Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/April 2019/Articles


 * Salih ibn Mirdas : Another entry in Al Ameer's series on the rulers of Syria, Salih founded the Mirdasid dynasty and was emir of Aleppo from 1025 until he was killed in battle four years later. Contemporary records suggest that Salih's Shia Muslim emirate was well-organised, and tolerant of Christians. His sons took control of Aleppo after his death at the hands of the Fatimid Caliphate.


 * Japanese aircraft carrier Hiyō : Hiyō was one of two Japanese aircraft carriers converted from ocean liners. She entered service in mid-1942 and saw combat in the Guadalcanal Campaign. The ship had a peculiar history as she rarely conducted operations with her aircraft aboard as the Imperial Japanese Navy adopted a policy of flying carrier air groups from land-bases to minimise the risk to its carriers in 1943–44. Hiyō was sunk after being torpedoed by an American submarine during the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 20 June 1944.


 * 27th Infantry Division Savska : Another in Peacemaker's series on units of the former Yugoslavia, this entry covers an ill-fated division of World War II that mainly comprised Croat troops. The division is described as being "a very large and unwieldy formation", and many of the Croat personnel mutinied and seized a city following the German invasion in April 1941. The remainder of the division collapsed, and eventually surrendered to German forces.


 * French battleship Bretagne ( & ) : Bretagne had a typical career for a French dreadnought of her generation. Her participation in World War I mostly consisted of swinging around a mooring buoy as she was tasked to prevent a breakout into the Mediterranean by the Austro-Hungarian fleet. Between the wars, she was extensively modernized and remained in 1st-line service. Briefly deployed in search of German commerce raiders and blockade runners after the start of World War II, she was destroyed when Britain attacked the French fleet in mid-1940 to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Germans.


 * Southampton Cenotaph : Another in Harry's series on war memorials designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Southampton Cenotaph was the first of these monuments to be completed. It influenced Lutyens' later work, including the Cenotaph in London. The memorial was marred by the accidental omission of the names of over 200 war dead, as well as the deliberate omission of most of the city's Jewish war dead, motivated by concerns over its design including a Christian cross.


 * Battle of Bergerac : This article covers a battle fought in south-western France between Anglo-Gascon and French forces in 1345, during the Hundred Years' War. While most of the French forces were opposing an English offensive in the north of the country, the Anglo-Gascons attacked and defeated the main concentration of French troops in their region.


 * IFF Mark II : This article concerns the first operational identification friend or foe system. Developed by the Royal Air Force, IFF Mark II began to be fielded widely towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940. The device allowed the operators of British radar stations to distinguish between friendly and enemy aircraft. It remained in use until 1943, when it began to be replaced by IFF Mark III, which was used by all Allied aircraft until long after the war ended.


 * Buzz Aldrin ( & ) : Another in Hawkeye's and Kees' series on American astronauts, targeting in particular the members of the Apollo 11 crew as the 50th anniversary of man's first walk on the moon draws nearer. Aldrin's schooling had a focus on preparing him for the Navy, but as he suffered from sea sickness and was more interested in flying he attended West Point instead. Graduating in 1951, he entered the US Air Force and deployed to Korea in 1952. Aldrin's extensive experience flying jet fighters was a key part of his success in joining NASA as an astronaut in 1963. As the Apollo Program wound up, Aldrin rejoined the USAF in 1971 but retired the next year.


 * Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham : The impressively titled Humphrey Stafford, 1st Duke of Buckingham, 6th Earl of Stafford, KG was an English nobleman and a military commander in the Hundred Years' War and in the Wars of the Roses. He fought in France during the 1430s and became one of the wealthiest and most powerful landowners in England of his generation. From the 1440s on he served King Henry VI as a bodyguard, diplomat and military commander. He was killed during the 1460 Battle of Northampton.


 * Roger B. Chaffee : Kees' second appearance in this issue's list of FAs from the previous month is a biography of an American naval aviator, aeronautical engineer and astronaut in the Apollo program. Chaffee joined the US Navy in 1957, and flew 82 reconnaissance sorties over Cuba during the Cuban Missile Crisis. He was selected for NASA in 1963, but was killed in the 1967 Apollo 1 disaster before making it into space.


 * SMS Preussen (1903) : Parsecboy's second appearance among last month's FAs, this article is about a German battleship that served with the High Seas Fleet during World War I, but saw limited action. She was the guard ship for the Danish straits during the Battle of Jutland, and so missed the biggest naval battle of the war. She was one of the few battleships that Germany retained after the war, but was converted into a tender for minesweepers, and never served again as a warship. A section of her hull was retained for weapons testing, and it was eventually sunk by Allied bombers in 1945.


 * Apollo 15 : Beginning on began on July 26, 1971, and ending twelve days later, Apollo 15 was the ninth manned Apollo mission, the eighth to be successful, and the fourth to land on the Moon. It was also notable for deploying the first Lunar Roving Vehicle, and for the first walk in deep space on the journey back to earth. Unfortunately it was all overshadowed by the subsequent revelation that the crew had carried unauthorized postal covers to the moon, some of which were sold by a West German stamp dealer, thus violating NASA's policy against commercial exploitation of the program.


 * Gascon campaign of 1345 : Gog's second appearance among last month's FAs, this article focusses on what has been described as "the first successful land campaign of... the Hundred Year's War". It took place between August and November 1345, and ended in victory for the English. During the campaign the English forces defeated two French armies and captured several castles.


 * Japanese battleship Ise : Sturm's third appearance in this issue's list of FAs from the previous month (surely a record!) concerns a Japanese battleship built during World War I but which saw no action during the conflict. Despite being rebuilt at great expense before World War II, the ship saw almost no combat before she was converted into a hybrid battleship/carrier in 1943. She was used to decoy American carriers away from the landings during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 and returned to home waters early the following year where she was sunk by American carrier aircraft.


 * Escape of Viktor Pestek and Siegfried Lederer from Auschwitz : This event, described as "one of the most bizarre escapes" of World War II, involved an SS guard who risked (and ultimately lost) his life to help an Auschwitz prisoner escape. The escapee, Siegfried Lederer, then insisted on breaking into a different concentration camp. He later rejoined the Czech resistance movement and unsuccessfully attempted to smuggle a report on Auschwitz to the International Committee of the Red Cross in Switzerland. He survived the war but experienced antisemitic persecution under the Communist Czech government.

Note: All but one of the above articles underwent a MilHist A-class review before achieving featured status.


 * Battle of Masaka (Indy beetle) : The Battle of Masaka was a key event in the Uganda-Tanzania War of 1979. The fighting was relatively minor, but it led to the capture of the town by Tanzanian and Ugandan rebel forces, and demonstrated that Idi Amin's military situation was in trouble. Afterwards, the Tanzanian army leveled Masaka with explosives, forcing much of the local population to relocate and causing damage that the town did not fully recover from until the last decade.


 * Operation PBFortune (Vanamonde93) : Vanamonde93 described this article as being "about a planned military operation that never actually took place, but which nonetheless forms an important part of the prelude to the 1954 Guatemalan coup d'état". Operation PBFortune was a covert United States operation to overthrow the democratically elected Guatemalan President Jacobo Árbenz in 1952. The plan involved arming an exiled Guatemalan military officer who was to lead an invasion from Nicaragua. The US Government cancelled the operation due to concerns that details of the plan had become too widely known.


 * Operation Obviate (Nick-D) : Operation Obviate was an attack on the German battleship Tirpitz in October 1944 by the Royal Air Force's two elite heavy bomber squadrons which failed at the last minute due to clouds suddenly covering the battleship. This bad luck led to many of the bombers making multiple passes over the target area before their crews dropped scarce and expensive Tallboy bombs on where they thought Tirpitz probably was. Not surprisingly, none of the bombs struck their target. The article represent's Nick's return to writing about air attacks on Tirpitz after a two year break from the subject.


 * Samuel Forsyth (Zawed) : This article forms part of Zawed's series on New Zealand Victoria Cross recipients of World War I. Forsyth joined the New Zealand Expeditionary Force in 1914 and took part in the Gallipoli Campaign as an engineer during 1915. From 1916 he served on the Western Front. While attached to an infantry battalion to gain front-line experience, on 24 August 1918 Forsyth lead a successful attack during which he rescued the crew of a damaged tank but was shot and killed by a sniper. He received the VC for this action, and this medal is currently on display at the Imperial War Museum in London.


 * French battleship Jean Bart (1911) (Sturmvogel 66) : Jean Bart was a World War I-era French dreadnought. Like other French dreadnoughts, she saw little action in the war though. Between the wars, she was modernized twice but was judged to not be worth the cost of a third refit before World War II. She instead was converted into an accommodation ship and gave up her name for a newly building battleship. She was captured when the Germans occupied Vichy France although they only made use of her as a target for new warheads. The ship was sunk by Allied airstrikes in 1944 and scrapped after the war.