Military History Matters

Latest issue

Military History Matters magazine
October 2019
is out now

The Ardennes, 1944

More than 4,000 square miles of hills and ridges, thickly forested, dissected by streams and rivers, its few roads punctuated by chokepoints. One of Western Europe’s ancient wildernesses. How was the Ardennes Offensive executed, and how did it accelerate the bitter end of one of history's most brutal regimes?

Latest features

Iron Age hillfort in danger of erosion

Archaeologists are working to uncover the secrets of a Roman hillfort near Caernarfon in north Wales. The coastal fort is believed to date back about 2,500 years, but is in danger of being totally eroded by the sea ...

The Ardennes, 1944

MHM Caption Competition: October 2019

Think of something appropriately witty for this image from our Behind the Image article, published in the October issue of Military History Matters. The best caption will be judged by the editorial team and published online! Winners will be announced ...

MHM Competition: October 2019

This issue, we’re giving away three copies of Hunt The Bismarck, courtesy of Osprey. Drawing on expert research and first-hand accounts of the action, Hunt the Bismarck is a gripping and fast-paced narrative of World War II’s most dramatic naval ...

Found: the bow of the USS Grunion

The USS Grunion was a Gato-class submarine that was sunk at Kiska, Alaska, during World War II. Operating near the Aleutian Islands, the submarine reported that it had been attacked by Japanese antisubmarine patrols, but had managed to avoid sinking ...

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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