Interesting facts of military history

On " Hawker Hurricane" by Edward Shacklady

By May/June 1938 the production rate had risen to five aircraft per week. In September 1938 the programme for re-equipping Hurricane squadrons had reached a total of twelve by the time of the Munich Crisis of that month when it was disclosed that only two squadrons were fully operational.

 

Trenches on the Web - Timeline: 1905-1914 - The Dreadnought Race

 

The first declaration of war by telegram

The following telegram sent by Count Leopold von Berchtold (Austro-Hungarian Foreign Minister) at 11.10 am to M. N. Pashitch (Serbian Prime Minister and Foreign Minister), who received it at 12.30 pm.

Vienna
28 July 1914

The Royal Serbian Government not having answered in a satisfactory manner the note of July 23, 1914, presented by the Austro-Hungarian Minister at Belgrade, the Imperial and Royal Government are themselves compelled to see to the safeguarding of their rights and interests, and, with this object, to have recourse to force of arms.

Austria-Hungary consequently considers herself henceforward in state of war with Serbia.


First World War.com - Primary Documents - Austria-Hungary's Declaration of War with Serbia, 28 July 1914

 

Following the surrender of Japan, Fourth Marines seized and occupied the large naval base at Yokosuka in Tokyo Bay. This gesture was designed to avenge the capture of the "Old Fourth" on Corregidor. The Marines of Second Battalion, Fourth Marines were the first American combat troops to set foot in Mainland Japan, landing on Futtsu Cape. They were sent ashore to ensure the approaches to Tokyo Bay were secure.

2nd Battalion 4th Marines - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

German Lusitania medallion

German WW1 Psyop

 

Interesting...

Cold war start and speeches:

In February 1946, Stalin's Soviet Party Congress speech made the growing East-West conflict seem inevitable. Cold War historian Walter LaFeber discussed how Stalin's speech cast a pall over contemporary East-West negotiations,

"In an election speech of February 9, the Soviet dictator announced that Marxist-Leninist dogma remained valid, for 'the unevenness of development of the capitalist countries' could lead to 'violent disturbance' and the consequent splitting of the 'capitalist world into two camps and the war between them.' War was inevitable as long as capitalism existed. The Soviet people must prepare themselves for a replay of the 1930s by developing basic industry instead of consumer goods and, in all, making enormous sacrifices demanded in 'three five‑year plans, I should think if not more.' There would be no peace, internally or externally. These words profoundly affected Washington. Supreme Court Justice William Douglas, one of the reigning American liberals, believed that Stalin's speech meant 'The declaration of World War III.' "

One month later,in his March 1946 speech at Fulton, Missouri, ex-British Prime Minister Winston Churchill presented his views on the East-West conflict. Churchill coined the term "iron curtain" in this speech and outlined a global alliance between Europe and the United States, "From Stettin in the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic an iron curtain has descended across the Continent. Behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Warsaw, Berlin, Prague, Vienna, Budapest, Belgrade, Bucharest and Sofia; all these famous cities and the populations around them lie in what I must call the Soviet sphere, and all are subject, in one form or another, not only to Soviet influence but to a very high in some cases increasing measure of control from Moscow."

Minuteman Missile NHS: Historic Resource Study (Chapter 1, Section I)

Joseph Stalin's response to Winston Churchill in an interview with Pravda

Modern History Sourcebook: Stalin: Reply to Churchill, 1946

The German racial theory brought Hitler and his friends to the conclusion that the Germans, as the only fully valuable nation, must rule over other nations. The English racial theory brings Mr. Churchill and his friends to the conclusion that nations speaking the English language, being the only fully valuable nations, should rule over the remaining nations of the world....

 

In 1653...

The great Dutch Admiral Marten Tromp, with eighty warships, escorted a huge convoy of 150 homeward-bound merchantmen up the Channel - legend has it that he tied a broom to his masthead to show his intention to sweep the English from the seas.

FREE MARKET FAIRY TALES

 

200 years since "the Finnish war".

The Finnish War started on 21st February 1808 when Russian troops crossed the Kymijoki without Declaration of War.

Finnish War - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Main Document - Swedish-Russian War

 

When 1/KG30 attacked the Firth of Forth on 16th October 1939, it became the first air raid on Britain in WW2. However it's not generally known that one of the men who took part was a Scot.
Sergeant Pilot Friedrich Gustav Hansen was born in the Borders town of Melrose in 1913, his brother William having been born there in 1911. His German father Hermann had been the town barber after moving there just prior to WW1 and was both popular and accepted. On the outbreak of war he was interned on the Isle of Man as an enemy alien, but on returning to the town he was never allowed to forget being German. The entire family moved back to Germany in 1920.
Friedrich's aircraft was crippled during the raid and he made for neutral Holland. However his aircraft crashed at Breda and there were no survivors. Friedrich and his crew were buried at IJsselstein. His brother William was later killed while serving with the Wehrmacht.

Tartan Air Force- Scotland and a Century of Military Aviation 1907-2007
Deborah Lake, Birlinn Press 2007 £16.99

 

Who says there were no plans to bomb German production centers before WW2...?



Of course there were....

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After the Munich Crisis in late 1937, the Air Staff formulated a list of targets in Germany for Bomber Command's planners to consider. These were known as the Western Air Plans and had 16 items in the list ranging from attacks on German industry and the Luftwaffe to attacking forests with incendiaries to set them alight. The Command's response was pessimistic to some of the plans - Attack on the German Air Striking Force (WA1) it felt, was beyond it's current capacity as the relatively small targets would be difficult to find and hit. Others, such as WA5 (Attack on German manufacturing resources) received a better response such as much of Germany's industry was concentrated in an area called the Ruhr and presented a much larger target. Bomber Command believed that by concentrating its efforts on 19 powerplants and 26 coking plants it could bring German war production to a standstill in 2 weeks! Furthermore, this would require 3,000 sorties and would result in the loss of 176 aircraft.

RAF History - Bomber Command 60th Anniversary

 

WAR IN RUSSIAN BOLSHEVIK WATERS

and the Royal Navy

Russian Bolshevik Navy 1919

In April 1918, seven submarines had to be scuttled. Between December 1918 and September 1919 - just nine months - British losses amounted to:

1 light cruiser
2 destroyers
2 small monitors
1 submarine
4 minesweepers
3 coastal motor boats


The attack on Kronstadt,in August 1919,by 8 British Coastal Motor Boats assisted by 12 RAF Sopwith Camels resulted in 2 Victoria Crosses being awarded.

Claude Congreve Dobson (1885 - 1940) - Find A Grave Memorial

Claude Congreve Dobson - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Gordon Charles Steele - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

I must say I was amazed by this high figure:

Korean war:

Between 3.5 and 4 million civilians were killed.

::Korea::

 

Kerensky did not die until 1970....

Alexander Fyodorovich Kerensky (Russian: Алекса́ндр Фёдорович Ке́ренский, Aleksandr Fjëdorovich Kerenskij) (May 4 [O.S. April 22] 1881 – June 11, 1970) served as the second Prime Minister of the Russian Provisional Government until Vladimir Lenin was elected by the All-Russian Congress of Soviets following the October Revolution.

Alexander Kerensky - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Kerensky died at his home in New York City in 1970, one of the last surviving major participants in the turbulent events of 1917. The local Russian Orthodox Churches in New York refused to grant Kerensky burial, seeing him as being a freemason and being largely responsible for Russia falling to the Bolsheviks. A Serbian Orthodox Church also refused. Kerensky's body was then flown to London where he was buried at Putney Vale non-denominational cemetery.

 

Black Tom Explosion

On Sunday morning, July 30, 1916, at 2:08 a.m., Jersey City residents were awakened by a major explosion and a succession of smaller explosions that lasted for several hours, sending shock waves as far as ninety miles away. The explosions occurred at Black Tom Island--no longer an island--but a mile-long pier on landfill that connected the island with the Jersey City waterfront (formerly old Communipaw). The pier stood opposite the Statue of Liberty in the New York Harbor. The Lehigh Valley Railroad Company owned and used the pier as a work yard where the National Dock and Storage Company had warehouses. The origin of the name "Black Tom" is said to come from a "dark skinned" fisherman who lived at the site for many years.

On the evening of the Black Tom incident, barges and freight cars at the depot were reportedly filled with over two million pounds of ammunition waiting to be shipped overseas.

The reported property damage was enormous--over $20 million. The Black Tom depot with its freight cars, warehouses, barges, tugboats and piers was completely destroyed. In the nearby harbor, the Statue of Liberty sustained $100,000 in damages from the spray of shrapnel.

After World War I, the Lehigh Valley Railroad, who owned Black Tom, and others, brought charges of German sabotage before the Mixed Claims Commission under the 1921 Treaty of Berlin between the United States and Germany. The commission questioned the origins of the Black Tom explosion.

In 1939 after seventeen years of deliberation, the German-American Mixed Claims Commission claimed Germany responsible of sabotage. Germany was ordered to pay reparations of $50 million to all claimants.

 

Kruger telegram - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Kruger telegram was a message sent by Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm II to Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger, president of the Transvaal on 3 January 1896. The Kaiser congratulated the president on repelling the Jameson Raid, a sortie by 600 irregulars from Cape Colony into the Transvaal under the command of Leander Starr Jameson. The raid was intended to trigger an uprising by the primarily British expatriate workers but was a fiasco with around 30 raiders killed and the rest surrendering.

The Kruger Telegram is often seen as marking the point at which Anglo-German antagonism became firmly established . This antagonism and the naval arms race which it promoted were important factors behind the outbreak of the First World War.

 

Ohhh...I read about the Kruger Telegram in Robert K. Massie's book.

 

Theo Kordt met sir Horace Wilson for lunch in Sept 1938. Sir Horace whined about the nazis: " We treat them like gentlemen and they are gangsters!"
Kordt snapped back: " And when there were gentlemen in the German government , the British treated them like gangsters!"

Form the "Oyster conspiracy of 1938 " by Parssinen

Amazon.com: The Oster Conspiracy of 1938: The Unknown Story of the Military Plot to Kill Hitler and Avert World War II: Terry Parssinen: Books

 

Commander in Chief?

One day during the early stages of the Revolutionary War, George Washington enlisted an officer to requisition some horses from local landowners. Calling at an old country manse, the officer was graciously received by the lady of the house.

"Madam," he explained, "I have come to claim your horses in the name of the government." "On whose orders?" the woman sternly demanded. "On the orders of General George Washington," the officer replied, "Commander in Chief of the American army."

"Well, you go back and tell General George Washington," the woman replied, "that his mother says he cannot have her horses!"

Anecdotage.Com - Thousands of true funny stories about famous people. Anecdotes from Gates to Yeats

 

Why was Germany considered "always hostile"....

The eminent British military and naval historian, Captain Russell Grenfell, computed the record of numerical involvement in wars by the major European powers in the crucial century between Waterloo and Sarajevo as follows:

Britain 10

Russia 7

France 5

Austria 3

Prussia-Germany 3



Unconditional Hatred (New York: The Devin-Adair Company, 1954)

Amazon.com: Unconditional Hatred: German War Guilt Post W. W. II 1953: Russell Grenfell: Books

 

Irish Brigade (WWI - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

The "Irish Brigade" was an attempt by Sir Roger Casement to form an Irish nationalist military unit during World War I, among Irishmen who had served in the British Army and had become prisoners of war (POWs) in Germany. Casement sought to send a well-equipped and well-organized Irish unit to Ireland, to fight against Britain, in the aim of achieving independence for Ireland. Such an action was to be concurrent with the ongoing war between Britain and Germany, thereby providing indirect aid to the German cause, without the ex-POWs fighting in the Imperial Germany Army itself.

Only 52 Irishmen volunteered and they were brought together at a POW camp at Limburg an der Lahn.

When Casement discovered that German material aid for the planned Easter Rising of 1916 was less substantial than expected, he abandoned the brigade and returned to Ireland, in an effort to persuade the Irish Volunteers to cancel the rising. Shortly after his arrival on the coast of County Kerry, Casement was arrested, and later charged with treason and executed.