A suppressed .22-caliber “Wetwork” weapon that never needed replacing When the United States entered World War II, the Pentagon quickly bought up all the stocks it could find of .22LR target pistols — a .22-caliber handgun that fires a rifle-style cartridge—for training purposes. But the British Special Operations Executive was already using suppressed versions of similar weapons in combat….
Category: Military History
World War II History: Bomber Plane Missing for 72 Years Found in the Pacific
TBM-1 Project Recover discovered its sixth WWII bomber plane since 2012. World War II American bomber plane the US Navy TBM-1C Avenger, missing since July 1944, was found in waters surrounding the Pacific Island nation of Palau, according to multiple news reports. It was discovered 85 feet under water within a lagoon. The plane was…
World War I History: Vintage Photo
Belgian soldier smokes a cigarette during a fight between Dendermonde and Oudegem Belgium in 1914. This is a really good photo of a Belgian Maxim, although it appears to be staged – the man has his thumbs on the trigger, but there does is not ammo belt in the gun. View the Original Photo and…
A “What If” Memorial Day
As a Veteran and Historian, I appreciate Post like this, I hope you do too. Happy Memorial Day Weekend to all my readers and subscribers. -SF The news could not have been worse. Starvation, malnutrition, diseases such as typhoid, smallpox, dysentery, and pneumonia, along with freezing temperatures that assaulted thousands of shoeless feet bloodying…
Espionage Files: The Man Who Seduced the US Navy’s 7th Fleet
He tempted his targets with the high life; whiskey, cigars, prostitutes and cash. His moles fed him bundles of military secrets and law enforcement files. All so he could rip off the Navy on an industrial scale for years and years. Now, the depth of the corruption is being exposed as the investigation reaches into the highest…
World War II History: The French Foreign Legion and Nazi’s
Sounds like a plot out of a W.E.B. Griffin Novel I know, but no, this really happened.-SF The French Foreign Legion is one of France’s elite fighting forces, filled with men who are ready and willing to do extreme violence on France’s behalf. When 1930s Germany started looking at its neighbors with greedy eyes, it…
World War I History: Trench Warfare Notes, 1915
I have a really neat document to share today, generously sent to me by a reader named Chris in the United Kingdom. These are the notes from a 1915 course on trench warfare as recorded by his grandfather, one Harold Rayner. Harold was born in 1885 in Surrey, and survived the war to live until 1973…
Espionage Files: North Korea’s Shadow War, Part I
The Great Leader’s Shadow War In the late 1960s, North Korean president Kim Il-sung sent commandos to infiltrate South Korea In the fall of 1966, things really began to change on the Korean Peninsula. The armistice agreement that had marked the de facto end of the Korean War in 1953 had created a demilitarized…
Cold War Files: The Ghost of Soviet Past
CRAWLING THROUGH THE DECAYED NUCLEAR MISSILE BASES OF THE USSR Editor’s note: In December 2015, two Army intelligence officers set out on a trip to explore the mysterious remnants of the Soviet Union in the Baltic States. In the first of this two part series, they showed War on the Rocks readers what they saw…
Ancient Warfare: 11 Rome Sacking Facts About the Original Goths
May 22 is World Goth Day, an occasion minted in 2009 when BBC 6 dedicated the day to goth rock. It has since become a happening in clubs across Europe, the Americas, Australia, and South Africa. To celebrate, we’ve compiled 11 facts about the original Goths—and we don’t mean Bauhaus. Here are some things you…