TimeGhost History
Published 20 Apr 2025This episode, we see the Chinese Civil War turn decisively against Chiang Kai-Shek. Mao’s Communists score great victories on the battlefield while the Nationalists face economic collapse. How much longer can Chiang hold on?
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April 21, 2025
The Battles That Broke the Chinese Nationalists – W2W 22 – 1948 Q2
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ZB47: A Truly Weird Czech SMG
Forgotten Weapons
Published 23 Dec 2024The ZB47 was developed at Brno as a contender for Czech military submachine gun adoption in the late 1940s. The Czech Army had technically adopted a submachine gun prior to World War Two (the vz.38; video on that is coming a bit later) but production did not begin before the arrival of German troops. After the war, the army was eager to add a submachine gun to its arsenal, and the vz.38 was no longer a practical option as it was chambered for the 9x17mm cartridge.
The ZB-47 is chambered for 9x19mm Parabellum, fired from an open bolt, uses a simple blowback action, and does not have a semiautomatic setting — just full auto. In its infantry configuration, it has a fixed wooden stock with a thumbhole design and a 72-round (!) magazine fitted almost horizontally under the stock and barrel. A unique feed system pushes cartridges vertically up out of the magazine feed lips into a pair of feed ramps that pitch the round 90 degrees forward and into the chamber. The system is closest to that of the FN P90, although the cartridge rotating element on the ZB is built into the gun, not the magazine. The paratrooper variant of the gun has a collapsing metal stock, which shortened the overall length and also restricts its capacity to a 30-round magazine when the stock is closed. Rate of fire was reportedly a blistering 1200 rpm.
One challenge of this very long straight magazine was the slight taper of the standard 9x19mm cartridge case. In 30-round magazines this is not really an issue, but by 72 rounds the taper adds up to enough to cause problems stacking cartridges. Brno attempted to solve this by making a truly cylindrical version of 9×19, but the Czech military was (rightly) not convinced of its benefits and rejected it.
In the 1947 field trials, eight Czech units were given examples of the ZB47 and other competitors. Five of those units actually reported favorably on the ZB; it looks like a very awkward gun to handle but actually isn’t in practice. However, the Army deemed it to have too many drawbacks, including the magazine reliability, poor accuracy, and bring judged too fragile. One more set of trials would take place the next year and ultimately the CZ model 23 was adopted. In total, just 62 examples of the ZB-47 were produced.
Many thanks to the VHU — the Czech Military History Institute – for giving me access to these two fantastic prototypes to film for you. The Army Museum Žižkov is a part of the Institute, and they have a three-story museum full of cool exhibits open to the public in Prague. If you have a chance to visit, it’s definitely worth the time! You can find all of their details (including their aviation and armor museums) here:
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April 20, 2025
Did Britain Bomb The Wrong Targets in WW2? – Out of the Foxholes Live
World War Two
Published 19 Apr 2025Today Indy and Sparty answer questions on the French colonies, Pykrete and iceberg aircraft carriers Japan’s invasion of India, and they talk about Britain’s misguided strategic bombing strategy.
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April 19, 2025
Dambusters – Part 2 – The Countdown to the Raid
HardThrasher
Published 17 Apr 2025The speed with which a theory had to be put into practice, and the opening phase of the raid itself.
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Downfall: The Battle of Berlin 1945
Real Time History
Published 6 Dec 2024April 1945. After nearly six years of war, the Red Army stands massed on the banks of the Oder River in eastern Germany. The Nazi capital and Hitler’s bunker are just 60km away, but the Nazi Party and the Wehrmacht are preparing to fight to the bitter end in the final struggle of WW2 in Europe – the Battle for Berlin.
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QotD: Allied air and sea operations won WWII
In [How the War Was Won author Phillips Payson] O’Brien’s methodology, we should look at what the Axis spent its productive effort making and consider what Allied actions slowed that productive effort. In both theaters, the answer is shocking. The Germans spent relatively little productive effort on tanks, focusing far more on aircraft, submarines, and vengeance weapons (i.e., proto-cruise missiles and rockets). The Japanese spent heavily on aircraft as well, but also a tremendous amount on freighters and oil tankers.
The Allies won the war by using air power to destroy the German and Japanese capacity both to produce military equipment and to transport it to the battlefield. By 1944-45, the Germans and Japanese could not use their economies to arm and supply their armies on the battlefield, leading to their inevitable defeat.
In the European war, American and British airpower: (a) directly destroyed a significant amount of productive capacity, (b) rendered remaining capacity far less efficient, (c) made it impossible for the Germans to defeat western ground forces, and (d) compelled the Germans to waste tremendous resources on air defense and exorbitant, ultimately ineffective vengeance weapons.
In the Pacific, the United States used carrier-based airpower, submarines, and bomber-deployed mines to isolate Japan from the resources of the empire it conquered in 1941-42. American bombers also directly destroyed factories and transportation systems, leading to similar levels of economic dysfunction as in Germany.
Anonymous, “Your Book Review: How the War Was Won“, Astral Codex Ten, 2024-08-09.
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April 18, 2025
SIG P320 Flux Legion / Flux Raider: The Best Pistol-PDW System Yet
Forgotten Weapons
Published 18 Dec 2024The Flux Raider is a chassis system designed to turn the SIG P320 into a very compact PDW. The design concept began as a desire to improve the practical accuracy of a handgun by adding a collapsing stock while keeping the weapon holsterable. Flux’ first product, circa 2019, was a spring-loaded stock that could be attached to the back of a Glock pistol. This had some clear shortcomings, and it led to development of the MP17 in 2020. This was a SIG chassis, something made feasible by the use of a serialized fire control group in the P320 pistol. The MP17 used the same basic stock design as the original Flux brace, but added an optics mount and a space to store a space magazine.
Less than 400 MP17s were built before the design was refined into the Flux Raider, and the manufacturing changed from printing to molded polymer. Of particular significance was the choice of polymer compounds to use, as the typical glass-reinforced nylon is not rigid enough to keep a good optics zero. By opting for a much more rigid material (albeit a much more expensive one), Flux was able to remove the metal reinforcing in the chassis, lightening the system while still retaining an optics mount stable enough to hold zero under adverse conditions. The spare magazine system was also significantly improved in the Raider, and an ambidextrous manual safety added.
Today, Flux has partnered with SIG to produce the P320 Flux Legion. I am excited to see where Flux and SIG take the design from here!
[Published a day later, here’s Ian’s range trip with the P320 Flux Legion Raider.]
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April 17, 2025
Why TOG II was BETTER Than You Think
The Tank Museum
Published 20 Dec 2024It was rejected and ridiculed for years — but TOG II is actually much better than you think.
In 1939, the UK Ministry of War issued the spec for a heavy assault tank. This hefty brief included the requirements to cross a 16ft gap, climb over anti-tank obstacles and enough firepower to penetrate 7 inches of concrete. Enter “The Old Gang”, a group of expert engineers, responsible for most of the tanks created during the First World War.
Two vehicles were created during this process — TOG I and TOG II. While the TOG projects have often been rejected as tanks out of time — relics of thinking from trench warfare — Content and Research Officer, Chris Copson, argues that these vehicles were highly innovative in terms of their mobility, armour and firepower.
Despite fulfilling their brief, TOG was sidelined in favour of other projects, and the lone survivor — TOG II — arrived at The Tank Museum in the 1950s. This lumbering beast that never saw active service, sat sidelined whilst surrounded by WW2 legends like the Churchill, Sherman, and the infamous Tiger 131.
But in 2012, a miracle happened. World of Tanks included the super heavy tank in their online video game — launching TOG II into viral popularity. Since then, interest in this unique vehicle has skyrocketed, and now more than ever people want to see TOG II in real life and find out more about its interesting history.
Shop TOG II merch at our online shop: https://tankmuseumshop.org/
00:00 | Introduction
01:24 | An Innovative Spec
05:00 | Innovations in Mobility
10:11 | Innovations in Armour
11:49 | Innovations in Firepower
16:21 | Would TOG II Have Worked?
18:46 | The Legend Lives OnIn this film, Chris Copson unpicks the misconceptions surrounding TOG II — that it was a ridiculous super-heavy tank built for a war from 30 years ago. Instead, this is a vehicle that was highly innovative and represented a significant engineering achievement. Thanks to videos games such as World of Tanks, TOG II is now celebrated as the goofiest super heavy tank in history, and lives on as an internet legend for a whole new generation of tank nuts.
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QotD: Explaining mid-century American support of Chiang Kai-Shek and the Republic of China
PR: Because the missionaries in China had decided that it was going to become their great project, channeling that global do gooder impulse that had lain dormant since the end of the Civil War as their Great Cause — the missionaries were the grandchildren of the abolitionists and they took their fanaticism straight from that movement. China was to be “saved” from paganism, Catholicism and colonialism and they formed some kind of proto-NGO, ensuring that their views were made the policy of the government. It is not a coincidence that both Chaing and his wife were Protestant Christian converts (at least nominally) That impulse to “nation build” China into a facsimile of Progresssive Christian America (excluding, of course, the Old Confederacy) is the source of the drive to make their fantasy real, like that Utopian impulse we described the other day that is a bedrock of the Juggalo mindset. To find the roots of the China obsession you have to understand the power of the missionary movement. Nothing to me sums it up better than Kenneth Wherry, who became a big player in the China Lobby, with his mix of naivety, pathological altruism, and religious fervor-
With God’s help, we will lift Shanghai up and up, ever up, until it is just like Kansas City …
[…]
That’s an important point — the Protestants never had the same fervor to make Vietnam or Cuba or even the Philippines (even though it was OUR colony) into Kansas City, because they were either already Catholic or had a minority Catholic elite. China, however, gave them that sweet Protestant fix in making a new China with the “right” kind of Christianity. It’s also why they hated Japan so — Japan had slammed the door on Protestant missionaries pretty hard and their Christian minority (in Nagasaki, ironically) was Catholic.
From the comment thread on “WNF: A Twofer”, Founding Questions, 2025-01-15.
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April 16, 2025
The Korean War Week 43 – Truman Dismisses MacArthur! – April 15, 1951
The Korean War by Indy Neidell
Published 15 Apr 2025It’s finally happened, President Harry Truman has relieved Douglas MacArthur of command. If you’ve followed us lately you’ll know the why, but today you’ll see then how, when, and where. But the fight in the field goes on- this week fighting for control of the Hwacheon Reservoir.
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April 15, 2025
How the UN Plan Tore Palestine Apart – W2W 20 – 1948 Q2
TimeGhost History
Published 13 Apr 2025In 1948, the British departure from Palestine plunges the region into chaos. Amid bombings, massacres, and forced displacements, a brutal civil war escalates into the Arab-Israeli conflict, reshaping the Middle East forever. As Israel declares independence, Arab armies invade, and atrocities on both sides deepen hatred and tragedy. Can either side emerge victorious, or has the cycle of violence become unstoppable?
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April 14, 2025
Huế: Battle for the Heart of Vietnam
Army University Press
Published 22 Nov 2024The Battle of Huế is known for urban combat, destruction, and anguish. The city of Huế mattered to all the combatant forces. The city and its people paid the price. Interviews with noted subject matter experts Drs. Pierre Asselin, Gregory Daddis, James Willbanks, and Cpt. Wyatt Harper are augmented with archival audio and film, and detailed maps. This documentary places the Battle of Huế within the context of Hanoi’s 1968 Tet Offensive. How North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the United States perceived the Vietnam War in 1967 and 1968 are central to this documentary. Covered are the key moments of the battle — including the People’s Armed Forces of Vietnam (PAVN) and People’s Liberation Armed Forces (PLAF) planning and assault on Hue. The responses of the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), Vietnam Marine Corps (VNMC), the United States Marine Corps (USMC), and the U.S. Army (USA) are addressed to offer insight into an informative example of urban warfare.
0:02:39 – Why the Tet Offensive
0:10:53 – Why Huế
0:15:53 – Military Decision Making Process | Doctrine
0:26:51 – Warfighting Function | Doctrine
0:27:59 – Paralysis by analysis | Doctrine
0:33:15 – Courses of action | Doctrine
0:38:22 – Weather and operations | Doctrine
0:40:52 – Huế Massacre
0:41:18 – My Lai
0:46:05 – Huế and Modern Warfare
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QotD: Pax Americana replaces Pax Britannica
The British government spent most of the next century being dragged – reluctantly – into being arbitrators of conflicts they wanted nothing to do with. Finishing with being stuck with the Great War, and then responsibility for some of the most hopeless basket-case states handed over to “Mandate Powers” by the Versailles peace … as one British minister presciently pointed out, no one wanted Palestine, and it would be nothing but a disaster for whoever gets stuck with it … (Fortunately for the US, their Congress repudiated Wilson’s ridiculous League of Nations before the plan to lumber the US with the Mandate for places like Georgia – the Russian bit on the Black Sea that is! – could be put through.)
It is unsurprising that the British taxpayer spent the next 50 years trying to get out of international police-keeping obligations. With the sole exception of reluctantly agreeing to fight against the expansionary dictatorships in World War Two, British taxpayers voted for disarmament and de-colonisation whenever they could. (Abandoning some states – particularly in Africa – that might eventually have developed into safe and secure states, way before they were ready for independence … much to the cost of world peace and security since …)
The United States has had a similar experience more recently. Having inherited responsibility for maybe 50 years of the “Pax Americana” by the simple expedient of being the strongest economy standing after the Second World War. (Their only potential rival being the British Commonwealth of Nations — who between them had 5 of the next 10 biggest and healthiest post-war economies — being more than happy to let the dumb Americans have a go at being world policemen for a time, and see how they liked being blamed by everyone else for absolutely everything.)
The Americans discovered pretty quickly that the things they had been complaining about the British doing for the last 200 years were exactly what they had now signed up for, and finding even quicker that their taxpayers simply weren’t willing to carry the can, and take the blame, for very long at all.
Arguably the US’s fun with being world policeman was already pretty much over after Korea, and certainly after Vietnam. It is notable that the first Gulf War was NOT paid for by the US taxpayer … the US troops turned up but only if Saudi Arabia and Europe paid for them to do so (and preferably with a British Division on one flank, Australian warships on the other, and NATO fighters overhead …) none of this “we will carry the can and our taxpayers will just cope” crap for post-Vietnam American taxpayers.
Nigel Davies, “Types of Empires: Security, Conquest, and Trade”, rethinking history, 2020-05-02.
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April 13, 2025
The Most Pointless Battle of WW1? – Passchendaele 1917
The Great War
Published 11 Apr 2025For more than three long months in 1917, Allied and German soldiers fought tooth and nail over a battlefield churned into a sea of sucking mud and shellholes by the guns. Hundreds of thousands were killed and wounded, some of them drowning in the soupy ground — for Allied gains of just a few kilometers. So why did the Battle of Passchendaele happen at all, and was it the most pointless battle of the First World War? (more…)
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April 11, 2025
Beretta 93R: The Best Machine Pistol?
Forgotten Weapons
Published 13 Dec 2024The Beretta 93R (“Raffica”) was developed in the 1970s by Beretta engineer Paolo Parola at the request of Italian military special forces. It took the basic Beretta 92 pistol design and added a well-thought-out burst mechanism under the right-side grip panel. It does not have a plain full-auto setting, but only semiauto and 3-round burst. To help keep the gun controllable, it has a heavier slide to reduce cyclic rate, a detachable shoulder stock, and a folding front grip to help control the muzzle. It uses extended 20-round magazines and is actually remarkably controllable (or so I am told; I have not had a chance to shoot one myself).
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