Browsing: Military

A Brief History On April 10, 1944, 2 Jewish inmates of the German concentration camp at Auschwitz, in Poland, escaped to tell the world of the horrors they had witnessed.  (The name of the camp is Oświęcim in Polish.)  They soon reported the incredible conditions of the camp and the ongoing extermination of European Jews by the Nazi regime of Germany.  Their report, known as the Vrba–Wetzler report, shocked the world and resulted in the government of Hungary, an ally of Germany during World War II, to stop deporting Hungarian Jews to Germany for extermination in the dreaded concentration camps.…

A Brief History On April 9, 1388, at the Battle of Näfels, a military force of the Old Swiss Confederation fought a much larger force representing the Austrian royal family, the Habsburgs.  In a stunning example of David beating Goliath, the Swiss soldiers won a rousing victory, an indication of why other powerful European countries have been leaving Switzerland alone for many years now. Digging Deeper At the Battle of Näfels, the Swiss fielded a modest troop of only about 400 or so fighting men against a superior Austrian force numbering around 6500 soldiers.  The attacking Austrians at first forced…

A Brief History On March 30, 1296, King Edward I of England, often better known as Edward Longshanks, sacked the Scottish town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, part of the ongoing war of England trying to maintain suzerainty over Scotland.  (Which means control of the direction and foreign policy of another nation without total ceding of local control.  Or something like that.)  As Scotland chafed under the English thumb, patriots such as William Wallace, a knight of murky origins, arose to fight the English during the struggle for total independence for Scotland. Digging Deeper Why “Longshanks?”  Meaning “Long Legs,” Edward was quite tall…

A Brief History On March 27, 1945, the United States Army Air Forces began Operation Starvation, an extensive program of using naval mines in all the waterways in and around Japan in an effort to greatly inhibit the transportation of food and essentials between Japanese islands.  Initiated at the command of Admiral Chester Nimitz, the Commander in Chief, U.S. Pacific Fleet and Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, the plan utilized the latest and most modern heavy bombers in the American arsenal, the Boeing B-29 Superfortress to drop the mines from the air. Digging Deeper Nimitz, born in Fredericksburg, Texas…

A Brief History On March 25, 1958, the Canadian supersonic interceptor, the Avro Arrow made its first flight. Designed to fly at Mach 2+ it seemed like a good airplane, but was mysteriously cancelled prior to production, with all partly assembled units and prototypes destroyed.  Other promising weapons have suffered the same fate, some of which may well have been effective while others faded away due to insurmountable problems.  Today we list 10 more military weapons that failed to make it into mass production or widespread issue, expanding on our original article “10 Weapons That Never (Or Barely) Went into…