History of War 06/2014

AS WAS ITS CUSTOM, on the evening of 5 June 1944, the BBC's French-language service broadcast personal messages after the news. This evening, there was an unusually large number - 325 -and it took an hour to get through them. One message - "I will bring the eglantine" -was particularly significant. It was the order to the Resistance throughout northern France to implement Operation Vert, the scheme for rail sabotage. As the broadcast continued, other announcements activated Operation Tortue, the destruction of bridges and highways; Operation Bleu, the disruption of the electricity supply system; and Operation Violet, the cutting of telephone and telegraph links. Before midnight, teams of the French Forces of the Interior (FFI) were moving into action. In the area of the Normandy beachheads, FFI intelligence chief Guillaume Mercader, a renowned cyclist who had come close to winning the Tour de France, pedalled at breakneck speed along coastal roads carrying orders from team to team. In Caen, stationmaster Albert Auge and his men set about disabling the locomotives in the city's marshalling yards. Further west, teams commanded by café owner André Farine cut the telephone cables leading out of Cherbourg. Meanwhile, other teams led by grocer Yves Gresslin dynamited the railway lines linking Cherbourg, Saint-Lô and Paris. In Brittany, teams of the Deuxième Régiment des Chasseurs Parachutistes (RCP) - the Free French equivalent of the SAS -parachuted down to join some 3,500 Resistance activists. By morning, they'd carved a swathe of destruction through eastern Brittany, wrecking railway bridges and tracks, demolishing electricity pylons, and establishing roadblocks covered by machine-gun and bazooka teams. They took every step to stop the 150,000 German troops in Brittany from reinforcing the beachhead quickly.

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Legion Magazine 05-06/2014

IF YOU WERE 20 YEARS OLD IN JUNE 1944, you are 90 years old today, and you probably don't need to be reminded of that. But that's how old many of Canada's younger D-Day veterans are as commemorations begin for those who participated in the largest seaborne invasion of all time—D-Day. Seventy years have passed since the Allied assault on Hitler's Fortress Europe and many of the men and women who were part of that incredible era are now gone. Many have left us with excellent books and memoirs detailing what they and others endured on Juno Beach and further inland at places like Buron, Carpiquet, Verrières Ridge, Falaise and St. Lambert-sur-Dives. The majority however returned to quieter lives by holding down a job in an office or factory, raising families, volunteering and spending time with grandchildren while perhaps trying to forget what they saw. Anyone who has spent time with a war veteran, especially from that era, knows it is easier to get them to talk about the good times or the lighter moments of being a soldier, sailor or airman. Those of us who were born after the war can experience something far more profound when a veteran goes beyond the easier memories. The experience can begin when you notice that the veteran's eyes are fixed on something so incredibly deep that it doesn't feel right to ask about it. You get the sense that there's a wall there, and that you are not part of that group of men or women (war veterans) who can go beyond it; all you can really do is wait for the story to emerge, if it does.

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Classic Military Vehicles 06/2014

The one fact that most MV enthusiasts will know about the Lightweight Land Rover - whether or not they are fans of that particular marque - is that despite the lightweight' moniker and in terms of unladen weight, it is actually heavier than the 88in Series IIA from which it was derived. However, and here is the whole point of the Lightweight, it can conveniently shed some 550 lb (250kg) of excess weight - doors, tailgate, bumpers etc - and slim down to a mere 2660 lb (1206kg). For, in the world of the air-portable vehicle, weight is king. Air-portable military vehicles were nothing new in the sixties. During the latter stages of WW2, Jeeps and even lightweight tanks had been deployed by glider, and in the late-fifties/ early sixties the British Army had evaluated various potentially air-portable types such as the Steyr Haflinger and Austin's Mini Moke. Indeed, from 1960 the Royal Marines employed 65 stripped-down Citroën 2CV pickup trucks which were stationed on the helicopter carriers HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark anö airlifted ashore slung under Westland Whirlwind HAS7s. Nevertheless, what the Royal Marines and the Army really needed was a sturdy utility vehicle, preferably with some commonality with existing types. Therefore, in 1964 an official specification was issued calling for a lightweight version of the short-wheelbase Land Rover. Among other things, it called for a maximum overall width of 60in (1500mm) so that two vehicles could be accommodated side-by-side within the fuselage of an Armstrong Whitworth Argosy, the standard heavy-lift aircraft of the time, and an unladen weight of no more than 2500 lb (1134kg) so that it could be airlifted by a Westland Wessex HC2 helicopter.

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Aviation News 06/2014

After weeks of speculation, US and UK officials confirmed on April 16 that the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II is to visit the UK this summer. The historic event will see three aircraft, one RAF and two US Marine Corps examples fly across the Atlantic Ocean. A single F-35B will make its international debut at the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT), RAF Fairford, Gloucestershire, on July 11-13. The following week a single F-35B will display on the trade days at the Farnborough International Airshow from July 14-18 and public days (19-20). Secretary of State for Defence, Philip Hammond said: "The US and the UK have worked closely together on the F-35 project from the beginning. We are the only country that is a Level 1 partner in the project, which is sustaining tens of thousands of jobs in the UK. This fifth-generation stealth combat aircraft will be a major boost to British combat air power and it is entirely fitting that the F-35's first stop outside the United States will be in the UK - its second home." The MoD has three F-35Bs, all currently based in the US at Eglin AFB, Florida, undertaking training with Royal Navy and Royal Air Force pilots. Orders for further aircraft will be placed over the next few years. First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval Staff, Admiral Sir George Zambellas, said: "July will be a real milestone in the rebirth of the UK's carrier strike capability. Alongside the naming of HMS Queen Elizabeth by Her Majesty the Queen on July 4, we can now also look forward to seeing the F-35B - the Lightning II - flying on the international stage for the first time."

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