Extra Credits
Published on 29 Jun 2017The Germans had established a secure barrier against the Allied invasion of France – or so they believed, until the D-Day landings in Normandy caught them by surprise and the Atlantic Wall quickly fell apart.
June 9, 2018
D-Day – IV: The Atlantic Wall – Extra History
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June 8, 2018
The Battle of Belleau Wood Begins I THE GREAT WAR Week 202
The Great War
Published on 7 Jun 2018The German Army is still threatening Paris and the situation for the Allies looks dire. Reluctantly, General Pershing agrees to put some of the American troops into action at Belleau Wood and Château-Thierry.
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D Day – III: La Résistance – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 20 Jun 2017Although the French government surrendered to the German invasion, French people rose up and formed resistance groups to take their country back. Charles de Gaulle and his Free French took advantage of these independent movements to help organize actions that would greatly aid the Allied landings at Normandy.
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June 7, 2018
D-Day – II: The Secret War – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 13 Jun 2017The Germans expected the Allies to invade France to re-open the Western Front, but they did not know when or where the invasion would start – thanks largely to the operations of MI5, British intelligence services, who staged an elaborate deception called Operation Bodyguard designed to make the Germans think they would be invading Pas de Calais instead of their real target: Normandy.
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June 6, 2018
D-Day: Canada at Juno Beach
Yesterday Today
Published on 3 Jun 2017D-Day: Canada at Juno Beach
6 June 1944
Of the nearly 150,000 Allied troops who landed or parachuted onto the Normandy coast, 14,000 were Canadians. They assaulted a beachfront code-named “Juno”.
The Royal Canadian Navy contributed 110 ships & 10,000 sailors in support of the landings while the RCAF had helped prepare the invasion by bombing targets inland. On D-Day & during the ensuing campaign, 15 RCAF fighter & fighter-bomber squadrons helped control the skies over Normandy and attacked enemy targets. On D-Day, Canadians suffered 1074 casualties, including 359 killed.
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D-Day – I: The Great Crusade – Extra History
Extra Credits
Published on 6 Jun 2017D-Day: June 6, 1944, the day when Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy to retake France from the Germans. They hoped to take the Germans by surprise, and their decision to brave rough weather to make their landings certainly accomplished that, but despite these small advantages, the American forces at Utah and Omaha Beach had to overcome monumental challenges to establish a successful beachhead.
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June 5, 2018
The Landings At ANZAC Cove And Suvla Bay 1915 I THE GREAT WAR On The Road
The Great War
Published on 4 Jun 2018With thanks to Mr. Ali Serim for making this episode possible.
Indy and our guide Can Balcioglu explore the northern landings sites of Gallipoli where the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) landed in 1915.
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June 3, 2018
Conrad von Hötzendorf – A Military Genius? I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
The Great War
Published on 2 Jun 2018Chair of Wisdom Time!
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June 2, 2018
A Safer Berth – HMS Victory
NMRNPortsmouth
Published on Aug 21, 2017An 18-month programme to re-support the world’s most famous warship HMS Victory sagging under her own weight is now underway.
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June 1, 2018
50 Miles To Paris – Third Battle Of The Aisne I THE GREAT WAR Week 201
The Great War
Published on 31 May 2018The German spring offensive has lost some traction over the past few weeks but the Allies are still under pressure. With Operations Blücher and York, the Germans are getting within 50 miles of Paris again, just as they did in 1914.
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Spiked armour
Lindybeige
Published on 11 Nov 2012In summary: no.
www.LloydianAspects.co.uk
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May 31, 2018
Admiral David Beatty: “There seems to be something wrong with our bloody ships today”
One of the outcomes of the Battle of Jutland was that naval opinion finally crystalized over the notion of battle cruisers: the loss of three British battle cruisers during the battle (and near-loss of a fourth) proved to most that the design was flawed and that this class of ships should never have sailed into battle against real battleships. A recent post at Naval Gazing begs to differ on this judgement:
Explosion that sank HMS Queen Mary at the Battle of Jutland, 31 May 1916
Image via Wikimedia Commons.
David Beatty’s famous remark about the destruction of two of his ships by catastrophic magazine explosions during the Battle of Jutland sums up the traditional attitude towards one of the battle’s most famous aspects. Of the 3,326 men aboard the battlecruisers Indefatigable, Queen Mary, and Invincible, only 17 survived. It’s long been believed that the ships themselves were to blame, as they were built with only relatively light armor. Shells supposedly penetrated to the magazines and set them off. Recent research has revealed that this was not the case, and the ships were lost primarily due to defects in operation, not design.
The basic problem with the conventional theory is that no German shell penetrated deep enough into the surviving ships to have been able to set off a magazine if it had hit one. The magazines take up a minority of a battlecruiser’s deck, so if such hits were common, then at least a few of the surviving ships should have seen shells reach their machinery. Instead, German shells were found to detonate with 16-24′ of their first impact with the structure. At the 20° angle the shells were falling at at the time, this puts them no more than 8 feet below the upper deck upon detonation. The only case where shell fragments reached magazine was a hit on Barham at 1758 when fragments from a 12″ shell penetrated the deck over the 6″ magazine. Despite leaving a 12″x15″ hole in the 1″ deck, the fragments had no effect on the powder stored under it.
So is there a different potential cause, one that happened to a surviving ship? A survey of the damage to Beatty’s battlecrusiers reveals a promising candidate. A hit on a turret, such as the one suffered by HMS Lion, could cause a flash to propagate down into the magazine, which would then deflagrate in precisely the manner seen during the battle. A careful examination of Lion‘s damage shows that she came very close to suffering the same fate.
Turret explosions are hardly unknown aboard warships, either as a result of accident or enemy action, and a great deal of care goes into making sure that they don’t set off the magazines. Powder is stored in metal cans or tanks, and flashproof doors and other interlocks are used to make sure that fire does not reach the magazines. Unfortunately, the British had systematically undermined these protections in the search for rate of fire and ammunition capacity, and their magazine practices during the battle can only be described as suicidal.
After the Battle of Dogger Bank, Beatty decided that the reason he was unable to destroy the German battlecruisers was insufficient rate of fire. Not only would opening fire early and firing quickly lead to early hits, but it would also distract the German gunners. However, the British were not particularly confident in their long-range fire control, and began to stuff extra cordite into the handling rooms and other spaces that had been designed to provide flash protection. This was made much worse by a other changes intended to increase rate of fire. Normally, the cordite cases were kept sealed until just before the charges are sent to the gun, but the crews chose to open many of the cases early, take some cordite out of the cases before battle to make it easy to access, and even stored extra charges completely unprotected. In a final effort to make the turrets as dangerous as possible, the majority of the anti-flash safety doors were removed.
The only ship which strongly resisted this trend was Lion, and the efforts of her Gunner, Alexander Grant, deserve most of the credit. When Grant came aboard, he found the situation described above, and quickly reintroduced the traditional magazine safety regulations with the support of Lion‘s captain, Ernle Chatfield. He managed to train the magazine crews to the point where they could provide cordite to the guns faster than the guns could fire it, while observing full safety procedures.
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The Battle of Jutland Explained
Ministry of Defence
Published on 25 May 201610,000 men. 250 ships. 12 hours. Two sides. The Battle of Jutland – 100 years ago.
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No5 MkI Enfield “Jungle Carbine”
Forgotten Weapons
Published on 18 Jan 2015http://www.forgottenweapons.com
The No.5 MkI Enfield, commonly called the “jungle carbine” is nearly the shortest-lived rifle in British military service. Introduced in 1944, they were declared obsolete in 1947 as the result of insoluble accuracy problems. The guns were originally developed from regular No4 Enfield rifles with the goal of producing a shorter and lighter variant for paratroops. This was done by shortening the barrel, adding a flash hider, and making lightening cuts in several places on the barrel and receiver (which were the cause of the problems that doomed the gun).
Not all No.5 rifles produced developed problems, and they were certainly handier than the regular Enfield rifles. They are noted for kicking harder, of course, and this is not really helped by the narrow rubber buttpad they came with (most of which are nice and hard today).
Theme music by Dylan Benson – http://dbproductioncompany.webs.com
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May 30, 2018
Decisive Weapons S02E04 – U-Boat Killer: The Anti-Submarine Warship
erana19
Published on 25 Jan 20161996-1997 BBC documentary series. Series 2, Episode 4.
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