Military History July 2021

USS Indianapolis Okinawa, 1609 Norman Massacre Death in Goliad Weird Warplanes Besieged in Paris HISTORYNET.com

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JULY 2021

Letters 6 News 8

Features

22

32

In 1969 the Soviet Union and China traded fire across their common border in a clash with global implications.

By Jesse Du

Straddling a lucrative trade route between empires, the island realm of Ryukyu lost its sovereignty to Japan in 1609.

By M.G. Haynes

Bear vs. Dragon

Departments

14

Interview Simon Elliott Seeking the ‘Lost Legion’

A Kingdom Lost

16

Valor Fighting Admiral

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Reviews 72 War Games 78 Captured! 80

40

48

It took a sailor, a schoolboy and survivors some 50 years to disperse the cloud hanging over the heavy cruiser’s loss.

By Marty Pay

Americans trapped in besieged Paris witnessed war, revolution and an eventual return to peace.

By Ellen Hampton

SOS Indianapolis

The Circle of Iron and Fire

56

Wacky Warbirds In the history of military aviation necessary function has often dictated unusual— and even truly bizarre—forms.

By Jon Guttman

64

When Normans Met the Longbow In 1136 a Welsh army resolved to drive out the invaders at arrow point.

By Dana Benner

18

What We Learned From...

The Rough Wooing, 1542–51

20

Hardware Consolidated PBY Catalina

On the cover: A Sino-Soviet clash over a worthless border island not only marked a major fracture between the world’s leading communist powers, but also imperiled world peace. (Arhendrix/iStockphoto)

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MICHAEL A. REINSTEIN CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER DAVID STEINHAFEL PUBLISHER ALEX NEILL EDITOR IN CHIEF

Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com

Rogers’ Rangers’ Risky 1759 St. Francis Raid In 1759 British Maj. Robert Rogers’ vaunted rangers raided deep into Abenaki territory in Quebec. Fewer than half would make it back alive

By Ron Soodalter IN THE ARCHIV E S :

Allen Pinpoints Indianapolis Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s maritime research team found the wreck of the storied cruiser in 2017

By Brendan Manley

Interview Guy Prestia, 98, served under Capt. Felix Sparks of The Liberator fame and now teaches schoolkids about World War II Tools The Japanese Type 89 heavy grenade

discharger was versatile but never intended to be fired off one’s knee as its nickname implied

JULY 2021 VOL. 38, NO. 2

STEPHEN HARDING EDITOR DAVID LAUTERBORN MANAGING EDITOR ZITA BALLINGER FLETCHER SENIOR EDITOR JON GUTTMAN RESEARCH DIRECTOR DAVID T. ZABECKI CHIEF MILITARY HISTORIAN STEPHEN KAMIFUJI CREATIVE DIRECTOR BRIAN WALKER GROUP ART DIRECTOR MELISSA A. WINN DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY JON C. BOCK ART DIRECTOR ALEX GRIFFITH PHOTO EDITOR C O R P O R AT E ROB WILKINS Director of Partnership Marketing TOM GRIFFITHS Corporate Development GRAYDON SHEINBERG Corporate Development SHAWN BYERS VP Audience Development JAMIE ELLIOTT Production Director ADVERTISING MORTON GREENBERG SVP Advertising Sales mgreenberg@mco.com RICK GOWER Regional Sales Manager rick@rickgower.com TERRY JENKINS Regional Sales Manager tjenkins@historynet.com DIRECT RESPONSE ADVERTISING MEDIA PEOPLE / NANCY FORMAN nforman@mediapeople.com © 2021 HISTORYNET, LLC

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Letters

I’d like to compliment author Dave Kindy on his excellent article about U-853 (“Last Shot at Glory”) in the March 2021 issue of Military History. I was especially pleased to see he acknowledged the participation of blimps in the battle that resulted in the destruction of the submarine. The important contributions of Navy blimps to anti-submarine warfare during World War II have been largely minimized or ignored over the years.

It may interest your readers to know there were actually three Goodyear ZNP-K –type blimps involved in the sinking of U-853. In addition to the two blimps from Naval Air Station Lakehurst, N.J., that Kindy mentioned—K-16 and K-58 of Blimp Patrol Squadron 12 —Blimp Patrol Squadron 11,

based at Naval Air Station South Weymouth, Mass., also sent K-82 to assist in the effort to find and destroy U-853. K-82 was actually the first blimp to arrive in the area, but due to poor visibility it was ordered to stand by until the weather cleared.

The weather was better to the south, and so K-16 and K-58, which had approached from that direction, were tasked to use their sonobuoys and magnetic anomaly detectors (MAD) to help the Navy and Coast Guard vessels in the attack force localize and track the German submarine.

K-16 and K-58 made separate attack runs on U-853 around 9 a.m. [May 6, 1945], dropping contact-fuzed “rocket bombs” (adapted hedgehog projectiles) on a stationary magnetic contact

Indonesian Insurgency The January 2021 article “A Method to His Madness” [by Benjamin Welton] says that after the Japanese capitulation, Japanese forces in Indonesia sold or gave their weapons to insurgents and even joined their ranks, kept their prisoners caged and allowed insurgents to terrorize their former charges.

I do not doubt these outrages happened. It seems to have been a chaotic environment in the interim between Japanese order collapsing and the Dutch reinstating their rule. I want to cite at least one exception to the article’s scenario of collapsed Japanese order.

In the 2008 book Lost Childhood: My Life in a Japanese Prison Camp During World War II Annelex Hofstra Layson, who as a child in 1945 was interned in

Halmaheira women’s camp in Java, described as “two hours’ drive from Bandung,” recounts the days after Japanese capitulation. First, food supplies were air-dropped to the camp; later, Gurkha troops. The Japanese camp guards had no more interactions with their former prisoners. The inmates were actually free to come and go without hindrance, though this soon became impossible due to roving murderous insurgents out to kill Europeans. The Japanese camp guards stayed and, with the Gurkhas, protected inmates from insurgents in the surrounding forest. Some Japanese guards were killed by insurgent snipers.

Layson describes the internment camp guards as constantly motivated to degrade, terrorize, humiliate, propagandize and hurt their captives. It occurred to me after reading this book: So that’s how it feels to be on the receiving end of empowered racial hatred. Young boys held in another camp were made to learn the Japanese language, military songs and practice military drill with mock wooden rifles.

You wonder how those boys would feel about defending the empire.

Hue Miller Newport, Oregon Send letters via e-mail to militaryhistory@historynet.com or to Editor, Military History HISTORYNET 901 N. Glebe Road, 5th Floor Arlington, VA 22203 Please include name, address and phone number

NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND

Battle of Point Judith

picked up by K-16’s MAD operator. The blimp attacks brought a variety of debris to the surface, suggesting at least some of the bombs hit the sub. K-82 circled the battle, prepared to attack the submarine if necessary, and the blimp’s crew took numerous photographs.

One more thing—SS Black Point was not headed for Boston, Mass., as stated in the article. The collier was actually bound for the coal-fired Edison electric power generating station in East Weymouth, Mass., a few miles south of Boston.

Marc J. Frattasio Pembroke, Mass.

6 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2021

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News

By Dave Kindy

Four identical caskets lay abreast in the room at City Hall in Châlons-en-Champagne, France, on Oct. 24, 1921. Each held the remains of an unidentified American soldier, and U.S. Army Sgt. Edward F. Younger had the solemn task of selecting one. Approaching the caskets with a spray of white roses in hand, the decorated, twice-wounded Younger circled them, then set the flowers down on the third coffin from the left.

Thus began the long journey home for one of hundreds of American soldiers killed in Europe during World War I whose names are “known but to God.” The casket selected

by Younger was transported by caisson and train to the port of Le Havre and placed aboard the protected cruiser USS Olympia for transport across the Atlantic to the Washington Navy Yard. On November 11—the anniversary of the war’s end, celebrated as Veterans Day in the United States— the anonymous remains were interred at Arlington National

Cemetery, Va., in the newly built Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, dedicated to all unidentified Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice for their nation.

In 1931–32 a carved marble superstructure was placed atop the tomb, completing the memorial familiar to presentday visitors. Since then Arlington burial details have interred American unknowns from World War II, Korea and Vietnam, though in 1998 the latter was exhumed, identified and returned to his family for reburial. Guarding the memorial around the clock are select sentinels of the 3rd U.S. Infantry Regiment (“The Old Guard”).

Arlington National Ceremony plans several events to mark the centennial of the tomb, leading up to a formal ceremony on Veterans Day. It invites the public to visit, pay silent respect and recall the men whose names remain a mystery but whose sacrifice must never be forgotten.

HERE RESTS IN HONORED GLORY AN AMERICAN SOLDIER KNOWN BUT TO GOD —Inscription on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery

CHRISTINA CONLON (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

ARLINGTON MARKS CENTENNIAL OF THE TOMB OF THE UNKNOWNS

8 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2021

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FROM TOP: COL. RAYMOND A. SKEEHAN, U.S. ARMY; IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; MURRAY WOODHOUSE (MILITARY VEHICLES MAGAZINE)

A century ago an unidentified American soldier killed during World War I was interred in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery.

WAR RECORD

Prince Philip, 99, Royal Navy Vet

FROM TOP: COL. RAYMOND A. SKEEHAN, U.S. ARMY; IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; MURRAY WOODHOUSE (MILITARY VEHICLES MAGAZINE)

CHRISTINA CONLON (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Prince Philip Mountbatten—Duke of Edinburgh, husband of Queen Elizabeth II and a World War II veteran of the Royal Navy—died on April 9, 2021. During the 1943 Allied invasion of Sicily he deployed a smoke decoy to spare his destroyer, HMS Wallace, from a night

bomber attack, and he was present at the 1945 Japanese surrender in Tokyo Bay. Philip stepped down from active duty in 1951 with the rank of commander.

Turing Merits New £50 Note Britain’s new £50 note features a portrait of Alan Turing, the World War II cryptanalyst who cracked the German Enigma code. During the war Turing worked at the codebreaking center at Bletchley Park estate, 50 miles northwest of London.

He cracked the evershifting code after perfecting the “bombe,” an electromechanical forerunner of modern computers. His team’s efforts are thought to have shortened the war by two years, saving untold millions of lives.

June 5, 1969

AGENCY ID’S KOREAN WAR HERO KAPAUN At the 1950 Battle of Unsan, North Korea, Capt. Emil Kapaun, a Catholic priest and U.S. Army chaplain, risked his life under heavy fire to rescue, aid and minister to the wounded. Recognized with the Medal of Honor, he didn’t live to see the award. Though ordered to withdraw, the chaplain stayed with the wounded and was captured. Kapaun, 35, died in a North Korean POW camp on May 23, 1951, and his body was dumped in a mass grave. In 1954 the U.S. Graves Registration Service repatriated the remains of 1,868 American casualties of the war. Those of Kapaun and 847 others were buried as unknowns. In 2018 the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency launched an effort to disinter and identify the men. This spring it identified the remains of Kapaun, who is a candidate for sainthood in the Catholic Church.

FAME-WORTHY WAR VEHICLES The envelope, please! Military Vehicles has announced the inaugural inductees into its Military Vehicle Hall of Fame. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the magazine hosted an online show of restored vehicles in six categories: 1/4-ton wheeled vehicles (jeeps), 1/2- to 3/4-ton wheeled vehicles, 1- to 2-ton wheeled vehicles, 2½-ton and larger wheeled vehicles, armor and/or tracked vehicles, and “other.” More than 100 private owners participated, and the magazine polled the public, which chose, among others, Murray Woodhouse’s 1952 Dodge M37 (at left).

Visit militarytrader.com for a look at the winners (under the Museums tab) and to learn how to enter next year’s competition (under the MV 101 tab).

The International Meeting of Communist and Workers Parties opens in Moscow amid a rift between the Soviet Union and China.

That March their troops exchanged fire on Zhenbao/ Damansky Island, sparking an undeclared shooting war known as the Sino-Soviet border conflict (P. 22).

June 17, 1971

The United States formally ends its military occupation of the Ryukyu Islands, dating from 1945, and returns the archipelago to Japanese control. Japan had invaded the Okinawa-based Kingdom of Ryukyu (P. 32) in 1609, annexing it in 1879.

June 28, 1283

King Edward I of England captures Dafydd ap Gruffydd, Prince of Wales. Dafydd’s subsequent execution represents final retribution for Welsh victories over the Normans at Crug Mawr (P. 64) and elsewhere during the 1136 Great Revolt.

June 1947

Designer Jack Frost joins Avro Canada and begins work on vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) aircraft. In 1958 he conceives the VZ-9 Avrocar, one of many unusual military aircraft designs (P. 56).

July 19, 1870

France declares war on Prussia. During the sixmonth Franco-Prussian War scores of American diplomats and expats are trapped in besieged Paris (P. 48).

9

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News

SEARCH TEAM ID’S HEROIC DESTROYER USS JOHNSTON Surprised by a superior Japanese fleet while on escort duty amid the Oct. 23–26, 1944, Battle of Leyte Gulf, the Fletcher-class destroyer USS Johnston (DD-557) led a desperate defense before sustaining fatal damage and sinking off the Philippine island of Samar. The actions of Johnston’s crew and captain, Cmdr. Ernest E. Evans—who was awarded a posthumous Medal of Honor— turned back the enemy fleet, enabling the successful invasion of the Philippines.

In 2019 Vulcan Inc.’s RV Petrel located the wreck of an unidentified Fletcher-class destroyer off Samar. But as Johnston’s sister ship USS Hoel was lost in the same battle, identification was pending. This spring maritime researchers with Caladan Oceanic verified the wreck as that of Johnston after finding a bow section inscribed with its hull number. At 21,890 feet, it is the world’s deepest known shipwreck.

On Oct. 25, 1944, Johnston, two other destroyers and four destroyer escorts were screening a group of six escort carriers providing close air support for the Leyte landings. Just after sunrise the central Japanese fleet of four battleships, eight cruisers and 11 destroyers made contact.

Leading it was Yamato, the largest and most heavily gunned warship afloat.

Undeterred, Evans’ group closed the distance and in three hours of combat inflicted punishing damage on the enemy. Not until his destroyer lay dead in the water surrounded by Japanese vessels did the seriously wounded commander order abandon ship. Johnston sank within a half hour, taking with it 186 of its 327 sailors, including Evans. No human remains were found and nothing was disturbed during the dive to identify the wreck, which is a protected war grave under international law.

‘It was a brutal and bloody fight that serves as a sobering reminder’ —Retired Rear Adm. Sam Cox, director of Naval History and Heritage Command

Seabees Craft Historic Desks Under the oversight of the Naval History and Heritage Command, U.S. Navy Seabees have crafted desks for the offices of the Navy secretary and the U.S. vice president using materials salvaged from storied American warships.

Both desks incorporate components from the 1797 frigate USS Constitution—the world’s oldest commissioned naval vessel still afloat—while the secretary’s desk includes materials from the frigate Chesapeake (1799), the sloop of war Constellation (1854) and the battleships Texas (1912), Arizona (1915) and New Jersey (1942).

Constitution Honors First Female Sailor Sailors aboard the 1797 heavy frigate USS Constitution have christened one of its 24-pounder cannons Perfectus in

honor of Loretta Perfectus Walsh, the first woman to enlist in the Navy and its first female chief petty officer. The honor came in March amid Women’s History Month. Enlisting in 1917, Walsh was the first woman allowed to serve in any branch of the U.S. armed forces as anything other than a nurse.

U.S. NAVY (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND, 2)

Launched in 1943, Johnston sank a year later in combat after taking on a far superior Japanese fleet.

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Recalling MOH Hero Chapman Though mortally wounded in the Battle of Takur Ghar, Afghanistan, on March 4, 2002, U.S. Air Force Tech.

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Irresistible Truck

British auction house H&H has offered a Citroën B12 converted truck used by the Resistance during World War II. Recovered from the French vineyard that owned it, the restored truck features wartime markings.

FILM HONORS NAVY PILOT AND PIONEERING WINGMAN Based on the eponymous Adam Makos book Devotion, a forthcoming Korean War film relates the selfless efforts of Vought F4U Corsair pilot Lt. j.g. Thomas J. Hudner Jr. (above left) to rescue his downed wingman, Ensign Jesse L. Brown (above right), the first black aviator in the U.S. Navy.

On Dec. 4, 1950, after Chinese ground fire downed Brown’s Corsair amid the Battle of Chosin Reservoir, Hudner intentionally crash-landed his own plane nearby and tried in vain to free his trapped friend from the burning wreckage. Brown, who died of his injuries, received the Distinguished Flying Cross for his combat actions that day, while Hudner was awarded the Medal of Honor for his rescue attempt. Directed by J.D. Dillard, Devotion will star Glen Powell as Hudner and Jonathan Majors as Brown.

PRITZKER BUILDS ARCHIVES, OPENS MEMORIAL CONTEST Sgt. John A. Chapman continued to assault al-Qaida positions until succumbing to his wounds. His actions shielded the Navy SEALs, Army Rangers and airmen with whom he fought, earning him the Medal of Honor.

Chapman’s story is the subject of Combat School, a forthcoming film directed by Sam Hargrave and starring Jake Gyllenhaal.

Warhead Not Included

For $1.6 million you can own Subterra Castle—a decommissioned SM-65 Atlas ICBM site in Eskridge, Kan., that has been converted into a 6,500-square-foot home. On 32 acres of prairie grassland, the Cold War–era hideaway features six bedrooms, three baths and two kitchens—oh, and a control room and 47-ton blast door.

Unbroken Mustang

World War II veteran fighter pilots have described the North American P-51D Mustang as the ultimate flying machine. Find out for yourself by purchasing the 1944 P-51D being overhauled by Georgia-based restorer Tom Reilly and brokered by Platinum Fighter Sales. Asking price? A cool $2.45 million.

Arizona Artifact A satellite of the nonprofit Pritzker Military Museum & Library in Chicago, the Pritzker Archives & Memorial Park Center—under construction in Somers, Wis.—will feature a state-of-the-art repository, a public gallery and a firearms training center on a 288-acre green space with walking paths. The project is to be completed in phases over 10 years. The memorial park will center on a yet-to-be-conceived Cold War Veterans Memorial, for which Pritzker is accepting design submissions through June 15, 2021. For more information and to submit a design visit coldwarveteransmemorial.org.

At a recent Davis Brothers auction in Missoula, Mont., a bidder paid $31,000 for a 24-inch ship’s wheel from the battleship USS Arizona, sunk at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. U.S. Navy diver Cmdr. Edward C. Raymer (author of the war memoir Descent Into Darkness) recovered the wheel during salvage operations in the wake of the attack.

TOP: U.S. NAVY (NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND, 2); LEFT:SECRETARY OF THE AIR FORCE PUBLIC AFFAIRS; BELOW: PRITZKER MILITARY MUSEUM & LIBRARY

The Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum in Lincoln, Neb., is marking the 75th anniversary of the since-deactivated Cold War command.

SAC (1946–92) had oversight of land-based strategic bombers and ICBMs. The museum plans yearlong events and is touting a new addition to its collection—a Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk stealth attack aircraft, a design that ushered out the Cold War.

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Interview Seeking the ‘Lost Legion’ What intrigued you about Legion IX Hispana?

I have always been fascinated about all things ancient world, and particularly with classical Greece and Rome, and latterly have been fortunate to become a full-time historian, archaeologist and broadcaster. That gave me time to focus attention on some of my favorite themes from the period, and one that really jumped out was the fate of the “lost legion,” IX Hispana. This allowed me to tackle historical writing from a detective perspective, trying to track down details about what really happened to the legion, and that seriously appealed to me.

Simon Elliott Archaeologist, historian, author and broadcaster Simon Elliott is an expert on Roman military history.

A trustee of the Council for British Archaeology and ambassador for the Museum of London Archaeology, he has written numerous books on Roman themes and has appeared on the BBC, the National Geographic and Discovery channels, and other broadcast media. Elliott often conducts archaeological fieldwork and is co-director of a Roman villa excavation in Maidstone, Kent, U.K. His latest book, Roman Britain’s Missing Legion: What Really Happened to IX Hispana? investigates the fate of a legion that vanished from written history in the second century.

Why has the story retained its appeal?

Because it remains truly one of history’s greatest mysteries. How do you lose 5,500 legionaries?

How did you approach the mystery?

Well, that was one of the issues, actually. There is more than one theory about its fate.

In fact, I was able to develop no fewer than four hypotheses about why IX Hispana simply disappeared from history. These were that it was lost in the north of Britain, lost in the south of Britain, lost on the Rhine or Danube, or lost in the east.

In the conclusion I then determined that, based on all of the available data to date, the legion was most likely lost in the north of Britain—just as [novelist] Rosemary Sutcliffe had speculated in her wonderful children’s book The Eagle of the Ninth.

What support have you found for your theory?

The available hard dates fit with the legion being lost in the north of Britain. It is last mentioned in contemporary history in ad 82, fighting in Scotland; last mentioned in epigraphy in York in 108, on a gate inscription; and then replaced in 122 in York by another legion. So IX Hispana must have left by then, and it is never recorded again.

What was the most challenging aspect of writing this book?

Unusually for me when writing a history book, the main issue I had here was separating fact from fiction, given there had been so much coverage of the legion’s fate in popular culture, including two Hollywood movies, a BBC TV series and a Doctor Who episode.

Did you learn anything surprising?

Yes, the fact that an entire Roman legion was lost in the east fighting the Parthians in ad 161. Given that it isn’t named, it became a serious candidate for the lost ninth legion.

What military lessons do the exploits of Legion IX Hispana convey?

I would say the lesson to learn is one of historiography for the historian.

Most people assume that the legions of Rome were usually the victors in any battle, and their exploits the stuff of legend, but in the story of the ninth there are numerous examples of it actually not living up to the ideal. For example, the legion’s last mention, in

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By Zita Ballinger Fletcher

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ad 82 in contemporary history, is by Tacitus, when he recounted its near annihilation at the hands of the natives of the far north of Britain.

What impact might your book have on the history of Roman Britain?

It has certainly attracted a lot of attention, and the introduction of the “lost in

the south” option, whereby IX Hispana was caught up somehow in an insurrection in London around the time of the accession of Hadrian in ad 117, is definitely new.

What will you be working on next?

The next book—my twelfth—is called Legacy of Rome, through The History

Top: The near annihilation of Legion IX Hispana in far northern Britain may have influenced the later building of Hadrian’s Wall. Above: A centurion orders slaves back to work on the wall.

Above left: Richborough Roman fort, in Kent.

Press. It examines in detail how the world of ancient Rome is still to be found all around us, in every aspect of our everyday lives. MH

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Valor Fighting Admiral

British Admiral of the Fleet Sir Philip Louis Vian was one of history’s great fighting commanders.

During World War II he was thrice awarded the Distinguished Service Order, the Royal Navy’s equivalent of the U.S. Navy Cross. A 1911 graduate of the Royal Naval College, Vian served primarily on destroyers and cruisers during World War I. He was aboard the M-class destroyer HMS Morning Star during the 1916 Battle of Jutland, though his ship was not actively involved in the fight.

During the interwar years Vian worked his way up through progressively more responsible assignments both afloat and ashore. On New Year’s Day 1940, four months after Britain declared war, Capt. Vian took command of the 4th Destroyer Flotilla, leading from the Tribal-class destroyer HMS Cossack. A month later Vian’s flotilla tracked down the German oil tanker and supply ship Altmark, which British intelligence believed was holding 299 British merchant seamen whose ships had been sunk by the pocket battleship Admiral Graf Spee. Although Altmark was in neutral Norwegian waters, Vian pursued it into Jossingfjord, boarded it on February 16 and freed the captives. Though the action was a clear violation of neutrality laws, Vian’s grateful nation awarded him his first DSO. After Germany invaded Norway, on April 9, Vian’s flotilla continued to operate in Norwegian waters. He won a bar (second award) to his DSO after attacking a German convoy on the night of October 13–14. On May 25 Vian’s five destroyers were escorting a troop convoy when ordered to join the search for the German battleship Bismarck. His flotilla harried the enemy ship overnight on May 26, reporting its location. The British main fleet engaged the warship the next morning, forcing Bismarck to scuttle with the loss of all but 114 of its 2,200-man crew. Six weeks later 47-year-old Vian was promoted to rear admiral.

Sir Philip Vian Royal Navy Distinguished Service Order and Two Bars Atlantic Ocean 1940–41

That fall Vian took command of the 15th Cruiser Squadron in the Mediterranean. On March 20, 1942, an emergency supply convoy of four merchant ships left Alexandria for Malta. Vian led the escort of four light cruisers, an anti-aircraft cruiser and 17 destroyers.

On the morning of the 22nd in the Gulf of Sirte off Libya two Italian heavy cruisers and two destroyers attacked the British convoy. Though outgunned, Vian turned to attack. The Italians initially withdrew, but two hours later they returned with the battleship Littorio, an additional light cruiser and a screen of 10 destroyers. Though massively overmatched, Vian fought on for more than two hours and ultimately drove off the Italian force, with three of his cruisers and five of his destroyers having sustained damage. Unfortunately, the merchant ships became separated from their escort, and all were later sunk by enemy air attacks. Regardless, Prime Minister Winston Churchill deemed the battle “a naval episode of the highest distinction.”

Vian commanded a carrier force covering the September 1943 landings at Salerno, Italy, and the Eastern Task Force supporting the Normandy landings in June 1944. That November he assumed control of air operations for the British Pacific Fleet and in April 1945 directed support of the American landings on Okinawa. A month later he was promoted to vice admiral.

In 1942 Vian was appointed a knight commander of the Order of the British Empire, and in 1952 a knight grand cross of the Order of the Bath. In addition to his British decorations, Vian received the French Légion d’honneur and the U.S. Navy Distinguished Service Medal. His last assignment was commander in chief of the British Home Fleet, retiring with the rank of admiral of the fleet in 1952. Vian died at age 73 on May 27, 1968. MH

KEYSTONE (GETTY IMAGES); INSET: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS

By David T. Zabecki

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Subscribe Now! JULY 3, 1863: FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT OF CONFEDERATE ASSAULT ON CULP’S HILL H

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ROGUE U-BOAT! SUB S, A GERMAN194 DEFYING ORDER . COAST IN 5 PROWLED THE U.S

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In one week, Robert E. Lee, with James Longstreet and Stonewall Jackson, drove the Army of the Potomac away from Richmond.

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Night of Terror Enemy Commandos Invade U.S. Base

The Fatal Romance of Consumption New Netherland’s Enduring Shadow Dragging Quakers to Abolitionism Lone Star State’s Tent Show King

HOMEFRONT Richard Roundtree becomes John Shaft

Green Berets Dramatic scenes of Special Forces in combat FIRST IN A FOUR-PART SERIES

A U.S. Special Forces leader directs local militiamen atop a hill in Ha Thanh.

Eyes in the Sky The pilots who directed airstrikes to save the troops below

April 2021 HISTORYNET.com

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f-107 ultra sabre: best fighter the USAF never bought?

Fall From Grace Brilliant but star-crossed, Herbert Hoover followed a landslide victory with a landslide defeat

The ’Nam

Marvel Comics enters the war

slow but deadly

the sbd dauntless dive bomber sank japan’s pacific war strategy pan am clippers: when luxurious flying boats conquered the world

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In World War II the famed “Fighting 79th” slugged its way through Nazi strongholds

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army artillery forced his 1881 surrender in montana territory

The general was a rising star in the Union Army until blamed for defeat at 2nd Bull Run Rebel artillery commanders Plus! feud on the road to Gettysburg Rare 1861 images of 1st Massachusetts Cavalry

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What We Learned From...

The Rough Wooing, 1542–51

By William John Shepherd

T

he term “Rough Wooing,” attributed to Scottish nobleman George Gordon, describes a brutal 16th century religious and dynastic war between England and Scotland. For much of the 1540s English forces pillaged or occupied areas of Scotland, ravaging Edinburgh and other towns. Despite its victories, the Crown wasted money and lives. King Henry VIII’s primary goal—to ensure the marriage of the child Mary, Queen of Scots, to Henry’s young heir, Edward—ultimately failed.

Born in April 1512, James V, Catholic king of the Scots, inherited his crown in infancy after his father was killed in 1513. In 1528 the teen assumed full power.

Six years later the Protestant Reformation prompted his uncle Henry to separate the Church of England from Rome and seize Catholic properties. Their ensuing religious rift led to war in 1542. A Scottish victory in August at Haddon Rig was overturned in November at Solway Moss by a smaller English force that routed James’ poorly led army and captured some 1,200 men. An ailing James died three weeks later, leaving his 6-day-old daughter, Mary, as successor.

Determined to impose union between Scotland and England, Henry insisted on a marriage between Mary and Edward in a July 1543 treaty. Scottish loyalties split between English-backed Protestants and Catholics. Scottish regent James Hamilton signed the treaty but then switched to the Catholic position. The Scottish Parliament renounced Henry VIII’s treaty in December 1543, prompting a fierce response. An invading English army commanded by Edward Seymour attacked Edinburgh in May 1544, burning the city on the king’s orders.

In February 1545 at Ancrum Moor the Scots routed an English force that had been raiding the borders. An uneasy truce followed. Then Henry died, in January 1547, leaving 9-year-old Edward VI as king. The boy’s uncle Seymour, Duke of Somerset, served as regent. After also failing to force a marriage alliance, Somerset

Lessons: Talk first—fight if you must.

Henry VIII should have tried the carrot (guile and diplomacy) approach to the Scots before turning to the stick; the latter resulted in huge losses of lives and treasure but not in the hoped-for dynastic union between Mary and Edward.

Better tech usually wins.

Though the Scots outnumbered the British at Pinkie Cleugh, they quickly learned that well-equipped, versatile armies can consistently defeat larger, less innovative forces.

War is a national effort.

Whether England in Scotland in 1548 or the United States in Vietnam in 1968, unity on the home front is vital to successful military expeditions abroad. MH

HISTORICAL IMAGES ARCHIVE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Despite the overwhelming English victory at Pinkie Cleugh, Somerset could not force a marriage alliance.

resumed hostilities in September, arriving outside Edinburgh with some 18,000 troops plus a fleet armed with modern artillery. The 22,000 Scots who met them September 10 at Pinkie Cleugh used outdated pike tactics.

Innovative English use of “combined operations”—integrating infantry, cavalry, and land-based and naval artillery —decimated about 6,000 Scots in what the Scots recall as “Black Saturday.”

The Scots continued to resist, hiding 4-year-old Queen Mary on Inchmahome Island. Though Somerset garrisoned troops across eastern Scotland, he could not complete his victory. Increased costs and domestic turmoil weakened English resolve. In August 1548 Scots spirited their young queen to France, and the English abandoned their Haddington base in 1549. Negotiations in March 1550 ended hostilities, and the nations signed a formal peace a year later.

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TODAY IN HISTORY FEBRUARY 14, 1929 KNOWN AS THE ST. VALENTINE’S DAY MASSACRE, SEVEN MEN WERE SLAIN DURING A FAUX POLICE RAID LIKELY STAGED BY AL CAPONE’S CHICAGO OUTFIT. THE VICTIMS, MEMBERS AND ASSOCIATES OF THE RIVAL “NORTH SIDE GANG,” WERE LINED UP AGAINST A BRICK WALL INSIDE A COMMERCIAL TRUCKING GARAGE AND SHOT. BRICKS FROM THE INFAMOUS WALL WERE LATER PURCHASED BY COLLECTORS. MANY ARE ON DISPLAY AT THE MOB MUSEUM IN LAS VEGAS. For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ TODAY-IN-HISTORY

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Hardware Consolidated PBY Catalina

By Jon Guttman Illustration by Jim Laurier

3 4 2

1

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B

uilding on its successful P2Y sesquiplane flying boat of the early 1930s, Consolidated won a 60-aircraft contract from the U.S. Navy in 1935 for the Model 28 Catalina, which entered service a year later as the PBY-1. The Navy anticipated trouble with Japan, for which long-range reconnaissance aircraft would be essential. On its maiden voyage the PBY boasted a 3,443-mile international record nonstop flight from Norfolk, Va. to San Diego, Calif. Its superlative range and stability prompted a series of improved models and growing production, ultimately taken up under license by the Soviet Union and Canada (where it was called the Canso). Taking to the air in November 1939, the PBY-5A, an amphibious version with retractable landing gear, added more versatility.

During World War II the PBY racked up a sterling record in reconnaissance, search and rescue, and combat. When the Royal Navy lost contact with the German battleship Bismarck, it was a Catalina Mk I of No. 209 Squadron, Royal Air Force Coastal Command, that found it again on May 26, 1941. British ships forced Bis-

9

marck to scuttle the next day. Amid the 1942–43 Guadalcanal campaign PBYs served as makeshift torpedo bombers, leading to regular use of matte-painted “Black Cats” for night attacks throughout the Pacific. On July 31, 1943, a Brazilian Catalina sank the German sub U-199 off Rio de Janeiro. On Aug. 2, 1945, a U.S. Navy PBY was the first vessel to rescue survivors of the torpedoed heavy cruiser Indianapolis (see P. 30).

Through war’s end the Allies built a total of 3,308 Catalinas—more than all other World War II–era flying boats combined. It was far and away history’s most successful military flying boat. MH

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7 6

5

8

1. Bow turret 2. Hamilton Standard three-blade constant-speed propeller 3. 1,200 hp Pratt & Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engine 4. Wing tip floats (in retracted position) 5. Glazed fuselage blister 6. Horizontal stabilizer and fabriccovered elevator 7. Vertical stabilizer 8 Fabric-covered rudder 9. Wing support struts 10. Wing center support pylon, housing the flight engineer’s station

Specifications (PBY-5A) Wingspan: 104 feet Wing area: 1,400 square feet Length: 63 feet 11 inches Height: 20 feet 2 inches Weight empty: 20,910 pounds Maximum takeoff weight:

35,420 pounds Crew: Seven to 10 Power: Two 1,200 hp Pratt &

Whitney R-1830-92 Twin Wasp 14-cylinder air-cooled radial piston engines Maximum speed: 179 mph at 7,000 feet Long-range cruising speed:

117 mph

FROM U.S. NAVY PBY CATALINA UNITS OF THE PACIFIC WAR, BY LOUIS B. DORNY (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

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Ceiling: 14,700 feet Maximum range:

2,545 miles Armament: Two .30-caliber

machine guns in bow turret, one .50-caliber machine gun in each opposite waist blister and one .30-caliber machine gun in ventral tunnel. Plus four 1,000pound or 500-pound bombs; or a dozen 100pound bombs; or four 650-pound, 450-pound or 325-pound depth charges; or two Mark 13-2 torpedoes

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Russian Junior Sergeant Yuri Babansky unexpectedly found himself in command soon after Chinese commandos ambushed Soviet border guards on Zhenbao Island.

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S V R A E B N O G DRA along s p o o r t t is n u In 1969 comm order traded shots b the Sino-Soviet e island in a clash rin over a tiny rive al implications n with internatio

By Jesse Du

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Pictured here from the Chinese side of the Ussuri River, Zhenbao is less than one-third of a square mile in area and in summer is mostly wetland.

O

Ussuri River, which marks the border between northeast China and the Russian Far East. The vast surrounding landscape, stretching from the Amur River north to the Stanovoy Range, is a region the Chinese traditionally referred to as Outer Manchuria. By the 19th century, as the declining Qing dynasty was beleaguered by internal rebellion and the Opium Wars, imperial Russia encouraged settlers to encroach on the region. In the 1860 Convention of Peking, at the close of the Second Opium War, a defeated and humiliated China ceded Outer Manchuria to Russia, shifting the Sino-Russian border south along the Amur and Ussuri Rivers. Per international custom river boundaries are demarcated along the median

on the Chinese side of the Ussuri, still belonged to China, but the Russians took control of it anyway, eventually naming it Damansky after a noted railway engineer.

Over the following century ownership of the island remained a nonissue. With the 1949 Maoist takeover of China the inconvenient history of Russian imperialism was ignored in favor of communist solidarity. Chinese and Soviet patrols occasionally bumped into one another on the island. While officers delivered each side’s official protest, soldiers exchanged cigarettes and communist memorabilia. After all, at not even one-third of a square mile the wetland of Zhenbao was relatively insignificant.

Hundreds of almost identical islets dot the Ussuri.

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LEFT: HERITAGE AUCTIONS; RIGHT: DORLING KINDERSLEY LTD (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Zhenbao (Chinese for “Rare Treasure Island”) bisects the of the main channel. Accordingly, Zhenbao, which lies

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n Oct. 13, 1969, unknown to the American public, President Richard M. Nixon put the nation’s nuclear forces on high alert. For more than two weeks various unified combatant commands raised their readiness levels, while Navy surface ships and nuclear submarines stepped up activities worldwide. However, unlike the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, this Cold War military operation was shrouded in secrecy—so much so that not even the generals of the commands themselves were briefed on its exact purpose. A prominent theory among historians is that the alert was in response to a potential Soviet nuclear strike on China.

The Chinese had been openly preparing for just such a possibility. That fall Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Mao Zedong had officially placed his country on a war footing. The national economy was mobilized, factories were converted to military use and evacuated into mountains, and Beijing scrambled to construct a massive underground city to shelter from nuclear attack. On October 17 the CCP placed all People’s Liberation Army (PLA) units on emergency wartime condition—the Chinese equivalent of the Pentagon’s DEFCON 1.

Seven years after the Cuban standoff the world was once again on the verge of nuclear war. This time, however, the world’s leading communist powers were pitted against each other in a conflict that traces its origins to a border clash six months earlier on a tiny riverine island in a remote corner of northeast Asia.

Though Soviet Russia and Maoist China initially proclaimed communist solidarity, their mutual pledges of “Friendship Forever!” did not survive the reality of their border issues.

with rifle butts, wooden bats and other weapons. Troops on both sides were under strict orders not to fire first.

Behind the medieval melee on ice, however, each nation was positioning more modern and destructive weaponry. In 1961 a dozen Soviet divisions deployed along the border; by 1969 there were 22. China reorganized its defensive strategy in 1965, shifting its primary military focus from the southeast coast to its northern border. Nuclear weapons were also on the table.

In 1964 China detonated its first atomic bomb, becoming the world’s fifth nuclear power. Within three years Beijing also detonated its first hydrogen bomb. In 1967 the Soviet Union constructed its first nuclear missile base in the Transbaikal Military District, due north of the Mongolian People’s Republic, with which it had signed a mutual assistance treaty.

A year later Moscow moved missiles and troops into Mongolia.

Neither the Soviet Union nor China planned on starting a war, but each was afraid the other might.

The Soviet-led invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 only heightened the Chinese leadership’s concerns, First published in 1964, Quotations From Chaircementing Mao’s resolve.

On Jan. 5, 1968, a skirmish erupted man Mao Zedong was required reading during between a Soviet patrol and Chinese fish- China’s violent 1966–76 ermen on an island a few miles upstream Cultural Revolution. Not from Zhenbao. During the confrontation to own a copy was seen as a Soviet BTR-60 armored personnel car- a sign of party disloyalty— rier ran over several fishermen. When an especially in the military— at a time when disloyalty angered Chinese mob swarmed the vehi- often led to execution. cle, a panicked soldier inside opened fire.

Four Chinese civilians were killed in the incident, and the news soon reached Beijing. The Central Military Commission advised the Shenyang Military Region to mount an appropriate retaliation. The regional commanders in turn formed a commando squad of elite personnel from garrison units and ordered it to ambush the next Soviet patrol. In a 2014 interview commando Wang Guoxiang, then political officer of the Red One Company of the 217th Infantry Regiment of the PLA’s 73rd Division, recalled lying in freezing snow for seven straight days and nights. The Russians never returned.

Whether due to Soviet intelligence or simple serendipity, a battle was averted. The same cannot be said for Zhenbao a year later.

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Little Red Book

By the early 1960s, however, relations between China and the Soviet Union began to deteriorate. As the nations diverged on their interpretations of Marxist-Leninist doctrine and vied for leadership in the communist world, the more than 4,500 miles of Sino-Soviet border—long stretches of which hadn’t been properly demarcated since the 19th century—came under increased scrutiny. Chairman Mao and Nikita Khrushchev, first secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, engaged in virulent arguments over the history of Russian imperialism and China’s “unequal treaties,” thwarting attempts at diplomatic resolution. By the second half of the decade —as Soviet First Secretary Leonid Brezhnev adopted a more hard-line stance on foreign policy, and the Cultural Revolution ravaged China—violence broke out along the Sino-Soviet border. Chinese fishing boats and Soviet vessels rammed each other on the Amur and Ussuri rivers in summer. In winter zealous Chinese Red Guards marched across the frozen river, Little Red Books in hand, to argue and scuffle with Soviet soldiers. There were no more friendly exchanges of gifts when Chinese and Soviet patrols bumped into each other. Instead, soldiers brawled

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An ambush on Zhenbao had long been in the works within the PLA. Heilongjiang Provincial Military District officials had approved a draft proposal on January 25 and sent it up to the PLA General Staff Department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. It was ultimately approved by the highest decision-making circle in Beijing, presumably including Mao, who oversaw all border affairs with the Soviet Union. The PLA then mobilized and transported three reconnaissance companies to the Zhenbao area to train for the operation. On the morning of the ambush

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TOP: VOJENSKA KONTRAROZVIEDKA; RIGHT: IMAGINECHINA LIMITED (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Spring came late in 1969. The morning of March 2 was as brisk as any Siberian winter dawn, with temps hovering around minus 35 degrees Fahrenheit.

Soviet forces in the Far East were busy conducting a military exercise against an imagined Chinese invasion. As part of the exercise all Soviet units pulled back 30 miles from the border, leaving only token garrisons at the outposts.

Chen Xilian Among those left behind was Junior Sergeant Yuri Babansky, who found himself staring blankly across the snow-covered Ussuri from the 2nd Nizhne-Mikhailovka border post.

Around 10:20 a.m. Soviet sentries spotted a Chinese patrol of some 30 soldiers in white winter camouflage marching openly across the frozen river toward Zhenbao. Treating it as a routine affair, the 32 border guards at Nizhne-Mikhailovka boarded a BTR-60 Oleg Losik and two GAZ light trucks and went to greet the Chinese. Once on the island post commander Senior Lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov sent Babansky with some two dozen men to confront the Chinese patrol, while he took a half dozen soldiers onto the river in a flanking maneuver. Babansky led his men to the edge of an open snowfield.

Facing him across the field was Sun Yuguo, commander of the local PLA border post. The men might have met before, perhaps in one of the many wild brawls on the ice. But Sun knew the time for brawling had

passed, for in the snow just yards from the unsuspecting Soviets lay a company of Chinese commandos, ready to spring an ambush. The commandos were not regular border guards but elite recon troops selected from three army corps in the Shenyang Military Region. Sun’s job as post commander was to lure the Soviets into the commandos’ trap. He had successfully accomplished his mission.

Not 20 feet from Babansky, Wang once again found himself lying in freezing snow. He and his Red One Company had secretly moved onto the island the previous night, dug shell scrapes and laid telephone lines to shore.

The commandos had lain motionless the entire night.

To maintain silence, each man had been given a packet of cough medicine. Having achieved surprise, they waited for Sun’s signal to jump up and fire their Type 56 assault rifles, variants of the Soviet AK-47.

That signal came in one crisp shot that echoed across the island. Strelnikov’s seven-man squad had run into a much larger group of Chinese on the frozen river, and as Babansky turned to see what had happened, overlapping bursts of automatic fire erupted around him. At such close quarters a half dozen men from both sides dropped within the first seconds of the mad exchange. As he ducked for cover, Babansky could only watch as the Chinese mowed down Strelnikov’s detachment. He assumed command of the surviving troops.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TASS (GETTY IMAGES); SPUTNIK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); MINISTRY OF DEFENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY OF CHINA

Chinese troops confront Russians aboard a BTR-60 in the lead-up to the March 2 clash on Zhenbao. Above right: Soviet border guards maintained year-round surveillance of the island in the months before the fighting.

TOP: VOJENSKA KONTRAROZVIEDKA; RIGHT: IMAGINECHINA LIMITED (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: TASS (GETTY IMAGES); SPUTNIK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); MINISTRY OF DEFENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; PEOPLE’S LIBERATION ARMY OF CHINA

senior PLA commanders were gathered in Beijing in advance of the CCP’s Ninth National Congress. Technicians set up a direct telephone connection in a suite of the Jingxi Hotel so Chen Xilian, commander of the Shenyang Military Region, could receive live updates from Zhenbao. The deputy minister of foreign affairs was also present, keeping track of international diplomatic activities and reporting directly to Premier Zhou Enlai, who reported to Mao. That morning their Soviet counterparts were also making phone calls, albeit far more frantic and confused.

Around noon Colonel Demokrat Leonov of the 57th Border Detachment, headquartered some 40 miles south of Zhenbao in Iman, was about to report his unit’s successful completion of the military exercise when news arrived from Nizhne-Mikhailovka. Within an hour Colonel General Oleg Losik, commander of the Far Eastern Military District, was on the phone with a bewildered Alexei Kosygin, chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers.

Russian political leaders had been caught wholly off guard by the Chinese attack. Brezhnev was overseas, while the Kremlin was preoccupied with continuing fallout from the previous year’s invasion of Czechoslovakia as well as a forthcoming summit with the United States—activities requiring a softer touch on the international stage.

After much deliberation the only instruction Moscow could give Losik was to defend the national boundary but prevent a large-scale military conflict. The politically sea-

Post-battle Soviet propaganda depicts a suitably heroic officer attempting to quell the violence. Below: A 1969 Chinese magazine features Sun Yuguo, praised by Mao for bravery during the fight.

soned general understood the seemingly paradoxical order.

The battle was to be limited to border troops; there would be no Soviet army reinforcements.

Indeed, the only reinforcements that came to Babansky’s aid that day were two dozen men in a BTR-60 from the neighboring 1st Kulebyakiny Sopki border post, under Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin. After almost two hours of fighting Leonov finally gave Babansky the order to retreat. By that point only a handful of his 31 comrades remained standing. To cover the decimated patrol’s withdrawal, Bubenin drove his BTR onto the 60-yard-wide Chinese side of the frozen Ussuri to draw fire. When RPG fire knocked out his vehicle, he and three of his men jumped into the 2nd Nizhne-Mikhailovka’s abandoned BTR and continued the flanking assault, madly firing the armored vehicle’s mounted machine guns. Bubenin somehow managed to take out the enemy command post, and the surviving Chinese retreated.

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Sino-Soviet Border Conflict It seems ludicrous anyone—let alone two nuclear powers —would risk war over Zhenbao. The tiny riverine island bisects the Ussuri, a stone’s throw from northeast China, to the west, and the Russian Far East, on the opposite bank.

At best it comprises one-third of a square mile, while in flood season it lies almost wholly underwater. In fact, the island itself had little bearing on the 1969 border conflict.

At issue was national pride.

In 1860, after the Second Opium War, a chastened China was forced to cede Outer Manchuria, north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri, to imperial Russia. Though Zhenbao is on the Chinese side of the Ussuri’s main channel, Russia occupied it regardless. Over the following century, as communist regimes took over first Russia and then China, there seemed even less reason to squabble over borders.

But by the 1960s, as the nations drifted apart ideologically and grappled for supremacy in the communist world, even this insignificant wetland became grounds for fighting.

The pot boiled over on Zhenbao in the spring of 1969. MH

March 2, 1969, Clash on Zhenbao

Early that morning a 30-man Chinese patrol openly marched across the ice to Zhenbao, prompting 32 Soviet guards from the 2nd Nizhne-Mikhailovka border post to respond. Two dozen of them under Junior Sergeant Yuri Babansky went to confront the enemy patrol, while Senior Lieutenant Ivan Strelnikov led the others on a flanking maneuver.

As the Russians approached, a company of People’s Liberation Army (PLA) commandos sprang an ambush, killing Strelnikov and his detachment. In the ensuing firefight Bubansky and two dozen reinforcements from the nearby 1st Kulebyakiny Sopki border post, under Senior Lieutenant Vitaly Bubenin, finally managed to drive off the Chinese.

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March 15, 1969, Rematch

Top: By midmorning opposing troops were engaged in a firefight. As things heated up, Soviet Colonel Demokrat Leonov directed four T-62 tanks on a flanking maneuver across the frozen Ussuri. His command tank soon struck an enemy mine. Leonov ordered a retreat, but as he evacuated his immobilized T-62, he was killed by sniper fire.

Above: The Chinese continued to lob RPGs at Soviet armor. Finally, at 5 p.m., on his own authority, Far Eastern Military District commander Colonel General Oleg Losik ordered a bombardment of Chinese positions on Zhenbao with 122 mm howitzers and BM-21 “Grad” multiple rocket launchers. Aside from sporadic fire, the battle was over.

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Battle of Zhenbao Island

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FROM TOP: MILITARIST, SPUTNIK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2)

The March 2 engagement did not mark the end of conflict. Though both sides withdrew from Zhenbao itself, each moved up reinforcements. While awaiting Moscow’s approval to commit regular army units, Colonel General Losik deployed the 135th Motor Rifle Division a few miles behind the Ussuri. Its arsenal of equipment included the T-62 tank and the then classified BM-21 “Grad” multiple rocket launcher. From his command post in a Beijing hotel room Chen also raised the stakes, sending up additional infantry and artillery regiments from the PLA’s 67th Division.

Before dawn on March 15 Chinese and Soviet patrols again deployed to the island from their respective riverbanks, sparking a new round of fighting far larger in scale and espeSOVIET TROOPS cially brutal. Soviet infantry pushed forward KILLED behind a screen of BTRs, while the Chinese 94 WOUNDED countered with RPGs and 75 mm recoilless rifles. Around noon Colonel Leonov of the 57th Border Detachment finally received reCHINESE TROOPS inforcement in the form of four T-62 tanks KILLED hastily transferred by Soviet staff officers just 64 WOUNDED, ONE MISSING hours earlier. As the drivers were unfamiliar with the area, Leonov climbed into the lead tank to direct the attack. Instead of advancing to the island, the tank column circled around it on the frozen river and approached the Chinese bank. The flanking maneuver was thwarted when the colonel’s tank struck a mine and was de-tracked. Realizing the Chinese had mined the very

river ice, Leonov ordered the other tanks to withdraw.

As the colonel himself abandoned his immobilized T-62, he was struck and killed by Chinese sniper fire, becoming the highest-ranking casualty of the conflict.

By that afternoon the situation was dire on both sides.

In his district headquarters Losik still hopelessly waited for Moscow’s order to commit army units. Meanwhile, across the river Chen’s infantrymen had reached their limit. Facing repeated Soviet motorized assaults supported by Mi-4 helicopters, the Chinese were decidedly outmatched in terms of heavy equipment. Wang, who on his return visit to the island was commanding a reinforced platoon, recalled watching one of his soldiers, bare-chested in the minus 30 degree cold, firing one RPG after another at the Soviet armored cars. By the time the platoon finally pulled back, the man was deaf in one ear.

At 5 p.m. sharp 122 mm howitzers and Grad rocket launchers of the Soviet 135th opened fire on the Chinese positions. To Wang the low-velocity howitzer shells and rockets resembled a dense flock of crows rising over the horizon. The shells made a low-pitched, droning sound as they approached, but Wang never heard the explosions, as the hellish barrage temporarily deafened him.

After a solid 10 minutes of intense bombardment two companies of Soviet army tanks and infantry surged onto the island. Surviving Chinese strongpoints mounted a fierce resistance, but by 6 p.m. most PLA troops had pulled out of Zhenbao. As evening set in, Soviet troops also withdrew. After more than nine hours of deafening battle, an eerie silence settled over the tiny island now littered with shell holes, wreckage and bodies.

Sporadic firefights and artillery duels broke out again on March 17, mainly in the vicinity of Leonov’s aban-

LEFT: TASS (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: ARCHIVE.ORG

Soviet border guards who took part in the fight for Zhenbao remained on high alert over the following months. Above right: Holding aloft a bulletriddled Russian helmet, Chinese troops celebrate their Zhenbao “victory.”

Tactical Takeaways

doned T-62, which the Chinese ultimately captured. But no more major engagements took place on ZhenLand trumps politics. bao. As the conflict had already Despite both having reached the regular army level, and communist governnuclear forces across north Asia ments, the Soviet were on alert, neither the Soviet Union and China were Union nor China was willing to risk quick to abandon “eternal friendship” further escalation. Thus the border when ownership of a situation returned to status quo, tiny, worthless island and Zhenbao remained a piece on became an issue.

Familiarity breeds... the political chessboard.

FROM TOP: MILITARIST, SPUTNIK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2)

LEFT: TASS (GETTY IMAGES); RIGHT: ARCHIVE.ORG

Troops on both sides were used to thinking of the other as secondrate soldiers, and both paid the price for that casual contempt.

Artillery helps.

Soviet 122 mm guns and rockets—followed by armor—drove the Chinese off Zhenbao.

As the Kremlin never contacted the

Far East on March 15, Losik had unilaterally decided to employ regular troops and the army’s top-secret Grad rocket launchers. He shouldered all responsibility for his actions. Fortunately, the battle had turned in his favor. Two months after the incident his superiors transferred Losik from the Far Eastern Military District to Moscow to head the Malinovsky Military Armored Forces Academy.

Promoted to marshal of armored troops in 1975, he retired from the Soviet army in 1992 and died at the venerable age of 96 in 2012. Leonov and Lieutenants Babansky and Bubenin were recognized as Heroes of the Soviet Union for their actions, as was Lieutenant Strelnikov in a posthumous award. A decade later then General Bubenin led his Alpha Group special forces into Afghanistan.

Less than a month after having directed the battle from his Beijing hotel, despite the outcome, Chen was inducted into the Politburo, China’s highest policy-making authority, in the CCP’s Ninth National Congress. He continued to climb the CCP political ladder until falling out of favor in the 1980s and being forced to retire. During the same CCP congress Sun, the PLA border post commander, was enthusiastically greeted by Mao and commended as a “combat hero.” Among the hundreds of others left out of the spotlight, Wang grew disillusioned with the CCP political propaganda surrounding the Zhenbao fight and was quietly discharged in 1979.

Zhenbao itself, that tiny, formerly insignificant dot on the Ussuri, was officially given to China as part of the 1991 Sino-Soviet Border Agreement. Today a modest Chinese memorial park marks the battleground.

A half century later details of the Zhenbao/Damansky Island incident remain shrouded in political rhetoric and communist propaganda. Russian media define the event as the first time since World War II its territory was subject to foreign invasion, while Chinese textbooks refer to it as a “self-defense counterattack.” Each side claims the other fired first. To date there is no consensus on many key details, including casualties. According to

self-reported numbers, from March 2–17 the Chinese suffered an improbable 29 dead, 64 wounded and one missing, while the Soviets lost 58 dead and 94 wounded.

Though limited in scope, the clash carried disproportionate historical significance. It was a watershed moment that displayed to the world—most important the United States—the extent of the SinoSoviet split. Stuck in the quagmire of Vietnam, the Nixon administration looked to China as a potential ally against Soviet hegemony in Asia. Recovering from the brink of total war and faced with the Soviet nuclear threat, Beijing was willing to engage in a Sino–American rapprochement.

Neither Mao nor Brezhnev—let alone the soldiers who had exchanged fire across the border—would have imagined the 1969 clash over a tiny island would be a catalyst for Nixon’s Air Force One to land in Beijing three years later. MH

Soviet Heroes Four of the Soviet border guards involved in the 1969 clash on Zhenbao Island—Babansky, Leonov, Bubenin and Strelnikov—were recognized as Heroes of the Soviet Union. It was the highest distinction awarded for heroic actions in defense of the motherland.

Jesse Du is a history writer specializing in modern East Asia. For further reading he recommends The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World, by Lorenz M. Lüthi, and Beyond the Steppe Frontier: A History of the Sino-Russian Border, by Sören Urbanksy.

The Soviets turned a mass funeral for troops killed on Zhenbao into a propaganda event intended to stir national anger against the Chinese.

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A KINGDOM LOST Straddling a lucrative trade route between empires, the island realm of Ryukyu surrendered its sovereignty to Japan in 1609

By M.G. Haynes

By the time U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry and his East India Squadron visited Okinawa in 1853, the once-independent Ryukyus had been under Japanese hegemony for 244 years.

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The samurai who landed on Okinawa in 1609 carried various types of traditional Japanese swords, including the katana.

C

onspicuously dressed in a gold-embroidered blue frock coat with epaulets, the U.S. Navy flag officer carefully wandered through weathered stone ruins on the East China Sea island of Okinawa. Marveling at the craftsmanship of Nakagusuku Castle, he explored the grounds as if on holiday, oblivious to any potential danger from locals who’d gathered to gawk at the new and clearly important arrival. Ignorant of the island’s long history and that of the people who called it home, Commodore Matthew C. Perry could only appreciate the fortifications for their imposing military beauty. The year was 1853. He carried a stern message for the islanders and their Japanese overlords—open for trade, or else.

Many today are doubtless aware of Okinawa’s significance in modern history. The brutal 98-day battle fought there near the end of World War II has assured the island a fearsome place in military lore. Yet the saga of the Kingdom of Ryukyu—as the archipelago was known when Perry visited—is far longer and more complex. The story of how the Japanese seized the once prosperous realm is a fascinating tale, whether viewed through a military, economic or political lens.

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ULLSTEIN BILD DTL. (GETTY IMAGES)

32,000 years ago. The same East Asian migration that Ryukyu benefited from its reputation as a hospitable stopcontributed to the formation of the Yamato people— over for mariners. The stream of foreign goods brought known today as the Japanese—helped populate the archi- the kingdom great wealth—a fact noticed by both the pelago’s 100-plus islands, which stretch nearly 400 miles Ming court in China and feudal lords in Japan. from Kyushu, the southernmost of the Japanese Home The Ming consistently wrote of the “civilized” nature Islands, southwest to Taiwan. For centuries mariners of trade envoys from “Lewchew,” who first visited Commander from China and Southeast Asia had found themthe mainland in 1374. Given the Ming dynasAndrew Hull selves shipwrecked on Ryukyu beaches. Forty’s generally poor relationship with Japan, going attempts to get home, they built new the Chinese repeatedly called on Ryulives where destiny had stranded them. kyuan kings to mediate, though never to The mixing of these strains of East Asian any appreciable effect. Those failures DNA meant the people of Ryukyu were aside, Ming China considered Ryukyu exposed to a wider range of influences a tributary state. than surrounding societies. The reRegardless of the Chinese stance, sulting culture was distinct from those Japanese rulers of the Kyushu provof the Japanese, Chinese and Koreans ince of Satsuma had long claimed the then taking center stage in the region. islands to the south. As early as 1206 Despite the kingdom’s total land mass one of the official titles of the Japanese of just under 877 square miles, by 1314 ruler in Kagoshima Castle was “Lord of it had split into three separate princithe Twelve Southern Islands,” in reference Matthew Perry palities centered on Okinawa—Hokuzan in to the Ryukyus. But as the Satsuma lacked the north, Chuzan in the center and Nanzan the strength and desire to seize and hold the in the south. Each lord ruled from his own castle, archipelago, the title was a mere pretention. at Nakijin, Shuri and Ozato, respectively. Following a Beginning in 1467, the Sengoku (“Warring States”) century of warfare and the construction of multiple castles, period of Japanese history focused all the energy of the the lord of Chuzan subdued his neighbors by 1429, usher- samurai in a seemingly endless series of internal conflicts. ing in more than two centuries of consolidated rule.

The period culminated in 1587 with Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s Military activity during the period was limited to campaign to conquer Kyushu. Within a few years he’d sporadic disputes with Japanese clans over the Amami defeated the last of his rivals, completing the long-sought Islands, north of Okinawa. Such tiffs were rare, as the unification of Japan. Satsuma suddenly found itself a peaceful kingdom looked to capitalize on its unique posi- vassal state. Thus when Hideyoshi launched his ill-fated tion in the world. Lying along the major trade route from invasions of Korea in 1592 and ’97, the province provided

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The first people to settle in the Ryukyus arrived some Malay and Siam to both Japan and Korea, the Kingdom of

ULLSTEIN BILD DTL. (GETTY IMAGES)

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more than 10,000 troops for the endeavor. As Satsuma’s ostensible tributary, Ryukyu was also ordered to provide support. Hoping to assuage Hideyoshi yet provoke neither the Koreans nor the Chinese, the tiny kingdom supplied only minimal rations for the invasion troops.

The failure of those two invasions and a subsequent succession dispute following Hideyoshi’s 1598 death proved disastrous for the Kingdom of Ryukyu, though it was unforeseeable at the time.

The Shimazu clan, which had ruled Satsuma and surrounding provinces since 1196, was a prosperous and venerable samurai family. Descended from the legendary Minamoto line, the Shimazu were famous for the extreme loyalty of their retainers and troops. The clan had done well during the Sengoku period, but due to its submission to Hideyoshi, the loss of thousands of its warriors in Korea and defeat by feudal forces under Tokugawa Ieyasu at the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara, the Shimazu found themselves in dire straits. Over the following decade they actively pursued all opportunities to turn around the clan’s fortunes.

The rich trade flowing through Ryukyu offered irresistible temptation for the combative Shimazu. Given the clan’s existing—albeit tenuous—claim to the islands, an expedition to decisively seize the lucrative trade route offered more than just the prospect of material gain.

Though a relatively small invasion force, the 3,000 samurai and ashigaru of the Shimazu clan were battle-hardened and brutally efficient warriors.

It represented an opportunity to appease the Tokugawa administration in faraway Edo (present-day Tokyo), secure territory in the name of the shogun and facilitate the payment of taxes.

Chafing at Ryukyu’s repeated refusals to formally submit to his authority, the shogun, Tokugawa Hidetada,

The Shimazu were famous for the extreme loyalty of their retainers and troops agreed to and authorized the 1609 invasion. Shimazu Tadatsune, the lord of Satsuma at the time, ordered the assembly of 3,000 samurai and loyal ashigaru. Supporting these horsemen, spearmen, archers and harquebusiers were 2,000 laborers and 3,000 sailors manning a fleet of some 100 ships. Comprising veterans of the Sengoku period, the Korean campaigns and the doomed struggle against the Tokugawa, this army was a brutally efficient and frightful adversary. The elite corps of samurai were far more effective than might be expected of such a small

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EAST CHINA SEA

U RYUKY S D N ISLA

OKINAWA

Tokugawa Ieyasu

Sho Nei

force. On April 8 Tadatsune ordered his army to set sail under senior commander Kabayama Hisataka.

Sho Nei, sovereign of Ryukyu, had been warned of the impending assault. Convinced the Shimazu thrust would be limited to the Amamis, the king ordered reinforcements north to the islands of Oshima and Tokunoshima.

But the speedy Japanese advance would dash all hopes to limit fighting to the kingdom’s northern periphery.

Easily brushing aside the weak Ryukyuan forces, the invaders swept south across the island The island of Okinawa itself appeared well prepared to deal with invasion, certainly one by such a miniscule enemy force. A network of stone castles (gusuku in the Ryukyuan language) stretched some 40 miles north to south, from Nakijin to the palace in Shuri. Multiple lesser bastions dotted the island’s many steep hills, with major fortifications at Nakagusuku and Katsuren and the largest of all at Urasoe.

The Japanese landed at Oshima on April 11, touching off the campaign. Easily brushing aside the weak resistance of local Ryukyuan forces, the invaders swept south across the island, securing it by the 20th. For the first time in two centuries Oshima was under direct Shimazu control —an auspicious beginning to the endeavor.

The invasion force then sailed south, landing at Tokunoshima on the 24th. There the Shimazu met their first significant resistance, some 200 to 300 troops under a son-in-law of Jana Teido, a member of Sho Nei’s Sanshikan (“Council of Three”), the king’s closest advisers. Though poorly armed, the defenders fought fiercely before withdrawing under withering gunfire. Japanese attempts to pillage local dwellings met with further resistance as the peasantry, wielding hatchets, defended their homes with savage intensity.

On April 28 the invaders boarded their vessels and continued south to Okinoerabujima, which promptly

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CHINA

JAPAN

Befitting a people with multicultural origins, the gusuku borrowed from its forbears’ fortifications. Tracing the landscape like the terrain-following walls of China and Korea, the gusuku also featured a series of overlapping baileys topped by wooden structures, as found in Japan.

Sited exclusively on high ground, their stone parapets rose to impressive heights, enabling sentries to quickly spot and isolate would-be attackers. That said, gusuku walls lacked crenellations through which to peer or fire, leaving exposed defenders vulnerable to the type of longrange, massed harquebus fire the Japanese had perfected during the Korean campaigns. That design flaw would have dire repercussions in the coming battle.

While Shuri Castle sheltered Sho Nei and served as the seat of royal authority, the port of Naha, a few miles west, represented the vital artery through which trade and diplomacy were carried out. Realizing the growing importance of Naha, the court in 1546 had ordered the construction of harbor fortifications and a road to link Shuri with the port. Intended to defeat periodic attacks by pirates, the defenses at the time of the invasion comprised Yarazamori and Mie, sister stone fortresses that jutted into the sea on either side of the anchorage. Suspended between them was a giant iron net that defenders could lower to permit entry or raise to seal off the entrance.

As strong as the fortifications were, the army defending Ryukyu was vastly inferior to the veteran samurai force headed their way. Ryukyuans had not fought a major campaign on their home turf in more than two centuries.

Infrequent skirmishes on faraway islands couldn’t possibly have prepared them for the coming storm. The king’s troops were armed with a hodgepodge of traditional Japanese and Chinese arms, including spears, bows, short swords and archaic, tri-barreled Chinese-style firearms eclipsed in both range and accuracy by the Portuguese-derived harquebuses of the Shimazu.

TOP: CHRISTIE’S (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); LEFT: ARTELINO GMBH; RIGHT: SHO GENKO

KOREA

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LUNSTREAM (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART; PETER NEWARK MILITARY PICTURES (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

TOP: CHRISTIE’S (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); LEFT: ARTELINO GMBH; RIGHT: SHO GENKO

surrendered without a fight. As it marked the last major island north of Okinawa proper, the troops were grateful for the chance to recuperate and prepare for the final phase of the operation.

The next morning the fleet dropped anchor in Unten harbor on the northeast side of Okinawa’s Motobu Peninsula. A large, sheltered anchorage, Unten was dominated

by Nakijin Castle, an expansive fortification and the seat of Ryukyu rule in northern Okinawa. Yet its garrison made no attempt to stop the Japanese from landing.

Instead, garrison commander Sho Kokushi, the warden of the north and Sho Nei’s son and heir, sent word to Shuri reporting the situation and pleading for reinforcements.

Unsure just where along the nearly 300-mile-long coastline the invaders might land, the main Ryukyuan army had gathered in a central location, ready to march in any direction on short notice. A thousand troops immediately headed north to secure Nakijin against the impending attack.

Top left: Shimazu ashigaru (infantrymen) race forward with a mortar to be used against Ryukyuan defenders. Above left: Mounted bowmen were the samurai’s mobile artillery. Above: Samurai wore body armor fashioned from iron, leather, silk, lacquer and various other materials.

Kabayama stormed the fortress on April 30. The fighting was brief and intense, resulting in the death of Sho Kokushi and fully half of the force dispatched to hold the citadel. It is unclear whether the reinforcements made it in time to defend the castle or engaged the Japanese after its fall. Regardless, the stronghold and a significant portion of Sho Nei’s army were lost.

Having secured the fortress, the samurai boarded their ships and headed down the west coast, making landfall May 3 at Yomitan, near Zakimi Castle. To the east and south, respectively, stood Katsuren and Nakagusuku castles. Though the trio of garrisons represented the fortified heart of the kingdom, none was willing to leave its fortifications and risk meeting the Shimazu in the open.

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In deploying so many of Ryukyu’s limited forces to protect Naha, Sho Nei had left Shuri Castle vulnerable to the

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ASAHI SHIMBUN (GETTY IMAGES)

To strike terror in peoples’ hearts, Kabayama burned the village at Yomitan in full view of Zakimi’s ramparts.

He then split his army into sea and land forces, the former embarking south for Naha, the latter heading inland toward Shuri Castle and the defiant king ensconced within.

Marching rapidly overland, the Japanese took massive Urasoe Castle in stride, looting and then torching adjacent

TOP: NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY, JAPAN; BELOW: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

Top: The Shimazu forces besieging Shuri Castle were supported by light wheeled cannons. Above: In 1945, nearly 340 years after the Japanese conquest of Okinawa, U.S. forces took the island in Operation Iceberg.

Ryufuku-ji Temple. Resuming their march toward Shuri, they ransacked and burned structures along the way, further spreading panic among Sho Nei’s fleeing subjects.

In a final, ill-fated attempt to prevent the invaders from reaching the capital, General Goeku Ueekata sought to hold the Taihei Bridge, a narrow stone span at Tairabashi, with a mere 100 men. The Japanese decimated the holding force with gunfire, then beheaded one of its wounded officers, scattering defenders who had never witnessed volley harquebus fire, not to mention such naked brutality.

The road to Shuri lay open.

Off the coast a few miles to the west, Kabayama’s fleet was far less successful in its attempt to secure Naha, the ultimate prize. On May 4 cannons from the Ryukyuans’ flanking fortresses pummeled Shimazu vessels, preventing Kabayama’s flagship from even nearing the imposing works. Manning the ramparts at Yarazamori, Jana Teido and 3,000 men repulsed the attack with cannon and smallarms fire. The invading ships quickly fell back out of range amid the exultant cheers of the defenders. Yet the shrewd invaders may have achieved exactly what they’d intended.

ASAHI SHIMBUN (GETTY IMAGES)

TOP: NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY, JAPAN; BELOW: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

battle-hardened contingent of samurai marching down on it from Tairabashi. Kabayama’s abortive attack on the port froze the bulk of the Ryukyuan army in place when it should have been inland defending Shuri. The king would live to regret his mistake, but by the time his advisers realized what was afoot, it was too late.

On May 4 the Shimazu advanced uphill toward the red palace walls of Shuri, pausing only to rain fire on the ramparts. While Japanese harquebusiers effectively kept the defenders’ heads down, the ashigaru brought up scaling ladders. Samurai soon poured over the ramparts, taking Shuri’s lower baileys one after another.

The assault came so fast that courtiers scarcely had time to flee. The only potential obstacle to Kabayama’s plan was an unconventional ploy by the desperate defenders. According to local lore, days in advance of the approaching threat islanders had scoured the jungle for as many of the indigenous—and highly venomous— habu snakes as they could find, then deposited the vipers along the route of attack. Even if true, clusters of venomous reptiles could not undo what was in motion.

Still at his command post when Shimazu troops burst into the palace courtyard, Sho Nei promptly surrendered to avoid further bloodshed. Leaving a small detachment to guard the king, the Japanese turned their attention on the defenses guarding Naha, which were virtually unprotected from a landward approach. In short order the fleet was able to safely enter the port, and the victorious invading army was once again reunited.

In the aftermath of the invasion the Japanese transported Sho Nei and his senior advisers to Satsuma as hostages. Finally, in 1611 Shimazu Tadatsune sent the captive king and his advisers to Sunpu to meet with the retired Tokugawa Ieyasu, then on to Edo to appear before Ieyasu’s son, Hidetada, the current shogun. Before permitting Sho Nei and the others to return home, Hidetada compelled them to swear a humiliating oath of loyalty, acknowledging fealty to the lord of Satsuma.

In a gruesome coda to the drama, Sho Nei’s Sanshikan adviser Jana Teido, the brave defender of Naha, refused the Tokugawa terms and was beheaded on the spot.

Having won their prize, the Shimazu had also earned the regard of Japan’s new shogun. But their work was far from done. First, Kabayama dispatched the surviving members of the Ryukyuan Sanshikan southwest by ship to Miyako and Kumejima islands to secure their surrender. That achieved, the Shimazu packed up and went home, leaving behind a handful of samurai as a makeshift occupation force. A small footprint would be necessary if the victors were to truly capitalize on the endeavor.

The Ming court was fully aware of the change in sovereignty of their lucrative trading partner. While direct trade between Japan and China was illegal—the Japanese having consistently refused to accept the tributary rela-

Invasion of Ryukyu

tionship required by the Ming—Tadatsune gambled on China’s willingness to look the other way if not confronted directly with a contradiction to that policy. His assumption was correct. Over the next three decades, whenever Chinese ships arrived in port, the SHIMAZU TROOPS Shimazu overseers discreetly withdrew into the jungle until the visitors left. This charade CASUALTIES continued until 1644 when the Manchus toppled the Ming, ending the long-standing tributary relationship with Ryukyu. In 1655, with the blessing of the Tokugawa shogun, RYUKYUAN TROOPS the archipelago re-established tributary relations with the Qing dynasty. By then, however, all trade profits went directly to the Shimazu, CASUALTIES and Ryukyu started its long slide into servility.

Commodore Perry knew none of this when he visited Shuri Castle. Yet his appearance in Ryukyu alarmed the Japanese, sparking an imperial resurgence known as the Meiji Restoration. The forces he unleashed would alter the trajectory of the history of Japan and all but destroy the idyllic island kingdom to its south.

Japan allowed Ryukyu the trappings of sovereignty until 1879, when it annexed the kingdom as the Okinawa Prefecture. From that time, in accordance with Meiji-era policy, the language and culture of ancient Ryukyu were all but erased. That process was ongoing when Okinawa became the last great battlefield of World War II. The archipelago remained under U.S. military control until 1972, when the Americans returned the once prosperous and independent Ryukyus to Japanese control. MH

3,000

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U.S. Army veteran M.G. Haynes is an author of military and historical fiction with a degree in Asian studies. For further reading he recommends Okinawa: The History of an Island People, by George H. Kerr, and The Samurai Capture a King: Okinawa 1609, by Stephen Turnbull.

Destroyed during World War II, 14th century Shuri Castle was reconstructed postwar on the original site. A 2019 fire destroyed much of the structure.

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A I D N I S O S Indianapolis goes down by the bow within 12 minutes of being struck by two torpedoes fired by I-58.

The ordeal was just beginning for those who survived the attack.

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S I L O P A N A ors iv v r u s d n a y o lb a schoo , r o il cloud a s e a h t k e o s o r t e p It is d ntury to e c a lf a h n ruiser a c h t y v a e h more e h t f o inking s e h t r e v o g in hang

By Marty Pay

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Launched in 1931, Indianapolis saw extensive combat in several World War II campaigns, including providing naval gunfire support for the landings on Tarawa, the Marshall Islands, Saipan, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Damaged by a Japanese bomb during the latter operation, the cruiser underwent repairs in California. On completion of the work Indianapolis was tasked with a secret mission of paramount importance. On July 26, 1945, the warship delivered key components of Little Boy, the atomic bomb that would be dropped on Hiroshima, to Tinian, in the Northern Mariana Islands. The nature of the materials was unknown to the cruiser’s crew and even to its commander, Capt. Charles B. McVay III. Its delivery mission completed, Indianapolis sailed to Guam and then got underway for the Philippines.

Shortly after midnight on July 30 two out of six Type 95 torpedoes fired by the Japanese submarine I-58 slammed into the cruiser’s starboard side. Fatally damaged, Indianapolis went down within 12 minutes. During that brief window McVay ordered Radio Room 1 to dispatch an SOS. His command could not be executed, however, because Radio 1 was damaged and none of its equipment worked. In Radio 2 Chief Warrant Officer Leonard Woods was busy pounding out a distress signal. He stayed as long as he could, urging the younger radiomen to grab life jackets and abandon ship. Woods went down with the ship.

Of the 1,195 men aboard Indianapolis fewer than 900 made it into the water. Many of those who did were suffering from third-degree burns, in excruciating pain

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TOP: U.S. MARINE CORPS; BELOW: NATIONAL DIET LIBRARY

J

uly 30, 1955, marked the 10th anniversary of the worst disaster Charles in American naval history—the sinking of USS Indianapolis. That McVay III Saturday retired salesman and World War II Navy veteran Clair Young was at home in southern California reading a day-old Los Angeles Times article that related how men in the heavy cruiser’s Radio Room 2 knew an SOS message had gone out following the vessel’s torpedoing by a Japanese submarine, but they believed no one had received it. A week later, on Aug. 6, 1955, a piece in the Saturday Evening Post stated unequivocally no SOS had been received.

Young knew better. On that fateful night a decade earlier he’d been a young radioman assigned to the sprawling U.S. Navy facilities at Tacloban, on the Philippine island of Leyte. He had personally delivered a copy of the cruiser’s SOS message to his commanding officer. What happened in the hours, days and years that followed is a story of unimaginable fear, tragedy and betrayal—yet it is also one of redemption.

PREVIOUS SPREAD: CHRIS MAYGER (INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY); THIS PAGE, TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; BELOW: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

A Portland-class heavy cruiser launched in 1931, Indianapolis had seen extensive Pacific combat before being tapped for the secret mission to Tinian.

and would not survive the night. Stories abound of sailors trying to help injured shipmates whose pain was magnified by the exposure of their broken bones and seared skin to salt water.

By the end of the first day the unimaginable occurred —the arrival of packs of sharks. At first survivors tried gathering in protective groups. The predators picked off any lone swimmers flailing in the water. Men in the vicinity of a victim would hear a bloodcurdling scream, then he was gone. The sharks—believed to be mainly oceanic whitetips—killed an estimated 50 crewmen a day.

After a few days in the water survivors started hallucinating. Some were convinced they could see islands in the distance and swam toward them, never to return.

Others thought the ship was beneath them, full of food and water. They unbuckled their life jackets and sank to their deaths. Others couldn’t resist the temptation to drink seawater, believing they could filter out the salt through their fingers. They, too, soon succumbed.

Mochitsura Hashimoto

oil was from a stricken Japanese submarine and pre-

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: CHRIS MAYGER (INDIANA HISTORICAL SOCIETY); THIS PAGE, TOP: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; BELOW: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES)

Launched in 1943, the Japanese cruiser submarine I-58 was a large, oceangoing vessel intended for long-range operations.

Those Indianapolis crewmen who managed to survive pared to release a string of depth charges on the slick. the sharks, sunstroke, dehydration and delusions were saved by a simple twist of fate.

Flying over the vicinity of the wreck in a PV-1 Ventura patrol bomber on the morning of August 2, Navy Lt. j.g.

Wilbur Gwinn happened to be in the underbelly of the plane, trying to tie down a loose antenna, when he spotted a miles-long oil slick in the ocean below. The crew had received no reports of any distressed American vessels in the area, so Gwinn and crew assumed the

As the Ventura began its run, however, crewmen noticed irregular bumps on the otherwise smooth surface of the ocean. Wanting a closer look, Gwinn took the aircraft down to 300 feet. Startled by the sight of groups of men clinging together down the length of the slick, he radioed an urgent request for rescue ships and planes.

At Peleliu Airfield in the Palau Islands Lt. Adrian Marks and his crew received orders to take their PBY-5A Catalina flying boat—call sign Playmate 2—to the co-

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all the survivors, Marks disobeyed standing orders not to land in the open ocean. Carefully maneuvering through the oil-covered swells, the PBY picked up more than 50 men. With no room left in the seaplane’s interior, Marks ordered additional survivors bound to the PBY’s wings mummy-style in parachutes. Obviously unable to take off, the aircraft and the men aboard it could only wait for rescue ships.

It was just before midnight when the first vessel, the destroyer escort Doyle, arrived. Despite the very real risk of submarine attack, Claytor ordered the ship’s search-

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FROM TOP: SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY (GETTY IMAGES); NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; MAP: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

ordinates provided by Gwinn. En route Marks flew over the destroyer escort USS Cecil J. Doyle and radioed its captain, Lt. Cmdr. W. Graham Claytor Jr., that his ship would probably be rerouted to the rescue scene. Claytor concurred and on his own initiative set a course for the area.

The PBY flew on. When it reached the scene—some 280 miles north of Peleliu—its crew was stunned to find hundreds of men in the water. Marks took Playmate 2 down, and as the flying boat passed over the survivors, the crew tossed out every bit of rescue gear the plane carried. Knowing the few rafts would not accommodate

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MARIE HANSEN, LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION (GETTY IMAGES); U.S. NAVY; CORBIS HISTORICAL (GETTY)

McVay’s court-martial convened in Washington, D.C., on Dec. 3, 1945.

Below: I-58’s former commander, Mochitsura Hashimoto, surprised prosecutors by testifying that zigzagging would not have saved Indianapolis. Below right: McVay points out where his ship was hit.

Above: Indianapolis carried key components of Little Boy to Tinian, where the atomic bomb underwent final assembly. Right: Hashimoto’s track chart of I-58’s attack on Indianapolis gave the sub’s course and bearing during the attack.

lights turned on to let the men in the water know help was at hand and make them easier to locate. As his crew brought aboard survivors, Claytor asked them their ship’s name and was shocked by the response. His cousin Louise was married to Indianapolis’ captain, McVay. Doyle and six other ships ultimately pulled from the water 316 Indianapolis survivors out of the original crew of 1,195. Two rescued sailors later died.

FROM TOP: SCIENCE & SOCIETY PICTURE LIBRARY (GETTY IMAGES); NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND; MAP: HISTORYNET ARCHIVES

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: MARIE HANSEN, LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION (GETTY IMAGES); U.S. NAVY; CORBIS HISTORICAL (GETTY)

Questions regarding the Indianapolis disaster —the U.S. Navy’s largest loss of life at sea from a single vessel—began almost before the rescue vessels reached shore. Why did the cruiser not have a destroyer escort? Why wasn’t McVay notified of Japanese submarine activity along his route? Why wasn’t Indianapolis listed as missing when it failed to arrive in the Philippines as scheduled?

For the time being such questions went unaddressed, largely because a Navy court of inquiry recommended the cruiser’s captain be court-martialed. It determined McVay had hazarded his ship by failing to take an evasive zigzag course, despite the fact his orders had left zigzagging to his discretion. Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander in chief of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, disagreed with the court’s recommendation and instead issued McVay a letter of reprimand and returned him to duty.

The controversy might have ended there were it not for Fleet Adm. Ernest King, commander in chief of the U.S. Fleet and chief of naval operations. Overturning Nimitz’s decision, King recommended McVay face court-martial on two counts—failure to zigzag and failure to issue a timely order to abandon ship. The postwar proceeding convened in Washington, D.C., in December 1945. The Navy sought to bolster its case by having I-58’s captain, Mochitsura

Hashimoto, testify, though to the prosecutors’ surprise he stated that, given the submarine’s position in relation to Indianapolis, zigzagging would not have altered the cruiser’s fate. Regardless, the court-martial panel found McVay guilty of not having followed a zigzag course.

He was not convicted of the other charge.

In view of McVay’s excellent wartime record before the sinking of Indianapolis, in February 1946 Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal remitted the guilty verdict in its entirety and ordered the captain restored to active duty. McVay remained in the Navy until 1949, when he retired as a rear admiral.

For years after the war McVay received hate mail from the relatives of some of the men who perished in the sinking. Those letters not intercepted by wife Louise he kept bound up by string as a reminder. On July 30, 1960, McVay was the guest of honor at the inaugural reunion of Indianapolis survivors, none of whom blamed their former captain for the ship’s loss. But the hate mail never stopped. On Nov. 6, 1968—after having lost Louise and

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a grandson to cancer—McVay walked onto the back porch of his Connecticut home in uniform and killed himself with his service pistol. He was 70 years old.

Clair Young’s lifelong quest to set the record

straight regarding Indianapolis’ SOS began when he read those 1955 articles in the Los Angeles Times and Saturday Evening Post. Know66 FEET 1 INCH ing what he had read was wholly inaccurate, BEAM he immediately wrote a letter to then Chief 24 FEET of Naval Operations Adm. Arleigh Burke exDRAFT plaining how he had received a distress message 32.7 KNOTS from Indianapolis at approximately 12:30 a.m.

SPEED on July 30, 1945.

“I personally delivered this message to the senior officer present, Commodore Jacob H. Jacobson U.S.N.,” Young wrote. “The message, although garbled, identified the ship, its position and its condition. His answer in effect was: ‘No reply at this time. If any further messages are received, notify me immediately.’ I feel that it is my duty to let it be known that the ‘lost’ distress signal was received.”

The Navy’s Civil Relations Division responded with a letter thanking Young for his “contribution to the distressing history of the sinking of the USS Indianapolis” while carefully pointing out that published accounts by LENGTH

individual survivors did not represent the official position of the Navy.

The Navy’s polite dismissal did not deter Young. When wartime naval correspondent Richard F. Newcomb’s classic account of Indianapolis’ loss, Abandon Ship! was published in 1958, Young contacted the author and told him of the cruiser’s SOS message. While the nature of their conversation is lost to history, Young’s home library contains an autographed copy of Abandon Ship!

In 1990 Dan Kurzman’s Fatal Voyage took a comprehensive look at the Indianapolis story. After reading a San Francisco Chronicle article about the book, Young reached out to Kurzman. According to a Jan. 30, 1991, article in the Chronicle, Kurzman had several conversations with Young and concluded, “I believe that what Young says is true.” Kurzman rewrote a passage in the paperback edition of his book, adding he knew of three reports from radiomen who had received Indianapolis’ SOS. It marked the first published acknowledgment of anyone having received the cruiser’s SOS. That same month Young received another request for information—this one from McVay’s son, Kimo. In his response Young detailed the events of that fateful night and his suspicion Commodore Jacobson had been drinking. The officer’s terse “No reply at this time,” Young felt, had been a missed opportunity to quickly rescue hundreds of Indianapolis survivors.

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FROM TOP: WATERFRAME (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); NEWS JOURNAL (USA TODAY NETWORK); MC1 BURT EICHEN, U.S. NAVY

USS Indianapolis

R/V PETREL, COURTESY PAUL ALLEN

On Aug. 19, 2017, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen’s research vessel Petrel pinpointed the wreck of Indianapolis some 18,000 feet below the surface of the Philippine Sea.

FROM TOP: WATERFRAME (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); NEWS JOURNAL (USA TODAY NETWORK); MC1 BURT EICHEN, U.S. NAVY

R/V PETREL, COURTESY PAUL ALLEN

In the 1990s Young reached out to Capt. William J. Toti, then commander of the fast-attack submarine USS Indianapolis, to share the story of the SOS message.

Toti checked out the story with the Naval Historical Center (present-day Naval History and Heritage Command), only to be told its researchers could verify neither Young’s account nor the two other reports that had surfaced regarding Indianapolis’ SOS. Toti offered to help Young, but by then the intrepid crusader was worn out.

What Young perceived as the Navy’s unwillingness to correct the record had led to a decline in his health, and on Aug. 24, 1997, he passed away at age 75. His wife, Eleanore, continued his fight.

So did a sixth-grade history buff in Pensacola, Fla.

The hearing ultimately prompted Congress to issue a joint resolution exonerating McVay for the loss of Indianapolis.

President Bill Clinton signed the nonbinding resolution on Oct. 30, 2000. Concerned the Navy might not actually place the signed exoneration in McVay’s official personnel file, the survivors requested that Toti, former captain of the decommissioned submarine USS Indianapolis, be allowed to do so in his new capacity in Naval Operations at the Pentagon. He did, finally ending a crusade for justice that had lasted nearly six decades. MH

In 1997 Hunter Scott chose the sinking of Indianapolis as the subject of his project for National History Day. The 12-year-old ultimately sent a detailed questionnaire to more than 100 survivors, scores of whom either responded by mail, spoke with the boy on the phone or met him in person. The information and documents Scott gathered convinced him McVay should be exonerated. His effort drew national media attention. Scott appeared on television several times, and on Sept. 14, 1999, he and several members of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) Survivors Organization testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee.

When asked by Sen. Bob Smith of New Hampshire about reports he’d received regarding SOS messages from the cruiser, Scott replied he’d gotten three. Russell Hetz, who as a young sailor had been aboard the harbor examination vessel LCI-1004 in Leyte harbor, told Scott his ship had monitored two Indianapolis SOS messages, spaced about eight and a half minutes apart. But since Hetz and fellow crewmen didn’t believe a heavy cruiser could sink so quickly, they wrote off the distress calls as Japanese deception.

In the second report Don Allen, a sailor based on Tacloban, said that on the night of the sinking his commander had left orders not to be disturbed, so he took the initiative to send two seagoing tugs to check out the report. When his commanding officer returned from playing cards, Allen said, he ordered the tugs back to port.

The third report, the one that most interested Sen. Smith, was Clair Young’s. Eleanore Young had provided Scott with copies of her husband’s 1955 letter to the Navy, the department’s response and Clair’s 1991 letter to Kimo McVay. In Smith’s eyes the collection of correspondence and testimony of the witnesses were undeniable proof an SOS had been received but hadn’t been acted on. At the end of the hearing survivor Jack Miner—who had been in the cruiser’s radio room on its last night—came up to Scott with tears in his eyes. He was moved to finally know the SOS signal he had witnessed—and for which CWO Woods had so valiantly given his life—had been heard.

California-based Marty Pay is an insurance broker and military history buff. In addition to the books mentioned in the story, for further reading he recommends In Harm’s Way, by Doug Stanton; Left for Dead, by Pete Nelson; and Indianapolis, by Lynn Vincent and Sara Vladic. All three mention Clair Young’s story in the absence of corroborating witnesses or Navy records.

Jaws of Death Shark experts believe oceanic whitetips were largely responsible for the post-sinking attacks on Indianapolis survivors, though tigers may also have been involved.

While the sharks took as many as 50 men a day, other causes accounted for far more deaths.

Top: In 1997 sixth-grader Hunter Scott’s project for National History Day refocused national attention on the need to exonerate McVay. Above: Scott went on to serve in the Navy and remains close with Indianapolis survivors.

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THE CIRCLE OF IRON AND FIRE Americans trapped within Paris during the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War witnessed chaos and compassion, revolt and an eventual return to republican ideals

By Ellen Hampton

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Violence in Paris during the suppression of the Commune posed a far greater risk to residents—including American expats and diplomats—than did the German siege.

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Designed by Kaiser Friedrich Wilhelm IV in 1843, the Prussian royal standard featured the phrase Gott mit uns (“God with us”). The date 1870 was added following German unification.

T

he 1870–71 war between France and Germany was the first, but remains the least remembered, of the archrivals’ terrible modern wars. Even less attention has been paid to the Americans it drew across the Atlantic to fight, observe, mediate, run a field hospital and, before it was over, endure two grinding sieges and pounding bombardment in Paris. Not every American in the French capital stuck it out, but Elihu B. Washburne, minister of the American Legation, considered it his duty to look out for those of his countrymen and women trapped in “that circle of iron and fire.”

The Franco-Prussian War, as it was known, was prompted by the combatant nations’ deeper territorial and political ambitions. Prussian Chancellor Otto von Bismarck needed a war to unite the German confederation of states into a nation; Napoléon III, leader of France’s shaky Second Empire, gave him one by mobilizing his country’s army on July 15, 1870, as a show of force intended to discourage any further consolidation of German power. It had the opposite effect. The North German Confederation mobilized its forces in response, and Bismarck was able to convince the independent southern German states to enter a mutually supportive military alliance. The French declared war on July 19 and on August 2 marched into German territory. Despite Napoléon III’s hopes for a quick victory, the stage was set for a disaster that would shake France to its foundations.

Otto von Bismarck

Napoléon III

the war.” By the time general turned businessman Ambrose Burnside arrived in Paris on October 2, the capital had been surrounded by Prussian troops and was under siege. Acting as a mediator for Bismarck, Burnside carried messages between the French and German commands.

The bulk of the French imperial army capitulated at Sedan on September 2, and the empire fell with it. Taken captive, Napoléon III and his aides would sit out the war in a luxurious Prussian castle. Two days later in Paris a conservative Government of National Defense claimed power, vowing not to surrender, organizing the city’s defense and arranging elections for a representative assembly. The republicans were back—but could they find a way out of the war?

Elihu Washburne, a 53-year-old lawyer and former Republican congressman from Illinois, had become minister to France in 1869. He and his family lived in Paris off the Champs-Elysées at 75 avenue de l’Impératrice (presentday avenue Foch). He walked daily to the Legation offices a mile and a half away. Washburne had oversight of some 5,500 Americans in the city when the war broke out, though as the siege tightened, all but a couple of hundred fled. He was also tasked with sheltering the non-Prussian German citizens in Paris, who numbered some 30,000.

The French agreed that such Germans, aside from men of military age, could leave the city under U.S. travel documents. Those seeking to exit flooded the Legation.

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DEAGOSTINI (GETTY IMAGES)

the Atlantic to observe the latest tactics and technological advancements in action during the American Civil War, the new conflict in Europe prompted U.S. military officers to attach themselves to the warring armies as observers.

From the Prussian side Lt. Gen. Philip Sheridan, an advocate of total war, advised Bismarck to cause the French “so much suffering that they must long for peace and force their government to demand it. The people

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Just as French and German military officers had crossed must be left with nothing but their eyes to weep with over

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“Pinched with hunger, terrified by threats of violence, with no means of leaving the country, they have come to me to save them,” Washburne wrote in his memoirs.

“Women with little babes in their arms, and women far gone in pregnancy, bathed in tears and filled with anguish, have come to our Legation as their last hope.”

The Germans helped pay the refugees’ travel expenses, and by mid-September Washburne thought he had gotten nearly all of them out of Paris. Over the coming months he would come to learn just how many had remained.

When the war began, Dr. Thomas W. Evans, a dentist who had practiced in Paris since 1847, organized the American International Sanitary Committee and solicited donations from Americans in Paris and abroad to set up a field hospital, or ambulance, as it was called at the time.

Among Evans’ recruits was Dr. John Swinburne, an American who happened to be traveling in Europe at the time.

Swinburne had been a Union Army surgeon during the Civil War and had developed an innovative system of

French troops seeking to break the Prussian siege in the direction of Versailles stall at the gate of the metropolitan hamlet of Buzenval.

heated and ventilated tents that greatly improved sanitary conditions for the wounded. Evans promptly ordered 10 U.S. Army tents from the States and donated his personal collection of Civil War medical equipment—six ambulance wagons, surgical instruments and other medical supplies he’d brought over for an exhibit at the 1867 Exposition universelle. His coffee wagon had last seen service at the April 1865 Confederate surrender in Appomattox Court House, Va.

By October the American Ambulance—operating opposite the Evans’ residence on land donated by the Prince de Bauffremont—was treating up to 100 patients at a time. A dozen young men, including Washburne’s son Gratiot, drove the horse-drawn ambulance-wagons, picking up wounded around the city and its outskirts. Several dozen women served in the ambulance’s Auxiliary Service, assisting a corps of trained nurses by making ban-

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Dr. John Swinburne

Mary Putnam

Elihu Washburne

Bonnet rouge

bassadors went to her rescue, sneaking the empress and a companion out of the palace and into a horse-drawn cab.

Eugénie de Montijo, daughter of a Spanish noble and granddaughter of a Scottish-American wine merchant, found one Bonaparte supporter’s door closed and had another slammed in her face. She then drove to Evans’ home.

Originally from Philadelphia, Evans had introduced modern dentistry to Europe and won the respect and confidence of several royal houses, including that of Napoléon III. The dentist’s renowned discretion led to his selection as an unofficial go-between on more than one occasion, and Eugénie had been his patient before becoming empress. The ladies spent the night at Evans’ home, and in the morning he provided for their use a British visa he happened to have for another doctor and patient. Then Evans and a friend set out in a carriage with the empress and her companion. Guards watching the city gates waved them through, and they continued west along the Seine into Normandy, reaching the coast at Deauville the next day. An Englishman’s yacht whisked the doctor and his wards across the channel to Britain, where Eugénie rejoined her son, Louis, and found safe harbor.

Evans did not return to wartime Paris, fearing he would be stuck there. Instead, he made a medical inspection tour of eastern France and southwestern Germany, where the Prussians were holding nearly 400,000 French POWs, and spent the balance of the war raising funds for clothing and supplies for the prisoners.

The gates of Paris closed to travel on September 18, shutting out some 240,000 German troops, and trapping within more than 500,000 French soldiers, mostly national guardsmen. The French made occasional sorties,

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TOP: HULTON DEUTSCH (GETTY IMAGES); BELOW: LIFE PHOTO COLLECTION

dages, serving food and washing linens. The auxiliary had a tent equipped with a piano, and as the siege wore on, it became a favorite hangout. “[It] naturally became an important social center, not only for the Americans cooped up within ‘the circle of iron and fire,’ but [also] for many foreign residents, who constantly dropped in to relieve the tedium of the time,” Evans later wrote.

Mary Putnam, the 28-year-old daughter of American publisher George Putnam, was in Paris studying to be a doctor as the first A traditional symbol of revolutionary France woman admitted into the School of Medidating to the 1790s, the cine at the vaunted Sorbonne. In letters home red Phrygian-style cap she mentioned having applied to work at bearing a red, white and the ambulance only to be told they had far blue cockade was worn more volunteers than they could use. “The by many Communards during the two months most interesting American peculiarity here their secular socialist at present is their success with the ambumovement ruled Paris lances,” she wrote to her father. “It is wonfollowing the siege. derful. They hardly lose a case, while in the French hospitals almost everyone dies.” In a time before antiseptic and antibiotics the ambulance was proud to report a mortality rate of 19 percent, compared with a French field clinic’s loss rate of 45 percent.

On the evening of September 4—as news spread of the fallen empire, and a mob of armed protesters swept across the Place de la Concorde—Evans returned home to find guests who needed his help. Spouting references to the “First Revolution,” the radicals were determined to exploit the current crisis. In their sights stood the Tuileries Palace, seat of the empire and on that tumultuous afternoon still home to Empress Eugénie. The Austrian and Italian am-

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; ROLAND BOUVIER (ALAMY)

Dr. Thomas W. Evans

TOP: HULTON DEUTSCH (GETTY IMAGES); BELOW: LIFE PHOTO COLLECTION

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; CHRONICLE (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE; LIBRARY OF CONGRESS; ROLAND BOUVIER (ALAMY)

hoping to break the encirclement, but were repeatedly routed. The only way to communicate with or travel to or from the French capital was via gas balloon, departures that soon switched to nighttime schedules to avoid being shot down by the Prussians. The French completed nearly 70 such flights during the siege, one balloon landing as far away as Norway. Flown out of the city on October 7, Minister of War Léon Gambetta set up camp in the Loire Valley to continue fighting the Prussians.

By that time, Washburne noted, no more than 250 Americans remained in the capital. Several had been arrested as German spies when heard speaking English.

The minister got them out of jail and railed against the insidious paranoia emerging everywhere.

Throughout the autumn of 1870 Washburne kept up a steady correspondence with Bismarck, who was grateful for his continued help safeguarding German citizens in Paris. Nearly six weeks into the siege Bismarck agreed to let a party of 48 Americans and 21 Russians leave under U.S. travel documents. Forming a convoy of 26 carriages, they exited the city on October 27. Four days later armed radicals staged a mass protest outside the City Hall against the Government of National Defense, but guardsmen dispersed the throng. Authorities held a plebiscite the following week, and Parisians expressed their support of the government by a margin of 557,996 to 62,638.

By mid-November food was becoming as scarce as information. Washburne was able to receive newspapers from New York and London in his diplomatic bag, but no one else had any news. “One of the features of the siege is the thousand rumors and reports that are constantly flying about,” he wrote in his journal. “The most absurd and ridiculous canards are circulated every hour in the day. These French people are in a position to believe anything, even that the moon is made of green cheese.”

So many horses had been killed for meat that transportation was hard to find. Mules, dogs, cats and rats were also on the menu. In his journal Washburne noted their rising prices as commodities. On Thanksgiving Day he and a dozen Americans, including Dr. Swinburne and Dr. William E. Johnston, a longtime Paris practitioner who also worked at the ambulance, attended a service at the American Episcopal Church of the Holy Trinity and then shared a paltry turkey dinner in a restaurant.

Colonel Wickham Hoffman, the U.S. Legation’s first secretary, noted that the government could no longer feed the animals in the city zoo, so it had them sold for slaughter. “I indulged from time to time in small portions of elephant, yak, camel, reindeer, porcupine, etc., at an average rate of $4 a pound,” Hoffman wrote in a memoir. “Of all these reindeer is the best; it has a fine flavor of venison. Elephant is tolerably good.”

As the weather turned colder, Parisians began felling mature trees for fuel. The Bois de Boulogne and the city’s leafy avenues soon became bare and devoid of traffic. By

Gas balloons—like this one in Place Saint-Pierre—were the only means of communicating with or traveling to or from besieged Paris. Bottom: On March 1, 1871, following the armistice, Prussian troops conduct a victory march beneath the Arc de Triomphe.

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stice. After 132 days of siege the war was over.

Or was it?

mid-January 1871 Washburne was giving financial support to 2,385 Germans (through funding supplied by Bismarck), and the Paris press was accusing him of being a Prussian sympathizer. The new year also brought a Prussian bombardment of the city. One young American had his foot shattered when a shell passed through his room.

Surgeons at the American Ambulance were compelled to amputate the man’s leg, and he later died. According to Washburne, he was the only American killed in the war.

National guardsmen made a final attempt to break the German siege on January 19. A failure, it resulted in high French casualties. Three days later leftist partisans staged another demonstration outside City Hall, demanding an end to bread rationing. When someone in the crowd shot an officer of the guard, his men returned fire, killing five and wounding 18. The city thrummed with tension. A week later the Government of National Defense announced it would begin peace negotiations, and on January 28 France and Prussia signed an armi-

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ROGER VIOLLETT (GETTY IMAGES)

Top: Soldiers manning a cannon-equipped barricade during fighting in Paris pause for a group portrait. Above: Government troops battle Communards on the rue de Rivoli as firebombed buildings burn.

the great central market today and seized everything they could lay their hands on,” Washburne wrote on January 29, the day the armistice went into effect. “The market men were demanding the most extortionate prices for everything that was eatable and refused to make the least concession to the poor, starving people.”

With an end to the fighting Britain and the United States sent aid, but France was in such disarray that distribution proved near impossible. At least two American ships carrying food and supplies landed at Le Havre but were unable to unload. “The French are so government-ridden that they are unable to take the initiative in anything for themselves,” Hoffman wrote.

While the city returned to normal on some levels, the radical faction of revolutionary socialists—calling itself the Commune—continued to push its demands and found an unlikely ally in the national guardsmen, who had been deprived of food, shelter and rent relief while on duty. On March 18, when ordered to fire on an armed barricade at Montmartre, guardsmen refused and reversed their muskets in solidarity. The guard had switched loyalties to the Commune, and over the next 24 hours the Government of National Defense fled to Versailles.

“When the government left Paris,” Washburne recalled, “the insurgents were far more astonished at their victory than the loyal people were.”

The radical Central Committee of the National Guard claimed power, vowing to protect the people against “danger,” meaning anyone who did not support their program. Executions began almost immediately, and the movement slid into violence, theft and anarchy before more responsible members could stop it. “They had used these poor enthusiasts while it suited their purpose,” Hoffman wrote. “Now they threw them overboard.”

Radical clubs, styled and named after the Jacobins of the 1789 French Revolution, proposed hanging Washburne and banishing any remaining Americans, but no action was taken. The red flag replaced the Tricolore over City Hall, yet Versailles continued to hold its 170,000 loyal troops at bay.

Washburne was busy through April keeping Americans from jail and execution, as well as seeking the release of Paris Archbishop Georges Darboy, whom the anti-religious radicals had arrested along with dozens of priests, nuns and other clergy members. An estimated 300,000 Parisians had fled by the time the Commune announced that no French men between the ages of 19 and 40 could leave the city, as they were to be conscripted

FROM TOP: HULTON DEUTSCH, ADOC-PHOTOS (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

“I hear tonight that the people broke into

into the guard. Taking a risk, Washburne asked Commune officials if people from Alsace and Lorraine— which had been promised to the German empire in the recent peace agreement—could leave Paris as German citizens, traveling on U.S. documents. Foreign relations minister Pascal Grousset agreed. Washburne had to hire 10 clerks to handle the hundreds of applicants who lined up outside the Legation each morning. (In a matter of weeks he spirited 4,450 of them to safety.)

By mid-April government soldiers began shelling the insurgents from batteries west of the city, some shells striking the Arc de Triomphe and Champs-Elysées. The danger compelled Washburne and family to move to safer quarters near the city center. Pillaging and looting were widespread by then, and it wasn’t long before a band of “organized brigands,” as Washburne dubbed them, showed up threatening to confiscate his home and possessions. The American diplomat appealed for help from Grousset, who dispatched men to fend off the looters.

On May 21 government troops found an undefended entry into Paris, and so began what has been called the “Bloody Week.” Amid the street fighting soldiers summarily shot thousands of insurgents, while the radicals executed hundreds of hostages, including Archbishop Darboy. As the Commune collapsed, its members firebombed buildings throughout the capital. Tuileries Palace, City Hall, the Finance Ministry, the Palace of Justice and other institutions were reduced to smoldering ruins.

“Beautiful France has been sorely tried with revolutions,”

Hoffman wrote. “Let us hope that she has seen the last.”

With the Commune defeated, Parisians cleaned up the mess, sent the insurgents to face justice, set up a new republican government and returned to work. Marked by class war within territorial war and siege within siege, the short-lived Franco-Prussian War is among the more complex in modern history.

Still, the war and the chaos it engendered did not sour Americans on the joys of Paris.

The French capital soon regained its status as what Evans called the “Heaven of Americans,” and by the mid-1920s the U.S. expat community had grown to some 30,000 fulltime residents. Alas, within two decades the arrival of another German army once again led to very dark times in the City of Light. MH

FrancoPrussian War

2,000,740 FRENCH TROOPS PEAK FIELD ARMY STRENGTH: 710,000

1,005,427 CASUALTIES

138,871 DEAD, 143,000 WOUNDED, 723,556 MISSING OR CAPTURED

1,494,412

GERMAN TROOPS PEAK FIELD ARMY STRENGTH: 949,337

144,642 CASUALTIES

44,700 DEAD, 89,732 WOUNDED, 10,129 MISSING OR CAPTURED

Paris-based journalist and author Ellen Hampton is a frequent contributor to Military History.

For further reading she recommends From Appomattox to Montmartre: Americans and the Paris Commune,

by Philip M. Katz; Elihu Washburne: The Diary and Letters of America’s Minister to France During the Siege and Commune of Paris, edited by Michael Hill; and The Dentist and the Empress: The Adventures of Dr. Tom Evans in Gaslit Paris, by Gerald Carson.

ROGER VIOLLETT (GETTY IMAGES)

FROM TOP: HULTON DEUTSCH, ADOC-PHOTOS (GETTY IMAGES, 2)

In the decades following the collapse of the Commune Paris regained its status as the “City of Light,” attracting American expats back to a rebuilt capital graced by Gustave Eiffel’s tower.

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Y K C A W S D R I B R A W

aircraft r-than-air bing ie v a e h , d powere and bom flight of a r reconnaissance velopment d e in ta s u de ft fo d, s that rapid u of roles. controlle time use of aircra h t s it r fi W e y. ll th n ince st war onentia nding me nd the fir on has grown exp ver-expa e n a r in 1903 a ti fo eoff XFY-1 d vertical tak ilitary avia s intende so has vair’s sole t flew on Aug. 1, n o in 1911, m lethora of design y has advanced, C ap ich firs log range, “Pogo,” wh a 7,100-shp Allison has come of aircraft techno maneuverability, red g te d, 1954, featu oprop engine drivin As the sta greater size, spee rb rs tu u o 4 m r h -1 o c ty fo -A c t ix 0 a s S 4 XT ellers. self to p pacity. the que a it ro c p ts g d n n a e ti n lo v ilitary t and y rein contrarota emonstrated only a armamen design continuall s. In the case of m ingd e ft to in of test flyin uld land the plane a r need d eng f airc n e o a th co ld re t h e o it tu fi il c p w e t Th is stru ver his expert ust coexis e emphas ly looking o Navy ations in m v rd th t o a h n w n e k ig in h w fl a f te W e o s. whil 5, the moda damentals uns and/or missile ons are sometimes Aug. 1, 195 ded. n n O fu r. e e ld th u , o g sh s, rati onclu aircraft l conside e project c ras, bomb a e th c d m ti a re u c a la c n te e a d corpor task, aero irframe e military —basic a that s r to c fa falls on th importance. present oth ns ary g pages re ble that b que desig d s a in n it te o w v c o ro e e ll g s in f fo n s ll by e o nt and ev he examples on the hangers only to fa as perhap Thus it w ould inspire devia c T me ead. ived as ga ad—c hing its h and paylo left posterity scratc raft initially perce r—or c r was wa ir e a ect w p s s ic o n tr a tr n e e re give in ecc n th on. on of the ir forces to a s der. Ofte ary aviati a ti n it c d o il a p te m fr t p a h in m t bu nces e mig e pro ns w e of adva king? on ilitary edg p e r im e n ta l d e s ig the waysid the designers thin the quest for a m x e .” e h uc tim MH re f many s ea at the g which o id in e r What we r d u u o d il o g — fa a Cold War h ir l. T h e med like at least a p o s a l a w rsal excuse, “It see o r p g in is e a n y p ro m nded by that univ e tt a t b u no do

SAN DIEGO AIR & SPACE MUSEUM

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lete p e r s i n o i t a ary avi t i l i m f ften o y r o The hist s in which looks—and o ility with design took a back seat to ut — aeronautics y Jon Guttman B

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The P.B.31E boasted technical advances, but its agonizing climb rate resulted in its rejection

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A The first airplane built by Supermarine, in 1917, the P.B.31E Nighthawk was a quadruplane conceived by Noel Pemberton Billing to intercept zeppelins. It boasted remarkable technical advances, including the first auxiliary motor in an airplane, but its agonizing climb rate resulted in its rejection. B In the Stipa-Caproni designer Luigi Stipa placed engine and propeller within a fuselage that amounted to a ducted fan. First flying on Oct. 7, 1932, the “flying barrel” was extremely stable but did not show enough improvement in performance to warrant further development. C Designed by Dr. Richard Vogt, the Blohm & Voss BV 141B was a reconnaissance plane that sought a wider view through asymmetry, with the fuselage and engine lying alongside the crew’s nacelle. Taking to the air in 1938, it flew better than anyone in the Luftwaffe expected—or really wished—but only 28 were built by 1942. D Conceived by George Miles in 1941, the Miles M.35 Libellula (a genus of dragonflies) was intended to reduce aircraft carrier accidents with a tandem biplane arrangement, the pusher engine and pilot up front. The Royal Navy rejected it, and Miles was criticized by the Air Ministry for building and flying it without authorization.

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WACKY WARBIRDS

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Though its development was canceled in 1946, the ‘Flying Flapjack’ survives in a museum

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F E Designed by Charles M. Zimmerman and first flying on Nov. 23, 1942, Vought’s V-173 was the test bed for an intended Navy fighter, the XF5U-1, which was canceled in 1946. The original “Flying Flapjack” survives at the Frontiers of Flight Museum in Dallas, Texas.

F After rocketing skyward and firing a noseful of rockets at American bombers, the German Bachem Ba 349A Natter (a type of snake) was designed to break into several components that would parachute down with the pilot, then be recovered, reassembled and relaunched. Its only test flight, on March 1, 1945, killed its pilot—and the program. G The last Stearman design completed by Boeing, the YL-15 Scout first flew in July 1947 to fulfill an Army requirement for a light observation/liaison plane. Although its high-set tail boom gave its crew unlimited downward visibility, only 12 were built before it was rejected in favor of the less expensive Cessna L-19 Bird Dog. H The McDonnell XF-85 Goblin was designed to provide each Air Force bomber with its own escort fighter, one that took off from and landed on a trapeze in the bomb bay. First flying in 1948, it was canceled by year’s end but proved too cute to scrap—both prototypes have been preserved. I Built to satisfy a 1951 British specification for a light antisubmarine aircraft capable of loitering for four hours at 140 mph, the Short SB.6 Seamew was designed to carry the necessary sonobuoys and ordnance, but its flight characteristics were described as “vicious.” In 1956 the order for 60 Seamews—30 each for the RAF and Royal Navy—was canceled.

The 26 built were scrapped. J Designed by Lewis C. McCarthy Jr. as a “personal helicopter,” a dozen de Lackner HZ-1 Aerocycles were built and underwent 160 test flights through 1956, when a rash of crashes convinced the Army it was too difficult for the average GI to control. K Developed for both the Army and Air Force, the Bell XV-3 convertiplane pioneered the 90-degree tilt-rotor principle of VTOL. Making 110 successful transitions from 1958 to 1962, it laid the groundwork for today’s Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey.

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E: BETTMANN (GETTY IMAGES); F: PLANE COLLECTION (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); G: U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE; H: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE; I: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; J: JOE PETRELLA/NEW YORK DAILY NEWS (GETTY); K: AVIATION HISTORY COLLECTION (ALAMY)

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WACKY WARBIRDS

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L Unveiled on April 1, 1956, the Vertol VZ-2A was one of several experiments toward achieving VTOL flight by tilting wings, motors and rotors together. M A flying saucer propelled by turbo exhaust blown from the rim, Avro Canada’s VZ-9 Avrocar inspired a joint experiment by Canada and the United States from 1958 to 1961, when recurring thrust and stability problems led to its cancelation.

N A French VTOL attempt, the SNECMA C.450 Coléoptère (beetle) surrounded its pilot and turbojet engine within an annular wing.

It first flew in December 1958, but crashed on July 25, 1959, badly injuring its pilot. O The Hiller X-18 Propelloplane was another attempt at a tilt-wing VTOL cargo plane. Conceived in 1955, it first flew in 1959, but propeller pitch problems resulting in neardisaster led to its grounding in 1961. P Debuting in 1967 and setting records at the 1969 Paris Air Show, the Dornier Do 31E used turbofans to take off and conventional jets for horizontal flight. Its uneconomical arrangement led to its abandonment in 1970.

It remains the only jet-powered VTOL transport to have flown. Q The culmination of Soviet experiments, the 380-ton Lun was classed as an ekranoplan—a ground-effect vehicle most at home up to 16 feet in the air, its eight turbofan engines hurtling it along at 340 mph. It entered service in 1987 but the collapse of the Soviet Union led to the project’s abandonment in the 1990s. That said, Russia, China, Singapore and the United States are all looking into civil applications of the ekranoplan’s ground-effect concept.

R Entering service with the Navy in 2015, the Lockheed Martin F-35B Lightning II differs from the Air Force’s conventional F-35A in having ducted fans that give it VTOL capability. Development of this most technologically sophisticated of the fifth-generation fighter-bombers (along with the Marines’ F-35C) has been fitfully protracted and expensive, with the last word remaining to be written.

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L: NATIONAL AIR AND SPACE MUSEUM, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION; M: NATIONAL MUSEUM OF THE U.S. AIR FORCE; N: KEYSTONE PRESS (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO); O: U.S. AIR FORCE; P: ULLSTEIN BILD DTL. (GETTY IMAGES): Q: MINISTRY OF DEFENCE OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION; R: REED KAESTNER (GETTY)

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While technologically advanced, the F-35B has had an expensive and controversial history

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WHEN N MET THE L In 1136 a Welsh army came calling on the Marcher Lords at

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N NORMANS E LONGBOW

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Cardigan Castle, determined to drive them out at arrow point By Dana Benner

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I

n the autumn of 1136, high on a hill in the Welsh countryside some 2 miles northeast of Cardigan, Norman forces awaited the arrival of a 9,000-man Welsh army that had already taken several towns and sacked the only other Norman castle in the western realm of Ceredigion. Yet Norman commanders were confident of victory in the coming battle, certain they could crush the approaching Welsh with little effort. Though comparable in numbers, the Normans had heavy cavalry, well-equipped infantry and the most ruthless Flemish mercenaries money could buy. Furthermore, they occupied the high ground, from which they could strike in any direction. What the Normans failed to appreciate, however, was the ability of Welsh commander Owain ap Gruffudd, the tenacity of his warriors and, foremost, their lethal skill with the longbow.

Henry I

In 1066 Anglo-Saxon England fell to the Normans. Over the next several years William the Conqueror subdued the holdouts, gave their lands to his loyal followers and built strongholds across England. He then set his sights on the Celtic realms of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

Like the Anglo-Saxons before them, the Normans considered the Celts an unsophisticated people, simple barbarians unworthy of regard. Yet by 1136 the Normans had gained only a foothold in the Celtic territory of Wales.

Though Norman lords had either taken over or built castles in that untamed western frontier, they found it hard to “rule” in any true sense. The Welsh had never been fully subdued, either by political means or brute force, after successive Roman, Anglo-Saxon and Norman invasions. Frustrating Norman ambitions in the region were two major factors—topography and the framework of Celtic society.

The Welsh landscape is largely one of rolling hills and, at that point in history, vast, heavily timbered forests.

“Because of its high mountains, deep valleys and extensive forests, not to mention its rivers and marshes, it is not of easy access,” observed 12th-century historian Gerald of Wales, archdeacon of Brecon, in South Wales.

Such terrain made a far from ideal battleground for the heavy cavalry on which the Normans relied.

As was the case in other Celtic societies, the Welsh had no central government. They composed a patchwork of small, fluid kingdoms ruled by various lords, princes and kings whose fealty was fickle. Loyalties often changed at a moment’s notice, sparking regular infighting.

Like much of medieval Britain, Wales was land rich and cash poor. Its agrarian society was dominated by farmers and shepherds who supplemented what they could produce with hunting and foraging. That lifestyle, out of necessity, made them equally proficient with the bow and the sling. It also set the stage for the Welsh style of fighting. Facing the enemy on rocky ground often surrounded by marshes, Welsh warriors harassed larger forces from the distance of a stone’s throw or an arrow’s flight.

As a reward for their service William had granted lands to barons in Norman-controlled territory along the Welsh border. Ambitious for power, these nobles steadily en-

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While the origins of the longbow remain obscure, its potency as both a hunting tool and a weapon of war is undisputed.

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Following his 1066 conquest of Anglo-Saxon England, William the Conqueror targeted the Celtic realms of Scotland, Ireland and Wales.

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Deheubarth, in the southwest; and Ceredigion, in between.

To address these obstreperous Celtic realms, the Norman barons resolved to divide and conquer.

The typical longbowman, whether Welsh or, later, English, was equipped in much the same way.

He wore little to no armor and carried—in addition to the 6-foot bow depicted here at full draw–extra shafts, as well as a short sword and small circular shield for self-defense.

croached on adjacent Celtic kingdoms, mainly in South Wales. Welsh ambushes and raids slowed but didn’t stop the trespassers, who built castles and market towns, encouraged English settlement and married into princely Welsh families. The barons became known as “Marcher Lords.” Though the term derives from the root word

What the Welsh lacked in experience they compensated for in ferocity and resolve “march,” meaning borderland, the Marchers may as well have been named for their tendency to simply march into areas they coveted, often without the leave of the English king.

Holding out against the Norman land grab were princes in three Welsh kingdoms—Gwynedd, in the northwest;

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LEFT: LOOK AND LEARN (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); RIGHT: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES

Draw!

counselors, established an earthwork castle and town of Cardigan along the tidal reach of the River Teifi on the border of Ceredigion and Deheubarth. When Roger died the following year, the Welsh razed the fort and reassumed control. In 1110 Henry I, William’s fourth son and second successor, installed Marcher Lord Gilbert de Clare over Ceredigion. Basing himself in Cardigan, Gilbert built a timber forerunner to the present castle. Over the following two decades the Normans and the fiercely independent people of Ceredigion maintained an uneasy peace, kept in check by the Norman garrison stationed at the castle.

Henry’s own 1135 death and the succession crisis it spawned transformed the Welsh frontier. With the threat of civil war looming over England, most Norman lords withdrew from Wales. Among those joining the exodus was Gilbert de Clare’s eldest son, Richard, who retired to family holdings in the English borderland while flattering Henry’s eventual successor, Stephen. The Welsh took full advantage. First, in January 1136, Hywel ap Maredudd, a Welsh lord from the central realm of Brycheiniog, gathered an army and raided Norman castles on the Gower Peninsula of Deheubarth, defeating them at the Battle of Llwchwr (northeast of present-day Swansea). Hearing news of the Welsh revolt, Richard de Clare marched west with a small force, determined to end the rebellion. But the Welsh got wind of his plans, ambushing and killing the presumptuous heir on April 15, 1136, near Llanthony Priory in the Brecon Beacons range of South Wales.

The Marcher’s death prompted the Welsh of Gwynedd to join forces with their Ceredigion brethren in expelling the Normans. By then widely regarded Prince Gruffudd ap Cynan of Gwynedd was in his 80s and losing his sight, so his sons Owain and Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd took up the banner and led the Welsh force south from Gwynedd.

En route they took Landbadarn and Llanfihangel and sacked the castle at Aberystwyth, leaving Cardigan as the last remaining Norman fortress in Ceredigion.

The stage was set for a clash of wills at Crug Mawr.

Though the numbers of fighting men on each side were comparable, their makeup was decidedly different.

Led by Welsh Marcher Lords Robert fitz Martin, Robert fitz Stephen and Maurice FitzGerald of Deheubarth, the Norman army comprised 1,000 Flemish mercenaries, 7,000 Norman infantrymen from local levies and 2,000 horse, much of which was heavy cavalry. The combined Welsh army—representing Gwynedd, Deheubarth and the eastern realm of Powys—comprised 6,000 infantry (mainly spearmen), 2,000 longbowmen and 1,000 light cavalry. Leading them were Owain and Cadwaladr ap Gruffudd of Gwynedd, Prince Gruffudd ap Rhys of Deheu-

PETER DENNIS, FROM LONGBOWMAN VERSUS CROSSBOWMAN, BY DAVID CAMPBELL (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

In 1093 Roger de Montgomery, one of William’s principal

LEFT: LOOK AND LEARN (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES); RIGHT: NATIONAL LIBRARY OF WALES

PETER DENNIS, FROM LONGBOWMAN VERSUS CROSSBOWMAN, BY DAVID CAMPBELL (OSPREY PUBLISHING, BLOOMSBURY PRESS PUBLISHING)

Owain ap Gruffudd

barth and a host of subcommanders, each responsible for the men from his region.

Under normal medieval battle conditions an observer might assume, as did the Norman commanders, the Normans would have the upper hand. Their forces were better trained, better equipped and had the advantage of heavy cavalry. The tanks of medieval warfare, these armor-clad riders and mounts were designed to break up infantry formations and spread fear and chaos. Norman belief in their own tactical superiority—and their preconceived ideas about Welsh inferiority—led them to seriously underestimate their enemy.

What the Welsh lacked in experience and equipment, they compensated for in ferocity, resolve and a firm tactical grasp of their home ground. Having herded sheep over the hilly terrain and hunted the forests for centuries, they knew the landscape and how to exploit it to their advantage. Though their horses lacked the bulk and armor of their adversary’s heavy cavalry, their mounts could maneuver far more quickly in combat. The Welsh had another ace up their sleeve—the longbow.

While all Welshmen were familiar with the longbow, having used it to hunt game and defend their flocks from predators, the archers of South Wales had perfected its use as an instrument of war. “The people of Gwent, in particular, are more skilled with the bow and arrow than those who came from other parts of Wales,” wrote 14th-century Welsh bard Iolo Goch.

Though the Welsh perfected its use, they did not invent the longbow. Its basic design had been around for millennia, the earliest example from continental Europe dating from 3300 bc. In capable hands the long-

Above left: Firing volley after lethal volley, massed longbowmen could stop and scatter advancing formations of enemy infantry and cavalry.

bow is extremely accurate at close range, and as an artillery weapon it can rain down armor-piercing projectiles from an effective range of up to 250 yards.

“The bows they use are not made of horn, nor of sapwood, nor yet of yew,” Iolo noted. “The Welsh carve their bows out of the dwarf elm trees in the forest.” The website WarbowWales.com notes longbows were made from common and wych elm. Gerald described them as “ugly, unfinished-looking weapons, but astonishingly stiff, large and strong, and equally capable of use for long or short shooting.”

As they used their longbows primarily to hunt, Welsh archers were adept at hitting targets on the run. That said, hunting deer is far different than facing armed men afoot or on horseback, many of whom would be Born circa 1100, Owain wearing chain mail or even full armor. To ap Gruffudd was a son of pierce even the stoutest mail, Welsh archers Prince Gruffudd ap Cynan.

He and brother Cadwaladr used a square-sectioned arrowhead known led Welsh forces against as a bodkin. When training for long-dis- the Normans in their aged tance shooting, archers shot at “butts,” or father’s stead. Owain earthen mounds, set out at about 220 paces. ascended to the Welsh While the Normans were doubtless aware throne in 1137 and was thereafter known as of the effectiveness of the longbow, the ex- Owain Mawr (“the Great”). tant histories of Crug Mawr make no mention of bowmen among their forces. Perhaps they grouped their archers under the general term “infantry,” though it’s possible their absence was a further sign of Norman disdain for the Welsh.

Owain Mawr

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3,000 9,000 LIGHT

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CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE ANCIENT AND HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF WALES; DAVID ROSS, NEIL MCALLISTER (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2)

10,000

remaining infantry were held in reserve. Owain put his archers on the front line, then resumed the march.

Refusing to take the bait and attack uphill, Owain halted his line some 200 yards from Crug Mawr and had his archers launch a storm of arrows into the frontline ranks of armored Flemish mercenaries. With each volley the bodkin-tipped Welsh shafts inflicted costly losses the Normans could ill afford. Sent forward to fill the gaps, the largely unarmored Norman reserve infantry suffered even greater casualties.

To stem the spreading panic, Norman commanders sent their heavy cavalry forward to break the enemy line.

The Welsh bowmen responded by simply turning their attention, and their aim, against the new threat. A wall of arrows slammed into both riders and horses—after all, a horse is simply a larger target, and a cavalryman without a horse is just infantry. Volley after volley mowed down men and their mounts. By the time the remnants of the Norman heavy cavalry reached the Welsh lines, the momentum of their charge was all but spent.

As the Norman cavalry approached, the bowmen retreated behind the infantry, which threw up a curtain of spears. Having lost all speed and the advantage, the armored Norman riders and horses were unable to break

DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION

The Normans at Cardigan were apparently aware of the Welsh force as it approached from the north on the day of battle. Emerging from the castle, the Normans marched out 2 miles to Crug Mawr (Welsh for “Great NORMAN TROOPS Hill”), high ground overlooking the road 1,000 FLEMISH MERCENARIES, from Aberystwyth.

7,000 NORMAN INFANTRYMEN AND 2,000 HORSEMEN The Normans deployed in three lines—the crack Flemish troops out front with Norman infantry in reserve and the cavalry in the rear.

KILLED Commanders hoped to entice the presumably undisciplined Welsh to attack uphill. Any who survived the Flemish onslaught were to be WELSH TROOPS ridden down by the Norman cavalry—a tried6,000 INFANTRY and-true tactic that had proven successful in (MAINLY SPEARMEN), 2,000 LONGBOWMEN continental warfare. But as the Normans were AND 1,000 LIGHT CAVALRY soon to discover, Wales was not the Continent.

With Owain ap Gruffudd at the fore, the Welsh advanced down the road to Cardigan CASUALTIES at a deliberate, yet cautious, pace. Spotting the Norman army atop Crug Mawr, Owain immediately understood their deployment. Calling a halt, he had the Welsh subcommanders move most of their infantry to the center with the cavalry protecting their flanks. The

Battle of Crug Mawr

Some 2 miles northeast of Cardigan, Crug Mawr remains a dominant terrain feature. Below left: The Welsh sacked Norman-held Aberystwyth Castle during the 1136 revolt. Below right: The restored Cardigan Castle flanks the River Teifi.

CLOCKWISE FROM TOP: ROYAL COMMISSION ON THE ANCIENT AND HISTORICAL MONUMENTS OF WALES; DAVID ROSS, NEIL MCALLISTER (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO, 2)

DAVID RUMSEY MAP COLLECTION

through. As the attack stalled, the Welsh cavalry charged in from both flanks, catching the Normans in a modified pincer movement. Harried on either side and blocked by the Welsh infantry, the Norman cavalry had no choice but to break contact and retreat. But instead of retreating to their own lines and regrouping to make a stand against the Welsh—or at least making an orderly withdrawal— the cavalrymen fled down the Cardigan road, leaving their infantryman wholly exposed.

On witnessing their heavy cavalry break and run, the surviving Normans and Flemings soon followed their lead.

Theirs was no orderly retreat. Had it been, they might have stemmed their losses. Instead, the frantic foot soldiers proved easy game for the Welsh light cavalrymen, who chased them south toward Cardigan and the River Teifi.

Under the weight of so many armored men and horses, the bridge across the Teifi soon collapsed. While some men managed to strip themselves of their armor and weapons and make it across, many more were stranded on the near side and quickly slaughtered by the Welsh.

Accounts describe the river as being clogged with the bodies of men and animals. Normans and Flemings not able to make it back inside the castle walls sought sanc-

tuary in the surrounding village, but the Welsh soon burned it to the ground.

Those Normans fortunate enough to make it back inside Cardigan Castle were spared, as their pursuers didn’t have the forces or siege engines to take the fortress. But the battle had been a decisive victory for the Welsh. Of the estimated 10,000 Norman troops who took to the field that day, as many as 3,000 were killed. The rest would live to fight another day, though not until the reign of Edward I (1272–1307) would the English gain some measure of control over the Celtic rebels on Britain’s western frontier. MH

Tactical Takeaways Know your enemy.

By underestimating the Welsh and their military prowess, the Normans set themselves up for failure.

Mobility is key.

Wearing heavy armor and riding large draft horses, the Norman cavalrymen were at a distinct disadvantage against the Welsh.

Choose your weapons.

While the Normans’ pikes were fearsome weapons on European battlefields, the Welsh longbows wreaked havoc from long range, cutting down pikemen and horsemen alike.

Canada-based writer Dana Benner is a frequent contributor to Military History. For further reading he recommends A Great and Terrible King, by Marc Morris, and the articles “Medieval Welsh Warriors and Warfare,”

by Daniel Mersey (available online at CastleWales.com), and “Longbow: A Medieval Take on Long-range Artillery,” by Historynet research director Jon Guttman (available online at Historynet.com).

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Reviews

Fellow Rochambelles take a break during a lull in the fighting in Normandy in 1944.

Women of Valor: The Rochambelles on the World War II Front,

by Ellen Hampton, McFarland & Co., Jefferson, N.C., 2021, $29.95

During World War II Free French Army Gen. Philippe Leclerc was known for utilizing unusual tactics to gain material advantages for his fighting units. Desperate to obtain ambulances to transport wounded troops, Leclerc was open to a radical proposal by indomitable American socialite Florence Conrad: Gain 19 ambulances by utilizing a group of female ambulance drivers dubbed the Rochambelles.

Women of Valor is a detailed and highly entertaining account of the Rochambelles, an organization of mostly French and American drivers whose idealism and patriotism enabled them to provide an essential service under life-threatening battle conditions. Initially met with resistance by male soldiers and their commanders, the determined and courageous Rochambelles quickly won allies.

In this updated edition author Ellen Hampton vividly depicts the grueling conditions they faced, including intense cold, dirt, little

food, lack of sleep, pest-infested sleeping areas and treacherous roads, as well as the mental stresses of live fire, near-death experiences and transporting casualties suffering from horrific battle injuries.

Hampton’s book offers valuable insights into the psychological makeup of the Rochambelles, whose quick thinking, resourcefulness and decisive action in treacherous situations saved many lives. The author laces the book with the women’s wry humor and describes their struggle at war’s end to readjust to society’s limitations.

Women of Valor is the inspiring story of how the Rochambelles met and then exceeded the challenges of World War II. As Hampton notes, they “opened the door to women as integrated members of an army,” making their history a “valuable template for courage and determination.”

—S.L. Hoffman

USIS-DITE (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

A Drive to Serve

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USIS-DITE (BRIDGEMAN IMAGES)

This Is Really War: The Incredible True Story of a Navy Nurse POW in the Occupied Philippines, by Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi, Chicago Review Press, Ill., 2019, $28.99 Professor and journalist Emilie Le Beau Lucchesi’s first book, Ugly Prey: An Innocent Woman and the Death Sentence That Scandalized Jazz Age Chicago (2017), was a notable contribution to women’s history. Her second book, What a Way to Spend a War (1995), was inspired by the moving memoir of U.S. Navy nurse Dorothy Still, who in 1991 related a detailed oral history to the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Her story intertwines with those related here of 11 other remarkable women led by Chief Nurse Laura Cobb. Amazingly, all survived three years of inhuman conditions in World War II Japanese prison camps.

The nurses’ war began in December 1941 at Cavite Naval Base, near Manila, where the women treated casualties after the Japanese attacked the U.S.-administered Philippines in the wake of Pearl Harbor. Still had been weeks away from a sched-

uled return home to her native California. With no military assistance coming from the United States, Gen. Douglas MacArthur withdrew with his outnumbered American and Filipino troops to Bataan, the subsequent starting point of the infamous forced death march of POWs. The nurses remained behind in Manila.

Bounced around among POW camps—including Santo Tomas and Los Baños —that held largely civilian internees, the women endured horrific conditions.

While suffering themselves and using improvised medicine, the dozen dedicated nurses provided lifesaving care to their beleaguered fellow inmates, including the more than 2,000 Allied POWs held at Los Baños in the war’s later years.

In early 1945 American paratroopers and Filipino guerrillas liberated the exhausted, emaciated nurses.

Repeatedly photographed, Still and the other nurses found brief celebrity. But with little understanding from either military doctors or the public for their collective affliction of posttraumatic stress disorder, they became a forgotten chapter of the war. Recently emerging scholarship, such as Elizabeth Norman’s We Band of Angels (1999), has provided much-needed illumination. Supported by maps, photographs, a chronology, a bibliography and both descriptive footnotes and source endnotes, This Is Really War is well-researched, engagingly written addition to a growing body of important war literature.

—William John Shepherd

Who Really Won the Battle of Marathon?

by Constantinos Lagos and Fotis Karyanos, Pen & Sword Military, Yorkshire, U.K., and Havertown, Pa., 2020, $34.95 In this reappraisal of one of history’s most decisive battles Greek scholars Constantinos Lagos and Fotis Karyanos have done admirable research. Almost a third of the book is taken up by the bibliography and notes, while the illustrations are impressive.

Herodotus devoted only a dozen or so lines to the pivotal events that Septem-

ber 490 bc—after all, he was a cultural rather than military historian. Yet the resulting paucity of firsthand information hardly inhibited subsequent writers from placing their own interpretation on events that day.

The six miles of gently curving shore at Marathon, on the east coast of mainland Greece, is where the Persian fleet landed. As to the Persian army—of which Herodotus only writes the “foot soldiers were many and well supplied”—its size has occasioned much conjecture across the centuries. Authors Lagos and Karyanos suggest

Recommended

Directing the Tunneller’s War

By Nigel Cave This is a memoir of Capt.

Herbert Dixon, an inspector of mines with the Royal Engineers during World War I. It details mining operations, assesses tactical and strategic considerations, and includes anecdotes about the personalities involved in this often grim task. The book includes plans, diagrams and photos, and the odd correction in this rare account rescued from obscurity.

Six-Legged Soldiers

By Jeffrey A. Lockwood A unique chronicle of ingenuity, this book catalogs the insects used by humans as weapons of war and terrorism. Lockwood explores everything from bee bombs and airdrops of plague-infested fleas through covert Cold War operations involving diseasecarrying and crop-eating pests to more recent ecoterrorism threats.

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Reviews Recommended

The Army of Ptolemaic Egypt

By Paul Johstono This book studies the military operations of Ptolemaic Egypt from the 323 bc death of Alexander the Great to the 217 bc Battle of Raphia.

Drawing on ancient sources, including papyri, inscriptions and archaeological finds, Johstono examines soldier classes, equipment, tactics and the Ptolemaic state’s approach to military history.

Jewish Anzacs

By Mark Dapin More than 7,000 Jews have fought in Australia’s military conflicts. Author Dapin takes a personal approach toward chronicling the history of Australian Jews in military service with profiles of generals, air aces, nurses and POWs. The book draws on interviews, letters, diaries and papers to reveal stories of courage.

between 20,000 and 25,000 men, facing a similar number of Athenians and Plataeans.

Thanks to a wealth of new information, it is known the Persians controlled the greater part of the plain, while the Greeks occupied the slopes of Mount Agrieliki.

The mount remains largely untouched, the authors noting that “a visitor is able to go where one of the brightest pages of world history was written 2,500 years ago.”

If the Greeks were to triumph, it was essential they first neutralize the formidable Persian cavalry. This they accomplished by luring the horsemen onto marshland.

Though by late summer the marsh looks to be dry land, the Persian horses churned up the ground, dissipating the charge, before coming under attack by Greek archers. The Persian dead numbered some 6,400, and the Athenian dead just 192.

The legendary runner who carried news of the battle to Athens at the close of that fateful day was most likely named Pheidippides, whom Herodotus mentions only as a “day-runner.” According to Plutarch and Lucian, he spoke the words, “Joy, we win!” and promptly collapsed, his feat later commemorated by the Greek marathon of athletic events.

—David Saunders Inside the U.S. Navy of 1812–1815, by William S. Dudley, Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, Md., 2021, $54.95 Most naval histories of the

War of 1812 stress stirring battles and sanguinary victories won by the young U.S. Navy against Britain’s Royal Navy, the greatest sea power of the day. Inside the U.S. Navy of 1812–1815 instead emphasizes the administrative and logistical challenges faced by the nascent Navy.

Author William S. Dudley examines the roles of Paul Hamilton and William Jones, the successive secretaries of the Navy called on to cope with those challenges.

Given its present-day size, observers may find it difficult to comprehend how miniscule the Navy was in 1812. At the end of the Revolutionary War the Continental Navy ceased to exist. Prior to 1798 there actually was no Navy. Led by Thomas Jefferson, the Democratic-Republicans opposed the very idea of a national navy due both to its expense and the belief that any such organization might threaten the sovereignty of the individual states. By the late 18th century, however, U.S. maritime assets faced hostility both from Barbary pirates and the French Republic, which resented Amer-

ica’s refusal to join hostilities against Britain. In the face of powerful political opposition, President John Adams managed to establish a new fleet under the guidance of Benjamin Stoddart, first secretary of the Navy.

Dudley describes challenges faced by Stoddart and successors in creating the infrastructure of a navy from scratch and in confronting the challenge posed by the Royal Navy at sea and on the Great Lakes. Beyond developing a warfighting strategy, their tasks included the establishment of naval yards; shipbuilding; recruitment, training and retention of both a corps of professional officers and crewmen; the procurement of armament and stores; and provision for medical facilities. Remarkable though the Navy’s exploits may have been during America’s second fight with Britain, Inside the U.S. Navy of 1812–1815 gives overdue appreciation to the achievements behind the service’s very existence.

—Robert Guttman The Bomber Mafia: A Dream, a Temptation and the Longest Night of the Second World War,

by Malcolm Gladwell, Little, Brown and Co., New York, 2021, $27 Departing from his usual path, New York Times bestselling writer Malcolm Gladwell addresses a still heated historical debate: Was Allied carpet bombing during World War II reasonable or criminal? Everyone, gen-

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erals included, hated the mass slaughter of World War I. Airpower had played only a modest role, but technology steadily improved during the interwar period, and by the 1930s military pundits were concluding that bombers—armored, fast and high-flying and thus impervious to fighters— would rain destruction and decide wars.

Warning that The Bomber Mafia “recounts how dreams go awry,” Gladwell focuses on Curtis LeMay and Haywood Hansell, both of whom ultimately became highly influential U.S. Army Air Forces generals. Each attended the Air Corps Tactical School in Montgomery, Ala., where influential faculty members known as the “Bomber Mafia” taught that precision bombing was the wave of the future. That in turn became America’s strategy—and it was unique. Like all Europeans, Adolf Hitler believed indiscriminate bombing would succeed by spreading mass panic. Although that didn’t work during the 1940–41 Blitz, Britain followed the latter strategy throughout the war, and it also didn’t work. A “Bomber Mafia” believer, Hansell sent missions to specifically target German and, later, Japanese industrial targets. Even then analysis revealed terrible accuracy.

Professional contrarian Gladwell is the rare historian who admires LeMay, inspiration for the archetypal cigar-chomping villain of such antiwar films as Doctor Strangelove. A be-

liever in little more than solving problems and smiting the enemy, he rose rapidly in rank in Europe, flew the lead plane on many missions and seemed impervious to fear and doubt.

In October 1944, as Japan came within range of Boeing B-29 Superfortresses flying from the newly conquered Marianas, Hansell’s XXI Bomber Command conducted precision daylight raids. The results disappointed everyone, but foremost Hansell’s superiors, who replaced him with LeMay in January 1945.

LeMay would take the credit, but AAF leaders Henry H. “Hap” Arnold and Lauris Norstad had been suggesting firebombing to a reluctant Hansell. LeMay had no objection, and his early low-level night mission over Tokyo on March 9 and 10, 1945, remains the most destructive raid in history.

Thereafter until the war’s final day his planes razed scores of large and mediumsized Japanese cities, killing some half million civilians.

He also sent the two B-29s armed with atomic bombs, though in his mind the

new weapon wasn’t a game changer but merely part of the campaign.

Mildly controversial at the time, the debate over the morality of America’s indiscriminate bombing has long since become ideologically toxic, as revisionist writers have overlooked or intentionally discarded evidence of its effectiveness.

So did it shorten the war?

Gladwell’s answer is a cheerful “some people think it did.” While readers on either side of the debate will likely squirm, they’ll keep their eyes glued to the page.

—Mike Oppenheim

of foreign societies, fluency in multiple languages and job as a reporter on society news into a full-fledged career as America’s first female spy. Atwood reveals how Harrison’s discretion, quick wits and occasional recklessness made her an effective foreign intelligence agent, albeit one sadly vulnerable to the maneuverings of the Soviet spy network, particularly Russian intelligence chief Solomon Mogilevsky, her archnemesis.

Harrison’s exploits in espionage took on her personal life and relationships with friends and family, especially her son, even as she battled

The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison: America’s First Female Foreign Intelligence Agent, by Elizabeth Atwood, Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Md., 2020, $32.95 During the Gilded Age many upper-class women had yet to enter the working world.

They were largely expected to be useful helpmates, pleasant hostesses and social activists but not to make particularly meaningful contributions to history. Baltimore socialite and gifted linguist Marguerite Harrison—restless, pragmatic and discontented with societal expectations—proved a notable exception.

Elizabeth Atwood’s biography shines a revealing light on Harrison’s fascinating life and career. The author explains how the Baltimorean parleyed her social connections, knowledge

to overcome the distrust of male supervisors.

The Liberation of Marguerite Harrison is a detailed and thorough portrait of a remarkable woman who possessed a zest for foreign intrigue and strong desire to shape historical events. Atwood’s book is a captivating testament to a trailblazer whose accomplishments and name have largely been lost to history but deserve recognition.

— S.L. Hoffman

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Hallowed Ground Goliad, Texas

C

olonel William Barrett Travis watched with increasing trepidation as day by day the Mexican army grew by hundreds and then thousands.

With fewer than 200 men he had been tasked with defending the all-but-indefensible sprawl of low buildings and open ground known as the Alamo. Sensing the hopelessness of his situation, Travis dispatched a stream of desperate letters begging for reinforcements. Several of these he directed to Col. James Walker Fannin Jr., commanding the garrison at Goliad, some 90 miles to the southeast.

An early Spanish mission settlement, Goliad was originally named La Bahía. Both names were then in common usage, though the latter was often mispronounced by Anglo Texians as “Labadie.” Fannin had renamed the presidio “Fort Defiance,” but that name and his garrison would be short-lived.

SAN ANTONIO The 32-year-old former Georgia THE slave trader and West Point dropALAMO out was disliked by his men, one GOLIAD of whom wrote, “He wishes to become great without taking the TE X AS proper steps to attain greatness.”

CORPUS CHRISTI By mid-February 1836 Fannin had taken charge at Goliad. The garrison soon grew to a force of more than 400 regulars and volunteers. On the 26th the colonel set out with 320 of his men and four cannons to relieve the Alamo. He made it scarcely a mile before deciding he was insufficiently provisioned. It would be his only attempt.

Fannin instead resolved to fortify Goliad, reasoning, “As soon as [the Alamo] falls, we will be surrounded by 6,000 infernal Mexicans.” Indeed, after the Alamo fell on March 6, the colonel received word a large Mexican force under Gen. José de Urrea was en route. Texas Army commander Sam Houston ordered Fannin to immediately withdraw to Victoria, but the dithering colonel remained frozen in place.

His own repeated pleas for help unheeded, Fannin finally marched his men from Goliad on March 19. Within hours the Mexican army caught them on an open plain. After a short, sharp engagement Fannin surrendered the next morning. Urrea returned the captives to Goliad, where Fannin sought honorable terms. It was a false hope, as months earlier Mexican dictator Antonio López de Santa Anna had

mandated the execution of all such “pirates” in rebellion against him. When Urrea wrote his commander, seeking clemency for his prisoners, a furious Santa Anna chastised the general and ordered Urrea’s subordinate, Lt. Col. José Nicolás de la Portilla, to carry out his orders.

Portilla spared nearly 100 Texians—tradesmen, translators and doctors who might prove useful to his forces, as well as dozens of newly arrived volunteers captured earlier.

On March 27—Palm Sunday—Mexican infantrymen and lancers formed some 300 captives into three columns and marched them separately out of Goliad, ostensibly to the coast and freedom. But within a mile of the mission the guards in each column lined up their wards and shot them at point-blank range. Any prisoners still moving were bayonetted or impaled on the horsemen’s lances. Twentyeight Texians managed to escape into the roadside brush.

The Mexicans returned to Goliad, where they butchered all 39 of the wounded, including the garrison commander.

Fannin was among the last to die. According to a Texian witness spared for his language skills, Fannin gave the officer of the firing squad coins and his gold watch in exchange for a promise the watch be returned to his family, he be shot in the heart and not the face, and his remains receive a Christian burial. The officer promised, then pocketed the watch and had his men shoot the colonel through the face and roll his body into a ditch atop those of his men.

As at the Alamo, the bodies were later stacked on layers of cordwood and set afire. The bodies were only partially burned, however, and lay exposed to the elements and carrion animals for the next two months. Their bones were ultimately buried with honors in a single unmarked grave.

Goliad lacked two elements essential for it to claim the legendary status of the Alamo. One was the “holy trinity” of Travis, Davy Crockett and Jim Bowie. The other was the fact the Alamo defenders had died fighting, while the men of Goliad had been executed. That said, the Palm Sunday slaughter marked the bloodiest massacre of the Texas Revolution, and the victims’ martyrdom prompted vengeance.

When Houston and his Texians finally rained death on Santa Anna’s forces at San Jacinto, they shouted the battle cry, “Remember the Alamo! Goliad! Labadie!”

The fight and massacre are remembered in the Fannin Memorial Monument, on the site of the mass grave near the Presidio La Bahía. MH

TOP: DONALD M. YENA, FROM BATTLES OF TEXAS; BOTTOM: WITOLD SKRYPCZAK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

By Ron Soodalter

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TOP: DONALD M. YENA, FROM BATTLES OF TEXAS; BOTTOM: WITOLD SKRYPCZAK (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Fannin's troops were marched from Goliad and executed on the orders of Mexican dictator Santa Anna. Below: The Fannin Memorial Monument is near Our Lady of Loreto Chapel at the Presidio La Bahía.

77

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War Games 1

2

4 3 5

Lionel Rees 6

1. Dafydd Gam 2. Thomas Monaghan 3. J ohn Campbell, 1st Baron Cawdor

7

8

4. William Henry Powell 5. Lionel W.B. Rees 6. John (Fielding) Williams 7. Stephen Beattie 8. Hugh Rowlands

9

9. Caradog 10. Richard W.L. Wain

10

____ A. Rorke’s Drift, 1879 ____ B. Saint-Nazaire, 1942 ____ C. Cambrai, 1917 ____ D. Jamo, 1858 ____ E. The Medway, 43 ____ F. Sinking Creek, 1862

Cruising Through World War II Can you identify these heavy cruisers of the combatant nations?

____ G. Agincourt, 1415

____ A. USS San Francisco

____ F. Gorizia

____ H. Fishguard, 1797

____ B. HIJMS Chokai

____ G. HMAS Australia

____ I. Double Crassieurs, Somme, 1916

____ C. USS Houston

____ H HIJMS Haguro

____ D. Admiral Hipper

____ I. HMS Norfolk

____ J. Inkerman, 1854

____ E. Krasny Kavkaz

____ J. HIJMS Mogami Answers: A5, B7, C9, D6, E10, F2, G8, H4, I3, J1

Answers: A6, B7, C10, D2, E9, F4, G1, H3, I5, J8

78 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2021

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WALKER ART LIBRARY (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

Can you match each of the following warriors of Wales to the battle for which he is remembered?

LEFT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; 1: JAPANESE MARITIME SELF-DEFENSE FORCE; 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND (7); 6: BUNDESARCHIV; 10: RUSSIAN NAVY

The Welsh, Know You?

Anglo-Scottish Wars Even before the wars of independence of Braveheart fame the English sought inroads into Scotland.

1. What did Malcolm III do to inspire Scots to regard his late predecessor, Macbeth, as the last true Scottish king?

A. He married an Englishwoman B. He gave his sons non-Gaelic

names

C. Stuart kings claimed him

D. All of the above

as their forebear 2. After the death of Malcolm III near Alnwick in 1093, who did Norman King William II support for the Scottish crown in 1097?

A. Edward B. Duncan II C. Edgar D. Donald

WALKER ART LIBRARY (ALAMY STOCK PHOTO)

3. Who was the last English king to personally lead an invasion of Scotland?

A. Richard II B. Henry IV C. Edward II D. Edward III 4. With which of his English captors did Archibald, 4th Earl of Douglas, ally in 1403?

A. Sir Henry Percy B. Owain Glyndwr C. Henry IV D. Henry, Prince of Wales

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John J. Pershing, Jeb Stuart, Adna R. Chafee Jr., Walton Walker, or Stonewall Jackson?

For more, visit WWW.HISTORYNET.COM/ MAGAZINES/QUIZ

HISTORYNET.com ANSWER: STONEWALL JACKSON. THE M46 PATTON WAS ONE OF THE U.S ARMY’S PRINCIPAL MEDIUM TANKS OF THE EARLY COLD WAR, WITH MODELS IN SERVICE FROM 1949 UNTIL THE MID-1950s.

Answers: 1D, 2C, 3B, 4A

LEFT: IMPERIAL WAR MUSEUMS; 1: JAPANESE MARITIME SELF-DEFENSE FORCE; 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 9: NAVAL HISTORY AND HERITAGE COMMAND (7); 6: BUNDESARCHIV; 10: RUSSIAN NAVY

Battle of Flodden

THE M SERIES PATTON TANKS ARE NAMED FOR GENERAL GEORGE S. PATTON. WHICH OF THE FOLLOWING GENERALS NEVER HAD A TANK NAMED IN HIS HONOR?

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Captured!

With Britain under threat of German invasion in the summer of 1940, the government of His Majesty George VI ordered Kent and other coastal counties to remove road signs and other identifying markers that might have aided enemy troops attempting to move inland from landing beaches and drop zones.

VAL DOONE (GETTY IMAGES)

Roads to Nowhere 80 MILITARY HISTORY JULY 2021

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STUDY WORLD WAR II WITH WORLD-CLASS SCHOLARS Learn Online and on Your Own Time

The National WWII Museum and Arizona State University have launched new online education programs focused on the most significant event of the 20th century.

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