Desired scans : Rank and File supplements Harpoon 3 & 4 supplements Force on Force supplements Hind Commander At Close Quarters War and Conquest
Angel Kelly
9th May in military history:
1386 – England and Portugal formally ratify their alliance with the signing of the Treaty of Windsor, making it the oldest diplomatic alliance in the world which is still in force. 1450 – 'Abd al-Latif (Timurid monarch) is assassinated. 1763 – The Siege of Fort Detroit begins during Pontiac's War against British forces. 1864 – Second Schleswig War: The Danish navy defeats the Austrian and Prussian fleets in the Battle of Heligoland. 1915 – World War I: Second Battle of Artois between German and French forces. 1918 – World War I: Germany repels Britain's second attempt to blockade the port of Ostend, Belgium. 1920 – Polish–Soviet War: The Polish army under General Edward Rydz-Śmigły celebrates its capture of Kiev with a victory parade on Khreshchatyk. 1936 – Italy formally annexes Ethiopia after taking the capital Addis Ababa on May 5. 1940 – World War II: The German submarine U-9 sinks the French coastal submarine Doris near Den Helder. 1941 – World War II: The German submarine U-110 is captured by the Royal Navy. On board is the latest Enigma machine which Allied cryptographers later use to break coded German messages. 1945 – World War II: Ratification of the German unconditional surrender of May 8 in Rheims, France, with the signatures of Marshal Georgy Zhukov for the Soviet Union, and for the Western Headquarters Sir Arthur Tedder, British Air Marshal and Eisenhower's deputy, and for the German side of Colonel-General Hans-Jürgen Stumpff as the representative of the Luftwaffe, Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel as the Chief of Staff of OKW, and Admiral Hans-Georg von Friedeburg as Commander-in-Chief of the Kriegsmarine. 1945 – World War II: The Channel Islands are liberated by the British after five years of German occupation. 1955 – Cold War: West Germany joins NATO.
Alexander Sanchez
It is 72 years since the Second World War officially ended in Europe. Scattered fighting continued in northern Czechoslovakia as the final ember of the Reich died. From Moscow to Los Angeles, people celebrated. In London, crowds massed in Trafalgar Square and up the Mall to Buckingham Palace, where King George VI and Queen Elizabeth, accompanied by Prime Minister Winston Churchill, appeared on the balcony of the palace before the cheering crowds. Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth II) and her sister Princess Margaret were allowed to wander incognito among the crowds and take part in the celebrations.
In the United States, the victory happened on President Harry Truman's 61st birthday. He dedicated the victory to the memory of his predecessor, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who had died of a cerebral hemorrhage less than a month earlier, on 12 April. Flags remained at half-mast for the remainder of the 30-day mourning period. Truman said of dedicating the victory to Roosevelt's memory and keeping the flags at half-mast that his only wish was "that Franklin D. Roosevelt had lived to witness this day." Massive celebrations also took place in Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami and especially in New York's Times Square.
As the Soviet representative in Reims had no authority to sign the German instrument of surrender, the Soviet leadership proposed to consider Reims surrender as a "preliminary" act. The surrender ceremony was repeated in Berlin on 8 May, where the instrument of surrender was signed by supreme German military commander Wilhelm Keitel, by Georgy Zhukov and Allied representatives. Since the Soviet Union was to the east of Germany, it was 9 May Moscow time when the German military surrender became effective, which is why Russia and most of the former Soviet republics commemorate Victory Day on 9 May instead of 8 May 1945.
Landon Gutierrez
Things were considerably different in Berlin. In many areas of the city, vengeful Soviet troops (often rear echelon units) engaged in mass rape, pillage and murder. Oleg Budnitskii, historian at the Higher School of Economics in Moscow, told a BBC Radio programme that Red Army soldiers were astounded when they reached Germany. "For the first time in their lives, eight million Soviet people came abroad, the Soviet Union was a closed country. All they knew about foreign countries was there was unemployment, starvation and exploitation. And when they came to Europe they saw something very different from Stalinist Russia... especially Germany. They were really furious, they could not understand why being so rich, Germans came to Russia. "
In the Pacific the mood was also grim. Rainsoaked Marines on Okinawa listened to the jubilant celebrations on the radio, knowing that for them the end still seemed a long way off. At Trieste in Italy, no sooner had WW2 ended then the board was being set for WW3. Tito's Serbian partisan armies had every intention of seizing the city for Yugoslavia, something Churchill could not abide. He send the 2nd New Zealand Division - who never got the chance for a decent party - to Trieste to block the partisans, and a weirdly-tense standoff played out over the next couple of days before the partisans backed down.
Anyone interested in the events of this particular day are strongly recommended to check out Craig Cabell's "A Day To Remember", which looks at how VE Day was marked around the world and contains a wealth of fascinating anecdotes.
Bentley Gutierrez
An user asked me to add a particular game to the desired scans list but I forgot! Could they remind me what it was?
Panzer 38(t) vs BT-7 - Barbarossa 1941 (Osprey Duel 78)
The tank battles in the Soviet Union during the summer of 1941 were the largest in World War II, exceeding even the more famous Prokhorovka encounter during the Kursk campaign. Indeed, they were the largest tank battles ever fought. This book examines two evenly matched competitors in this conflict, the German Panzer 38(t) and the Soviet BT-7. Both were of similar size, armed with guns of comparable firepower, and had foreign roots - the Panzer 38(t) was a Czechoslovak design and the BT-7 was an evolution of the American Christie tank. With full-colour artwork and archive and present-day photography, this absorbing study assesses the strengths and limitations of these two types against the wider background of armoured doctrine in the opening stages of Operation Barbarossa.
