Military History Matters

Latest issue

Military History Matters magazine
December 2019
is out now

The Battle of Midway

Coming just months after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Battle of Midway – in which the outcome of World War II was supposedly decided in the space of a ‘fatal five minutes’ – is the subject of a new film released earlier this month. The clash between the American and Japanese fleets will never be forgotten, but does Midway really deserve the hype? Was it truly the greatest battle of the war?

Latest features

REVIEW – Bolts from the Blue: From Cold War Warrior to Chief of the Air Staff

Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Johns’ book can, in essence, be divided into two distinct sections: his ‘junior’ and ‘senior’ officer days, and then his days shouldering the responsibilities of air rank, culminating in his appointment as Chief of the ...

Remembering the dead in the wildest of crash sites

The Brecon Beacons National Park is an unusual place for a commemoration. But in early November, it played host to a ceremony on the site where, in 1944, a Vickers Wellington bomber crashed, killing everyone on board ...

REVIEW – Photographs of the Third Reich: Images from the Wehrmacht

Although its subject matter is Germany, this slim volume is packed full of photographs garnered by the author from around the world, from the USA to such surprising places as Argentina, Turkey, and Israel ...

Rare military collection auctioned at Sotheby’s

A first edition of Machiavelli’s Libro dell’arte della guerra (The Art of War) has sold at auction for £150,000 ...

Back to the Drawing Board: Tsar Tank

One of the earliest attempts to design an AFV that could cope with First World War battlefields was the bizarre Tsar Tank ...

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The Battle of the Ardennes

This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Battle of the Ardennes, which took place in the Wallonia region of Belgium. To mark this date, Wallonia Belgium Tourism examine the build up to the German offensive, and the Battle’s opening manoeuvre.
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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: The Unknown Warrior, 1920

The coffin of the unknown warrior is carried into Westminster Abbey. On 11 November 1920, the largest funeral ever held in London took place – and yet the deceased was a man unknown to the hundreds of thousands of mourners who turned out in his honour. Described as the greatest outpouring of grief the country had ever known, the event was the burial of the Unknown Warrior, whose remains lie at Westminster Abbey alongside kings, princes, and other assorted dignitaries ...
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BEHIND THE IMAGE: Spectators at the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, 28 June 1919

Perched on sofas and peering in from every angle, these Allied officers were obviously desperate to catch a glimpse of the momentous events unfolding next door. The Great War was finally coming to an end with the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in the dazzling surroundings of the Palace of Versailles’ Hall of Mirrors. After the German surrender of November 1918, hostilities had ceased — but between January and June 1919, the representatives of 21 nations had met in ...
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