Military History Matters

Latest issue

Military History Matters magazine
September 2019
is out now

Operation Market Garden

The world’s largest ever airborne operation was launched during September 1944, with less than a week of planning. This was one of many ingredients in what, for the Allies, would become a major strategic setback. What went wrong?

Latest features

War Reporters: Ernie Pyle

Dubbed ‘the Soldier’s Friend’, his work had been syndicated across the States, making him a household name. President Harry Truman, on learning of Pyle’s death at the hands of a hidden Japanese machine-gunner, summed it up, saying nobody had ‘so ...

MHM September Competition

MHM and Star Statues are giving one lucky person the chance to win a free miniature statue of choice from their current collection. Star Statues offers the finest quality miniature and life-size bronze statues of the world’s most extraordinary leaders ...

Battle Map: Operation Cobra

Operation Cobra was a resounding success for the Allied forces on their path to liberating France in the summer of 1944, and one of the key turning-points in the history of the Second World War. Those days of fast-moving action ...

The Novgorod: ‘Circular Ironclad’

The Novgorod’s design originated in 1868, when the Scottish shipbuilder John Elder proposed widening the beam of a warship to reduce the area to be protected. This would allow it to carry thicker armour and heavier guns than a conventional ...

War Reporters: George Orwell

The life of a journalist who was never far from the front-line: George Orwell. His writing sought to rationalise and navigate the challenges of the day, and his early vision for a utopian socialist society slowly gave way to the ...

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: North Vietnam

North Vietnamese Radio Team, 1970 The radio team of a North Vietnamese attack group photographed during the offensive on the city of Quang Tri in 1970. An explosion has just gone off in the background, and three troops advance through the smoke. A soldier takes aim to provide covering fire, while the two men in the foreground, with stoic concentration on their faces, attempt to use the radio amid the chaos of battle. When Quang Tri was still the South’s border with North Vietnam, it suffered a major attack ...
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BEHIND THE IMAGE: Charge of the Royal Naval Division, 1915

This photograph shows infantry from the British Royal Naval Division climbing out of the trenches as if for a charge at the Battle of Gallipoli during 1915. Every man grasps their rifle with bayonet fitted, ready for the kind of close-quarters encounter with the enemy that it was expected – wrongly – would decide the war. The hills in the background are typical of the Gallipoli peninsula, making the terrain that had to be covered by the Allied forces uneven and difficult to negotiate. This photograph was taken by ...
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