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Featured battle : Lake Champlain
Part of British -American War 1812-1814
Date : 11 September 1814
The British squadron commanded by Captain George Downie were attempting to support their army under Sir George Prevost from the lakeward side of their line of advance. The American naval force under Commodore Thomas Macdonough was almost equal in gun strength, 86 to 92. The Americans had the wind and Downie was forced to tack into action. In the course of a desperate two hour battle Downie was killed and eventually the Americans prevailed.
Featured image :
German 88mm Anti-Aircraft Gun and Argentine 20mm AA gun
The premier, multi-purpose gun of the second world war, the German 88 was respected and feared wherever it was encountered. A high muzzle velocity, good accuracy and penetrating ammunition, as well as plentiful production meant that this AA gun could double as an anti-tank gun, which could destroy almost any allied armour from considerable range. Although as an AA gun it was inferior to the British 3.7in Mk6, it was available in considerably greater quantity and was much more flexible. This particular example is a Flak18 barrel mounted on a Flak36 cruciform mount, dates from 1939 and fired a 9.4kg shell with a ceiling of 9900 metres - the anti-tank variant could fire a 10.4kg AP shell 17,500m. Also included in the left-most picture, to the left of the 88, is a twin-barreled 20mm Anti-aircraft gun used by the Argentine Air Force during the Falklands War of 1982. It is a Rheinmetall Rh 202 mk20 and is still used by several NATO forces in the light, mobile AA role.
Gallery updated : 2022-04-04 08:33:43
Featured review :
The Destruction of 6th Army at Stalingrad
Ian Baxter
Like other books in the Images of War series this book is packed full of superb photographs. A huge amount of detail of the 6th Army’s equipment and people is shown in a set of rare, many previously unpublished, photographs. The annotations are most informative and the supporting text, only ten of the hundred and fifty five pages, gives a brief overview of the campaign. What I found particularly interesting was the different slant on the causes of the defeat. In this book the strength and organization of the Soviet army is given more weight than the Russian winter. There is a distinct absence of the usual crop of photographs of grotesquely frozen German soldiers.
Anyone, even those with only a passing interest in World War Two, would enjoy this book and for re-enactors it could prove a gold mine. We highly recommend it.
Pen & Sword Military, 2020
Reviewed : 2020-05-14 11:20:52
