War on Film: The Forgotten Battle
TAYLOR DOWNING reviews the latest film releases.
Second World War
The Battle of Britain: but for a few misplaced bombs
John Lock resumes his series on the ‘Butterfly Effect’. Last time (MHM June/July 2021) he assessed the possible impact of Stonewall Jackson’s accidental shooting at the Battle of Chancellorsville. This time, equally controversially, he turns his attention to the Battle of Britain.
WAR CLASSICS – Barbarossa: The Russian-German Conflict 1941-45
MHM Editor Neil Faulkner recalls one of the great works of military history.
The Greatest Raid: St Nazaire, 1942 – the heroic story of Operation Chariot
The superficial justification for Operation Chariot – the daring British commando raid on the French port of St Nazaire in March 1942 – was that it would deny Tirpitz a crucial repair dock. The destruction of the fearsome German battleship…
Only portrait Churchill formally sat for during war goes on display
The Freedom Portrait, by Frank Owen Salisbury, has joined an existing exhibition at the Churchill War Rooms in London.
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.
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 came across a bizarre situation. Pyle found one French unit…
The Junkers 322 Mammut and the Messerschmitt 321/323 Gigant
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 been cancelled by the time the requirement was issued in…
Museum review – The Night Hunters: The Royal Navy’s Coastal Forces at War
REVIEWING THE BEST MILITARY HISTORY EXHIBITIONS
WITH Graham Goodlad.
Popular Resistance and the Fall of Imperial Japan
The Japanese surge between December 1941 and June 1942 – between, that is, Pearl Harbor and Midway – created a huge Far Eastern empire comparable with that of the Nazis in Europe. But at that point Japan’s capacity for expansion…
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.’ General Field Marshal ‘Bloody Ferdinand’ Schörner, commander of Army Group…
The wartime art of Laura Knight
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 of her work at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes…
The Philippines, 1942-1945: the resistance and the return
James Kelly Morningstar describes the Philippine resistance to the Japanese occupation during WWII.
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.
‘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.
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
Veterans, curators, and authors head line-up of first ever IWM live event
The Imperial War Museum has announced its first ever all-day live event, consisting of talks from conflict veterans, museum curators, and leading authors in the field of military history.
Pearl Harbor and the Rise of Imperial Japan
David Porter charts Japan’s heady ascent from secluded feudal dictatorship to Pacific superpower in less than a century.
MHM Letters – November 2021
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
The Pathfinders: the elite RAF force that turned the tide of WWII
This well-written book tells the remarkable story of an extraordinary team of aviators and their support personnel, from a wide range of backgrounds and nationalities, who – to quote from the book’s sub-title – turned the tide of the RAF’s…
Smiling Through: Heath Robinson’s cartoons in the Second World War
Though he was 67 when the Second World War broke out, the celebrated cartoonist William Heath Robinson – best known for his drawings featuring crazy inventions – continued to produce memorable comic images during the conflict, as he had done in the First World War.
This week: Pearl Harbor
It was, according to a famous speech made by US President Franklin D Roosevelt the following day, 'a date which will live in infamy'. Shortly before 8am on Sunday 7 December 1941 – 80 years ago next month – 360 aircraft launched in two waves from carriers belonging to the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) made a surprise attack on the US Pacific Fleet based at Pearl Harbor, on the Hawaiian island of Oahu.
Pearl Harbor: The Attack, 7 December 1941
David Porter analyses the Japanese surprise attack on the US Pacific fleet.
War on Film – Pearl Harbour
Taylor Downing surveys screen depictions of Pearl Harbor in a ‘War on Film’ special.
MHM’s round-up of the latest military history titles – November 2021
•Total War: a people’s history of the Second World War
• Churchill, Master and Commander: Winston Churchill at war 1895-1945
• A Dangerous Enterprise: secret war at sea
• A Brave and Cunning Prince: the great chief Opechancanough and the war for America
• Bomber Command: men, machines, and missions, 1936-68
• Ancient Rome: infographics
Memorials of the Mighty Eighth
Sam Edwards explores the many markers in the English countryside to the former presence of America’s WWII bomber fleet.
Taking Paris: the epic battle for the City of Lights
‘General Erwin Rommel has had a very busy weekend.’ So begins Martin Dugard’s latest book, Taking Paris. And immediately the reader knows two things. Firstly, the book does not only describe the August 1944 campaign for the French capital. Originally…
Major new aircraft exhibition to display largest collection of Spitfires under one roof
The exhibition opens at the Imperial War Museum’s Duxford branch in December
Guy Gibson at RAF Scampton, 1943
In this image, Wing Commander Guy Gibson can be seen sitting in field of poppies at RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire in July 1943. It was from this airbase that Gibson led 617 Squadron to carry out Operation Chastise, more commonly…
Second World War and Holocaust Galleries, IWM London
MHM Assistant Editor Calum Henderson reviews the Imperial War Museum's latest exhibition.
Pacific War Quiz
How many Imperial Japanese aircraft took part in the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941?
Letters – MHM Septemeber 2021
Your thoughts on issues raised by the magazine.
RAF pilot’s uniform preserved as parcel for 70 years
The uniform, consisting of jacket and trousers, was found in a house in Rolleston-on-Dove, East Staffordshire, during a home clear-out.
War of Words: ‘Jeep’
‘Jeep’ was US Army slang meaning something that was unimportant or laughable.
Stalin’s War
This book convincingly argues that Stalin’s war began long before the German invasion of Russia in June 1941, and can really be said to have begun in the late 1920s. Initially, this was a war of suppression at home, combined…