Uploaded on 25 Aug 2017
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Indy and Tank Museum curator David Willey take a look at the British Mark IV tank. Over 1000 of these tanks were built and they are an iconic symbol of early tank warfare during World War 1. We discuss crew conditions and other important details in this episode.
August 26, 2017
Inside A British Mark IV WW1 Tank I THE GREAT WAR Special
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August 25, 2017
The 2nd Battle Of Verdun – Lost Opportunities On The Isonzo River I THE GREAT WAR Week 161
Published on 24 Aug 2017
The 11th Battle of the Isonzo river continued this week and the Italians manage to break through parts of the Austro-Hungarian lines, they hesitate to exploit the breakthrough though and the opportunity is lost. Meanwhile the French break through the German lines at Verdun and Herbert Plumer comes up with a plan to defeat the German Hindenburg Line.
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Solving the mystery of the fate of H.L. Hunley‘s crew
When the Confederate submarine H.L. Hunley was found, the bodies of the crew were still in their duty positions within the vessel, as if they’d been unaware or unable to do anything to save the situation. Sarah Knapton reports on what is now believed to have killed the crew almost instantaneously:
“Submarine Torpedo Boat H.L. Hunley, Dec. 6, 1863″ by Conrad Wise Chapman.
“The inventor of this boat, a man named Hunley, can be seen; also a sentinel. This boat, it was at first thought would be very effective; twice it went out on its mission of destruction, but on both occasions returned with all the crew dead. After this had happened the second time, someone painted on it the word ‘coffin.’ There was just room enough in it for eight men, one in front of the other, with no possibility of anyone sitting straight. The third time it started out, it never came back, nor was anything ever heard from it, but as one of the United States men-of-war in the harbor (USS Housatonic) was sunk at about the same time, the supposition was that they both went to the bottom together. Other objects to be seen in the picture are, Sullivan’s Island, and a Dispatch boat.” – Conrad Wise Chapman, 1898 (via Wikimedia)
The mystery of how the crew of one of the world’s first submarines died has finally been solved – they accidentally killed themselves.
The H.L. Hunley sank on February 17 1864 after torpedoing the USS Housatonic outside Charleston Harbour, South Carolina, during American Civil War.
She was one of the first submarines ever to be used in conflict, and the first to sink a battleship [Housatonic was actually a sloop-of-war, not a battleship].
It was assumed the blast had ruptured the sub, drowning its occupants, but when the Hunley was raised in 2000, salvage experts were amazed to find the eight-man crew poised as if they had been caught completely unawares by the tragedy. All were still sitting in their posts and there was no evidence that they had attempted to flee the foundering vessel.
Now researchers at Duke University believe they have the answer. Three years of experiments on a mini-test sub have shown that the torpedo blast would have created a shockwave great enough to instantly rupture the blood vessels in the lungs and brains of the submariners.
“This is the characteristic trauma of blast victims, they call it ‘blast lung,'” Dr Rachel Lance.
“You have an instant fatality that leaves no marks on the skeletal remains. Unfortunately, the soft tissues that would show us what happened have decomposed in the past hundred years.”
The Hunley‘s torpedo was not a self-propelled bomb, but a copper keg of 135 pounds of gunpowder held ahead and slightly below the Hunley‘s bow on a 16-foot pole called a spar
The sub rammed this spar into the enemy ship’s hull and the bomb exploded. The furthest any of the crew was from the blast was about 42 feet. The shockwave of the blast travelled about 1500 meters per second in water, and 340 m/sec in air, the researchers calculate.
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August 23, 2017
One definite success from the Dieppe raid
The allied attack on Dieppe in August, 1942 was an operational failure: nearly 60% of the raiding force were killed, wounded or captured and the tactical objectives in the harbour area were not achieved. I’ve mentioned the speculations on an Enigma side-operation (which does not seem to be given credence by most historians), using the main Canadian attack as cover for an attempt to snatch the latest German encryption device from one or more high-security locations within the target area. A second side-mission was also conducted to capture one of the newest German radar stations at Pourville, just down the coast from Dieppe:
Aerial reconnaissance photos indicated that one of these new Freya radar sets had been installed at Pourville-sur-Mer, near Dieppe. A military raid on Dieppe, to test British and Canadian plans for an amphibious invasion, was already being planned. Senior officers immediately added a sub-plan to the Dieppe raid: a small force would be detached to attack the Pourville radar station. There, a radar expert would dismantle the station’s vital equipment and transport it back to the UK for analysis.
Nissenthall, a Jewish cockney who had a lifelong fascination with electronics and radio technology, had joined the Air Force as an apprentice in 1936. By the outbreak of the war in 1939 he was assigned to RAF radio direction finding stations (RDF, the short-lived original term for radar) and rapidly built up a reputation as a competent and technically skilled operator. Before the war he had also worked directly with Robert Watson-Watt, widely regarded today as the father of radar.A German FuMG 401 “Freya LZ” radar station of the type installed at Pourville. (US National Archives and Records Administration image, via Wikimedia)
[…]
More than 5,000 soldiers of the First Canadian Division set off from the south coast of England in the early hours of 19 August 1942. Embedded with A Company of the South Saskatchewan Regiment, Nissenthall’s 11-man bodyguard landed on French soil – but on the wrong side of the Scie River from the radar station.
After finding their way to their intended starting point, the team ran into stiff German resistance. Casualties soon mounted up as they probed the area, looking for a way into the radar station.
Thanks to the Bruneval raid six months previously, the Germans had beefed up their defences around coastal radar stations. This, combined with the naivete of the Allied planners back in Britain, had left the Canadians exposed and vulnerable. Though Nissenthall’s team had just about reached the radar station, there was no hope they would be able to get inside it, much less examine it, dismantle it and take away the most valuable parts of the Freya set inside.
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August 22, 2017
Romanian Guns of WW1 I THE GREAT WAR Special feat. C&Rsenal
Published on 21 Aug 2017
Othais’ episode about the Romanian Mannlicher: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhuuFnaCMOw
In this special episode, Indy and Othais talk about the Romanian rifles and pistols of WW1, namely the Mannlicher M1893 and a very odd Spanish revolver that still puzzles Othais.
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How to Pronounce German Ship Names – World of Warships & Historical Background
Published on 8 Aug 2017
Pronunciation of German ship names from World of Warships with some background information on the person and location.
Military History Visualized provides a series of short narrative and visual presentations like documentaries based on academic literature or sometimes primary sources. Videos are intended as introduction to military history, but also contain a lot of details for history buffs. Since the aim is to keep the episodes short and comprehensive some details are often cut.
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August 21, 2017
Top Five Tanks – Indy Neidell
Published on 11 Aug 2017
For the fourth in our Top 5 series, Great War Channel presenter Indy Neidell came to The Tank Museum to share his 5 favourite tanks. https://www.youtube.com/TheGreatWar
It’s all about opinions, so please feel free to agree or disagree in the comments below.
Whose Top 5 would you like to see next?
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August 20, 2017
Trench Mortars – German Double Standards – Hughes’ Shovel I OUT OF THE TRENCHES
Published on 19 Aug 2017
Out Of The Trenches is finally back! In this episode Indy talks about the role of trench mortars in contrast to artillery, how the Germans could condemn the use of shotguns and saw-back bayonets while using chemical weapons, and a shovel with a hole in it.
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World of Warships – The Queen, God Bless Her! (Part 3)
Published on 18 Aug 2017
Took us long enough, but we finally arrived at tier 8, and here’s where the real fun begins.
Music in Conqueror segment – “In A World of Derp” by D1 of Aquavibe.
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August 19, 2017
Dieppe Raid 19 August, 1942 – Assault, escape and aftermath
Published on 22 Mar 2009
The Dieppe Raid was one of the costliest days for the Canadian Army in the entire Second World War. 907 Canadians were killed, in addition more than 2,500 were wounded or captured, all on August 19 of 1942.
At the BBC site: Julian Thompson’s summary of the Dieppe Raid.
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August 18, 2017
The Battle of Hill 70 – Mackensen Advances in Romania I THE GREAT WAR Week 160
Published on 17 Aug 2017
The Battle of Passchendaele has turned into a muddy mess, the weather conditions take a toll on both the defenders and the attackers alike. The Canadians relieve some pressure on the British Army in the Battle of Hill 70 south of Ypres. Meanwhile, August von Mackensen is fighting back the Romanian offensive that was unleashed last week.
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Refuting the “Canadians supported the Confederacy” slur
A tweet from Colby Cosh linked to this informative little section of the “Canada in the American Civil War” page at Wikipedia:
The statement about Canadians sympathizing with the South is complete balderdash. https://t.co/KELtAZ7YN1 https://t.co/e4in2IPaTu
— Colby Cosh (@colbycosh) August 16, 2017
Canadians in the Union Army
The best recent estimates are that between 33,000 and 55,000 men from British North America (BNA) served in the Union army, and a few hundred in the Confederate army. Many of these men already lived in the United States; they were joined by volunteers signed up in Canada by Union recruiters.
Canada refused to return about 15,000 American deserters and draft dodgers.
Calixa Lavallée was a French-Canadian musician and Union officer during the American Civil War who later composed the music for “O Canada”, which officially became the national anthem of Canada in 1980. In 1857, he moved to the United States and lived in Rhode Island where he enlisted in the 4th Rhode Island Volunteers of the Union army during the American Civil War, attaining the rank of lieutenant.
Canadian-born Edward P. Doherty was a Union Army officer who formed and led the detachment of Union soldiers that captured and killed John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Lincoln, in a Virginia barn on April 26, 1865, 12 days after Lincoln was fatally shot. Canadian-born Sarah Emma Edmonds was a noted Union spy.
One of the longest living Canadians to have fought in the American Civil War was James Beach Moore who died August 29, 1931.
Anderson Ruffin Abbott was a Toronto-born son of free people of color who had fled Alabama after their store was ransacked. Canada’s first Black physician, he applied for a commission as an assistant surgeon in the Union Army in February 1863, but his offer was evidently not accepted. That April, he applied to be a “medical cadet” in the United States Colored Troops, but was finally accepted as a civilian surgeon under contract. He served in Washington, D.C. from June 1863 to August 1865, first at the Contraband Hospital which became Freedmen’s Hospital. He then went to a hospital in Arlington, Virginia. Receiving numerous commendations and becoming popular in Washington society, Abbott was one of only thirteen black surgeons to serve in the Civil War, a fact that fostered a friendly relationship between him and the president. On the night of Abraham Lincoln’s assassination, Abbott accompanied Elizabeth Keckley to the Petersen House and returned to his lodgings that evening. After Lincoln’s death, Mary Todd Lincoln presented Abbott with the plaid shawl that Lincoln had worn to his 1861 inauguration.
At least 29 Canadian-born men were awarded the Medal of Honor.
The usual assortment of internal links to other Wikipedia articles are omitted because I’m too damned lazy to recreate ’em. They’re all available on the original page.
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August 17, 2017
HMS Queen Elizabeth enters Portsmouth harbour
At The Register, Gareth Corfield reports from Portsmouth as the Royal Navy’s new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth visits her new home port for the first time:
Royal Navy aircraft fly over HMS Queen Elizabeth as she enters Portsmouth harbour. Click to see full-sized photo.
Britain’s newest warship, its biggest warship of all time, HMS Queen Elizabeth, entered Portsmouth Harbour for the first time this morning.
The 65,000-tonne aircraft carrier entered the port at 0710 this morning under the watchful eye of half a dozen tugboats, a small flotilla of police vessels – and crowds of thousands lining the sea front along Portsmouth and Southsea.
In addition, scores of smaller civil vessels accompanied the carrier at a respectful distance. A flypast of Royal Navy helicopters and fast jets – Hawk training aircraft – also took place as the carrier made her stately way towards the naval base.
Admiral Lord West, the former head of the navy and now a Labour Party peer, told The Register as the ship came in: “This is a very joyous day. She looks splendid. We had lost sight of our maritime capability. This is something very special for Portsmouth and the Navy.”
When asked if the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers were necessary, the admiral said: “The one thing you can’t guarantee is what will happen tomorrow. When they’ve got their fixed wing assets, they’ll be one of the only capabilities [the UK has that will have] a strategic impact. It’s 4.5 acres of British sovereign territory.”
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World of Warships – The Queen, God Bless Her! (Part Two)
Published on 16 Aug 2017
In which I attempt to cover the British tier 7 – 10 Battleships, but can’t stop running my mouth off about the King George V and Nelson so it looks like we’ll be back later this week to finish.
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August 16, 2017
World of Warships – The Queen, God Bless her!
Published on 15 Aug 2017
Join me in the traditional Royal Navy toast to the Monarch, as I raise a glass to the long awaited British Battleships in World of Warships. Thank God they don’t suck!
Mostly.
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