Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/News/June 2023/Articles


 * USS Marmora (1862) : A sternwheel steamer that served in the Union Navy from 1862 to 1865, USS Marmora was built as a civilian vessel and purchased for military service for conversion into a tinclad warship. The vessel served on the Yazoo River during 1862 and 1863. In August 1863 Marmora participated in some activities on the White and Little Red Rivers while the Little Rock campaign was beginning, and patrolled on the Mississippi River late that year. In 1864 she participated in another movement up the Yazoo River. Continuing to serve on the Mississippi River, Marmora was declared surplus in May 1865. Nothing further is known about the ship after she was disposed of by the Union. HF took this through ACR before going for FA.


 * Gordon Steege : From Ian's nomination statement: "Part 3 of a random/unplanned trilogy following on from Alan Rawlinson and Wilf Arthur: veteran of No. 3 Squadron RAAF in the Middle East theatre of World War II; fighter ace with precisely 8 confirmed victories; rose to command wings in the Pacific; left the air force with the rank of group captain after the war. Are you sensing a pattern here...? Thereafter things diverged: unlike Rawlinson who joined the RAF and Arthur who never resumed a military life, Steege re-joined the RAAF during the Korean War, where he didn't take long to ruffle a few feathers..." Never one to hurry, Ian took almost a decade to move this from A-class to FA...


 * Battle of Bronkhorstspruit : This article covers the first conflict of the First Boer War, fought on 20 December 1880. It was a one-sided affair that can barely be termed a battle in terms of the contest. A blasé British commander did not consider the Boers to be able to present a threat to the men of the British Army, and was resoundingly defeated in around 15 minutes. The battle was a taste of what was to come over the following couple of months; a series of humbling defeats for the British. The article passed ACR before achieving FA status.


 * Battle of Zama : You just can't go past Gog's own nomination statements for pithy descriptions of the featured articles in question... "Hannibal! Elephants! Scipio Africanus! Numidian cavalry! Two great generals at the top of their form fight it out for the fate of empires. Yes, it's yet another battle from the Punic Wars. With added elephant dung. But it was decisive. [Plot spoiler] Hannibal was finally beaten."


 * Saving Private Ryan : The film that redefined how war movies, and action movies in general, were presented. Inspired partly by the true story of the search for a single soldier in Normandy to send him home after the deaths of his brothers in combat, the Steven Spielberg epic was a major critical and box office success. Mercifully it was not the kind of story to generate sequels, though TV's Band of Brothers was a spiritual offshoot.


 * Epsom riot : The Epsom riot took place in June 1919 when between 300 and 800 Canadian soldiers rioted and attacked the police station in Epsom, England. Station Sergeant Thomas Green, a British police officer, was fatally injured during the incident and died the following day. The Canadian soldiers were frustrated by delays in repatriating them home following the end of World War I, and attacked the police station after two of their comrades were arrested. Schrocat took this article to A-class before its run for featured status.


 * Supermarine S.4 : This article tells the story of R.J. Mitchell's beautiful racing seaplane, designed as an entrant in the 1925 Schneider Trophy competition, but which crashed during navigation trials before the contest. It led to the S.5, S.6 and finally the S.6B that would permit Britain to win the Schneider Trophy three times running. The design of course also laid the fundamentals for the legendary Supermarine Spitfire of World War II.


 * List of commanders of the British 4th Division :  The 4th Division was established in 1809 during the Napoleonic Wars, and re-formed for service in the Crimean and Second Boer Wars. In the early 1900s, new 4th Divisions were formed, renumbered, and re-formed. The division saw action in the First and Second World Wars, and was raised, disbanded, and renamed several times before it was disbanded for the last time in 2012. Three of its commanders were killed in action, five were wounded, and one was captured.


 * British logistics in the Western Allied invasion of Germany (Hawkeye7) : This article concludes Hawkeye7's series on British logistics in the campaign in North West Europe in 1944-45, taking the story down to the conclusion of the war in Europe. To conserve scarce manpower, the British and Canadian forces employed mechanisation and materiel to maximum effect. This involved prodigious use of ammunition, fuel and equipment, which in turn demanded a first-class military logistics system.


 * Soviet cruiser Vasily Chapayev (Simongraham) : Vasily Chapayev was a Kresta II-class cruiser of the Soviet Navy that was launched in 1974 and served during the Cold War with the Pacific Fleet. Based at Vladivostok, the ship travelled extensively in the Indian and Pacific Oceans, visiting friendly ports in Angola, Ethiopia, India, Mozambique and Yemen. In 1978 and 1979, the vessel formed part of a Soviet flotilla that supported Vietnam in the aftermath of the Sino-Vietnamese War. In 1982 Vasily Chapayev supported the BOR-4 spaceplane programme, and in 1985 took part in a simulated joint operations attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor. Taken out of active service in 1992, Vasily Chapayev was decommissioned in 1993.


 * 1st Armoured Division (United Kingdom) (EnigmaMcmxc) : The British 1st Armoured Division was formed in November 1937 as the Mobile Division. It was sent to France after the German offensive began, fought a couple of engagements and was evacuated to the UK having lost practically all its tanks. After a period defending the UK, it was dispatched to North Africa, where it fought in most of the major armoured battles from Gazala to the Second Battle of El Alamein. It was then on to Tunisia before a final campaign in Italy. After fighting through the Gothic Line, the division was broken-up in late 1944 to provide reinforcements for others. The division number was briefly reused (1946–47) in the post-war period when the 6th Armoured Division was renamed.