Charge Of The Light Brigade Bugle Stolen

The stolen bugle came from the Balaclava battlefield in the Crimea

Charge Of The Light Brigade Bugle Stolen In Eastbourne -- BBC

A £2,000 reward is being offered for the return of items stolen from a museum, including a Russian bugle from the Charge of the Light Brigade.

The brass bugle, decorated with a double-headed eagle, was stolen from the Redoubt Fortress and Military Museum in Eastbourne, Sussex.

The borough council and the Queen's Royal Irish Hussars Museum Collection, at the museum, have offered the reward.

World War II hero General Sir John Hackett's medals were also stolen.

The total value of the haul, taken in a break-in on 3 July, is estimated at more than £16,000.

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My Comment: Even though it is a Russian bugle .... it is another piece of British military history gone for the ages.

Who Was Britain's Greatest Ever Foe (As A Leader Of An Army)?

Washington was the winner in a contest run by the National Army Museum to identify the country's most outstanding military opponent

George Washington Named Britain's Greatest Ever Foe -- The Telegraph

George Washington has been named as the greatest foe ever faced by the British.

The American was voted the winner in a contest run by the National Army Museum to identify the country's most outstanding military opponent.

He was one of a shortlist of five leaders who topped a public poll and on Saturday was selected as the ultimate winner by an audience of around 70 guests at a special event at the museum, in Chelsea, west London.

In second place was Michael Collins, the Irish leader, ahead of Napoleon Bonaparte, Erwin Rommel and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk.

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My Comment: George Washington is a good choice, and Michael Collins deserves to be on the list. I would put Napoleon as number #1, and George Washington as number #2.

10 Greatest Killers of Man 364 Comments

Although many different cultures have legends that tell of men slaying thousands by their own hand, Simo Hayha is one of the deadliest soldiers of modern war.

From Listverse:

Since time began, the single greatest act one can witness is the miracle of life. It occurs at every moment of every day. This admiration of life leads us to the fear and devastation that accompany the ending of said life. Throughout history, death has used many vessels to carry out its mission to end that life. Below you will find 10 couriers of death’s deed. Some of them are natural, brought forth by the forces of nature itself; some are terrible, due to the atrociousness of evil men, and some are the result of omission, the lack of prevention.

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Mankind's First Genocide?

An archaeologist uncovers a skeleton from the Uruk colony's remains. Was this person killed by his/her own people? Photo courtesy Professor Clemens Reichel

New Discoveries Hint At 5,500 Year Old Fratricide At Hamoukar, Syria -- The Independent

Five years ago, archaeologists found the “earliest evidence for large scale organized warfare in the Mesopotamian world.” Using slings and clay bullets a – likely Uruk – army took over the city of Hamoukar, burning it down in the process. Now, new discoveries at a nearby settlement shed more light on the 3500 BC battle – and raise more questions. If the invading army was from Uruk, did they kill their own people? If so, why?

Hamoukar is a city that flourished in northern Syria since at least 4000 BC. They traded in obsidian and in later times copper working became increasingly important to the city’s economy. Thousands of clay sealings – once used to lock doors or containers and impressed with stamp seals – were found at the ancient site. They tell of a bureaucratic system that was almost as complex as our own.

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My Comment: It appears that mankind has been at war with each other since the beginning of time. Sighhh .... the only difference is that our weapons are now vastly more destructive than what the ancients had 5500 years ago.

A Bit Of British Naval History Stolen

Top secret: A Holland class submarine surfaces during trials

Wreck Of 'Protected' Royal Navy Sub Plundered By Thieves Who Dived Down 90ft To Reach It -- The Daily Mail

The wreck of an historic Royal Navy submarine has been plundered by thieves who dived 90ft to the sea bed to remove part of it.

HMS Holland, which sank in bad weather off the Sussex coast while being towed to a scrapyard in 1912, is protected by law because of its historical importance.

Now police are investigating after divers from the Nautical Archaeology Society discovered during a routine check that its torpedo tube hatch is missing.

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My Comment: Nothing is sacred anymore.

Did The USSR Plan A Nuclear Attack On China In 1969?

Leonid Brezhnev and Richard Nixon talks in 1973. Photo from Wikimedia

USSR Planned Nuclear Attack On China In 1969 -- The Telegraph

The Soviet Union was on the brink of launching a nuclear attack against China in 1969 and only backed down after the US told Moscow such a move would start World War Three, according to a Chinese historian.

The extraordinary assertion, made in a publication sanctioned by China's ruling Communist Party, suggests that the world came perilously close to nuclear war just seven years after the Cuban missile crisis.

Liu Chenshan, the author of a series of articles that chronicle the five times China has faced a nuclear threat since 1949, wrote that the most serious threat came in 1969 at the height of a bitter border dispute between Moscow and Beijing that left more than one thousand people dead on both sides.

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Legends of Vietnam: Super Tweet

In 1967, four months after delivery, the new A-37A entered combat in South Vietnam.
(Roger Moseley)

From Air And Space Smithsonian:

Yeah. The A-37 was small. So was Napoleon.

Looking for Mach-busting splendor in million-dollar wonders from the heavies of the U.S. military-industrial complex? This ain't it. The A-37 Dragonfly was a waist-high, subsonic light attack aircraft that could lift its own weight in fuel and armaments, built by a manufacturer known for civilian pleasure craft. You could get a half-dozen for the price of a single F-4. The A-37 brought jet-propelled combat in Vietnam down from rarefied heights to the low-and-slow—where the acrid haze of rice-burning season permeated the unpressurized cockpit and you plucked bullets from Viet Cong small arms out of the armor plate under your seat after a mission. Its claim to fame?

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My Comment: Small, cheap, can be massed produced, and terribly. This is a mindset that is missing in today's Defense R&D departments and procurements.

Chinese Test Pilot Recalls Scary Time in 1971 When Live H-Bomb Wouldn’t Disengage From Plane

(Courtesy Yang Guoxiang)

A&S Interview: Yang Guoxiang -- Air And Space Smithsonian

One of China's top test pilots recalls the H-Bomb that almost backfired.

When your assignment is to drop a live nuclear bomb, you’d better not return to base with it. But that’s just what happened in 1971 to Yang Guoxiang, a pilot with the People’s Liberation Army Air Force, who told his harrowing tale to Bob Bergin, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer who writes about the aviation history of Southeast Asia and China. Bergin interviewed Yang in Kunming, China, in early 2009, with the assistance of interpreter Zhao Gang, an instructor at Yunnan University.

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My Comment: I am sure that the guys on the ground were not amused.

The Story Behind China Salvaging A British Submarine In 1972

HMS Poseidon

China Admits Secretly Salvaging British Submarine HMS Poseidon -- The Telegraph

China has admitted secretly salvaging a British submarine sunk in an accident in 1931, but claimed there was no sign of the remains or personal effects of the 18 men who were entombed in HMS Poseidon when it went down off the former naval base of Weihai.

Beijing has only confirmed that it raised and scrapped the Poseidon in 1972 after its fate was reported by The Daily Telegraph shortly after the anniversary of the sinking on June 9.

But China's claim that the hull of the vessel contained no human remains, identity tags, watches, rings or other personal items has provoked anger among relatives of the men who died.

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Hat Tip: New Wars

My Comment: I am surprised that the Chinese admitted that they salvaged the sub. On such issues, they are usually silent and not forthcoming on any information.

A 1935 US Plan For Invasion Of Canada!

(Click Image to enlarge)
Canada, named "Crimson", the UK was "Red," India "Ruby," Australia "Scarlet," New Zealand "Garnet", and Ireland "Emerald" according to War Plan Red

From Wikipedia:

War Plan Red, also known as the Atlantic Strategic War Plan, was a plan for the United States to make war with Great Britain (the "Red" forces). It was developed by the United States Army during the mid 1920s, approved in May 1930 by the Secretary of War and the Secretary of Navy, updated in 1934-35, and officially withdrawn in 1939, following the outbreak of the Second World War, when it and others like it were replaced by the five "Rainbow" plans created to deal with the Axis threat. However, it was not declassified until 1974.

The war was intended to be a continental war, waged primarily on North American territory between the United States and the British Empire. The assumption was that Canada would represent the ideal geographic forum through which the United States could wage war against the British.

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My Comment: To say that this is weird is an understatement .... I guess the Pentagon planners had a lot of free time in the 1930s.

The Wider View: Nazi Codebreaker Which Shortened The Second World War By Two Years

Mike Hillyard, one of the volunteers who rebuilt a replica of the Turing Bombe machine that played a crucial part in cracking the Nazi Enigma Code, stands by the machine at Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes

From The Daily Mail:

The rows of silver dials and tangle of scarlet wires look more like a telephone exchange.

But this is the inside of the Turing Bombe, the part-electronic, part-mechanical code-breaking machine and forerunner of the modern computer, which cracked 3,000 messages a day sent on Nazi Enigma machines during the Second World War.

There were 210 such bookcase-like Bombes that gave Britain advance warning of Hitler’s plans and shortened the conflict by two years.

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Most Important Battleship of WW 2

USS Missouri

From New Wars:

The race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong… but time and chance happeneth to them all.

Eccesiastes 9:11

Still keeping with our theme of “New Wars”, we journey back to the last great war at sea for some historical lessons.

In lists of battleships most favored in the Second World War, when the mighty dreadnoughts ended their reign as capital ship, are familiar factors including size (”The Biggest“), speed (”the fastest“), armament, (”most dangerous“), or even “all of the above“. My own list would include which battleship was the most crucial toward winning the war against the Axis Powers, the German, Japanese, and Italian Navies.

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