Another in Parsecboy's massive series on German capital ships, this article looks at the five pre-dreadnought battleships built for the German Imperial Navy in the early 1900s. Soon rendered obsolete by the pace of battleship development, they yet saw service in the early years of World War I and were among the few the post-war German navy was permitted to retain, continuing to serve in several roles. The final survivor of the class was used as a target ship by the German and, later, Soviet navies until 1960.
Also the latest installment in a long-running series, in this case on Australian aviators, Tommy White was one of the country's first military pilots. He saw action in the Mesopotamian campaign of World War I, during which he was captured but later escaped. He then became a Federal parliamentarian, resigned on the eve of World War II, and served in the RAAF before, as nominator Ian Rose puts it, "getting his second bite of the political cherry" as Minister for Air between 1949 and 1951. He ended his career as the Australian High Commissioner to the UK.
Continuing their series on the Hundred Years' War, Gog examines the eleven-month siege of the French port of Calais by the English forces of Edward III in the wake of their stunning victory at Crécy. The French king Philip VI tried and failed to come to the aid of the city, which fell to the English and remained in their hands for more than 200 years.
The dreadnoughtFrance was completed shortly before World War I, and ferried the French President to Saint Petersburg for consultations with the Tsar during the July Crisis of 1914. She had a typical war for a French dreadnought, spending most of it swinging at her moorings in case the Austro-Hungarian fleet attempted to break out of the Adriatic. The ship was sent to the Black Sea in 1919 to support Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War, but her crew was tired of the fighting and mutinied. They succeeded in their goal of getting the French ships withdrawn, although most of the ringleaders were later court-martialed. France struck a rock in 1922 and quickly sank with minimal loss of life.
Gog's second featured article in July, this article examines Edwards III's famous victory over the French in August 1346, which preceded the Siege of Calais mentioned above. Thanks in large part to their longbowmen, the English routed a numerically superior force that included crossbowmen and mounted knights, resulting in heavy French casualties.
Completed after the Battle of Jutland, HMS Ramillies played only a minor role in World War I. She subsequently supported the Allied intervention in the Russian Civil War and Greco-Turkish War. Despite being obsolete, Ramillies saw combat in World War II, including convoy escorts to Malta in 1940, flagship for the invasion of Madagascar in 1942 (during which she was torpedoed by a Japanese midget submarine), and bombarding German positions during the landings in Normandy and in the South of France in 1944. She was eventually placed in reserve and broken up in 1948.
Sturm's third FA in July, Dvenadsat Apostolov was one of the earliest pre-dreadnoughts built for Russia's Black Sea Fleet. She was completed in the early 1890s, and took part in the unsuccessful attempt to recapture the mutinous battleship Potemkin in 1905. Dvenadsat Apostolov was disarmed six years later and became a submarine depot ship in 1912. Immobile in Sevastopol, she was controlled by the Whites and the Reds in turn during the Russian Civil War. Ironically in light of her earlier action, she stood in for Potemkin during the filming of Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin in 1925, before being scrapped.
Parsecboy's third and final piece of featured content in July, this list covers the 23 screw corvettes built by the Prussian and German navies between the 1860s and 1880s. These ships were generally used to protect German economic interests abroad and later German colonies, as well as to train naval cadets on long-distance cruises. Some of the earlier ships also saw action during the wars of German unification. Most of the corvettes were sold for scrap between the 1880s and 1920s; two were lost in accidents.
A good topic since July 2016, this suite of articles on the Royal Australian Air Force's geographically based command-and-control system of the 1940s and early 1950s was elevated to featured status last month following the promotion of its fifth FA, North-Western Area Command (RAAF).
The Battle of Calais was an ambush staged on either 31 December 1349 or 2 January 1350, during the Hundred Years' War, by English troops in the occupied French city of Calais against a force of unsuspecting Frenchmen who were attempting to take the city by stealth. The French were routed by the smaller English force, with significant losses and all of their leaders captured. In the nomination statement Gog noted that as well as describing the battle, they have "used this event to explore a few of the motivations for war in this period, including brief consideration of knightly honour and dishonour, examples of personal gain and personal enmity, and consideration of the perception of behaviour".
Gaulois was a member of the first multi-ship class of pre-dreadnoughts in the French Navy. Aside from having multiple collisions with other French ships, and sinking one of them, her peacetime career was fairly uneventful. When World War I began, she and her sisters were relegated to secondary roles as convoy escorts before they were sent to the Dardanelles to prevent the ex-German battlecruiser Yavuz from breaking out and to attack the fortifications defending the Dardanelles. The ship was badly damaged during one such bombardment in 1915 and had to be run aground. Gaulois was repaired, but was sunk by a German submarine in late 1916 with the loss of only four crewmen while en route to the Eastern Mediterranean.
In the nomination statement, Cplakidas described this as being "a small article on a naval battle between the Venetians and the Genoese in 1263 off Greece, with the Byzantines as onlookers; a fairly typical example of the power dynamics between the three states at the time. Few details are known about the battle itself, but its diplomatic repercussions were great, leading the Byzantines to a rapprochement with Venice soon after".
The Kaiser Friedrich III-class were a class of five pre-dreadnought battleships built for the German Imperial Navy between 1895 and 1901. The ships had relatively uneventful careers, being rebuilt in the mid-1900s and then sent to the reserve as the new dreadnought battleships began to enter service. They were reactivated for duty early in World War I but they saw limited activity owing to their age and the threat of submarines. Withdrawn from service and disarmed by 1916, they were all discarded after the war.
Bill Kibby is one of two South Australians to have been awarded the Victoria Cross during World War II (the other being Tom Derrick, the subject of a FA). Kibby joined the Second Australian Imperial Force in 1940, and was posted to the 2/48th Battalion. He first saw combat in July 1942 during the First Battle of El Alamein. In October, his battalion was committed to the Second Battle of El Alamein, during which he earned the VC for undertaking a series of courageous and inspirational actions across the period from 23 to 31 October. He was killed in the last of these actions, making the award posthumous.
This article covers a short lived formation of the Australian Army that was raised during World War II. Intended to serve in the Middle East, Japan's entry into the war meant that the brigade was never deployed there, instead being held back for defensive duties in the event of an invasion that never came. It was eventually broken up, although some former elements saw service in the Pacific with other formations. In the post war period, the brigade was re-raised briefly within the part-time Citizen Military Forces, remaining on the order of battle until 1957 when it was broken up and its constituent units reallocated to other formations.
The 23rd (Northumbrian) Division was a British Army division of the Second World War. Barely trained, the division was sent to France in 1940 as unskilled labours and with a promise of not being used a combat formation. When the German advance through the Ardennes split the Allied armies, the division was put on the frontline. With no realistic hope of stopping the Germans, the division did its best and got mauled in the process. It escaped via Dunkirk, and after it's return home was broken up in June 1940 to reinforce other units.
Iéna had a short history after her completion in 1902 as she suffered a magazine explosion while in dry dock in 1907. The ensuing investigations caused a scandal that resulted in the resignation of the navy minister and did not solve the fundamental problem because another magazine explosion occurred in 1911 aboard another battleship to much the same cause. The ship was patched enough to be refloated and used as a target in 1909 before sinking. Her wreck was sold for scrap three years later, though it was not completely removed until 1957.
The United States Zouave Cadets was a small and short-lived zouave unit of the Illinois militia that has been credited as the force behind the surge in popularity of zouave infantry in the United States and Confederate States in the mid-19th century. The United States Zouave Cadets were formed in 1859 from the National Guard Cadets of Chicago, established three years earlier. The unit's 1860 tour of the eastern United States popularized the distinctive zouave appearance and customs, directly and indirectly inspiring the formation of dozens of similar units on the eve of the American Civil War. The unit was disbanded following the outbreak of the US Civil War. Chetsford created this article last December, and it became the 49th most-viewed DYK of all time later that month.
This article covers an American engineer, naval aviator, test pilot, and NASA astronaut. See flew fighter aircraft with the US Navy during the 1950s and was selected for NASA in 1962. He was to participate in 1966 Gemini 9 orbital mission, but was killed along with the other astronaut selected for that mission when a jet See was flying crashed.
This article covers the second time Basra came under Safavid control. Though the Safavid military had considerably weakened by this period, the Safavids took the opportunity, ousted the Arab rebels led by Shaykh Mane from the city (they had revolted earlier against their nominal Ottoman overlords), and garrisoned it with their own troops. Not wishing to break the peace with their arch rivals the Ottomans, and due to persistent pressure on the city by the Arab rebels, the Safavids decided to withdraw from Basra in 1701, allowing the Ottomans to retake control of the Persian Gulf city.
Built to counter a pair of Chinese ironclads, Yashima was one of the first battleships in Japanese service and had to be ordered from Britain. She participated in the initial battles of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, but struck a mine and sank in May 1904 after trying to go to the assistance of another battleship that also sank. The Japanese were able to keep the news of her loss from leaking to the Russians who had no idea that the odds against them had dramatically decreased.
Douglas Albert Munro is the most celebrated member of the U.S. Coast Guard. He was killed leading a Coast Guard small boat flotilla against Japanese forces to cover the retreat of the 7th Marines at the Second Battle of the Matanikau and is both the Coast Guard's only Medal of Honor recipient and the only non-Marine listed on the Wall of Heroes of the U.S. Marine Corps. After his death, his 48 year-old mother volunteered for military service and was commissioned a Lt JG in the U.S. Coast Guard. Three warships have been named in his honor, along with three Coast Guard facilities and a street in his home town.
Peacemaker67's second article on a VC recipient from South Australia last month covers an officer who received the award posthumously for three actions in South Vietnam during early 1967. Badcoe was initially an artillery officer who transferred to the infantry. He was posted to South Vietnam as an adviser in 1966, and was devoted to the militia units he was generally attached to. Despite believing that the war was unwinnable, he served with great valour and repeatedly exposed himself to enemy fire to motivate and support South Vietnamese troops.
In the nomination statement Bryanrutherford0 noted that "the "Silesian Wars" are mainly a feature of German military historiography, since from other perspectives they seem to generally be thought of as theatres of wider wars (the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War), but they mark a watershed in German history, signalling the rise of Prussia to parity with Austria in German affairs". The First Silesian War was fought between Prussia and Austria between 1740 and 1742, and ended with an unexpected Prussian victory.
The British pre-dreadnought battleship HMS Bulwark served as flagship of the Mediterranean Fleet from 1902 to 1905, and then spent the rest of her career in home waters as part of the Channel and Home Fleets. The ship was reduced to reserve in 1910–1914, but was reactivated as tensions rose during the July Crisis of 1914. After World War I began, she was assigned to the Channel Fleet to protect the British Expeditionary Force from interference by the Imperial German Navy. Bulwark was destroyed in an accidental magazine explosion in November; almost all of those aboard were killed.
HMS Mallow was a Flower-class corvette designed to be a small and nimble escort for convoys. Commissioned in July 1940, Mallow participated in nearly 100 convoys and played a part in the sinking of a U-boat. She was transferred to the Royal Yugoslav Navy-in-exile on 11 January 1944 and renamed Nada. She subsequently served as an escort in the Mediterranean until being detached from a convoy when her crew was judged politically unreliable. She saw little subsequent action during the war, and was returned to the Royal Navy in 1949. The corvette served with the Egyptian Navy as El Sudan between 1949 and 1975.
Nidwalden symbols and military flag
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