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


 * Battle of Halmyros : The Battle of Halmyros was one of the most crucial battles in the history of Greece during the Middle Ages. It was fought in 1311 between the heavy Frankish cavalry of the Duchy of Athens and the mercenary infantry of the Catalan Company. The battle was sparked by the Duke's refusal to pay the mercenaries after they captured much of the region for him. The mercenaries scored a crushing victory, killing the duke and most of his knights and claiming the duchy for themselves. The article passed GAN and ACR before gaining FA status.


 * SMS Elsass : Elsass saw limited combat in the Baltic Sea during World War I, and was also used as a training vessel from 1916. She was one of a handful of battleships Germany was allowed to retain under the Versailles Treaty, and continued to be used to train sailors. She was decommissioned in 1930 and scrapped in 1936. Parsecboy took the article through GAN and ACR, prior to a successful FAC nomination; it's also part of the Battleships of Germany featured topic.


 * Operation Retribution (1941) : Peacemaker's first appearance in this month's list is for an article covering the devastating series of German air raids conducted on Belgrade in April 1941. These attacks resulted in the destruction of large parts of the city and the deaths of thousands of civilians. Brave but ultimately futile resistance was put up by the pilots of the Royal Yugoslav Air Force. The main Luftwaffe commander responsible was captured by the Yugoslavs at the end of the war, and subsequently tried and executed. Scars from the bombing were still visible in 2008. The article achieved GA and A-class status before FAC.


 * British logistics in the Falklands War : This article details the complex logistical arrangements needed to transport forces from the UK to the Falklands during the 1982 war, sustain them there and supply the troops involved in unexpectedly intense combat. While initial logistical assessments judged that the operation was impossible, the commitment of much of the Royal Navy's support ships and a large fleet of chartered civilian vessels and some herculean efforts by logistics personnel on the islands proved sufficient. The article was not much more than stub for around 10 years until Hawkeye expanded it late last year, taking it through GAN and ACR prior to FAC.


 * Philip I Philadelphus : Philip was a Seleucid King of Syria from 94 until his death in either 83 or 75 BC. According to nominator Attar-Aram, "he was one among four contenders for the throne, all of them managed to rule some parts of the country! Yet, despite his humble role in history, Rome found it fit to maintain his image on the coins of its Syrian province for fifty years: so he must have left an impression in the region."


 * Army of Sambre and Meuse : The latest in Auntieruth's huge series on the French Revolutionary War is also the second of a pair of articles on two principal French armies which participated in the Rhine Campaign of 1796 she's brought to FAC. The Army of Sambre and Meuse was formed in June 1794 and disbanded in September 1797. For most of the period that it was active it operated successfully in modern Germany, but it was eventually pushed back across the Rhine into France. The article passed GAN and ACR before achieving FA status.


 * Russian occupations of Beirut : This unusual article covers two military expeditions by forces of the Imperial Russian Navy, the first in 1772 and the second in 1773–74, set against the backdrop of the Russo-Turkish War of 1768–1774. Though of limited historical significance, the occupations marked the first occasion the Russians ruled an Arab city, and the first time in over 250 years that Beirut was controlled by a power other than the Ottomans.


 * Lawrence Weathers : Lawrence Weathers was born in New Zealand of Australian parents. He joined the Australian Imperial Force in 1916 and fought in France. During the Battle of Mont Saint-Quentin in 1918, with some assistance, Weathers captured 180 German troops and three machine guns, and was subsequently awarded the Victoria Cross. He was killed a few days after the actions which resulted in the award, and never knew he was to receive it. PM took the article through GAN and ACR prior to FAC.


 * Eastern Area Command (RAAF) (Ian Rose) : This article is about one of the Royal Australian Air Force's most important area commands, responsible for units in New South Wales and southern Queensland between 1942 and 1953. As most of Australia's air combat formations were located in this region after World War II, the organisation evolved into the RAAF's main operational headquarters when the service transitioned from the area command system to one based on function, and remains active as Air Command. The article passed GAN and ACR before gaining FA status; it's also part of the RAAF area commands good topic.


 * Japanese battleship Ise (Sturmvogel 66) : Built during World War I, Ise saw no action during the war and had a pretty typical career for a Japanese battleship during the interwar period. Following the Japanese invasion of China, she patrolled off the coast of that country/ Despite being rebuilt at great expense before World War II, the ship saw almost no combat before she was converted into a hybrid battleship/carrier in 1943. The ship was used to decoy American carriers away from the landings during the Battle of Leyte Gulf in 1944 and returned to home waters early the following year where she was sunk by American carrier aircraft.


 * IFF Mark II (Maury Markowitz) : The IFF Mark II was the first operational identification friend or foe system and, in Maury's words, "one of the many advances of the "Wizard War" in WWII". Developed by the Royal Air Force, the IFF Mark II began to be fielded widely towards the end of the Battle of Britain in 1940. The device allowed the operators of British radar stations to reliably distinguish between friendly and enemy aircraft. It remained in use until 1943, when it began to be replaced by the IFF Mark III, which was used by all Allied aircraft long after the war ended.


 * SM U-1 (Austria-Hungary) (White Shadows) : U-1 was Austria-Hungary's first submarine. As an experimental submarine, her design included some unusual features, such as a diving chamber and wheels(!) to drive along the seafloor. The wheels proved to be entirely useless and her engines routinely poisoned the crew, but she was used for training and reconnaissance purposes between 1911 and 1918; these included operational patrols during World War I.


 * Territorial Force (Factotem) : The Territorial Force was a British part-time auxiliary which was formed in 1908. It was ridiculed in peacetime, and Lord Herbert Kitchener ignored it in favour of his New Army as a means of reinforcing the regular army on the outbreak of the First World War. Despite this indignity, the territorials volunteered for service overseas, filled the gap between the effective destruction of the regular army in France in 1914 and the arrival of the New Army in 1915, and carried the majority of the British effort in the Middle Eastern theatre.


 * Johann Heinrich von Schmitt (Auntieruth55) : This article forms part of Auntieruth's vast series on the French Revolutionary Wars and the Wars of Coalitions. It covers the life of one of the most successful chiefs of staff to have served in the Army of the Holy Roman Empire. von Schmitt first saw combat in Austria's wars against the Ottoman Empire, and was a key staff officer by the start of the French Revolutionary Wars. He retired in 1800 after a controversy, but was recalled in 1805. He was killed by friendly fire during a battle in November that year.


 * James P. Hagerstrom (HueSatLum) : James P. Hagerstrom was a fighter pilot with the USAAF and USAF, and one of only seven people to become an ace in both WWII and Korea. He also served in an advisory role in Vietnam, where he flew 30 combat missions and frequently butted heads with military brass. After retirement, he sailed around the Pacific with his family on a homemade boat. This article is the first HueSatLum has developed to A-class - congratulations!


 * List of ironclad warships of Austria-Hungary (Parsecboy and White Shadows) : As indicated by the article's title, this article provides a comprehensive listing of all 17 ironclad warships acquired by the Austro-Hungarian Navy between the 1860s and 1880s. The first generation of these ships were built as part of a naval armaments race with Italy, which ended with the Austrian victory in the 1866 Battle of Lissa. Due to funding shortfalls, none of the second generation of ironclads saw significant activity. Parsecboy and White Shadows developed the article to A-class as the capstone of a project which has involved raising the articles on all of the ironclads to GA status.


 * Vance Drummond (Ian Rose) : Vance Drummond was a Royal Australian Air Force pilot who fought in the Korean and Vietnam Wars. He 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, with 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".


 * MAUD Committee (Hawkeye7) : Another article which forms part of a huge series, this article covers a British scientific working group which was established in 1940 during World War II to investigate whether it would be feasible to develop an atomic bomb. Research was split between four universities. After 18 months work, the Committee issued two reports which concluded that atomic bombs could be produced. These reports proved highly influential, and led to the British and United States nuclear weapons programs, as well as the Soviet atomic bomb project after they were transmitted to the USSR by spies.


 * Soviet cruiser Admiral Isakov (Kges1901) : Admiral Isakov was a large anti-submarine warship of the Soviet Navy. She was commissioned in 1970, and operated as part of the Northern Fleet throughout her career. She conducted patrols and exercises in the North Atlantic and Mediterranean, and in 1981 deliberately rammed a British destroyer which was on an intelligence-gathering mission. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the cruiser was decommissioned in 1993, and sank the next year while under tow to India to be scrapped.


 * 57th Rifle Division (Soviet Union) (Kges1901) : Kges1901 described this article as being "about a fairly obscure Soviet division whose most intense combat occurred at Khalkhin Gol". The 57th Rifle Division was formed in 1920, and fought in the Russian Civil War. It was transferred to Siberia in the 1930s and spent the rest of its existence in the region. As well as fighting at Khalkhin Gol, the division garrisoned Mongolia and, remarkably, encountered virtually no Japanese troops during an advance of 1,000 kilometres into Manchuria in 1945. The 57th Rifle Division was disbanded in 1947.
 * Marcian (Iazyges) : Marcian was the Eastern Roman Emperor from 450 until his death in 457. After assuming the purple due to political manoeuvring, he revoked all treaties with Attila the Hun, and launched offensives into the Hun's homeland. Following Attila's death, he was able to settle several tribes of Huns in Eastern Roman territory, where they gave military service. Marcian was regarded as among the best Eastern Roman Emperors, and a memorial column dedicated to him still stands in Istanbul.


 * Razing of Friesoythe (Gog the Mild) : This article covers the deliberate destruction of a German town by Canadian troops in April 1945, which was motivated by a mistaken belief that a civilian had killed their commanding officer. In the nomination statement, Gog the Mild noted that "it gives, I think, a feel for the spirit in which the last months of World War II, and probably the rest of it, were fought. No glory and precious few heroes".


 * 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski (Peacemaker67) : The 32nd Infantry Division Triglavski was a Yugoslav division of World War II. At the time of the Axis invasion of Yugoslavia in April 1941 it was seriously deficient in firepower and mobility and deployed in the mountains along the Italian border. The division didn't see a lot of fighting as the 7th Army, of which it was a part, was swiftly encircled and promptly surrendered.