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Vietnam Stuka's
On 13th of April 1972 the darkness of the early morning was lit up by the flashes of a huge number of artillery pieces. For the next 15 hours they fired at their target. The focus of this concentration...
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Fire Fight
The anti-hero is a common enough tale in fiction, but even in real life they exist. Maynard Harrison Smith was born to wealthy parents in May 1911, and after his father died he lived off his...
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War Train
Today, armoured trains in the Second World War are seen as mostly an Eastern Front vehicle, with both the Germans and Russians using them. But in the Second World War the British did build their own...
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Toilet Bomb
In 1952 Lieutenant Commander M. K. Dennis was serving as the executive officer for the US Navy's They were based upon the USS Princeton flying A-1 Skyraiders against the communist forces. During an...
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Toilet Bomb, part II
Last weeks article was posted on its normal day, which was also Aprils fools day. It was a bit of an odd tale about a pilot strapping a broken toilet to his plane and bombing the Vietnamese with...
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Gun of the Century?
A couple of weeks ago while writing the piece on armoured trains it suddenly occurred to me that one of the most ubiquitous weapons ever hardly gets a mention. It racked up a service period of over 100...
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Medium Mirage
For the last three weeks I have been looking at the Vickers Medium tanks of the inter war period, and I think I might have discovered some bits and pieces. Now I posted some of this on my Facebook page...
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Killer of Everything
This week I start with a warning, a lot of the material in this article is drawn from sources that seem to be distinctly biased one way or another. Yet the results of the battles point to the...
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To kill a Convoy
HOMO-03 was the designation of a Japanese convoy that departed from Hong Kong at 1700 on the 4th of April, 1945. Setting out was risky, however remaining was just as dangerous. On the 3rd an air raid...
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The Little Helicopter that Could
On April the 21st 1944 a US L-1 observation plane was slowly flying along at very low level over the Burmese jungle. On board were the pilot and three British soldiers. This particular patch of jungle...
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I spy a T-64!
Earlier in the week I took advantage of the fact I was made redundant and went to visit an archive. Whilst there I saw a document that I thought might be of interest. It is a technical assessment of...
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Wingwalker
Late in the day of 6th July 1941, No 75 (NZ) Squadron Wellington Mk.Is took off from RAF Feltwell. Their target for tonight was Munster. The Germans had just launched their invasion of Russia, and...
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Busy Week
I'm sure there's a scientific theory somewhere which describes this phenomenon, but as you will most likely know I got made redundant a few weeks back. After two-three weeks unemployed I started back...
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No Big Bang
During 1940 Britain came under sustained bombing from the Luftwaffe. Its widely recognized today that an average of 10% of bombs that were dropped on the UK were duds, often called 'UX' or 'UXB' in...
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Super Conqueror Kryptonite
Have you ever looked back at work you did when younger or looked back at your social media posts from your teen years and thought "What the hell was I thinking?". Well that is me today, and it is time...
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Tandem HEAT warhead
In the years prior to the Second World War the Swiss inventor Henry Mohaupt started work on the Munroe effect, and is credited with developing the hollow charge anti-tank projectile. Although this is a...
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Go Ahead England
In the first half of 1944 The Japanese Army and Navy were having an argument over the use of the Japanese Navy’s huge Type C submarines. These monsters were over 100m in length, to put that in...
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Radfan Radicals
On the day I normally write an article I had to go to an archive for some research, so for this week and next, we'll be doing a two parter.There is a common theme in the history of Arabia. The country...
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Mountain Armour
We left British operations in Radfan with the failure of an SAS patrol to secure a landing zone, that would allow a company of Para's to land behind an objective. With the failure to secure the drop...
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Radfan (part three)
Part one. We left the situation in Radfan with two companies of 3 Para, and the battalion HQ arriving along with some medium guns. These replaced the company already on the ground which rotated out for...
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