Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/July 2018/Articles


 * Jørgen Jensen (soldier) : Jensen was a Danish-born South Australian recipient of the Victoria Cross in World War I. He was decorated for capturing more than 50 German soldiers on the Western Front during April 1917. He also received several disciplinary infringements during the war, and on one occasion was jailed for going absent without leave. This is part of a long-term project Peacemaker is working on to get all South Australian VC recipients to FA. He took the article through GAN and ACR prior to its successful FAC nomination.


 * Quebec Agreement : The latest FA in Hawkeye's huge series on the development of atomic weapons covers the Quebec Agreement, which merged the British (Tube Alloys) and Canadian (Montreal Laboratory) nuclear weapons projects with the American one (Manhattan Project). This agreement was negotiated over early 1943, and signed by Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Quebec Conference on 19 August 1943. The article passed GAN and ACR on its way to FA status.


 * Gevninge helmet fragment : Let nominator Usernameunique tell the story: "The Gevninge helmet fragment, a gilded piece of metal that would fit in the palm of your hand, is seemingly ripped from the charred pages of the Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. It was found in Gevninge, a coastal Danish village by Lejre, the contemporary royal capital and thought to be the site of the fabled mead hall Heorot. Beowulf's trip to the hall takes him by such an outpost, where a 'noble warrior', brandishing a spear, rides down to meet him. If ever there were an artifact that one could imagine as singularly identifiable with a place and a person in Beowulf, the Gevninge helmet fragment is it."


 * Cleopatra : Yes, that Cleopatra: seventh and last Ptolemaic ruler of Ancient Egypt (the first to speak Egyptian rather than Greek), who famously had affairs (and children) with Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony, and who committed suicide rather than be paraded through Rome by Octavian (Augustus) Caesar. Less well-known, she was also a diplomat, naval commander, linguist, and medical author.


 * Yeomanry Cavalry (Factotem) : This article covers an interesting period in the history of the Yeomanry, from its formation during the French Revolutionary Wars in 1794 until it was absorbed into the Territorial Force in 1908 shortly before the First World War. During this period, this uniquely aristocratic institution was transformed from a key bastion against civil unrest to amateur cavalry of questionable military value before finding salvation in the failure of the professional British military system in the Second Boer War.


 * List of ironclad warships of the Ottoman Empire (Parsecboy) : This list includes all of the ironclads that the Ottoman Empire ordered or built, including those that were purchased by other countries before completion. Despite their limited finances, the Ottomans were able to amass a fairly respectable ironclad fleet in the 1860s, though decades of neglect and little to no training rendered it effectively useless when war with Greece came in 1897. Parsecboy developed the list to A-class after bringing the articles on all of the Ottoman ironclads and the individual ships GA status.


 * Brian Robertson, 1st Baron Robertson of Oakridge (Hawkeye7) : Hawkeye's second A-class article on a British general covers an officer who served with distinction during both world wars. The son of a field marshal, Robertson was a staff officer during World War I. He served as an engineer and military diplomat between the wars, before resigning from the army to manage a factory in South Africa. He joined the South African Army after being rejected by the British Army early in World War II, and became one of the key commanders of Allied logistical efforts in the Mediterranean Theatre. Following the war he held senior roles in Germany and commanded the British Army units in the Middle East.


 * 19th Mechanized Division (Greece) (Cplakidas) : A short-lived formation that was swept aside by the German Panzers, this was the Greek Army's first attempt at a modern, mechanized formation. The division was established in January 1941, and never became more than an ad hoc assortment of equipment and men. Its story does encapsulates the conditions in which Greece fought during the German invasion in April 1941.


 * Reginald Judson (Zawed) : The latest article in Zawed's series on New Zealanders who received the Victoria Cross during World War I covers a soldier who received the VC as well as the Military Medal and the Distinguished Conduct Medal. Remarkably, all three medals were awarded for actions which took place within a four week period in mid-1918. Judson was a boilermaker before the war, and joined the NZ Expeditionary Force in 1915. He fought on the Western Front and, despite being seriously wounded on several occasions, survived the war. He lied about his age to re-join the Army during World War II, and commanded a home defence battalion.


 * Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945) (Nick-D) : The bombing of Tokyo in the early hours of 10 March 1945 was the single most destructive air raid of World War II, including the two nuclear bomb attacks. A total of 279 B-29 heavy bombers dropped a vast number of incendiary bombs which had specifically been designed to start uncontrollable fires on one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world. It's generally believed that 90,000 to 100,000 people were killed, and another one million made homeless. Nick created this article after being annoyed for years over the lack of a specific article on the topic.