Military History Matters

Latest issue

Military History Matters magazine
August/September 2020 is out now

The Immortal Hawke

In 1759, Britain faced an invasion threat from France, but two remarkable victories – the Battle of Lagos and later the Battle of Quiberon Bay – put paid to the plan. It was Admiral Sir Edward Hawke who delivered victory at the latter battle. So what kind of man was he, and what was his contribution to the history of the Royal Navy?

Latest features

Back to the Drawing Board: the ‘Sticky Bomb’

The idea ‘took off’ in the aftermath of the Dunkirk evacuation, when a German invasion seemed imminent and there was a critical shortage of anti-tank weapons ...

Wreck of German warship off Kent coast given protected status

During a training session in the English Channel in May 1878, SMS Grosser Kurfürst was accidentally rammed by another German warship, SMS König Wilhelm, while attempting to avoid a collision with two sailing ships ...

Birthplace of Adolf Hitler to be transformed into police station

The small building in the town of Braunau am Inn, close to the border with Germany, will be redesigned by an Austrian architectural firm in order to deter further neo-Nazi visitors ...

War of Words – ‘Spartan’

The Spartans were well-known for their frugality, living simply with a minimum of comforts, and ‘spartan’ acquired the sense of extreme simplicity in lifestyle ...

Heatwave photographs reveal Roman roads and forts

The research, published in the journal Britannia, is expected to aid understanding of how Wales was conquered and dominated 2,000 years ago ...

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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