Revolutionising naval warfare in the Dutch Golden Age
How did Michiel de Ruyter transform war at sea? Gone were the chaotic close-quarter mêlées, galleys, and archers. In came tight discipline, strategic formations, and the man–o'–war. We revisit the swashbuckling era of 17th-century naval conflict, when the Dutch – not the British – ruled the waves.
Latest features
MHM 96 Caption Competition
Think of something appropriately witty for this photograph from our feature on Dutch Admiral Michiel de Ruyter, published in the September issue of Military History Monthly. Leave your caption as a comment below. The best caption will be judged by the ...
Battle Royal: Prince George, Duke of Kent
Patrick Boniface on the deaths in combat of regal warriors. The door clicked shut behind him. HRH The Duke of Kent had left the warmth and comfort of his family home in Buckinghamshire. From within, his wife Princess Marina of ...
RAF Museum London: into the future
Seema Syeda reviews the newly remodelled RAF Museum. Museums, I thought in a rather prosaic way as I sat underneath the bomb bay of an Avro Vulcan B2 in the RAF Museum’s Hangar 5, usually chronicle the events of the ...
Revolutionising naval warfare in the Dutch Golden Age
How did Michiel de Ruyter transform war at sea? Gone were the chaotic close-quarter mêlées, galleys, and archers. In came tight discipline, strategic formations, and the man–o'–war. We revisit the swashbuckling era of 17th-century naval conflict, when the Dutch – ...
Women at War: Simone de Beauvoir
Born in Paris in 1908, Simone de Beauvoir belonged to that unlucky generation which lived through both World Wars. She was also one of the 20th century’s seminal thinkers ...
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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MHM Fact files
Winston Churchill: 10 little-known facts
Winston Churchill, the emblematic British wartime leader is instantly recognisable by his ...
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TOP FIVE: Gladiators
MHM introduces the most fearsome warriors of the Roman arena. 5. Marcus Attilius Free-Born ...
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TOP FIVE: Female Spies
MHM rounds up the most daring and decorated female agents in history ...
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10 ways to mark the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings
The best known date in English history may be 1066, but how much do you really know ...
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Hitler Facts: 10 little-known facts
Many strange, contradictory and often largely unsubstantiated rumours have arisen about Hitler, both in life ...
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5 Myths about the Wars of the Roses
We examine 5 myths surrounding the Wars of the Roses, as part of our 17-page ...
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9 Kings Who Lost Their Thrones
Taken from the MHM34 feature, here are 9 deposed monarchs, some of whom were quite ...
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Battle maps
The Battle of Wakefield: 1460
It was the culmination of ten years of increasingly violent unrest between supporters of King Henry VI and his cousin Richard, ...
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D-Day: Plan of Operations on 6 June, 1944
How were tens of thousands of infantry landed on the Normandy beaches on 6 June 1944? How was the supply ...
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Falklands – troop manoeuvres
To help you visualize the action in Major General Julian Thompson's lead feature for MHM on the Royal Navy's triumph during ...
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Battle of Naseby, 14th June 1645
Two years of amateur warfare had changed nothing.The English Civil War remained in the balance. Then, in February 1645, Parliament created ...
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The Battle of Marathon- 490 BC
The Battle of Marathon saw wo entirely antithetical military and political traditions: cavalry, archery, and light-armed troops versus heavy infantry; ...
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