World War Two
Published Nov 8, 2023Indy takes a look at the armoured beasts battling it out on the Western Front. On the German side we have vehicles like the long-serving Panzer IV, the sleek and modern Panther, and the obnoxiously heavy King Tiger. These are arrayed against the American stalwart, the M4 Sherman, and British tanks like the up-gunned Firefly, Cromwell, and Churchill.
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February 5, 2024
Western Front Tank Warfare 1944
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February 4, 2024
Is the Red Army too fast for its own good? – WW2 – Week 284 – February 3, 1945
World War Two
Published 3 Feb 2024Soviet forces have reached the old German border in force, however, logistical issues and a strong enemy presence possibly threatening their flanks means that a drive on Berlin may not be doable just now. Heinrich Himmler is in charge of the new Army Group to defend the Reich, and he has a host of problems. On the Western Front, the Allies finally eliminated the Colmar Pocket, and in the Philippines, the American advance reaches Manila, and the battle for the city is about to begin.
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Civil strife in Spain before the full civil war broke out
Niccolo Soldo continues his in-depth look at the situation in Spain leading up to the outbreak of the civil war in 1936. It’s clear that bloodshed was in the immediate future — so much so that it’s almost surprising that it took as long as it did for the war to start in earnest:
Flag of Spain during the Second Spanish Republic (1931-1939).
Image by SanchoPanzaXXI via Wikimedia Commons.
In 1930, almost half of all Spaniards over the age of 10 were illiterate. The country was still overwhelmingly agrarian, with a small number of very wealthy landowners owning about 2/3rds of all the arable land in Andalusia alone, employing almost a million landless campesinos at barely subsistence-level wages. Industry was almost entirely found only in the north and northeast. Industrialization was beginning to pick up pace by the turn of the century, but was still very far behind the rest of Western Europe by the time the Second Spanish Republic came into being in 1931.
Despite Spain having one foot in the past, its other foot was in the present, a present that was rapidly changing and very unstable politically. The loss of confidence in King Alfonso XIII on the part of the middle and upper classes led to his abdication which opened the door to the establishment of the Second Republic, a democracy in a time when democracy itself was under attack throughout Europe, having already lost in Russia and Italy, and on its way to disappearing in other countries, most notably Germany.
The end of the monarchy was celebrated throughout the country (with some exceptions), but not always for the same reason. Yes, anti-monarchist forces viewed the monarchy as retrograde and out of step with the modern era, but only the liberals and various republican parties were committed to democracy and parliamentary politics. The Socialists (PSOE) for example, were riven by factionalism and a generational divide whereby there were those who sought to use power in office to both settle scores with their old enemies in the military, the landowning class, and especially the Catholic Church, and to actually launch a revolution along Marxist lines. For them, the Second Republic was a vehicle for a larger goal, and not an end goal in and of itself. Anarchists celebrated the end of the monarchy, but they were opposed to any and all government on principle. For Anarchists, the Second Republic was also a path towards revolution as well. For Catalan separatists, the Spanish Second Republic was a stepping-stone towards independence, or at least towards as much political and economic autonomy as possible.
Conservatives were in a state of disarray upon the establishment of the Second Republic. Despite this condition, all the factions that could be grouped as “conservatives” largely supported the new regime … at least at the outset. Once the agenda of the first government of the Second Republic was made public, opposition began to harden.
Rather than trying to generate a grand consensus among the various factions that dominated Spanish politics, economics, and society in 1931, the liberals, republicans, and socialists who led the country from 1931-33 instead chose to attack the core interests of their political rivals to the right. The military was to be slashed via the retirement of a large number of its officer class, land was to be seized from wealthy landowners in order to redistribute it to the poor and landless, and the Catholic Church was to be stripped of its role in educating young Spaniards, with the Jesuits expelled from the country altogether, and many churches, convents, monasteries, episcopal residences, parish houses, seminaries, etc. expropriated by the Spanish state. Private Catholic schools were also expropriated and turned into government-run ones instead. The Church was also forced to pay taxes and was banned from all industry and trade, “… enforced with strict police severity and widespread mob violence”.
These attacks on the Catholic Church (which also saw the torching of churches, monasteries, and convents in 1931 as we saw in the previous entry in this series) resulted in the release of a Papal Encyclical by Pope Pius XI on June 5, 1933 entitled “Dilectissima Nobis“. In this encyclical, Pius XI decries the persecution of the Church in Spain, and asks Spanish Catholics to defend themselves and the Church from attacks by the government. He describes the attacks as “… [an] offense not only to Religion and the Church, but also to those declared principles of civil liberty on which the new Spanish regime declares it bases itself”. As we already saw previously, then-Minister of War in the Spanish cabinet, Manuel Azaña, famously declared that “All the convents in Spain are not worth a single Republican life“.
There was no attempt to build a solid democratic foundation for the Second Republic whatsoever. Instead, a cultural revolution was quickly ushered in, and an agrarian revolution was threatened, but only implemented half-heartedly. The first government of the Second Spanish Republic managed to alienate the military, the landowning class, conservatives, and the Catholic Church overnight.
On the other side of the political divide, the centrists were attacked from the left for not going far enough, fast enough. Campesinos and small landowners demanded immediate expropriation of latifundia estates to be redistributed to them. The youth wing of the PSOE urged the nationalization of all industry, which led to factionalism within the socialist groupings. Less radical socialists pointed to the extension of voting rights to women, to the enshrining of the eight hour workday in law, and to the increase in wages for industry workers as the biggest successes of the first two years of the Second Republic. These radical factions were not content with these incremental gains, and demanded “more, now!”
This radicalism culminated in the “Casas Viejas Incident”, which I described in the previous entry:
Staying true to form, the anarchists were restless and, as is their nature, opposed the present government in Spain as they opposed all governments, viewing them as inherently oppressive. Their massive labour union, CNT, led by the vanguard of FAI, began demonstrations in various locations across the country, with the greatest actions taking place in Andalusia. Political violence ensued, with two Civil Guards wounded. The Assault Guards, set up by the new Constitutional authorities in the Republic to provide a new force to purportedly protect those who lacked protection under the Monarchy, raided the village of Casas Viejas near Cadiz. They encountered a group of anarchists locked in a house and set fire to it (while disarming others in the village who were armed), and then executed them.
This act of state violence was committed not by fascists, nationalists, royalists, or even conservatives. It was committed by a liberal-socialist regime and its purposely-created security force, against anarchists. All the parties involved in this incident would find themselves on the same side in the not-too-distant Spanish Civil War.
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Johnson LMG: History & Disassembly
Forgotten Weapons
Published Feb 29, 2016The Johnson light machine gun is one of the lesser-known US military machine guns of WWII, although it seems to have been very popular with all those who used it in combat. Melvin Johnson made a commendable attempt to get his rifles adopted by the US military, but was unable to unseat the M1 Garand as American service rifle. However, he did make a significant sale of both rifles and light machine guns to the Dutch colonial army.
By the time those Dutch guns were ready to ship, however, the Japanese had overrun most of the Dutch islands. The guns were thus basically sitting on the docks with nowhere to go, and at that point the US Marine Corps took possession of them. Because of their short recoil action and quickly removable barrels, the Johnson guns were ideal for airborne Paramarines, and saw use in the Pacific with these forces. They were also used by the joint US/Canadian First Special Service Force in Italy.
In many ways, the Johnson LMG is similar to the German FG-42, although with more emphasis on full-auto use instead of shoulder rifle use. It fired from a closed bolt in semiauto and from an open bolt in full auto, and had a bipod both effective, light, and easily detachable. Overall the Johnson is a light, handy, and very easily dismantled weapon, and its popularity with combat troops seems well deserved.
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February 3, 2024
A Day in Ancient Rome
toldinstone
Published Nov 10, 2023Following Marcus Aurelius on the day of his final triumph.
Chapters:
0:00 Another day
1:05 Petitions
3:12 Breakfast
3:51 The Triumph
4:44 Romanis Magicae
5:37 Artifacts of the wars
7:09 Caesar, you are mortal
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February 2, 2024
The Sad Story of Churchill’s Iceman, Geoffrey Pyke
World War Two
Published Jan 31, 2024Geoffrey Pyke is remembered as an eccentric scientist who spewed out ideas like giant aircraft carriers made of icy Pykerete. But there was much more to him than that. He was a spy, a special operations mastermind, and his novel ideas contributed to the success of D-Day.
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February 1, 2024
The Kohima Epitaph: Britain’s Forgotten Battle That Changed WW2
The History Chap
Published 9 Nov 2023What is the Kohima Epitaph and what has it got to do with Britain’s forgotten battle that changed the Second World War? Well, those of you living in the UK and who attend Remembrance Sunday services will probably know the words even if you don’t know the story behind them:
“When you go home, tell them of us and say,
For your tomorrow, We gave our today.”The memorial which bears those powerful words, stands in a cemetery containing the graves over over 1,400 British servicemen and memorials to over 900 Indian troops who died alongside them. They died in one of the bloodiest, toughest, grimmest battles of the Second World War. A battle sometimes called the “Stalingrad of the East.”
Outnumbered 6:1 and half of whom were from non-combat units, the multi-national British garrison stood their ground in bloody hand-to-hand fighting, refusing to retreat or surrender for two weeks until relieved. And even then the battle continued for another vicious month. That stand stopped the Japanese invasion of India in its tracks and turned the tide of the war in South East Asia. Both for its ferocity and its turning point in the war, it has been called: “Britain’s greatest battle”.
The Japanese lost 53,000 men from their army of 85,000.
The British (14th Army) lost 4,000 men killed and wounded.This forgotten victory was made possible by General William (Bill) Slim commanding the 14th Army. Rather like the battle and the 14th Army, General Slim has not received the recognition that he is due. And yet, it is almost completely forgotten. Rather like the army that fought against the Japanese in Burma.
So, as we near Remembrance Sunday, I think it is time to reveal the story of the Battle of Kohima in 1944.
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January 31, 2024
The rise of the “Technical”
Kulak at Anarchonomicon considers the innovation and adaptability that Chad’s ragtag forces displayed in the late 1980s to drive Libyan forces out of their territory, specifically the military use of Toyota pickup trucks as improvised gun carriages:
The Great Toyota War of 1987 was the final phase of the Chadian-Libyan conflict. Gadhafi’s Libyan forces by all rights should have dominated the vast stretches of desert being fought over: the Chadian military was less than a 3rd the size of the Libyan, and the Libyans were vastly better equipped fielding hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, in addition to dozens of aircraft … to counter this the Chadians did something unique … They mounted the odds and ends heavy weapons systems they had in the truck beds of their Toyota pickups, and using the speed and maneuverability of the Toyotas, managed to outperform Libya’s surplus tanks and armored vehicles. By the end of the Chadian assault to retake their northern territory, the Libyans had suffered 7500 casualties to the Chadians 1000, with the Libyan defeat compounded by the loss of 800 armored vehicles, and close to 30 aircraft captured or destroyed.
The maneuverability and speed of the pickups made them incredibly hard to hit, and the tanks in particular struggled to get a sight picture … strafing within a certain range the pickups moved faster across the horizon than the old soviet tanks’ main gun could be hand cranked around to shoot them.
Since then Technology has become the backbone of insurgencies, militias, poorer militaries, and criminal cartels around the world. The ready availability of civilian pickups, with the ability of amateur mechanics to mount almost any weapon system in their truck-bed means that this incredibly simple system is about the most cost-effective and easy way for a small force to make the jump to mounted combat and heavy weapon.
But these weapons are far less asymmetric than motorcycles. The increasing importance of mobility means even the most advanced armies are getting in on the game. The US Army is currently converting a portion of its Humvees to have their rear seat and trunk cut out for a truck bed so that they can run a mobile light artillery out of it:
Popular Mechanics article – https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/weapons/a28288/hawkeye-humvee-mounted-howitzer/
The importance of instant maneuverability far outstretches any advantage armor can give in this application. Since artillery shells are radar-detectable, and, follow a parabolic arc, their origin point is easily calculable. Thus shoot and Scoot tactics are necessary since it may only be a minute or two from firing a volley that counter artillery fire might be inbound.
Aside from The bemused jokes that the US is finally catching up with the tech Chad had in the 80s, The truth is most advanced forces have always had something light with a heavy gun that can travel at highway speeds … the fact the US is now converting Humvees to have full light artillery pieces is only really a continuation of the trend of semi-auto grenade launchers, TOW missiles, or anti-tank guns being placed on light fast vehicles since WW2.
The remarkable thing about the technical isn’t that they’re some unique capability militaries can’t use … most poorer countries field something equivalent (the Libyans seemed to have screwed up the unit composition of their force) … Rather the unique advantage is how easy and cheap they are for non-conventional or poorer forces to home assemble.
US combat-ready Humvees cost the military into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, a cost that is presumably even higher as they’re modified to carry heavy weapons systems.
As ridiculous as a Toyota with an Air-to-Ground rocket pod, or a repurposed anti-air gun might be, they’re cheap. The pickup truck new is $20,000-50,000, though I suspect any irregular force would pay closer to 1000-5,000 for something decades old, if they pay at all. Likewise, they’re trivial to source, which is good if sanctions or anti-money laundering laws are trying to stop you from buying anything, and as the Chadians proved: pretty much any captured or surplus heavy weapon will go on it.
This gets irregular forces into the mounted combat game … but it does slightly more than that. Pickup trucks, as any perturbed Prius driver will tell you, are shockingly common … perhaps one in 10 or more vehicles out there are some form of pickup truck. This not only makes them easy to source, but it disguises them and allows them to operate hidden amongst the rolling stock of civilian vehicles, requiring either visual identification or extensive intelligence work to tell them from mere civilians.
ISIS forces near Mosul shortly after its fall.
This combination of mobility, resemblance to civilian vehicles, and ability to deploy heavy weapons was used to devastating effect by the Islamic State during the 2014 Fall of Mosul. Striking quickly while Iraqi national tanks were deployed elsewhere the small Islamic force entered the city at 2:30 am, striking in small convoys that overwhelmed checkpoints with their firepower, executing and torturing captured Iraqi soldiers and targeted enemies as they went. Even after taking into account desertions and “ghost soldiers” (fake soldiers meant to pad unit numbers so corrupt officials could collect their pay) which significantly reduced the 30,000 Iraqi army and 30,000 police within the city … Even after allowing for all that, the Iraqi national forces still outnumbered the 800-1500 ISIS fighters at a rate of 15 to 1.
YET ISIS was able to achieve a total victory and take the whole of the city within 6 days.
2 years later it would take the Iraqi government with American backing 9 months to retake it.
How? How does a force of 1500 at most, most without any formal training, overwhelm and defeat a force of 12,000-23,000, which at least has some training, better equipment, and has an entire state behind it? How did ISIS do this entirely without air support? Even as the Iraqi government bombed them from helicopters?
How did they take in 6 days what would take the Iraqi government with full American backing 9 months to retake?
Well, they made the Iraqis break and run.
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January 29, 2024
Peter Hitchens isn’t onboard with the march to yet another war
Writing in the Daily Mail, Peter Hitchens decries the apparent drift by western politicians into yet another war:
Are we the baddies? What if the Ukraine war is just as stupid and wrong as the Iraq war, but the state propaganda has been more successful and hardly anybody has realised … yet?
Many people to this day still think the damaging and morally dubious Western attacks on Serbia and Libya were justified. Many still think the gory attempt to destroy Syria was a good thing. It took ages for opinion to swing on the Vietnam war, back in the 1960s. And, as one who opposed the Iraq war, I remember only too well just how many (who now think they were against it all the time) were fooled into backing Sir Anthony Blair and George W. Bush.
The issue is more pressing as generals and admirals warn we must live in a militarised society and prepare for what they think is an inevitable war against Russia. They could get their way. If you go on backing this policy, you could be condemning yourself, your children or grandchildren to a world of war, privation and perhaps conscription into some sort of military service.
[…]
This is what I have never been able to work out. We have a Defence Secretary, Grant Shapps, who has perfected the art of shouting loudly while carrying a very small stick – thunderous, belligerent declarations while our Armed Forces melt away thanks to neglect and badly targeted spending. Perhaps, if the long-feared Russian invasion of Western Europe takes place, we can fend it off by dispatching our troops on the pestilential e-scooters and e-bikes which are this former Transport Secretary’s major contribution to the nation.
Certainly these vehicles are terrifying to those not riding them. They have nearly killed me more than once. And, piled up in heaps, they make formidable obstacles, as the people of London are finding.
What Mr Shapps does not seem to grasp is that Britain became great by staying out of continental conflicts, and letting others do the fighting. Even in the battle against Bonaparte, we paid our European allies to do most of the hard work.
Our greatness ceased when bombastic moralising took over, in 1914. We flung ourselves, supposedly nobly, into a Russo-German war. Within two years we were bankrupt, and bereft of the flower of our young manhood.
People still refuse to believe me when I say accurately that Britain has not paid off its huge 1914-18 war debts (now worth about £40 billion) to the USA. But I promise you it is true.
Four years of terrible loss left the Russo-German problem unsolved and we had to do it all again in 1939. After that we were even more bankrupt, and in 1946 had to ration bread, like some desperate People’s Republic. But for many years afterwards we were largely governed by grown-ups who had fought in actual wars and been wounded, and had seen death very near them, or endured bombing and a war economy. And so we largely stayed out of major foreign trouble.
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January 28, 2024
Himmler Takes Command – WW2 – Week 283 – January 27, 1945
World War Two
Published 27 Jan 2024A new German Army Group has been formed, tasked with protecting the Reich from the east and commanded by none other than Heinrich Himmler, who has never held such a command. The Soviets are really on the move in the east and have even begun reaching the prewar German border. In the west the Allies have cleared the Roer Triangle and are also working hard to eliminate the Colmar Pocket. In the Far East the Americans are advancing on Luzon, and in Burma the Allies have success on the Arakan and the Shwebo Plain, and finally manage to re open the Burma Road with China.
01:27 Soviet advances in East Prussia
09:23 Hungary and the fight for Buda
11:19 Operations Nordwind, Cheerful, and Blackcock
14:23 Block 5
16:14 American advances on Luzon
18:55 Allied successes in Burma
22:06 Summary
22:26 Conclusion
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January 27, 2024
AFN-49: The Forgotten Full-Auto Brother of the FN-49
Forgotten Weapons
Published 20 Oct 20230:00 Introduction and Overview of the AFN 49
1:23 Detailed Insight into the AFN 49’s Global Presence
3:01 Demonstration and Explanation of the AFN’s Unique Features
5:05 Auto Trip Feature: A Deep Dive
7:27 Unique Characteristics of the AFN 49
8:48 The Journey of AFN 49s to the US
10:17 Conversion of Luxembourg AFN 49s: A Historical Perspective
10:43 Conclusion and AcknowledgementsA note to censors: This video is not a tutorial on full auto conversion. It is an explanation of how the system works, and provides no instruction of how to fabricate or modify parts to modify a semiautomatic firearm into a fully automatic one. Doing that would be illegal for most people — although certainly not all; conversion or ownership of machine guns is legal in most places with the appropriate government permission.
The SAFN, aka FN-49, is one of the classic post-war European battle rifles, and was sold to nine different countries in the early 1950s before the FAL became FN’s primary combat rifle offering. What is often forgotten is that despite being limited to a fixed 10-round magazine, nearly half of all FN-49s produced were actually fully automatic AFN-49s. The Belgian Army, Luxembourg Army, Luxembourg Gendarmerie, and Belgian Congo all purchased the automatic pattern. So today, we’re going to take a look at how it differs from the regular SAFN that we are used to seeing.
Interestingly, a batch of the Luxembourg Gendarmerie rifles were imported into the US without anyone realising that they were automatic until they arrived and were being unpacked. InterArms went to the IRS (the NFA was a tax law administered by the Treasury; this was before the formation of the ATF) and proposed removing the selector levers and auto sears, as well as milling off their attachment points on the receivers. The IRS agreed that this would be an acceptable conversion to render the guns legally semiautomatic only, and the changes were made before the rifles were sold. They remain on the US collector market today as an interesting example of legal conditions prior to the adoption of a pointless and punitive decree of “once a machine gun, always a machine gun”.
Many thanks to the Royal Museum of the Armed Forces and Military History in Brussels for access to this very cool piece! Check them out here: https://www.klm-mra.be/en/
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January 26, 2024
Canada’s sooper-sekrit warship program
David Pugliese on the cone of silence the federal government seems to have pulled down over the Canadian Surface Combatant shipbuilding program as it steadily escalates in total cost to the taxpayer:
An artist’s rendition of BAE’s Type 26 Global Combat Ship, which was selected as the Canadian Surface Combatant design in 2019, the most recent “largest single expenditure in Canadian government history” (as all major weapon systems purchases tend to be).
(BAE Systems, via Flickr)
National Defence has brought in a new and unprecedented shroud of secrecy around a controversial warship project now estimated to cost taxpayers more than $80 billion.
After withholding documents for almost three years, the Department of National Defence has released nearly 1,700 pages of records that were supposed to outline specific costs and work done so far on the Canadian Surface Combatant program.
But all the details of what taxpayers have so far spent and what type of work has been done by Irving Shipbuilding for that money have been censored from the records.
“I pretty much got nearly 1,700 blank pages,” Ken Rubin said of the access to information request he filed to National Defence in April 2021 about the warship program. “I have never seen this level of secrecy or lack of accountability over a project that is costing so much.”
Rubin, an investigative researcher who has used the access law to obtain federal documents for decades, said there was not a single cost figure contained in any of the 1,700 pages. One page noted that Irving was required to perform 19 specific tasks, but all details were censored. Others pages listed numerous amendments made to the CSC program, but all details were blacked out. Information about the annual profit Irving has made so far on the CSC project is censored.
Irving declined to provide comment, referring this newspaper to National Defence.
Defence Minister Bill Blair’s office sent this newspaper a statement noting the “minister believes strongly in openness and transparency, and expects the Department of National Defence to respect the rights of Canadian citizens, permanent residents and persons or corporations present in Canada, to access records of government institutions that are subject to the Access to Information Act“.
National Defence noted in a statement that, since some of the records involved Irving Shipbuilding, government officials consulted with the firm to determine if the records contained proprietary information of the firm. Irving objected to the release of information, the department added.
But Rubin pointed out that National Defence was not required to follow Irving’s orders on what records could be released to the public. The amount of tax dollars spent on the surface combatant and how that money was being spent shouldn’t be secret, he added.
In addition, National Defence originally claimed in a statement to this newspaper that the long delay in providing the documents was because Rubin had asked for 20 years of records. But, when challenged on that claim, the department acknowledged it wasn’t true. It did not, however, provide an explanation why it had provided false information to this newspaper.
The Canadian Surface Combatant project will involve the construction of 15 warships for the Royal Canadian Navy at Irving on the east coast.
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January 25, 2024
Finnish Jews, Polish Special Forces, and MREs – WW2 – OOTF 32
World War Two
Published 24 Jan 2024How did Finland treat its Jews, and what did Finnish people know about the Holocaust? Who were the mysterious Polish Silent Unseen? And, what sort of rations did soldiers carry? Find out in this episode of Out of the Foxholes.
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USS West Virginia
The History Guy: History Deserves to be Remembered
Published 26 October 2023On December 7, 1941, the battleship USS West Virginia was at Pearl Harbor, moored on Battleship Row, next to USS Tennessee. During the Japanese attack, she was struck by seven torpedoes, sinking in shallow water. But the “We Vee” would rise again, and she would lead the American line of battle at the last battleship on battleship action in history. USS West Virginia deserves to be remembered.
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January 24, 2024
France’s Final Battle Rifle Iteration: The MAS 49-56
Forgotten Weapons
Published 24 May 2019While the development of the MAS 49 had given France a very utilitarian rifle that could serve as both for both marksmen and grenadiers, it could still be made better. In large part, the change to the 49-56 pattern was motivated by the move to adopt NATO-compatible 22mm rifle grenades. With the new muzzle hardware, several other changes were made. A gas cutoff was added, to prevent wear and tear on the action from grenade use (something that was found to be a real problem on the MAS 49). The gas port was also moved farther down the barrel, and the hand guard and barrel were both shortened to make the rifle a bit lighter and handier.
Production began in 1957, and about 175,000 of the rifles were made, seeing service as France’s standard front-line infantry rifle until the adoption of the FAMAS in 1979.
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