Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/February 2020/Articles


 * Battle of Babylon Hill : This article describes a skirmish that took place between Royalist and Parliamentarian forces near Yeovil, in South West England, on 7 September 1642, during the early stages of the First English Civil War. In the nomination statement Harrias noted that "both sides were inexperienced and still learning the art of war. As such, the description of this engagement as "more muddle than battle" is fitting. Ralph Hopton was considered one of the more able of the Royalist leaders, and yet here he found himself needlessly ambushed by the enemy".


 * Ersatz Yorck-class battlecruiser : Another in Parsecboy's series on German capital ships but this time on a class that was aborted: three vessels were planned, and work began on the first, but none were completed before the project was abandoned so resources could be allocated to the construction of U-boats. According to the nomination statement, "they nevertheless provided the starting point when the German Navy began work on what became the Scharnhorst-class battleship in the mid-1930s".


 * Henry Clifford, 10th Baron Clifford : According to SN's nominations statement, "Another in a series of bold bad barons—yes, I'm typecasting myself!—this time the son of "Butcher Clifford" of Shakespearean fame. This chap was less a butcher and more a shepherd, who went from disgraced son of a traitor to a clapper of cannons, an astrologer and a commander at the Battle of Flodden; in between all this came two wives, many mistresses, mutual accusations of adultery and a lawsuit accusing him of denying his wife her conjugal rights. Oh yes, and he was a loyal servant of the King occasionally as well." On a more prosaic note, this is the only article in this crop of FAs that didn't negotiate A-Class Review first.


 * 1958 US–UK Mutual Defence Agreement : Hawkeye7 described the latest entry in his huge series on the British nuclear weapons program as being "an unusual article, which grew organically from humble beginnings". It covers a treaty between the United States and the United Kingdom on nuclear weapons co-operation that was signed in 1958 and has been extended and renewed nine times. The treaty grants the UK extensive access to American nuclear weapons technology, and also allows the US to draw on Britain's nuclear weapons expertise.


 * Battle of Lagos : This naval battle was fought between British and French fleets off the Portuguese port of Lagos in August 1759 during the Seven Years' War. The British intercepted the French Mediterranean Fleet as it attempted to reach the West Indies and brought it to battle. Although the engagement was, in Gog's words, "one where Clausewitz's friction was working overtime and few things went right for either side", the larger British force emerged victorious, and subsequently violated Portugal's neutrality to capture two other French ships and destroy another two.


 * First Silesian War : This is, appropriately, the first in a series of articles on the Silesian Wars by Bryanrutherford0. The First Silesian War was fought between Prussia and Austria between 1740 and 1742, and ended with an unexpected Prussian victory that netted them most of the region of Silesia (now in south-western Poland). Fought mainly in Silesia, Moravia and Bohemia, the conflict was part of the wider War of the Austrian Succession. Congratulations to Bryanrutherford0 on this, his first FA!


 * Peter Badcoe : Another in Peacemaker67's series on VC recipients from South Australia, this article looks at 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.


 * French battleship Iéna : This ship 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 failed to solve the fundamental problem because a similar explosion occurred in 1911 aboard another battleship and for much the same reason. Iéna was patched, re-floated and used as a target in 1909 before sinking and being sold for scrap three years later.


 * Abbasid invasion of Asia Minor (806) : This was the largest operation ever launched by the Abbasid Caliphate against the Byzantine Empire. Led by the Abbasid Caliph Harun al-Rashid, the huge Abbasid army, numbering perhaps 135,000 men, raided across Cappadocia unopposed, capturing several towns and fortresses and forcing the Byzantine emperor, Nikephoros I, to seek peace in exchange for tribute. Following Harun's departure, however, Nikephoros violated the terms of the treaty and reoccupied the frontier forts he had been forced to abandon. The Abbasid civil wars that began in 809 and the Byzantine preoccupation with the Bulgars contributed to a cessation of large-scale Byzantine–Arab conflict for two decades.


 * SMS Gneisenau (Parsecboy) : SMS Gneisenau was an armored cruiser of the German Imperial Navy. Commissioned in 1908, she initially served with the main German fleet but was dispatched to East Asia Squadron in 1909 after the armored cruiser concept became obsolete. Over the next four years, Gneisenau patrolled Germany's colonial possessions in Asia and the Pacific Ocean and visited foreign ports. Following the outbreak of World War I in July 1914, the East Asia Squadron, crossed the Pacific to the western coast of South America. Gneisenau took part in the Battle of Coronel on 1 November 1914, which ended in victory for the Germans, but was sunk in the Battle of the Falkland Islands on 8 December that year.


 * Battle of Marshall's Elm (Harrias) : The Battle of Marshall's Elm was a skirmish that took place near Street, in the county of Somerset, South West England, on 4 August 1642, during the build-up to the First English Civil War. It is sometimes described as the first battle of the war, and involved 60-80 Royalist cavalry and dragoons and 500-600 and Parliamentarian recruits. The Royalist force ambushed and defeated the Parliamentary troops, but the engagement had no long-term consequences.


 * USS O'Flaherty (Kges1901) : This article covers a US Navy destroyer escort of World War II. O'Flaherty was commissioned in April 1944 and served with the Pacific Fleet from June that year. As was typical for this type of vessel, she was used in anti-submarine hunter-killer groups, as well as to protect convoys and escort carriers. Decommissioned in 1947, O'Flaherty spent more than twenty years in the Pacific Reserve Fleet before being sold for scrap in 1973.


 * Ba Congress (Peacemaker67) : This article is about the final roll of the dice for Draža Mihailović's Chetnik guerilla movement in occupied Yugoslavia during WWII. Conducted at a point when large parts of the Chetnik movement had been drawn into collaboration with the Germans and their puppets, it may have been conducted with the tacit approval of the Germans. Its main outcome was the creation of a single political party and political platform for the Chetniks, something that came far too late in proceedings to have any impact on the eventual Allied decision to abandon the Chetniks and throw their full weight behind Josip Broz Tito's Partisans.


 * The Holocaust in Slovakia (Fiamh) : This article covers the systematic dispossession, deportation, and murder of Jews in the Slovak State, a client state of Nazi Germany. Out of 89,000 Jews in the country in 1940, around 68,000 to 71,000 were murdered during the Holocaust. The Slovak State not only implemented anti-Jewish measures of its own accord but paid Germany a large sum of money in order to deport 58,000 Jews.