The U.S. Army Wanted to Conscript Insects to Fight the Viet-Cong But the six-legged soldiers weren’t terribly reliable! Mao Tse-Tung famously wrote in On Guerrilla Warfare that guerrillas are proverbial fish who have to swim in the water of the people in order to win their struggle against powerful governments. “It is only undisciplined troops who…
Category: Military History
On This Day in History: The Chernobyl Disaster
On this day, 30 Years Ago, in 1986, the world’s worst nuclear accident to date occurs at the Chernobyl nuclear plant near Kiev in Ukraine. The full toll from this disaster is still being tallied, but experts believe that thousands of people died and as many as 70,000 suffered severe poisoning. In addition, a large…
Military History: Six Astounding 18th Century Rules of War
“Yes, the objective of any general is to defeat the enemy, but that doesn’t mean you should be a boor about it.” Editor’s Introduction THE GENEVA CONVENTION is in the news of late, thanks to Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump. The bombastic billionaire-turned-politician has been taking aim at international lawsgoverning the use of military force, characterizing…
World War I History: Gallipoli
With the war along the Western Front at a standstill in early 1915, allied leaders were looking for ways to break the stalemate. Many were worried that the deadlock might be permanent. Lord Kitchener, the British secretary of state for war, reluctantly conceded that operations needed to be established elsewhere. Breaking the Stalemate That “elsewhere,”…
Military Weapons From the Past: The M3 “Grease Gun” v2.0
The Philippine Marines Teach a SMG that dates back to WW2 some New Tricks War Is Boring and Historical Firearms recently posted a story about the use of suppressed M3 “Grease Gun” from World War II onward to Vietnam. U.S. forces stopped issuing the guns to troops in 1992, but at least one unit in…
World War Two History: The Man Who Fell 22,000 Feet and Lived to Tell The Tale
Paratroopers make a big deal about jumping out of planes from 800 feet, but U.S. Army Air Force Staff Sgt. Alan Magee fell out of a plane at 22,000 feet without a parachute while the plane was on fire. And he lived. Magee was a ball turret gunner in a B-17 named “Snap! Crackle! Pop!”…
Military Naval History: The Samoan Showdown: How Germany and the U.S. Almost Came to Blows Decades Before WWI
“For several months, the two opposing fleets would face off in a tense game of brinksmanship. The standoff became known as the Samoan Crisis.” GERMANY WAS A LATE BLOOMER among Europe’s imperial powers. After attaining nation-state status in 1870, Otto von Bismarck’s newly unified Germany made up for its recent arrival on the world stage by…
Know Your Weapons: The Adams Revolver
Robert Adams and Samuel Colt Waged a Vicious, but Largely Unknown War over the 19th Century Pistol market By 1850, Samuel Colt had come to dominate the American revolver market, aggressively defending his patents and using advanced manufacturing processes to out-produce rivals. Meanwhile in February 1851, British gunsmith Robert Adams patented his double-action revolver design….
One Big Reason America is Not Ready for World War III
I was on this hill as a battery commander with six 88-millimeter antitank guns, and the Americans kept sending tanks down the road and we kept knocking them out. Finally, we ran out of ammunition and the Americans didn’t run out of tanks. [Nazi Artillery Commander, Battle of Salerno] At the start of World War…
Obscure Weapons: Thompson Model 1923 Auto Rifle
One of the very early entrants into the United States Ordnance Department’s semiauto rifle trials was the Auto-Ordnance Company, makers of the Thompson submachine gun. For the rifle trials, they designed a .30-06 rifle using the same Blish-locking principle as had been applied to the SMG. Since the Blish principle doesn’t actually work, this resulted…