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




 * Silesian Wars : Fought between 1740 and 1763, the "Silesian Wars" are mainly a feature of German military historiography, since from other perspectives they are generally considered theatres of wider conflicts (the War of the Austrian Succession and the Seven Years' War). They nevertheless mark a watershed in German history, signalling the rise of Prussia to parity with Austria in German affairs. Prussia defeated Austria in all three of the wars, gaining most of the region of Silesia in the process. The article passed an A-class review gaining FA status.


 * Lionel Matthews : Another in Peacemaker's series on South Australians who received the highest Commonwealth award for gallantry, Matthews was an Australian Army officer who earned the George Cross for running an intelligence network from a Japanese prisoner of war camp. A reservist before World War II, Matthews volunteered for the Second Australian Imperial Force in 1940. He was captured in early 1942 when Singapore fell to the Japanese, and sent to Sandakan POW camp in British North Borneo. There he established an intelligence network that was betrayed in July 1943. Matthews and other members of the organisation were arrested. He was executed in March 1944, and awarded the GC in November 1947. PM took the article through ACR before successfully negotiating FAC.


 * Battle of the Bagradas River (255 BC) : In the words of nominator God the Mild: "an arrogant Roman general; a proud state refusing peace terms with the enemy at the gates; imported talent showing the locals how to fight; elephant charges; a Roman army going down to defeat with a higher proportion killed than at Cannae." More prosaically, Bagradas River (also known as the Battle of Tunis) saw a Carthaginian army led by Xanthippus triumph over the Roman army led by Marcus Atilius Regulus in the spring of 255 BC, nine years into the First Punic War that finally ended fourteen years later with Rome becoming the dominant power in the Mediterranean.


 * French battleship Bouvet : Built in the 1890s, Bouvet was a pre-dreadnought battleship of the French Navy that spent most of her peacetime career in the Mediterranean Squadron conducting routine training exercises. In 1903 she collided with the battleship Gaulois; both ships' captains were relieved of command. Bouvet was withdrawn from front-line service in 1907 and was part of the training fleet until the outbreak of World War I. After escorting troop convoys, she was deployed to the eastern Mediterranean and sank after striking a mine off Gallipoli on 18 March 1915, with the loss of most of her crew. The article went through ACR before its FAC.


 * Charles Duke : In April 1972, Charles Duke became the tenth and youngest person to walk on the Moon as a member of the crew of Apollo 16. A 1957 graduate of the United States Naval Academy, Duke was a fighter pilot and test pilot before becoming an astronaut. He served as CAPCOM for Apollo 11, the first manned landing on the Moon; nervous after a long landing that almost expended all of the lunar module's fuel, Duke was known for radioing the Apollo 11 crew, "You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot!" After retiring from NASA he served successfully in the USAF reserve and the corporate sector. Hawkeye took the article through ACR prior to its FAC nomination.


 * Operation Rösselsprung (1944) : PM's second FA last month, this article covers a German operation of World War II in which elite and conventional forces attempted to kill or capture the leader of the Yugoslav partisans, Josip Broz Tito. The attack involved a Waffen-SS airborne unit using parachute and glider insertion near Tito's headquarters in Drvar (part of modern Bosnia) and a planned linkup with ground forces converging on the town" but failed, according to the nomination statement, owing to "fierce Partisan resistance, the failure of German intelligence agencies to share limited intelligence on Tito's exact location, and lack of contingency planning by the junior officer commanding the airborne force". The article passed ACR way back in 2014.


 * Battle of the Lipari Islands (Gog the Mild) : Several years into the First Punic War the Romans realised that they needed to challenge Carthage at sea and built a fleet. This is an account of its first encounter, which proved a complete disaster for the Romans. Every ship in their squadron and its commander were captured. The Romans went on to win the war, however, though it lasted for 23 years.


 * First Punic War (Gog the Mild) : Continuing Gog's recent focus on the First Punic War, this article comprises "23 years of war boiled down into 6,000 words". The war was fought between Carthage and Rome, the two main powers of the western Mediterranean in the early 3rd century BC. For 23 years, in the longest continuous conflict and greatest naval war of antiquity, the two powers struggled for supremacy, primarily on the Mediterranean island of Sicily and its surrounding waters, and also in North Africa. After immense material and human losses on both sides the Carthaginians were defeated.


 * Operation Mosaic (Hawkeye7) : Operation Mosaic was a series of two British nuclear tests conducted in the Monte Bello Islands in Western Australia on 16 May and 19 June 1956. These tests followed the Operation Totem series and preceded the Operation Buffalo series. The second test in the series was the largest ever conducted in Australia. It wasn't until the 1980s that radioactivity from the tests had decayed to the point where it was no longer hazardous to casual visitors to the area.