Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/August 2022/Articles


 * Sayfo (buidhe) : The Sayfo, also known as the Assyrian genocide, was the mass slaughter and deportation of Assyrian/Syriac Christians in southeastern Anatolia and Persia's Azerbaijan province by Ottoman forces and some Kurdish tribes during World War I. Mass killing of Assyrian civilians began during the Ottoman occupation of Azerbaijan in early 1915, by Ottoman forces and pro-Ottoman Kurds. The Sayfo occurred concurrently with and was closely related to the Armenian genocide, although the Sayfo is considered to have been less systematic. Local actors played a larger role than the Ottoman government, but the latter also ordered attacks on certain Assyrians. Motives for killing included a perceived lack of loyalty among some Assyrian communities to the Ottoman Empire and the desire to appropriate their land. At the 1919 Paris Peace Conference, the Assyro-Chaldean delegation said that its losses were 250,000 (about half the prewar population); the accuracy of this figure is unknown. The Sayfo is less studied than the Armenian genocide. Efforts to have it recognized as a genocide began during the 1990s, spearheaded by the Assyrian diaspora.


 * Battle of Van Buren (Hog Farm) : The Battle of Van Buren was fought at Van Buren, Arkansas, on December 28, 1862, during the American Civil War. After defeating Confederate forces led by Major General Thomas C. Hindman at the Battle of Prairie Grove on December 7, 1862, Union forces under Brigadier Generals James G. Blunt and Francis J. Herron prepared for a raid against the Confederate positions at Van Buren and Fort Smith. Setting out on December 27, the Union troops struck an outlying Confederate cavalry unit near Drippings Spring, north of Van Buren, on the morning of December 28.  The Confederate cavalry fled to Van Buren, which was then overrun by Union troops. The Union pursued and captured three steamboats on the Arkansas River, and captured some Confederate troops and many supplies in Van Buren.  Across the river in Fort Smith, the Confederates destroyed supplies and also burned two steamboats trapped upriver.  An artillery duel took place at Van Buren, and after nightfall a minor skirmish was fought downriver at Strain's Landing.  After the battle, Hindman withdrew his men to Little Rock and the Union force returned from the raid, unable to maintain a supply line to Van Buren across the Boston Mountains.  The battles of Prairie Grove and Van Buren broke Confederate strength in the region.


 * Galeb-class minelayer (Peacemaker67) : The Galeb class (also known as the Orao class) were minelayers built as minesweepers for the Imperial German Navy between 1918 and 1919. In July 1921, the six unarmed vessels were purchased as "tugs" for the navy of the newly created Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes (later the Kingdom of Yugoslavia). Re-armed with two Škoda 90 mm guns and two anti-aircraft machine guns, they could also carry up to 30 naval mines. They were mainly used for training and "show the flag" cruises along the Adriatic coast and islands. In 1931 their guns were re-lined to 83.5 mm or replaced with guns of that calibre. In 1936, they were redesignated as minelayers and, in the lead-up to the April 1941 Axis invasion of Yugoslavia, several ships of the class laid minefields off the Yugoslav coast, which probably resulted in the sinking of two Yugoslav merchant ships. All six were captured by the Italy during the invasion. They were then put into service by the Regia Marina (Italian Royal Navy) under new names as submarine chasers, operating as escorts between Italy and North Africa. Five of the ships were lost or sunk during the war; the remaining vessel escaped being captured by the Germans during the Italian surrender in September 1943, and was returned to the Royal Yugoslav Navy-in-exile at Malta in December. It was transferred to the new Yugoslav Navy after the war and employed to help clear the thousands of mines laid in Yugoslav waters during the conflicts. Her armament was replaced and she was renamed twice before being disposed of in 1962.


 * CSS Baltic (Sturmvogel 66 and Hog Farm) : A casemate ironclad that served in the Confederate States Navy during the American Civil War, CSS Baltic was a towboat and cotton lighter before being purchased by Alabama in December 1861 for conversion into an ironclad. After being transferred to the Confederate Navy in May 1862 as an ironclad, she served on Mobile Bay off the Gulf of Mexico.  Baltic's condition in Confederate service was such that naval historian William N. Still Jr. has described her as "a nondescript vessel in many ways".  Over the next two years, parts of the ship's wooden structure had been affected by wood rot. Her armor was removed to be put onto the ironclad CSS Nashville in 1864.  By that August, Baltic had been decommissioned. She was taken up the Tombigbee River near the end of the war, where she was captured by Union forces on May 10, 1865.  An inspection of Baltic the next month found that her upper hull and deck were rotten and that her boilers were unsafe.  She was sold on December 31, and was likely broken up in 1866.


 * Second Punic War (Gog the Mild) : Fought from 218 to 201 BC, this was the second of three wars fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the 3rd century BC. For 17 years the two states struggled for supremacy, primarily in Italy and Iberia, but also on the islands of Sicily and Sardinia and, towards the end of the war, in North Africa. After immense materiel and human losses on both sides the Carthaginians were defeated. Macedonia, Syracuse and several Numidian kingdoms were drawn into the fighting; and Iberian and Gallic forces fought on both sides. There were three main military theatres during the war: Italy, where Hannibal defeated the Roman legions repeatedly, with occasional subsidiary campaigns in Sicily, Sardinia and Greece; Iberia, where Hasdrubal, a younger brother of Hannibal, defended the Carthaginian colonial cities with mixed success before moving into Italy; and Africa, where Rome finally won the war.


 * Shepseskaf (Iry-Hor) : A pharaoh of ancient Egypt, Shepseskaf was the sixth and probably last ruler of the fourth dynasty during the Old Kingdom period. He reigned most probably for four but possibly up to seven years in the late 26th to mid 25th century BC. Shepseskaf's relation to his probable successor on the throne, Userkaf, is not known although in the absence of clear indication of strife at the transition between the fourth and fifth dynasties, Userkaf could well have been his son or his brother. If Shepseskaf was succeeded directly by Userkaf rather than by Thampthis as claimed by some historical sources, then his death marks the end of the fourth dynasty. The transition to the fifth dynasty seems not to have been a sharp rupture but rather a continuous process of evolution in the king's power and role within the Egyptian state. Around this time, some of the highest positions of power such as that of vizier which had hitherto been the prerogative of the royal family were opened to nobles of non-royal extraction. The only activities firmly datable to Shepseskaf's short reign are the completion of the hitherto unfinished mortuary complex of the Pyramid of Menkaure using mudbricks and the construction of his own tomb at South Saqqara, now known as the Mastabat al-Fir'aun.


 * Nadezhda Alliluyeva (Kaiser matias) : Nadezhda Sergeyevna Alliluyeva (1901–1932) was the second wife of Joseph Stalin. She was born in Baku to a friend of Stalin, a fellow revolutionary, and was raised in Saint Petersburg. Having known Stalin from a young age, she married him when she was 18, and they had two children. Alliluyeva worked as a secretary for Bolshevik leaders, including Vladimir Lenin and Stalin, before enrolling at the Industrial Academy in Moscow to study synthetic fibres and become an engineer. She had health issues, which had an adverse impact on her relationship with Stalin. She also suspected he was unfaithful, which led to frequent arguments with him. On several occasions, Alliluyeva reportedly contemplated leaving Stalin, and after an argument shot herself early in the morning of 9 November 1932.


 * Freddie de Guingand (Hawkeye7) : Major-General Sir Francis Wilfred "Freddie" de Guingand (1900–1979) was a British Army officer who served as Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery's chief of staff from the Second Battle of El Alamein until the end of the Second World War. He played an important diplomatic role in sustaining relations between the notoriously difficult Montgomery and his peers and superiors. Posted to the Joint Planning Staff of Middle East Command in Cairo in December 1940, he also took on the role of secretary to the Commanders-in-Chief Committee. In February 1942, he was recommended for the position of Director of Military Intelligence, Middle East, and after the First Battle of El Alamein he was appointed the Eighth Army's Brigadier General Staff. When Montgomery assumed command of Eighth Army in August 1942 he became Montgomery's chief of staff. His diplomatic skills proved advantageous when serving with Montgomery. He proved indispensable not only in battle, but also in relations with the Americans. De Guingand was on sick leave several times, and only Montgomery's intervention kept doctors from relieving him. After the war in Europe he spent time recuperating but was still not recovered when he was appointed as Director of Military Intelligence (DMI) in September 1945. Montgomery had become aware that he was to succeed Alan Brooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff in June 1946 and told de Guingand he wanted him as his Vice Chief of the Imperial General Staff, but de Guingand failed to impress Brooke as DMI and the job went to Frank Simpson.


 * Excubitors (Cplakidas) : The Excubitors were founded in c. 460 as an imperial guard unit by the Byzantine emperor Leo I the Thracian. The 300-strong force, originally recruited from among the warlike mountain tribe of the Isaurians, replaced the older Scholae Palatinae as the main imperial bodyguard. The Excubitors remained an active military unit for the next two centuries, although, as imperial bodyguards, they did not often go on campaign. Their commander, the count of the Excubitors, soon acquired great influence. Justin I was able to use this position to rise to the throne in 518, and henceforth the counts of the Excubitors were among the main political power-holders of their day; two more, Tiberius II Constantine and Maurice, rose to become emperors in the late 6th century. In the late 7th century, the Excubitors appear to have degenerated into a parade-ground formation, and fade from the record as a corps. This changed in c. 760, when the corps was reformed by Emperor Constantine V into one of the elite tagmata, professional heavy cavalry regiments that provided the core of the Byzantine army of the middle Byzantine period. The Excubitors fought in several campaigns during the next four centuries, and are last attested in the disastrous Battle of Dyrrhachium in 1081 that destroyed the remnants of the middle Byzantine army.


 * 4th Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment (Kges1901): Officially known as the 4th Regiment, Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, this unit was an infantry regiment of the Union Army in the American Civil War. Formed mostly from a militia unit in Norristown in southeastern Pennsylvania, the regiment enlisted at the beginning of the American Civil War in April 1861 for a three month period of service under the command of Colonel John F. Hartranft. Logistical difficulties bedeviled the regiment, which served as part of the garrison of Washington, D.C. until late June, when it was sent into northern Virginia to join the army of Brigadier General Irvin McDowell. The regiment suffered its only combat casualties in a picket action on 30 June and was sent back to be mustered out on the eve of the First Battle of Bull Run due to disagreement among the men over remaining with the army after the expiration of their term of service. Its men were denounced as cowards for being members of the only regiment to refuse to fight at the 21 July battle. Hartranft and a company commander stayed with the army and later received the Medal of Honor for their actions at Bull Run. Many men of the regiment went on to serve in new Pennsylvania regiments during the war, forming the bulk of the 51st Pennsylvania Infantry, which fought for the rest of the war.


 * Oswald Boelcke (Georgejdorner) : A World War I German soldier and pioneering flying ace credited with 40 victories, Boelcke (1891–1916) is honored as the father of the German fighter force, and the "father of air combat". He was an influential mentor, patrol leader, and tactician in the first years of air combat, 1915 and 1916. Boelcke fulfilled his childhood dream of a military career by joining the Imperial German Army in 1911, and learnt to fly as World War I began. After duty as an aerial observer during 1914, he became one of the original fighter pilots during mid-1915. During his forced grounding on staff duty after 19 victories, he helped transform the Army's Fliegertruppe (Flying Troop) air arm into the Luftstreitkräfte (Air Force). His innovative turn of mind codified his combat experiences into the first manual of fighter tactics distributed to an air force, the Dicta Boelcke, which promulgated axioms for individual pilot success, as well as a requirement for teamwork directed by a formation's leader. Present-day tactics manuals stem from the Dicta. Picked to lead one of Germany's first fighter squadrons, Jagdstaffel 2 (Fighter Squadron 2), Boelcke scored 21 more victories in September–October 1916 as he continued as the world's highest-scoring ace. He was killed in a midair collision with his best friend, Erwin Böhme, on 28 October 1916.