Germany, Britain, and France all introduced luminous night sights for their service rifles in 1916. Today we are looking at a Gewehr 98 and an SMLE that have detachable WW1 night sights fitted (and the SMLE also has a metal muzzle cover device). WW1 Night Sights: Gewehr 98 and SMLE — Forgotten Weapons
Category: History of Weapons
Know Your WW2 History: Panzerturms: The Gothic Line
At the Hitler Line, a single Panzerturm had systematically knocked out thirteen North Irish Horse tanks in minutes. Fighting defensively, and sited to take best advantage of the terrain, a Pantherturm had several advantages over tanks, artillery or standard bunkers. It’s low silhouette made it easy to conceal and, once located, difficult to target from […]…
Viking Vessels
Know Your History: Was Hitler’s Ho 299 the First True Stealth Fighter?
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/was-hitlers-ho-299-first-true-stealth-fighter-152356 The Nazi invention wasn’t exactly a “stealth” fighter, but it did share a certain idea. by Sebastien Roblin Key point: The plane never took over. However, it did accidentally stumble upon how a certain shape can help reduce a plane’s radar signature. Northrop Grumman revealed this year it is developing a second flying wing […]…
Know Your WW2 History: 51st and 52nd Panzer Battalions
Panthers were supplied to form Panzer Abteilung 51 (Tank Battalion 51) on 9 January, and then Pz.Abt. 52 on 6 February 1943. The first production Panther tanks were plagued with mechanical problems. The engine was dangerously prone to overheating and suffered from connecting rod or bearing failures. Gasoline leaks from the fuel pump or carburetor, […]…
Know Your WW2 History: Jagdtiger SdKfz 186
The heaviest armored vehicle fielded by the Germans in World War II was the Panzerjäger Tiger Ausf B. This was built on a slightly lengthened Tiger II chassis topped with a fixed casemate and a 12.8 cm PaK 44 L/55 antitank gun. It weighed seventy-nine tons. A few early versions of the Jagdtiger had a […]…
Know Your Weapons: Soviet WWII Machine Guns
The Soviets were latecomers to machine-gun development generally. Prior to World War I, the czarist army bought machine guns from other countries and manufactured some under license. For this reason, Russian machine-gun development and production had to start virtually from scratch after the Russian Revolution. A top priority was the development of a light machine […]…
We Accept Death, We Hand Out Death II
The forty-three-year-old Gruppenführer Hermann Priess commanded the I SS Corps, formerly Sepp Dietrich’s old formation, which contained 1st and 12th Panzer Divisions, totalling around 240 panzers on 16 December. We have seen via Dietrich’s career how the Leibstandarte expanded from a motorised regiment in 1939 to the largest division in the armed forces by December […]…
The Viking “Great Army”
The Operations of the ‘Great Army’ in Britain (865–79) The term ‘great army’, employed by several contemporary sources to describe this unusually large assemblage of Norse raiders, implies a huge horde of perhaps tens of thousands, but it most probably was not. Although no precise figures are given, it is highly doubtful that it numbered […]…
THE VIKINGS IN IRELAND 795–1014 Part I
I am reading a short novel right now about the Vikings in Ireland so I found this fascinating. Few places suffered more at the hands of the Vikings than Ireland. For the best part of 200 years the Vikings systematically milked Ireland of its people to supply the slave trade, yet, for all their military…