Military History Matters

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Military History Matters magazine
October/November 2020 is out now

Okinawa: Endgame in the Pacific

From the beginning, Okinawa challenged expectations. The landing was supposed to be the bloodiest of the war so far. The 182,000 troops riding aboard the 1,300-ship fleet heading for Okinawa were prepared for the worst – many had been warned that their commanders expected to lose eight in every ten men in the coming battle.

Latest features

German U-boat surveyed over a century after wartime sinking

The U-boat went down with all hands and has rested on the seabed, some 37km (23 miles) off the coast of Yorkshire, ever since ...

Museums and events with MHM (Oct/Nov 2020)

The best military history museums, events, and, exhibitions, as chosen by Military History Matters magazine ...

Walkway allows new access to HMS Victory

A new hull walkway, opened in August of this year, allows enthusiasts to descend into the base of the ship’s dry dock and view the vast craft from below ...

Restored craft from D-Day makes one last beach landing

This unique ship is the last of over 800 tank-carrying landing craft to have served at D-Day, the amphibious Allied assault on Normandy on 6 June 1944 ...

MHM Competition: September/October

This issue, we’re giving away three copies of Wellington: The Road to the Lion’s Mound 1769-1852, courtesy of Amerigo-Citadelle. In this first volume of a new biography of the Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, Daniel Res draws on a ...

Behind the Image

BEHIND THE IMAGE: Wind tunnel testing, Messerschmitt Bf 109, 1940

It may look like a scene from a movie shoot – Germany’s answer to The Dam Busters, perhaps – but this strikingly modern photograph from 1940 offers instead a real-life glimpse behind the scenes of a top-secret aeronautical project. The state-of-the-art wind tunnel at the Herman Goering Aviation Research Institute, near Braunschweig (or Brunswick) in Lower Saxony, was one of Germany’s most closely shrouded military sites. Spread over 1,000 acres, the Institute’s 60 buildings were low-rise, nestling under the treeline, and well camouflaged from the air. As a result, until the end ...
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BEHIND THE IMAGE: VE Day, 8 May 1945

Image: Imperial War Museum We are all familiar with photos depicting jubilant crowds of people celebrating the end of the Second World War. They are shown racing through the streets of Piccadilly or crammed together outside the balcony at Whitehall as Churchill waves, exultant relief on their faces, bottles and flags in their hands. Victory in Europe (VE) Day marked the official conclusion of the six-year world war against Hitler and his allies. Civilians and soldiers around the world had ...
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BEHIND THE IMAGE: U-Boat on Hastings beach, April 1919

Five months after the Armistice and with the Great War finally behind them, the last thing the townspeople of Hastings expected to see from their elegant promenade, just in front of the Queens Hotel and lying like a monstrous metallic whale, was a U-boat. But on the morning of 15 April 1919, after a storm had caused the submarine to break free from its tow, that is exactly what they saw. U-boat 118 had been launched in February 1918, and ...
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