today as the ‘deep state’. … Nixon proved to a team of federal prosecutors and grand jurors not only that such a beast existed but also that he, guilty as he was in Watergate, had been its victim.”
Chris Bray, “The Nixon Library Is Wrong About Nixon And The Deep State”, The Federalist, 2026-02-13.
June 6, 2026
QotD: Richard Nixon – more sinned against than sinning?
June 5, 2026
The First Ever British SLR: Serial Number One L1A1 Explained
Royal Armouries
Published Jan 14, 2026The L1A1 Self-Loading Rifle is one of the most iconic service rifles in British military history and on this week’s episode we have the very first one ever produced.
Next week: an original Royal Small Arms Factory archive film found by our archive team showing how the L1A1 was made.
0:00 Intro
0:46 Serial Number One Explained (UE57 Alpha 1)
1:40 Factory Plaque, Proof Marks & Enfield Details
4:26 Condition, Finish & Standard Configuration
5:17 Distinctive British L1A1 Features
7:08 Controls, Ergonomics & Fire Selector Choices
10:35 Why the L1A1 Won & Closing ThoughtsThis week’s object’s collections online page: https://royalarmouries.org/collection…
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June 3, 2026
China’s pirate fishing fleets
John Carter was really impressed with a recent self-published novel by Frank Kidd, and takes the time to set up the real-life situation the novel imagines being kinetically addressed:
A few years ago a photograph taken by a pilot over the Pacific went viral. It showed a mysterious red glow spreading ominously out over the water.
Initially people thought it was aliens, and to be fair, they weren’t far off. The glow belonged to the closest thing humanity has yet invented to a Tyranid hive fleet: a Chinese fishing fleet raping the seas in search of seafood. The glow is from huge banks of LEDs, which the ships use to draw marine life to the surface, where they trawl it up with nets. Much, maybe even most of the indiscriminate catch is discarded.
China has over half a million fishing vessels. Their vast fleets comprise thousands of ships, and can often be seen from orbit.
The triangular lights inside the red circle are a Chinese fishing fleet.
China has long since eaten its way through its own territorial waters, and therefore sends its fleets out into the rest of the world’s oceans. As a rule marine life is much more abundant close to the shore, since this is where most of the nutrients are. Fishing in another country’s territorial waters is illegal under international law. The Chinese do not care. Their fleets park just on the edge of a country’s Economic Exclusion Zone, and then turn off their Automatic Identification System transponders so that they can sneak inside and poach. Turning off an AIS transponder is also illegal: maritime law requires these to be activated at all times, for collision avoidance and search and rescue. Organizations which track this regularly observe Chinese ships on EEZ borders disappearing from the AIS network, and reappearing a few hours later on the right side of the border.
Here we see the scum pillaging the ocean around the Galapagos. Yeah. I know. Billions must die.
The consequences for local fishermen are disastrous: the Chinese scoop up all the fish, and lead the local fisheries towards ecosystem collapse. When they’re done pillaging they just move on, leaving an oceanic wasteland in their wake.
Environmental groups generally don’t seem very bothered about this, perhaps because the ocean is a CO2 sink whether or not there are fish in it, and the only thing that matters about the environment is how much carbon is in the air. National governments are reluctant to take action, because they are often dependent upon Chinese investment for their economic growth. The only people who really seem to care are fishermen and Internet racists.
This is the set-up for Frank Kidd‘s immensely satisfying debut mercenary novel, Once Upon A Time In Argentina.
The Korean War Week 102 – American Bioweapons on Korean Soil? – June 2, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 2 Jun 2026The Chinese continue their campaign of accusing the US of practicing germ warfare in North Korea and Manchuria. Meanwhile in South Korea, Syngman Rhee has declared martial law in Pusan as part of his campaign to remain in power.
00:00 Intro
00:50 Recap
01:23 Germ Warfare Charges
11:17 Bull Boatner
15:34 Holding POWs
17:58 Summary
18:13 Conclusion
19:21 Call to Action
June 2, 2026
Rare & Unique Sightings From 100 French FR-F2 Sniper Rifles
Forgotten Weapons
Published Jan 12, 2026Today I had a chance to dig through no less than one hundred FR-F2 snipers brought in by Navy Arms. I found a number of interesting and unusual things in the process, including a number of three-digit serial numbered very early production examples and some renumbered guns. We’ll also be looking at the Scrome J8, the modern picatinny scope mounts for the FR-F2, and things like depot refurbishment markings.
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May 31, 2026
The Battle Of Jutland: How Britain Should Have “ANNIHILATED” Germany’s Fleet & Won EASILY
History Undone with James Hanson
Published 13 Dec 2024James Hanson is joined by Rear Admiral Dr Chris Parry and the YouTuber and naval historian @Drachinifel to discuss the Battle of Jutland. It was the largest naval battle of the First World War and the only time the British and German fleets went head to head.
So just how significant was it and should it have ended differently? This is History Undone.
May 30, 2026
“Bullying”
I was bullied as a kid. I hated it. Most kids experience it, and either hate it or embrace it as “how things are done” (most likely both). This is basic human nature across all cultures. It’s how we learn how to conform, or appear to conform, to cultural expectations. In a pre-urban environment, the community could only handle so many non-conformists — that is: close to zero — so nipping it in the bud with the children was a pro-survival/pro-communitarian mechanism. In modern urban environments, bullying still happens because it’s part of human nature rather than being how children learn how to cope with social situations.
We’ve even migrated the notion of suppressing “bullying” to the military, as InfantryDort explains:
Any man who thinks bullying is ubiquitously inappropriate has the survival instincts of a deer gazing longingly at headlights.
For most of human history, communities had weak formal institutions. Public ridicule, shaming, and ostracism were used to enforce norms.
Examples:
> Villages mocking chronic thieves.
> Military units humiliating cowards.
> Tradesmen ridiculing apprentices who refused to learn.The positive effect was often:
> Greater conformity to community standards.
> Faster correction of disruptive behavior.
> Stronger group cohesion.It hardens individuals to harsh environments when properly applied. And enforces societal norms we want and dissuades the ones we don’t.
The lack of bullying is how people grow up to adulthood and say things like “I’m gonna kill you and your whole family” at some political protest. And have it come out of their mouth as normal as breathing.
Because nobody ever stood them down in their formative years.
You’re a JAG. You think every problem has a legal solution. It doesn’t. You don’t understand the way the world works outside of the one the law has carefully curated for you. Made possible by people who’ve been using strength to coerce others for all of human history.
Let me spank the kids while you do the dishes.
May 29, 2026
Julius Caesar: the final verdict
Adrian Goldsworthy. Historian and Novelist
Published 29 Oct 2025This week the questions are all about Julius Caesar, and in particular:
What were his motives? Did he aim at reform/revolution from the start?
Also, how was he viewed by the wider population after the Ides of March?
QotD: What is volley fire and what is it for?
Volley fire can cover for the slow reload rate of guns or crossbows in two ways. The first are volley fire drills designed to ensure a continuous curtain of fire; the most famous of these is the “counter-march”, a drill where arquebuses or muskets are deployed several ranks deep (as many as six). The front rank fires a volley (that is, they all fire together) and then rush to the back of their file to begin reloading, allowing the next rank to fire, and so on. By the time the last rank has fired, the whole formation has moved backwards slightly (thus “counter” march) and the first rank has finished reloading and is ready to fire. The problem this is solving is the danger of an enemy, especially cavalry, crossing the entire effective range of the weapon in the long gap between shots. This, by the by, was the volley fire tactic that was being used in China with crossbows before gunpowder; I don’t know that anyone ever did volley-and-charge with crossbows, which lack the lethality of muskets.
The other classic use is volley-and-charge. Because firearms are very lethal but slow to reload, it could be very effective to march in close order right up to an enemy, dump a single volley by the entire unit into them to cause mass casualties and confusion and then immediately charge with pikes or bayonets to try to capitalize on the enemy being demoralized and confused. You can see variations on this tactic in things like the 17th century Highland Charge or the contemporary Swedish Gå–På (“go on”). By charging rather than waiting to reload, the attacker could take advantage of the high lethality of firearms without suffering the drawback of long reload times.
Crucially, note that volley-and-charge works because it compresses a lot of lethality into a very short time, which I suspect is why we don’t see it with bows or crossbows (but do see it with javelins, which may have shorter range and far fewer projectiles, but seem to have had higher lethality per projectile). As we’re going to see in a moment, the lethality of bows or crossbows against armored, shielded infantry – even in close order – was pretty low at any given moment and needed to add up over an extended period of shooting. By contrast, muskets were powerful enough to defeat most armor and thus to disable or kill basically anyone they hit, limited of course by reload time: with a reload time of as much as 30 seconds for earlier matchlocks, a line of musketeers might only be able to fire a few times at an advancing infantry unit (which might take two or three minutes to walk through effective range) and given the limited accuracy of smoothbore muskets, only the last shots would hit at a high level. By contrast, a unit doing volley-and-charge is compressing probably close to 50% of the lethality of sustained shooting, devastating moment and then immediately charging.
Putting that much lethality into a singular instant was valuable from a morale perspective and of course it enabled a unit to quick march through the enemy’s effective range, stopping only briefly to fire and charge, limiting losses from steady enemy fire. But as we’re going to see, the lethality of bows (and, to a significant extent, crossbows) was much lower and so couldn’t be effectively compressed into that single, devastating, confusing moment.2
Bret Devereaux, “Collections: Why Archers Didn’t Volley Fire”, A Collection of Unmitigated Pedantry, 2005-05-02.
- On drill and in particular, counter-march volley fire with crossbows, see Andrade, The Gunpowder Age (2016), 149-160.
- It also didn’t generate a smokescreen to help with the final rushing charge, whereas a musket-and-bayonet unit might benefit significantly from firing and then charging through and out of its own obscuring smoke into a terrified and confused enemy.
May 28, 2026
“Seamen tend to be wary of authority, unless it is wisely exercised”
In UnHerd, Peter Hitchens considers the plight of the Royal Navy, much diminished from its years (centuries, actually) of greatness:
Our own Royal Navy is famous for its mutinies, in HMS Bounty in 1789, at Spithead and the Nore in 1797, and most recently at Invergordon in 1931. It is a curious organisation, its hammocks once filled by the cruel Press Gangs kidnapping innocent men and forcing them to sea and possible death, its discipline for many years enforced by the cruel cat o’ nine tails and the occasional shooting of an admiral to encourage the others. But it stood between us and the world, without trying to take over the state, and it was very beautiful, and many of us loved it. In London and the big seaport cities, bluejackets in their Edwardian uniforms were still a common sight in my childhood. They were reassuring, not overbearing. Since 1901, when horses failed at the task, Navy men have pulled the gun carriage on which Royal coffins (and Churchill’s) have rested at state funerals, an extraordinarily moving sight. These were our defenders, upon whom, as Charles II’s Articles of War first proclaimed, “under the Good Providence of God, the safety, honour and welfare of this realm do chiefly depend”.
In an era when soldiers were often despised, or even feared, sailors were not. Think of Kipling’s 1890 poem “Tommy”, intended to change the drunken delinquent reputation of Queen Victoria’s redcoats:
For it’s “Tommy this, an’ Tommy that, an’ Chuck him out, the brute!”
But it’s “Saviour of ‘is country” when the guns begin to shoot.In George Orwell’s perfect novel Coming Up for Air, Edwardian civilians are appalled when a young man signs up for the Army: “‘Well now! Listed for a soldier! Just think of it! A fine young fellow like that!’ It just shocked them. Listing for a soldier, in their eyes, was the exact equivalent of a girl’s going on the streets.”
“HMS Victory in Portsmouth Harbour”
Painting by Charles Edward Dixon (1872-1934) via Wikimedia Commons.But sailors, possibly because they were at sea so much, were idealised as “hearts of oak” manning the wooden walls (and later the steel walls) of England. And the same was true for officers, credited above all with the great victory at Trafalgar in 1805, which secured national safety and prosperity for the rest of that century. They had a reputation for taciturnity and bluffness, which never does anyone any harm, and they often lived up to it. The fictional Jack Aubrey, in Patrick O’Brian’s witty and clever books about the Napoleonic wars, is a perfect rendering of this type. They tell terrible jokes. They don’t say much, just “Kiss me, Hardy” (Nelson as he died); “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today, Chatfield” (Beatty at Jutland, as British warships repeatedly blew up under German fire); and “Continue to engage the enemy” (Warburton-Lee at Narvik, dying on his bridge after smashing up Hitler’s destroyer fleet and so making a cross-Channel invasion impossible).
And so the word “Navy” had, for many years, a useful commercial magic if you were selling something a bit manly and bluff, such as Navy Cut tobacco and Navy Rum, or even Senior Service cigarettes. But it did not have the yelling, martinet character of the Army. I have never yet seen a naval officer’s uniform that fits properly, and when sailors are marched aboard their ships (does this still happen?), the drill is far from pernickety. Close contact with the Navy — both my parents were in it, and so were most of their friends, some of my schoolteachers and many of the parents of my schoolfellows — revealed a dry, faintly sarcastic view of the outside world which had never been to sea. Even my mother, an ocean-going snob who would die of shame if she heard me use the word “toilet”, had mastered the sarcasm of the fleet. More than once I jumped with surprise when I heard her icily remarking about some inadequate if feeble attempt at recompense. “Well, that’s damned nice of him”, she’d say, which, for a Fifties married middle-class woman in a respectable suburb, was going it a bit.
May 27, 2026
The Korean War Week 101 – Another Week, Another POW Riot – May 26, 1952
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 26 May 2026In the wake of the kidnapping of the Koje-Do POW camp commandant, UN Commander Mark Clark is busy really working on expanding security at all the POW camps in Korea and gaining total internal control of them. However, the damage done to the UN’s global reputation by the whole incident is considerable, and at the negotiating table the Communists denounce the UN and UN Chief Delegate Turner Joy leaves his post to return to the states. The war in the field goes on as always, with the Philippine Battalion Combat Team seeing success in the field.
The Real T26 “Tanker” M1 Garand
Forgotten Weapons
Published 5 Jan 2026The name “tanker” has been applied to shortened M1 Garand rifles for a long time and today we are looking at one of the rifles that was the genesis of that concept. It actually has nothing to do with tanks; the idea for a shortened M1 came from the Pacific Warfare Board of the US Army, looking for a handier weapon for jungle fighting. During 1944 when this idea was proposed, Springfield Arsenal was already independently working on the M1E5, a very similar paratrooper version of the M1. The PWB ordered the 6th Infantry Division in the Philippines to make 150 samples for testing, of which two were sent back to Springfield for testing.
In testing, the T26 showed the same problems as the M1E5 — excessive recoil, noise, and concussion. Despite this, 15,000 were recommended for production in the summer of 1945, but the war ended before any production actually took place. The name “tanker” came later, when companies started making cut-down Garands for commercial sale and thought that marketing them as specialized tanker weapons would help them sell.
Thanks to the Springfield Armory National Historic Site for giving me access to this truly unique specimen from their reference collection to film for you! Don’t miss the chance to visit the museum there if you have a day free in Springfield, Massachusetts: https://www.nps.gov/spar/index.htm
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May 25, 2026
George Washington “basically started the world’s first global war”
On his Substack, Ed West talks about a book he had intended to write, but “put it on the back burner” for too long and the moment has passed:
George Washington in the uniform of the Virginia Regiment, 1772.
Portrait by Charles Willson Peale (1741-1827) from the Washington and Lee University collection via Wikimedia Commons.
The story would start in the 1750s. The first truly world war is in full flow, as Britain and France battle for supremacy of the continent and the oceans. In North America, British colonial troops fight side by side with soldiers from the old country, who mock the bumpkin locals with their ditty “Yankee Doodle“. But, rivalries aside, they both know what they’re fighting for: if Louis XV’s absolute monarchy wins, all their liberties will be gone.
In a heroic battle the British regular and colonial forces take the French stronghold of Fort Duquesne and rename it Fort Pitt, after cabinet minister William Pitt “the elder” – it later becomes Pittsburgh. By 1763 the French are driven out of North America altogether. The British colonies are safe. One officer particularly shines during this war, and diarist Horace Walpole writes how “The volley fired by a young Virginian in the backwoods of America set the world on fire”.
That Virginian was George Washington. Born in Wakefield in Westmoreland County, this British hero was the great-grandson of an Essex clergyman thrown out of the church for drunkenness, and who had landed in that colony in 1657. Washington was an impressive man in every way – standing at 6’2″, with enormous hands and feet and a massive nose, he was notably strong and able to throw objects immense distances (although many of these accounts improved in the telling).
Despite having almost no teeth, like any good British patriot, Washington was very proper about his appearance, insisting on bringing a selection of fine linen shirts even into the backwoods. A conservative by nature and with ambitions to serve as an officer in His Majesty’s forces, he didn’t like the new fashion for shaking hands, preferring the more formal bow.
A major at 21, Washington’s first job was to lead his men into the Ohio Valley to warn away any Frenchmen they found there. The following year, 1754, and now a lieutenant-colonel, he went back and built Fort Necessity close to Fort Duquesne, where he stumbled upon a contingent of enemy troops. They ran for their muskets and Washington ordered his company to fire. Ten Frenchmen were killed, including their lieutenant, and the incident would spark a war in North America between the two great powers, which in 1756 linked up with a Europe-wide conflict later known as the Seven Years’ War. It’s strange to think that, as well as being the first president of a future global superpower, Washington basically started the world’s first global war.
But what if France had won that struggle? Would French-controlled colonies in North America have formed constitutions centred on the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not to mention the often-overlooked right to property? Would they have enshrined religious tolerance or the right to free speech? Trial by jury? Innocence until proven guilty? Hell, no! And if it wasn’t for us, my thesis went, you’d be speaking French.
Without England’s history of Parliamentary freedom, habeas corpus, Magna Carta and the jury system, the colonies would never have developed as they did. Neither would they have the same commercial spirit, downstream of their Puritan and Quaker inheritance.
I think I came up with the proposal after reading David Hackett Fischer’s Albion’s Seed, one of the most discussed and popular analyses of American culture. This great work of history and anthropology charts the foundation of the country’s cultural folkways through four migrations – East Anglian Puritans to New England, Cavaliers from England’s south and south-west to Virginia, the mostly northern Quakers to the middle colonies, and Borderers from Ulster to the Appalachians.
I was always very interested in founder effects, whereby colonies come to take on aspects of the mother country which subsequently disappear back home. This is reflected in the fact that many “Americanisms” are actually old English words, like fall, trash and garbage, even “gotten”. It’s also true to some extent of the American accent, developing out of various regional dialects which have since been flattened by the dominance of London. This is especially the case with Ocracoke Island in North Carolina, which apparently is the closest thing to Shakespearean English, although I fear that if I went there this would no longer be true, and they’d all say “like” four times in every sentence and tell you they’re “reaching out”.
Did The Taranto Raid Inspire Pearl Harbor?
TimeGhost Cartographic
Published 24 May 2026In November 1940, the British Royal Navy launched a daring carrier strike against the Italian fleet at Taranto. The attack shocked the world, crippled Italian naval power in the Mediterranean, and demonstrated just how devastating naval air power could be against battleships at anchor. But the consequences of Taranto didn’t end in Italy.
In this episode, we explore the aftermath of the raid, the race to understand how it had been achieved, and why military observers around the world paid such close attention to what happened there. From British convoy operations in the Mediterranean to Japanese investigations into shallow-water torpedo attacks, this episode examines how one raid would echo far beyond the harbor at Taranto.
How did the British make the attack possible? What lessons did foreign observers take away from it? And why did some nations react to the raid very differently than others?
CP-121 Tracker; carrier-borne ASW powerhouse turned aerial firefighter
Polyus
Published 31 Jan 2026This is an aircraft carrier borne submarine hunter, dressed up like a firefighter. Its story is one of Cold war posturing, coastal policing, and aerial firefighting. Quite the career for such an unassuming looking aircraft. It was the de Havilland Canada CP-121 Tracker, an icon of Canadian aviation for almost 60 Years.
0:00 Introduction
0:30 Historical Context
1:58 Tracker or Gannet?
4:26 Canadian built CS2F-1 Trackers
9:06 CS2F-2
10:23 CS2F-3
13:12 New roles
15:14 Marine Reconnaissance
16:10 Conair Firecat/Turbo Firecat
17:48 Conclusion
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