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


 * David Scott : David Scott is an American astronaut who was the seventh person to walk on the Moon, achieving this as the commander of Apollo 15 in 1971. After graduating from the United States Military Academy at West Point, he joined the Air Force. He served as a fighter pilot in Europe, and later graduated from the Air Force Experimental Test Pilot School and Aerospace Research Pilot School. Scott retired from the Air Force in 1975 with the rank of colonel, and more than 5,600 hours of logged flying time.


 * Vance Drummond : A New Zealand-born Royal Australian Air Force pilot, Vance Drummond was shot down over North Korean territory in 1951, and held as a prisoner of war for almost two years. After being released, he resumed his career as a fighter pilot. He was posted to South Vietnam to observe USAF tactics in 1965, and talked himself into an operational role as a forward air control pilot. When he returned to Australia he was appointed the commanding officer of a fighter squadron, but died soon afterwards in a flying accident. The article had been on Ian's to-do list for sometime, "the impetus to complete it being 1960s images becoming available to use, and my discovery of a detailed article on the circumstances of the subject's death".


 * James Park Woods : Another in PM's long-running series on South Australian Victoria Cross recipients, Woods was awarded the VC for his actions on 18 September 1918. He was a member of a four-man patrol sent to make contact with a flanking British unit after an attack, but instead found a strongly held German position. He led the patrol against the German post, putting thirty enemy to flight, then helped hold it until reinforcements arrived. He survived World War I, but suffered from poor health owing to his military service.


 * Kediri campaign (1678) : The Kediri campaign was a colonial-era conflict in which Mataram Sultanate and Dutch East India Company forces on Java attempted to suppress a rebellion. The campaign took Dutch troops into regions not previously visited by Europeans, and ended in defeat for the rebels.


 * L 20e α-class battleship : The latest in another major series of FAs, this article is about the Imperial German Navy's most serious post-Jutland battleship design, which, like several others that never even progressed past the paper stage, ultimately came to nothing as a result of the country's defeat in World War I.


 * Bombing of Tokyo (10 March 1945) : The bombing of Tokyo in the early hours of 10 March 1945 was the single most destructive air raid of World War II, and that includes the two nuclear bomb attacks. A total of 279 B-29 heavy bombers dropped a vast number of incendiary bombs specifically designed to start uncontrollable fires in 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 an article on the topic.


 * Waterloo Bay massacre : PM's second FA last month describes a fatal clash between settlers and Aboriginal Australians in late May 1849 on the cliffs of Waterloo Bay near Elliston, South Australia. Accounts of the incident vary considerably, and PM noted in the nomination statement that the story "has received quite a bit of attention in the last few years due to a memorial being established, amid some rancour between members of the local community".


 * Lion-class battleship : Part of yet another long-running series, the Lion-class was the second-last class of battleships designed for the Royal Navy, though none were completed. The design called for huge warships, with only the modern Queen Elizabeth-class aircraft carriers being larger. Construction of a pair began right before World Wae II, but more urgent priorities caused their eventual cancellation. Work began late in the war on new designs but a combination of still more powerful weapons and post-war economic reality made them unaffordable and they were never ordered.


 * History of the Office of The Inspector General of the United States Army : This article tells of an important but somewhat obscure element of the US Army from its established in 1777 to the present day. Over this period the office has been reorganized many times, varied in size dramatically, and almost been abolished on several occasions. Special congratulations to Eddie on this, his first FA!


 * Battle of Caen (1346) : The Battle of Caen took place on 26 July 1346, during the Hundred Years' War. The French-held town was attacked by elements of an invading English army under King Edward III. In the nomination statement Gog described the battle as "a stain on England's record" -- after capturing the town on the first attempt, the English forces sacked it for five days and killed over 5,000 French soldiers and civilians.


 * Operation Hurricane : Part of Hawkeye's series on the British nuclear weapons program, this covers the test of the first of the country's atomic bombs. Operation Hurricane was conducted in remote islands off the west coast of Australia and, somewhat unusually, the bomb was exploded in a frigate to also test what would happen if an atomic bomb was smuggled into a British port. Despite hosting the test, the Australian Government was not provided with technical information about the bomb or its effectiveness due to American concerns over the extent of Soviet espionage in the country.


 * Antiochus XI Epiphanes : The Seleucid empire that came about during the Hellenistic period that followed the death of Alexander the Great is, according to nominator Attar-Aram syria, "probably the most intriguing polity that rose out of Macedon, but its weakness was the civil wars between its princes". Six kings ruled Syria between 96 and 83 BC, Antiochus XI's reign being the shortest. Attar-Aram says, "I planned on bringing the articles of the six kings to FA, and, after almost a year and a half, this is the last article" -- congratulations on completing a fine body of work!

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


 * List of torpedo cruisers of Italy (Parsecboy) : This is a comprehensive list of all of the torpedo cruisers operated by the Italian Navy. These included 18 vessels split across 6 classes. Several of these designs were failures, the ships being let down by their slow speed. Parsecboy developed this article as the final stage of a good topic on these ships.

These include images from roughly the start of the year to present


 * Siege of Calais (1346–1347) (Gog the Mild) : Ten years into the Hundred Years' War, after an eleven month siege, the French port of Calais fell to Edward III. This article covers the military and political background to the siege, its impact on other theatres of the war and a sketch of its immediate and longer term consequences, as well as the major features of the siege itself.


 * John Leak (Peacemaker67) : The first of two articles this month from Peacemaker67's series on South Australian Victoria Cross recipients covers a soldier who had a rather uneven time in the Army. Leak joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1915, and served in the Gallipoli Campaign later that year. He earned the VC for actions during the Battle of Pozières in July 1916, and was seriously wounded the next month. He returned to his unit in October 1917, but soon deserted as he was unable to stand artillery fire again. A sentence of life imprisonment was suspended, and Leak served with his battalion from December 1917 to March 1918, when he was gassed and never returned to combat. He was severely affected by his war experiences for the rest of his life, and was very reticent to discuss his military service or VC exploits.


 * William Hardham (Zawed) : Zawed has also been working on a large series of articles on VC recipients, in their case covering New Zealanders. William Hardham received the VC for an action during the Second Boer War in January 1901 in which he rescued a soldier while under fire. Hardham also served in World War I, and was badly wounded during the Gallipoli Campaign. While he was sent home to recuperate, he agitated for a return to active duty and was eventually sent to the Palestine front. He attempted to enlist in the military on a permanent basis after the war, but was rejected due to his poor health.


 * Normandie-class battleship (Sturmvogel 66 and Parsecboy) : The Normandie-class dreadnoughts were part of an ambitious French naval expansion program begun in 1912 to replace most of the older battleships in the French Navy. They were the first battleships designed with quadruple-gun turrets, and also had a unique propulsion system. All five ships were still under construction when World War I began and were suspended for the duration. After the war, the navy considered finishing them or modifying them to incorporate the experiences learned during the war, but the government's perilous financial state prevented this. The least advanced ship, Béarn, was converted into an aircraft carrier during the 1920s and later became an aircraft transport before being scrapped in 1967.


 * Carlos Castillo Armas (Vanamonde93) : Carlos Castillo Armas was a Guatemalan Army Colonel who was exiled, led a rebellion against the Guatemalan government, and became an authoritarian ruler, before being assassinated. His reversal of the reforms of his predecessors sparked a series of leftist insurgencies in the country after his death, culminating in the Guatemalan Civil War of 1960 to 1996. Vanamonde93 developed this article as part of "my efforts to rewrite most major pages related to the Guatemalan Revolution".


 * Battle of Andrassos (Cplakidas) : The Battle of Andrassos was an engagement fought on 8 November 960 in an unidentified mountain pass on the Taurus Mountains, between the Byzantines, led by Leo Phokas the Younger, and the forces of the Hamdanid Emirate of Aleppo under the emir Sayf al-Dawla. The Byzantine forces ambushed an Hamdanid army which had invaded their territory, and annihilated it. This victory proved decisive, with the Byzantines capturing most of the Hamdanid Emirate of Aleppo over the next decade.


 * SMS Friedrich Carl (Parsecboy) : SMS Friedrich Carl was an armored cruiser built in the early 1900s for the German Imperial Navy. Commissioned in 1903, the ship was a part of the main German battleship until she was placed in reserve in 1909. Friedrich Carl was recommissioned upon the outbreak of war in 1914, and operated in the Baltic Sea until November that year, when she struck two Russian mines and sank. Only seven or eight members of her crew died in this incident.


 * Roy Inwood (Peacemaker67) : Roy Inwood is Peacemaker67's second South Australian VC recipient for the month. Like Leak and Hardham, he also served in the Gallipoli campaign. Inwood received the VC for three separate actions during the September 1917 Battle of Menin Road. After returning to Australia at the end of the war, he launched inaccurate verbal attacks on left-wing residents of the town where he had been living, and was forced to move state. Inwood served in military police roles during World War II. He specified that his VC remain in Adelaide upon his death, and it is currently on display in the city's town hall.