Maritime Foundation
Published 25 Oct 2015HMS Victory – In Her True Colours
Painting HMS Victory – Repainted in the true colours Nelson would have known.
Produced by Maritime Films UK (www.maritimefilmsuk.tv) for the National Museum of the Royal Navy.
World War Two
Published 1 Jul 2021During the occupation of South-East Asia, Japan builds a large system of institutionalised rape to “keep their soldiers happy”. Meanwhile, Allied refugees from Burma find a safe haven in India, but for some, hardship continues.
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Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Mar 2017This is a very rare Ross automatic pistol, patented in 1903 by Charles Ross, of the Ross Rifle Company in Quebec. It is a short recoil, toggle locked design, made for the .45 Ross proprietary cartridge (although efforts were made, unsuccessfully, to make a .45 ACP version for the US 1907 pistol trials).
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Kurt Schlichter offers a few questions that an American media with any credibility would already have been asking after Biden’s ramble about F-15 aircraft and nuclear weapons:
“2-35 Infantry Battalion, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division” by The U.S. Army is licensed under CC BY 2.0
“Are you saying that you would use bombers like F-15s against Americans? Would you ever use nuclear weapons against Americans?”
That seems like an important coule of threshold queries. Say “No” and you look like a fool. Say “Yes” and you’re a fool and a psycho.
“Mr. President, since using force against American citizens is on the table, can you tell us how many BCTs the American military has currently deployable within the United States? Do you know how many troops are in a brigade combat team? Do you understand the logistical needs of a BCT and its vulnerabilities in an insurgency environment?”
A “BCT” is a brigade combat team, 4,000-5,000 troops and the basic ground combat unit. Now, if you are going to pick a fight with 165 million Americans, specifically the half who like America and who own a whole bunch of those accursed AR-15s, you might wanna know how many dudes you have on your side first (I estimate about 80 active and reserve BCTs and equivalents in the whole active and reserve force, including the Marines). One might also want to understand why you would have problems using them here at home.
“How many BCTs do you think you would need to secure an urban area the size of Los Angeles. Didn’t it take three divisions, about 12 brigades, to secure it during the Riots? How long could you logistically support that?”
It did take three divisions (approximately 12 BCTs) to quell the riot in LA in 1992. I was there. Now, that was largely idiots burning and looting. What if the next time it is guys shooting back with evil AR-15s? And America is a zillion times bigger than Los Angeles. How do you hold all that ground? You don’t.
“Have your generals staffed exactly how many American military personnel they could count on to attack American citizens if you ordered it? What percentage do you believe would comply and why?”
Oh, awkward. I was informed – by them, the geniuses in the Pentagon – that “extremists in the ranks” are our gravest threat (except for the weather, of course), so I assume they will have analyzed the number of “extremists” in the ranks who would be averse to killing their own friends and family at the behest of coastal elitists and who would desert or go full Niedermeyer on the guys urging them to wage war on the American people. This would be a good number to have as a planning factor, since when 50% of his troops go *poof* overnight, it would mean a significant reduction in the *’s combat power.
“You mentioned F-15s. How many bombers of all types does the United States have deployable within the continental US? How many are operational? How many sorties could the military fly a day against American citizens? Can you explain how you would employ bombers to hold territory, like a city?”
Bombers are nice. But if they were decisive, you could walk around Kabul without a dozen guys with AKs keeping your Schumer safe. We bombed Afghanistan back into the Stone Age – albeit, it was not much of a trip, but the point remains. You control dirt by having a guy with a rifle standing on it, not plinking at targets from 30,000 feet. And speaking of targeting …
World War Two
Published 29 Jun 2021An extensive network of spies and radio operators are gathering intelligence and sending it to Moscow from Western Europe. They are a colourful group of people who go by the name of Die Rote Kapelle, or Red Orchestra.
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The Tank Museum
Published 11 Dec 2020Tank museum Historian David Fletcher discusses the Ferret Armoured Car, also commonly known as the Ferret Scout Car. Built between 1952 and 1972 by Daimler, the Ferret was pressed into service in a reconnaissance role and saw service with the British Army, RAF and multiple commonwealth countries throughout its service life.
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The Japanese Nakajima B5N “Kate” (235mph, 1 x 7.7mmm mg, 1760lbs torpedo or bombs, 1,075 mile range) torpedo bomber had been introduced in 1941, and was the mainstay of the early years of the wartime Japanese carrier operations. It had good range, was reliable, and had a good payload. But it still lacked armour or self-sealing fuel tanks. As a result it was desperately vulnerable to daytime operations against reasonable fighter opposition.
Almost exactly the same could be said for the American Douglas Dauntless dive bomber (255mph, 2 x 0.5 and 2 x 0.3 mg, 1,200lbs bombs, 1,115 mile range). Arrived at the same time, same strengths, similar weaknesses. Like all American aircraft it could absorb considerably more damage than any Japanese plane, but like all daylight attack aircraft, its top speed made it a sitting duck against organized fighter defenses. The greatest success of the Dauntless was at Midway, where the sacrificial run of the TBD Devastator torpedo bombers fortuitously arrived just far enough in advance to pull the entire Japanese fighter cover away and allow the Dauntlesses exactly the sort of unopposed attacks that the theoretically inferior Japanese “Val” dive bombers had enjoyed at Ceylon and Coral Sea. The increased success of the Dauntless later in the war was in direct parallel to the increased ability of American fighters to clear a path. By the time of the sinking of the Yamato in 1945, Dauntless formations always had almost completely unopposed runs. (Perhaps that is why it continued in operation when every other contemporary aircraft had been replaced?)
Nigel Davies, “Comparing naval aircraft of World War II”, rethinking history, 2010-12-20.
Forgotten Weapons
Published 2 Mar 2018The R75A was the last version of Colt’s commercial BAR, with 832 made between August and December of 1942 for the Netherlands Purchasing Commission. It was a derivative of the commercial R75 BAR, with a pistol grip, magazine well cover, and ejection port cover. The R75A added on a folding bipod and a detachable barrel functionality, albeit not of the most elegant sort. To remove the barrel, one first used the lever under the muzzle to detach the gas block from the barrel by sliding it rearwards. Then a tool or cartridge tip was used to pry open the barrel locking lever at the front of the receiver, which then allowed the barrel to be rotated about 60 degrees to unlock its interrupted threads and remove it.
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World War Two
Published 26 Jun 2021Fall Blau, the huge Axis summer offensive in the Soviet Union, is supposed to being this, but is postponed to next. The smaller Operation Fridericus II does begin though, and what does Josef Stalin make of that and the intelligence he’s received? Meanwhile in North Africa, after the fall of Tobruk, the British 8th Army gets a leadership change, but Erwin Rommel is still on the move eastward into Egypt. Where will the Allies try to hold him? Half the world away, the Allies begin to establish a base at Milne Bay, New Guinea. It’s a start, a small one, but a start.
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From The Line‘s weekend wrap-up post, a reminder that the top leadership of the Canadian Armed Forces and the government are still embroiled in scandal:
Canadian Defence Minister (at least for the moment) Harjit Sajjan during his pre-ministerial career.
In other news, your Line editors continue to think that not enough of you are tuned in to the sexual misconduct scandal still roiling the Canadian Armed Forces. Yes, yes, we know the military is this weird, complicated thing that no one really pays much attention to in this country. But you really ought to be.
You all know the basic outline already: sexual harassment and assault is a major problem in the armed forces. In 2015, former Supreme Court justice Marie Deschamps completed a major report into the issue, and recommended sweeping changes. A few of the changes were made, but the report was mostly immediately assigned dust-collector status and forgotten. That would be bad enough, but what really gave this life was that the Trudeau government — specifically, National Defence Minister Harjit Sajjan — was given a heads-up that Gen. Jonathan Vance, the country’s top military officer, was himself accused of misconduct. And the PMO found a way to bend the nature of the space-time continuum as they contorted and twisted their way out of having to do anything about it.
It’s a horrific look for a government that considers itself feminist, especially when the guy at the top has some baggage of his own. The Liberals did what Liberals do — said they should have done better and circled the wagons. Accountability is for chumps, after all. This week, Gregory Lick, the ombudsman for the Canadian Armed Forces — a position that exists to give serving members of the armed forces a place to go with complaints within their chains of command — took aim at his own chain of command — Minister Sajjan, saying that his reporting structure has to be changed because Sajjan, frankly, ain’t interested in hearing about problems that the Liberals find awkward.
Here’s Lick:
The collective actions or, in some cases, the inaction of senior political, military and civilian leadership within the government have eroded trust within the defence community … When leaders turn a blind eye to our recommendations and concerns in order to advance political interests and their own self-preservation or career advancement, it is the members of the defence community that suffer the consequences … It is clear that inaction is rewarded far more than action. In the four months since the most recent outbreak of multiple accusations of sexual misconduct, the actions of the minister of National Defence, senior government and military officials have bitterly proved this point. The erratic behaviour of leadership defies common sense or reason. The concept of ministerial accountability has been absent.
Folks, trust us when we tell you that by the standard of Ottawa bureaucratese, that statement is blistering. Lick is directly targeting Sajjan with that last sentence. Translated into normal Canadian English, Lick is accusing Sajjan of inaction in the face of obvious problems.
[…]
What was it that Lick said about ministerial accountability again? About inaction? Oh dear, it’s totally slipped our little ole minds. Probably nothing important!
More seriously: We don’t expect much to come from this. From any of it, or from all of it. Firing Sajjan would require Trudeau to admit he’d fell short, and, well, we all know this guy is way more comfortable apologizing for stuff that happened a century before he was born than he ever is admitting he himself screwed up. Apologies are just a subset of performance art for Trudeau, not actual admissions of failure and expressions of regret. But let’s not mistake what has happened here. A slew of senior military officers have quit or been removed. The PMO has been singed. Sajjan has been directly called out, and his own assistant implicated.
There is no mystery here. Canadians have been told there is rot in the government, and that our men and women in uniform are suffering for it while Trudeau looks the other way. And you’ll have to get used to that, too.
The Northern Historian
Published 5 Mar 2021On the 25th of November 1941, the Royal Navy’s 1st Battle Squadron consisting of HMS Queen Elizabeth, HMS Valiant and HMS Barham along with eight destroyers were on a hunt in the central Mediterranean looking for Italian convoys.
Also on the hunt was a German U-Boat and their paths were on a collision course. A collision that would send HMS Barham to the floor of the Mediterranean Sea along with over 800 of her crew.HMS Barham had begun her service with the Royal Navy during World War 1 and played a role during the Battle of Jutland.
Following World War 1, HMS Barham had several refits and operated in the Atlantic Fleet and the Mediterranean Fleet during the inter-war years.
During World War 2, HMS Barham took part in the the Battle of Dakar before taking part in escort convoys in the Mediterranean.
In November of 1941, during an escort mission, HMS Barham was attacked by U Boat U-331 under the command of Hans-Diedrich von Tiesenhausen.
The attack caused a huge explosion in her magazine and rapidly sank, killing over 800 men.
World War Two
Published 24 Jun 2021When nuclear fission was discovered, scientists theorized it could be used in an atomic bomb. Thus, the American Army sets up one of the biggest research projects in history: The Manhattan Project.
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Forgotten Weapons
Published 10 Mar 2021http://www.patreon.com/ForgottenWeapons
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When the British military transitioned from the .303 British cartridge to 7.62mm NATO in the 1950s, it replaced the Enfield rifles with the new L1A1 SLR (the FAL) but retained the Bren gun as a support weapon. The Bren was updated to use 7.62mm, in a process more complicated than most people would think. Ultimately, only a few thousand L4 series Brens were made, as they were rather quickly supplanted by the FN MAG as a belt-fed support weapon.
The four different patterns of L4 are:
L4A1 – the initial pattern, without magazine supports
L4A2 – the Bren MkIII in 7.62mm with magazine supports
L4A3 – the Bren MkII in 7.62mm with magazine supports
L4A4 – the A2 and A3 patterns with chrome-lined barrelsContact:
Forgotten Weapons
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The Cold War
Published 31 Aug 2019Our series on the history of the Cold War period continues with a documentary explaining the political background of the First Arab-Israeli War of 1948.
To learn about the military events of this conflict, go to the Kings and Generals channel
Consider supporting us on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/thecoldwar
World War Two
PUblished 22 Jun 2021What aircraft are being sent out by commanders like Hermann Göring and Arthur Harris to blitz and firebomb enemy cities? Watch the video to learn the specs of the Handley Page Halifax, Avro Lancaster, Junkers Ju-88, Dornier Do-17, Dornier Do-217, and Heinkel He-111 as they fly in their respective 1,000 Bomber Raids and Baedeker Blitz.
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