Military History Matters 126

Cover Story

Edward III, the Black Prince, and the Battle of Crécy Graham Goodlad analyses the joint careers of the father and son who led England’s armies in the early campaigns of the Hundred Years War.

Features

The Battle of Crécy, 26 August 1346 Neil Faulkner analyses the first great victory of Edward III’s new tactical system in the Hundred Years War.
The Battle of Chinese Farm William Stroock analyses the decisive battle of the 1973 Yom Kippur War: a massive clash of Egyptian and Israeli armour in the Sinai Desert.
Wolfe at Quebec: a new analysis Sam Allison and Jon Bradley offer a forensic reappraisal of General James Wolfe’s spectacular victory.
The Philippines, 1942-1945: the resistance and the return James Kelly Morningstar describes the Philippine resistance to the Japanese occupation during WWII.
‘The worst maritime disaster ever’: the Sinking of the Wilhelm Gustloff Hitler’s Nazi Empire was in its death agony. Millions of Germans were desperate to escape the fast-advancing Red Army. Richard Selcer reports on a signal catastrophe amid the chaos.

News

Pre-Columbian mass grave found in Peru Although the Chimú are known to have practised human sacrifice, it is currently not possible to say whether this is the case here.
Australia’s famous ‘unknown sailor’ identified after 80 years No other sailors from HMAS Sydney were ever recovered, even after the ship’s wreckage was located in 2008.
Vera Brittain’s wartime service medals acquired by museum They will now form part of the Imperial War Museum's First World War Collections.
Record of Scotland’s largest battle to be updated The Battle of Pinkie was the last large-scale pitched battle between Scotland and England before the 1603 Union of Crowns.
Rare Roman dagger found by young amateur archaeologist in Switzerland Inlaid with silver and brass and buried under 20 inches of soil, it was possibly placed as an offering to the gods.
Last surviving ‘Band of Brothers’ officer Edward Shames dies A member of Easy Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division, Shames was involved in some of the most important battles of the Second World War.
New film depicts Allies’ legendary ‘Mincemeat’ deception Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen star in this retelling of the 1943 Allied plan to keep the invasion of Sicily a secret

Views

MHM Letters January 2022 Letters Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
Military History Book Awards 2022 Competitions Military History Matters has curated a list of 2021’s best military history titles: the nominees for this year’s MHM Book Awards. Our selection includes some of the best-researched, most-insightful, and…
Military History Events, Lectures, and Exhibitions in Spring 2022 Museum, What's on Exhibitions include 'Brothers in Arms' at the National Army Museum, and 'Nelson, Navy, Nation' at the National Maritime Museum.
The Junkers 322 Mammut and the Messerschmitt 321/323 Gigant Ideas All three of these aircraft originated with a 1940 requirement for a large assault glider in preparation for Operation Sealion, the projected invasion of Britain. Although Operation Sealion had effectively…
Museum review – The Night Hunters: The Royal Navy’s Coastal Forces at War Museum, What's on REVIEWING THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EXHIBITIONS WITH Graham Goodlad.
War Classics: History of the Art of War in the Sixteenth Century Comment What is immediately striking reading Oman is the depth of his scholarship... These are works of exceptional length and detail.
The wartime art of Laura Knight Culture, People Laura Knight was blessed with some of the essential qualities of any great artist: a broadness of outlook and a fascination with the riches of ordinary life. A new exhibition…
War of words – ‘ovation’ Ideas Marcus Claudius Marcellus asked the Senate to grant him a triumph. He was refused because the fighting in his former province of Sicily was still ongoing, and his army was…

Reviews

Review: Eye in the Sky Taylor Downing reviews a classic war movie.
Munich – The Edge of War George MacKay (pictured) once again demonstrates he has the face of a wartime hero in this new adaptation of the bestselling book by Robert Harris, screened initially at the BFI…
Military History Events, Lectures, and Exhibitions in Spring 2022 Exhibitions include 'Brothers in Arms' at the National Army Museum, and 'Nelson, Navy, Nation' at the National Maritime Museum.
When France Fell: the Vichy crisis and the fate of the Anglo-American alliance In the midst of Operation Torch, the Allied invasion of French North Africa in November 1942, the famous war reporter Ernie Pyle arrived in the Algerian city of Oran and…
Museum review – The Night Hunters: The Royal Navy’s Coastal Forces at War REVIEWING THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EXHIBITIONS WITH Graham Goodlad.
Blood and Ruins: the great imperial war, 1931-1945 While many historians drill deeper into their sources and produce more detailed and specialist works, it is excellent to find one of Britain’s best Second World War historians doing the…
Boy Soldiers: a personal story of Nazi elite schooling and its legacy of trauma An old German proverb has it that ‘a great war leaves the country with three armies – an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves.’…
Lawrence of Arabia’s Secret dispatches in the Arab Revolt, 1915-1919 Fabrizio Bagatti has made a major contribution to Lawrence of Arabia studies with the publication of this volume. Until now, we have had only the edited selection of his military…
Between Two Hells: the Irish Civil War I am always perplexed by political commentators who suggest that the possibility of Northern Ireland being reunited with Éire or Scotland becoming independent as a result of Brexit puts us…
The Blind Strategist: John Boyd and the American Art of War In his introduction to this exceptionally worthwhile volume, Stephen Robinson describes how, during the Gulf War, General Tommy Franks, a true believer in what had become the US Army’s dominant doctrine of…

From the editor

England’s King Edward III was one of the greatest military innovators of the Middle Ages. His son, the Black Prince, became one of the period’s most renowned commanders. Our special this issue takes a look at this extraordinary partnership.

Edward implemented a series of radical reforms in English military organisation that turned his country into an armed camp and a launch-pad for successive attempts to make good the English monarchy’s claim to the French crown. Central to this was a new tactical system of defensive linear warfare that combined ‘bill and bow’ – a system that delivered the extraordinarily one-sided victory at Crécy in August 1346.

Also in this issue, we revisit General Wolfe’s capture of Quebec in 1759. Sam Allison and Jon Bradley offer a forensic analysis of Wolfe’s underestimated brilliance.

We then have two very different WWII stories. Richard Selcer offers a detailed account of the greatest naval disaster of all time – the sinking of the German passenger liner Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic on the night of 30 January 1945 – while James Morningstar discusses the Philippine resistance to the Japanese occupation between 1941 and 1945.

Finally, William Stroock recounts the decisive Battle of Chinese Farm in the Sinai Desert in October 1973 – the armoured clash between Egyptian and Israeli forces that determined the outcome of the Yom Kippur War.