Soviet POWS in Auschwitz-Birkenau

Although there were a large number of Nazi concentration camps, the one that since World War II has come to represent them all and act as a symbol of the atrocity of the Holocaust is Auschwitz-Birkenau, whose remains continue to be visited by many thousands of tourists every year. Situated just outside the Polish town of Oswiecim, near Krakow, Auschwitz-Birkenau is also the largest mass murder site documented anywhere in history. Established first in May 1940 on territory occupied by Germany at the onset of World War II, Auschwitz soon emerged as the central killing center for Jews murdered by National Socialism and its allies. In less than five years some 1.1 million victims perished, overwhelmingly Jews, but also 75,000 Poles, 25,000 Roma and Sinti travelers, 15,000 Soviet POWs, and thousands of others—including many clergy and other persons opposed to Nazism on conscientious grounds. Its sheer size, slave labor facilities, and its bureaucratic management of genocide have made Auschwitz a central—often exemplary—part of the Holocaust story.

Finally, Nazi population policy— especially following the invasion of the USSR in June 1941—grew more intense and ambitious toward “undesirable elements.” By the summer of 1941, Russian prisoners quickly outnumbered surviving Polish workers at Auschwitz, receiving even worse treatment and being worked to death at even greater rates: of nearly 12,000 laborers, only 150 Russian POWs survived their first year building Auschwitz. In a related development for “solving” Nazism’s “demographic problems,” Russian POWs were also the first group gassed by the pesticide Zyklon-B, in September 1941, at the initiative of Höss’s deputy, Karl Fritsch, in the infamous punishment cells of Block 11. Previous attempts at mass murder by the Third Reich through shooting, explosives, injections, and carbon monoxide tanks and engine fumes were all superseded by the efficiency and availability of Fritsch’s successful experiment with Zyklon-B.


Ship Development II


Northern and western Europe

The archaeological evidence indicates that from at least as early as the second millennium BC seagoing ships were making their way between the coasts of northern and western Europe, carrying people and goods over long distances. We have already noticed the importance of skin or hide boats in colder waters and it is clear from several Classical Roman writers that this type of vessel was considered highly suitable for the mariners of France, Ireland and the British mainland. A framework of relatively slender timbers with hides stretched over it was also very light in weight, which was another useful feature for mariners who would often need to carry their craft over considerable distances and also be in need of extra buoyancy. Both sails and oars were used for propulsion, but very large oared galleys of the Mediterranean type were employed by the Romans only when their naval forces operated in northern waters.

Early medieval seafarers in north-western Europe and Scandinavia used the virtually double-ended vessels with upswept prow and stern characteristic of many later medieval craft. These features enabled the ships to be beached and launched easily and were useful when running before the wind, which seems to have been a favoured sailing technique. The building method was usually shell-first and consisted of light, overlapping planks, laid clinker-fashion, fastened to the keel by lashing, strengthened by strakes and attached to each other by iron clenches. By the ninth century ad Nordic shipwrights had developed a vessel type with a fairly broad keel that relied mainly on a single square sail for propulsion, with the oars being an auxiliary power source for use in calm weather or inland waterways. The typical Viking raiders’ ship was a buoyant, fast sailing vessel that needed very little depth of water and few or no docking facilities.

Ship designs were adapted to suit the needs of the communities that used them. The Norwegian and Danish vessels that crossed the North Sea and the Atlantic were generally smaller than the Swedish ones that operated in the Baltic, sacrificing carrying capacity for seaworthiness in the harshest of conditions. By the thirteenth century the Scandinavians and their Germanic neighbours were using bulkier, less elongated ships for trade and even military activity. There were two predominant types, the hulk, or hulc, a word which originally seems to have meant something hollowed out like a peapod and was characteristically banana-shaped, with a curving hull, high prow and stern, but little or no sternpost or stempost. Side rudders were commonly used for steering. A good depiction of this type can be seen on the fourteenth-century seal of Winchelsea. The hulk may have originated in the Low Countries, but it spread to England and across northern Europe and was the most common cargo vessel of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The other was the cog, probably of Frisian origin, and distinguished by its angled prow and stern, flat bottom and high sides. The cog was the preferred vessel of the Hanseatic traders in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Both had a main square sail on a mast fitted amidships. Gradually larger sails and more masts were added. Stern-castles and fore-castles were used on both merchant and naval ships. One reason for the development of the hulk and the cog may be that harbour duties and maritime taxes encouraged merchants to use fewer, larger ships. Another reason may be the adoption of the centrally mounted stern rudder, gradually introduced to northern Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which could be more easily incorporated in these types of ships. It has also been argued that high-sided sailing ships were more difficult for pirates to attack. By the sixteenth century, however, three-masted ocean-going vessels based on a sturdier, more flexible skeleton-first form of ship construction began to replace these earlier types.

The ships that launched European seafarers across the oceans of the world in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries represent a combination of design and construction elements from the maritime traditions of the Mediterranean, the Indian Ocean and northern Europe. The caravels that were the favoured ships of the Portuguese in the fifteenth century had blunt, transom-built sterns with large rudders. They were carvel-built, that is with the planks joined edge-to- edge, rather than overlapping in the northern style. They could carry both square and lateen rigged sails, as Vasco da Gama’s fleet did in his epic voyage to India, using the former style in the Atlantic, but converting to the latter style in the Indian Ocean.

Over the next few centuries the main developments in European shipping were in terms of size and speed. Sailing ships were made larger and sleeker, and were rigged with more masts and sails to use the available winds as effectively as possible. Displacements of a few hundred tons were typical of the ships of the late sixteenth century, but in later centuries ships displacing a thousand tons or more were built. Bulk cargoes, carried over long distances in large, fast ships also required protection. The Spanish, needing to transport the wealth of the New World in large amounts and securely, developed the most celebrated ship of the sixteenth century, the galleon, a long, single- or double-decked, ocean-going ship with sharply raised foredeck and quarter-deck and a hull pierced with ports for heavy guns. It was the increasing number of guns on the European warships of the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that were to make them particularly effective against the ships and coastal fortifications of the Orient. The Chinese, for example, had long used artillery in warfare, but they did not employ large guns on their ships.


Ship Development I


Mediterranean and Indian Ocean regions

Strong metal tools, initially made of bronze, were obviously a major element in the development of shipping technology. They were available in central Europe by the early fourth millennium bc and were introduced into the Mediterranean and Near East probably a little later. By the latter part of the third millennium BC wooden ships large enough to carry cattle were being used to ferry animals between the mainland and Cyprus. Oars and paddles were the methods of propulsion employed by the earliest seafarers, but by the end of the fourth millennium BC the sail was being used in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Indian Ocean. We cannot say where or when it was first developed, although it seems likely that there were several, roughly simultaneous ‘inventions’ of the sail in these regions. The idea of attaching a broad wind-trap to a post or pole, fixed to the body of a ship, in order to use the wind to propel the vessel is taken so much for granted nowadays that we can easily overlook how ingenious and bold the concept must have seemed to those who saw it for the first time. The sailing ship is one of humankind’s great technical innovations, to be ranked alongside the potter’s wheel or the printing press in the history of civilization. Wooden sailing ships were to be the preferred means of maritime transport in the Mediterranean and adjacent regions for nearly two thousand years.

By the middle of the first millennium BC the two main methods of propulsion, sail and oars, were in widespread use across the Mediterranean region and beyond. Ship designs had begun to specialize according to function. The typical seagoing vessel of the first millennium ad might use oars or sails or both. There were many variations in the size, the depth, breadth and length of its hull, according to the needs of the ship’s owner. The long, multi-level oared warship with a ram on its prow, best exemplified by the celebrated trireme and quinquereme, is the type of vessel most readily associated with ancient seafarers. Yet these impressive-looking galleys with their huge crews of oarsmen were only for naval use. Less elegant, shorter, more rounded ships with a greater cargo capacity would have been commonplace in the harbours of the Mediterranean, the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf. Warships were far less specialized outside the Mediterranean, where rougher seas and stronger winds made the oared galley less effective and where naval activity was less regular.

The number of masts and the types of sails used by ancient mariners varied considerably, as did the techniques of building, rigging and sailing seagoing ships. By the third century AD the square sail was being gradually supplanted by the triangular, lateen sail, which, together with multiple oars, offered considerable advantages in the relatively calm conditions of the Mediterranean. A major advantage of the lateen sail is that it can be cut much larger and baggier than a square-cut sail, and thus it will catch and use the wind more efficiently, especially when sailing to windward. Exploitation of the monsoon winds, which was widespread from c.600 BC onwards, led to much larger, sturdier sailing vessels in the Arabian Sea and Indian Ocean. From an early stage, therefore, the shipbuilders of the Arabian Sea produced sewn plank boats with lateen rigged sails. These were the ancestors of the dhow, a term used by Europeans for a range of sailing vessels. Looking further afield it is not surprising that light, bamboo and timber craft with outriggers were very popular in South-east Asia, especially for use in shallow seas and among the islands.

In these seas and elsewhere experiments with sailing rig, steering methods and other aspects of seafaring gradually produced a diversity of ships built and sailed according to the dictates of local conditions. In general terms the factors influencing maritime ship design were similar throughout the world. They include the range of locally available materials, cargo sizes and weights, costs of crews (important for both merchant and naval requirements), the typical strengths of winds and currents and the depths of coastal waters. The interplay of these factors was complex. For example, larger cargo ships were produced where the cargoes were usually in bulk (e.g. timber, cloth, grain and cheaper metals), whereas smaller vessels might be favoured for luxury or high value cargoes (e.g. gold and ivory). But very large cargo ships were not common until more recent times, partly because individual merchants or ship owners lacked the resources and capital to produce them and run them effectively. Only the very rich or the ruling elites could afford to use them. A compromise was often sought in terms of mixing bulkier and smaller cargoes so that the typical merchant ship or trading vessel of the pre-industrial era was of a modest size and crew.


Walther Model P38


Walther’s growing success in the late 1920s and early 1930s coincided with the rise of the Nazi Party and Germany’s rapid remilitarization. In defiance of the restrictions imposed by the Versailles Treaty, the German military aggressively sought to modernize its arsenal and began to reassess the weapons then in use. It soon became apparent that its standard P08 Lugers were overly complicated for efficient manufacture and needed to be replaced by a more modern pistol that could be produced more rapidly with less machining time. Mauser attempted to develop a prototype to replace the Luger, but Walther firmly dominated German pistol development and ultimately won the competition to design the German military’s new standard pistol: the Model P38.

The firm’s greatest obstacle in designing a new pistol lay in the necessity of chambering it for the powerful 9mm Parabellum German service cartridge. Walther initially repeated its earlier mistake with its World War I Model 6 in that it simply enlarged an existing blowback design—in this case the Model PP—to accept the 9mm Parabellum cartridge. At 8 inches in overall length with a 5-inch barrel, the new pistol, the Militärische Pistole (Model MP) shared the Model PP’s sleek lines and had fine handling characteristics. Predictably, however, its inherently weak mechanism failed under the pressures generated by the 9mm Parabellum, and Walther was forced to abandon the project.

In 1935 a design team consisting of Fritz, Eric, and Georg Walther and Fritz Barthlemens began work on a new pistol specifically engineered to accommodate high-pressure military cartridges (Ezell 1981: 425). Their combined talents at last culminated in 1937 with a prototype of a strikingly new design Walther christened the Armee Pistole (Model AP). The Model AP retained the doubleaction capability of Walther’s earlier pistols but abandoned the fixed-barrel blowback design in favor of an innovative recoiloperated locking mechanism. Rather than being rigidly fixed to the frame, the barrel assembly of the Model AP was a separate component that rode within grooves cut into the slide that, in turn, followed tracks in the frame.

The key to the mechanism was a pivoting block that was positioned under the barrel assembly and locked it to the slide when the action was closed. The force of the cartridge’s ignition forced the locked barrel and slide backward to a point where the locking block disengaged and allowed the slide to continue on its own in its rearward movement. This movement ejected the spent cartridge case and cocked the weapon’s internal hammer. The return movement of the slide stripped a new cartridge from the magazine and was aided by two small recoil springs located within either side of the frame. German ordnance officers found only one significant fault with the Model AP: its lack of an external hammer. The army had come to the conclusion that an exposed hammer held the twin advantages of allowing the pistol to be thumb-cocked for single-action shooting and indicated the pistol’s cocked status. The army’s comments prompted Walther to discontinue the short-lived Model AP and rework its basic design to provide the exposed hammer.

The result of these final modifications was known as the Heeres Pistole (Service Pistol; Model HP), indicating its intended use by the military. Walther fabricated a small number of experimental models in calibers 7.65mm Parabellum (.30 Luger), Super .38, and even .45 ACP. The standard Model HP was, however, chambered for the 9mm Parabellum as specified by the German military. Although somewhat light at the muzzle, the Model HP handled well and proved accurate and reliable. It was 8.6 inches in overall length with a 4.9-inch barrel and weighed 2.1 pounds. The metal finish was a high-quality blue, and the pistol was fitted with checkered walnut or plastic grips. It was fed by an eight-round box magazine released by a catch at the base of the grip. Muzzle velocity was slightly higher than the P08 at 1,115 fps. Walther offered the Model HP to the civilian and international military markets and submitted it to the German military for final trials. After Walther added further minor changes to the safety, firing pin, and extractor, Germany at last adopted the new pistol as the Model P38. For its part, the Model HP lived on into 1944 on a limited scale as Walther continued to manufacture the pistol as a high-quality civilian alternative to the P38. Sweden also adopted the pistol as its P39, but with the advent of World War II exports ceased abruptly, with only some 1,500 pistols being delivered.

Walther designed the P38 to be manufactured with a strict economy of time and machine tooling, utilizing as many stamped (rather than machined) steel components as possible. Although the P38 incorporated slightly more parts, it could thus be manufactured in half the time of the P08 with half of the machines of the older pistol. The P38 also required less-skilled workers on its production lines—a considerable advantage during wartime. The manufacturing innovations alone mark the P38 as a much more modern weapon than the vast majority of its contemporaries. Although many production records were destroyed during the war, reliable estimates hold that something over 1 million P38s were manufactured during World War II for military and police use.

Walther began manufacturing the P38 in 1939. Unlike the checkered walnut grips of the Model HP, most wartime P38s were fitted with horizontally grooved brown composition or black plastic grips. The left side of the slides of early pistols was stamped with the Walther commercial banner trademark “P38” and the pistol’s serial number. The German Heereswaffenamt (Service Arms Office), however, had previously initiated a coding system for its various arms manufacturers. The purpose of this system at first was to confuse Versailles Treaty inspectors and, later, Allied intelligence agents. Walther thus replaced its trademark in 1940 with the code “480” and later in the year switched to the code “AC,” the code it maintained until 1945, when the code changed to “SVW.” Dates of manufacture were indicated by the last two digits of the year. The small Heereswaffenamt inspector proof, consisting of an eagle and swastika over the number “359,” was also applied to various parts of Walther-manufactured pistols.

As World War II intensified, the Nazi war machine’s demand for Model P38s outstripped Walther’s manufacturing capabilities. The situation soon prompted the Heereswaffenamt to press other firms to manufacture complete pistols as well as various components. Mauser phased out its production of the P08 to begin producing the P38 in late 1941 and was joined in spring 1943 by Spreewerk Gmbh of Berlin. The Heereswaffenamt inspection proof for Mauser was the eagle and swastika over “135.” The slides of Mauser manufactured P38s were stamped “P38,” with the serial number, the company’s wartime “BYF” code, and the last two numbers of the date of manufacture. In 1945 Mauser’s code changed to “SVW.” Spreewerk pistols were undated but were stamped with that company’s “CYQ” code, a serial number, and the eagle and swastika over various “88,” “706,” and “359” Heereswaffenamt proofs. At some point late in the war Spreewerk’s code-stamping die was damaged, and many later pistols by the company appear to be stamped “CYA.” As with other types of German pistols, P38s intended for police use were stamped with a small eagle over the “F” proof mark.

The Heereswaffenamt also farmed out the manufacture of various P38 parts to domestic and captured arms facilities for assembly at main production centers. These included slides and frames by the Fabrique Nationale (FN) plant in Belgium and barrels by Böhmische Waffenfabrik of Prague. Another Czech firm, Erste Nordböhmische Waffenfabrik, manufactured large numbers of magazines stamped with the “JVD” code.

Spreewerk pistols were markedly cruder than their Walther and Mauser counterparts, in large part owing to the use by that company of slave labor. For the most part they were serviceable, although numbers of defective weapons did leave the factory—either the products of incompetent workmanship or possible sabotage by the forced workers. The vast majority of wartime Walther and Mauser P38s were mechanically excellent, but their external finish deteriorated to varying degrees as the war progressed. Early-war pistols were finished in a military dull blue over relatively well-polished metal. Later pistols exhibit noticeable machine-tooling marks on their outer surfaces and a thinner blued finish. As the war entered its final months Mauser began to use a cheaper and more durable matte-gray phosphate finish. Sometimes known as Gray Ghosts for their coloring, Mauser’s later, phosphate-finished “SVW” pistols were often fitted with metal ersatz grips rather than the usual brown composition or black plastic panels. Late war pistols were also often assembled with mixed parts of both blue and phosphate finishes.

The quality of P38 holsters also reflected Germany’s declining wartime fortunes. Early holsters completely enclosed the pistol and were of high-quality, heavy, molded black leather similar to the P08. These were followed by a more typical break-open style that was easier to manufacture and allows faster access to the pistol. A small number of paper composition holsters appeared very late in the war, revealing the desperate, although ingenious, measures forced upon the Reich’s armaments industry. The typical Nazi P38 holster was stamped with its manufacturer’s code and the eagle and swastika Heereswaffenamt proof and was fitted with a slot for a spare magazine.

The heavy fighting at the end of World War II wrecked the P38 manufacturing centers yet did not end the pistol’s production. The Walther factory was initially occupied by U.S. forces but was soon turned over to the Soviets, who stripped the factory of most of its machinery. French forces occupied the Mauser factory long enough to assemble a number of types of weapons manufactured there. French-assembled P38s were put together from parts left over at the war’s end and bear a five-pointed star proof stamp. They were also typically phosphate-finished with either black plastic or steel grips and retain the Nazi “SVW” slide markings and “45” date. Those pistols assembled the next year were stamped “46.” The site of the Mauser factory eventually became part of the Soviet occupation zone, and its moveable machinery, as was Spreewerk’s, was removed by the Russians and shipped east. Numbers of the French-assembled P38s saw service in that country’s actions in Southeast Asia and Algeria.


Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, (451)


This map shows the general routes taken by Attila’s forces as they invaded Gaul, and shows the major cities that were sacked or threatened by the Huns and allied troops.


Course of the battle

Major battle in June 451 between Attila the Hun and his Hunnish and allied armies against the Roman imperial forces and their allies, led by the great general Aëtius. Although it is traditionally known at the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains or Battle of Châlons, J. B. Bury has argued that because of the battlefield’s proximity to Troyes it should be known as the Battle of Troyes. Whatever the name should be, the battle was the most important of several that Attila fought as part of his invasion of the Western Empire in the early 450s. Although the battle ended in a draw, Attila himself was on the verge of suicide during the fighting and survived only because Aëtius allowed him to escape.

The battle itself was part of Attila’s campaign in the Western Empire after several years harassing the Eastern Empire and extracting significant wealth and political concessions from Constantinople. The invasion of 451 may have been brought on by the emperor’s sister, Honoria, who, like her aunt Galla Placidia, may have offered her hand in marriage to the barbarian king. Attila’s demands for Honoria and other things were rejected, and therefore he invaded Gaul, seizing Metz, Rheims, and numerous other cities before being repulsed at the important city of Orléans. Despite that setback, Attila caused great destruction and bloodshed and threatened Visigothic power in Gaul. The Goths were compelled to assist the imperial armies in defense of Gaul because of the ferocity of Attila’s assault.

After leaving Orléans, Attila moved toward Troyes, where he met the imperial armies of Aëtius, which included Alans, Bretons, Franks, Burgundians, and Visigoths. Attila’s army was also made up of peoples of numerous nations, including his own Huns, Alans, Franks, Gepids, Heruls, and Ostrogoths. On the eve of the battle, Attila consulted a priest who examined bones of a sheep. The priest proclaimed that the Huns would lose the battle but that a great enemy leader would fall; Attila desired the death of the leader and therefore risked battle. On the day of the battle, Attila arranged his Huns in the center of his lines and the subject peoples on both flanks. On the opposite side, Aëtius, with his Romans, commanded the left flank; Theodoric commanded his Visigoths on the right flank; and the center was held by the Alans. After major skirmishing on the previous night, the battle began at three o’clock in the afternoon and went on into the evening.

It was a ferocious battle, which, according to one contemporary, ended with 165,000 dead, including the Visigothic king Theodoric. The battle went so badly for Attila that he fortified himself in a circle of wagons, preparing for the final assault that would have left him dead from battle or from suicide. But the Roman commander, Aëtius, recognized the value of having Attila’s Huns as a legitimate threat to other barbarian peoples in order to preserve the balance of power. Consequently, Attila was allowed to withdraw from the battlefield without being annihilated by the armies of Aëtius. Although the battle ended technically as a draw, Aëtius could claim victory because he stopped Attila’s advance and killed a large number of his enemy’s troops.

The battle was a major setback for Attila, who was forced to withdraw from his invasion following the contest on the Catalaunian Plains. Although he again invaded Italy in the following year, Attila’s aura of invincibility was damaged and his army seriously depleted by the near disaster on the battlefield between Châlons and Troyes. Although the importance of the battle is overstated when it is described as one of the great battles of history, it was an important moment in late imperial history because Attila’s virtual defeat left him much less of a threat to the Roman empire. Never a serious threat to the life of the empire, Attila nonetheless demanded significant tribute from the empire, and anything that weakened his challenge was a benefit to the emperors.


Bury, John B. History of the Later Roman Empire: From the Death of Theodosius I to the Death of Justinian. Vol. 1. 1923. Reprint, New York: Dover, 1959.

———. The Invasions of Europe by the Barbarians. New York and London: W. W. Norton, 1967.

Randers-Pehrson, Justine Davis. Barbarians and Romans: The Birth Struggle of Europe, a.d. 400–700. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1983.

Thompson, Edward A. A History of Attila and the Huns. Oxford: Clarendon, 1948.

———. The Huns. Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

Wolfram, Herwig. The Roman Empire and Its Germanic Peoples. Trans. Thomas J. Dunlap. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997.



An important town and castle on the Anglo-Scottish border, Berwick served as a base for Lancastrian and Scottish raids into northern England in the 1460s, and remained a complicating factor in Anglo-Scottish relations throughout the WARS OF THE ROSES. After the capture of HENRYVI at the Battle of NORTHAMPTON in July 1460, Queen MARGARET OF ANJOU and her son Prince EDWARD OF LANCASTER fled into SCOTLAND, where they were honorably received by the regency government of young JAMES III. In January 1461, after negotiations with Queen MARY OF GUELDRES, mother of the Scottish king and leader of his regency council, Margaret agreed to surrender Berwick to the Scots in return for Scottish military assistance against the Yorkists. The agreement was to be sealed by a marriage between the Prince of Wales and Mary, the sister of James III. Although the Yorkist victory at the Battle of TOWTON in March 1461 won the throne for EDWARD IV, the north of England remained loyal to Henry VI, and Edward was unable to prevent the Lancastrian surrender of Berwick to the Scots on 25 April 1461.

The loss of Berwick infuriated Edward IV, but he could do little about it beyond using Margaret’s surrender of an English town as a PROPAGANDA weapon against the Lancastrians. Prince Edward’s marriage to the Scottish princess never occurred, but a Scottish-held Berwick became an ideal staging point for repeated Lancastrian and Scottish military efforts, which kept northern England unsettled for most of the 1460s. Although the Lancastrian threat to the region ended with Edward IV’s restoration in 1471, continued Scottish possession of Berwick irritated the Yorkist government, and Anglo-Scottish relations remained poor.

Having unsuccessfully besieged Berwick since the previous year, Edward IV concluded the Treaty of Fotheringhay with Alexander, duke of Albany, estranged brother of James III, in June 1482. In return for the surrender of Berwick and certain other concessions, Edward IV agreed to support Albany’s claim to his brother’s throne. In fulfillment of the treaty, Richard, duke of Gloucester, led a large army northward in July. The town of Berwick capitulated immediately, but the castle held out. Gloucester then invaded Scotland, where the political opposition to James III prevented any real resistance and allowed the duke to enter Edinburgh on 1 August. With no help coming from the Scottish king, the Berwick garrison surrendered the castle to Gloucester on 24 August 1482. After twenty-one years in Scottish hands, Berwick was once again an English town.

Further Reading: Haigh, Philip A., The Military Campaigns of the Wars of the Roses (Stroud, Gloucestershire, UK: Sutton Publishing, 1995); Macdougall, Norman, James III: A Political Study (Edinburgh: J. Donald, 1982); Nicholson, Ranald, Scotland: The Later Middle Ages, vol. 2 of The Edinburgh History of Scotland (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1974); Ross, Charles, Richard III (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981).


BOOK: The Battle of Nibley Green


In 1470 the heirs of the 5th Baron Berkeley (Thomas Talbot and William Berkeley) fought on Nibley Green (on the edges of Nibley House Farm), for the considerable inheritance of Berkeley Castle.
It had been Talbot’s challenge, with the rule that they could only fight with soldiers created from their own tenants (Tweedledee and Tweedledum are coming strongly to mind), but Berkeley cheated by immediately employing a great many expert archers from the Forest of Dean. He, not surprisingly, won, and proceeded to sack Talbot’s manor in Wotton-under-edge.






Jet aircraft and jet engine development became a priority task for the Soviet aircraft industry after the war. Huge resources were committed to this task; still, all the money in the world can’t buy you time, and the research and development effort was certainly going to be a lengthy one, which meant the service entry of the first Soviet jets would occur rather later than desired. Therefore, to speed up the work the Soviet government chose to make use of Germany’s experience in this field.

In 1945 the Soviet Union came into possession of many materials pertaining to jet aircraft development. The rich war booty included complete aircraft and jet engines. Many of these aircraft underwent rigorous testing at the Red Banner State Research Institute of the Soviet Air Force (GK Nil VVS-Gosoodarstvennyy krasnoznamyonnyy naooch-no-issledovatel’skiy institoot Voyennovozdooshnykh sil) and the Flight Research Institute (LII – Lyotno-issledovatel’skiy institoot); they were also carefully studied at the Central Aero-&Hydrodynamics Institute named after Nikolay Yeo Zhukovskiy (TsAGI-Tsentrahl’nyy aero- i ghidrodinamicheskiy institoot). The detailed reports filed after these tests and examinations were circulated to various organizations within the NKAP framework, including design bureaux. The same procedure applied to the captured engines. The Junkers Jumo 004B and BMW 003A turbojets rated at 900 kgp (1,984 lb st) and 800 kgp (1 ,763 lb st) respectively were of special interest to the Soviet engineers because they had reached production status; therefore, it was decided to urgently launch production of these engines in the USSR.

On 28th April 1945 the People’s Commissar of Aircraft Industry issued an order to the effect that Chief Designer Vladimir Yakovlevich Klimov, whose engine design bureau had been evacuated from Rybinsk (Yaroslavl’ Region) to Ufa during the war, should prepare a set of detail drawings of the Jumo 004B, whereupon the reverse-engineered turbojet was to enter production at the Ufa aero-engine factory No. 26 as the RD-10. Klimov’s closest aide Nikolay D. Kuznetsov was put in charge of the actual copying job. Another NKAP order issued on 13th June 1945 tasked Chief Designer of the Kazan’ aero-engine factory No. 16 Kolosov with similarly copying the BMW 003A and launching production of this engine as the RD-20. The decision to build the RD-10 and RD-20 was confirmed by the State Defence Committee’s directive of 20th July 1945 titled ‘On studying and mastering production of German jet aircraft designs’. Production of both models got underway in 1946.

Still, despite the high priority attached in the immediate post-war months to copying and producing the German engines, it was clear that progress in the field of Soviet engine design could only be attained by relying on own resources and indigenous models.

Back in the autumn of 1944 Lyul’ka’s design team had begun testing the S-18 turbojet, a further development of the pre-war RD-1; the S stood for stendovyy, meaning that the Soviet Union’s first operational jet engine was intended for bench trials and was not yet flight-cleared. At this stage the designers had their first acquaintance with engine surge at high rpm; the surge was bad enough to wreck the engine completely. Still, changes introduced into the design cured the problem and the S-18 successfully completed its trials. The latter included comparative tests with the Jumo 004B, showing that the Soviet engine had not only higher thrust (1 ,250 kgp/2,755 lb st) but a lower dry weight and specific fuel consumption. These encouraging results led to the decision to develop a flight-cleared version designated TR-1 (toorboreaktivnyy [dvigate!'] – turbojet engine) and manufacture a small trials batch. To this end a new design bureau, OKB-165, was established, with Arkhip M. Lyul’ka as Chief Designer.

On 2nd April 19461. V. Stalin, Chairman of the Council of People’s Commissars, held a briefing on the prospects of Soviet aviation, including jet aircraft development. One of the items on the agenda was the possibility of copying the Messerschmitt Me 262A-1 a fighter, an example of which had been evaluated by GK Nil VVS in August-November 1945, and putting it into production at one of the Soviet aircraft factories. In its day the Me 262 had an impressive top speed of 850 km/h (459 kts) , heavy armament comprising four 30-mm (1.18 calibre) cannons and was generally well designed. However, the idea was rejected for various reasons.

By then several Soviet design bureaux had a number of high-speed aircraft projects in the making; many of them fell for the ‘German’ layout with two turbojet engines under or on the wings ala Me 262 (which, incidentally, was also employed by the British Gloster Meteor). For instance, Pavel O. Sukhoi’s OKB used it for the izdeliye K fighter, the Mikoyan OKB developed a Me 262 look-alike designated 1-260, while the Lavochkin OKB came up with the ’160′ fighter (the first fighter to have this designation) and the Alekseyev OKB with the 1-21 designed along similar lines. A notable exception was the Yakovlev OKB because A. S. Yakovlev cordially disliked heavy fighters, preferring lightweight single-engined machines. (Later Yakovlev did resort to the twin-engined layout, but that was in the early 1950s when the Yakovlev OKB brought out the Yak-120 (Yak-25) twinjet interceptor.)

As an insurance policy in case one OKB failed to achieve the desired results, the Soviet government usually issued a general operational requirement (GOR) for a new aircraft to several design bureaux at once in a single Council of People’s Commissars (or Council of Ministers) directive. This was followed by an NKAP (or MAP, Ministerstvo aviatsionnoy promyshlennosti – Ministry of Aircraft Industry) order to the same effect. This was also the case with the new jet fighters. Initially all the above mentioned OKBs designed their fighters around Soviet copies of the Jumo 004B or BMW 003A engines; later the more promising indigenous TR-1 came into the picture.

It should be noted that in the early postwar years the Soviet defence industry enterprises continued to operate pretty much in wartime conditions, working like scalded cats. In particular, the Powers That Be imposed extremely tight development and production schedules on the design bureaux and production factories tasked with developing and manufacturing new military hardware. The schedules were closely monitored not only by the ministry to which the respective OKB or factory belonged but also by the notorious KGB. ‘Missing the train’ could mean swift and severe reprisal not only for the OKB head and actual project leaders but also for high-ranking statesmen who had responsibility for the programme. Nevertheless, even though the commencement of large-scale R&D on jet aircraft had been ordered as far back as May 1944, no breakthrough had been achieved by early 1946. For instance, the aircraft industry failed to comply with the orders to build pre-production batches of jet fighters in time for the traditional August flypast held at Moscow’s Tushino airfield; only two jets, the MiG-9 and Yak-15, participated in the flypast on that occasion. This was all the more aggravating because jet fighters had been in production in Great Britain since 1944 and in the USA since early 1945. Unfortunately the Soviet aero-engine factories encountered major difficulties when mastering production of jet engines; hence in early 1946 jet engines were produced in extremely limited numbers, suffering from low reliability and having a time between overhauls (TBO) of only 25 hours.

As was customary in the Soviet Union in those days, someone had to pay for this, and scapegoats were quickly found. In February-March 1946 People’s Commissar of Aircraft Industry A. I. Shakhoorin, Soviet Air Force C-in-C Air Marshal A. A. Novikov, the Air Force’s Chief Engineer A. K. Repin and Main Acquisitions Department chief N. P. Seleznyov and many others were removed from office, arrested and mostly executed.

The early post-war years presaged the Cold War era, and the Soviet leaders attached considerable importance not only to promoting the nation’s scientific, technological and military achievements but also to flexing the Soviet Union’s military muscles for the world to see. This explains why the government was so eager to see new types displayed at Tushino, regardless of the fact that some of the aircraft had not yet completed their trials – or, worse, did not meet the Air Force’s requirements. Thus, the grand show at Tushino on 3rd August 1947 featured a whole formation of jet fighter prototypes: the Yak-19, the Yak15U, the Yak-23, three Lavochkin designs the ’150′, the ’156′ and the ’160′, plus the MiG9, the Su-9 and the Su-11 .

Sometimes the initial production aircraft selected for the flypast lacked armament or important equipment items. This was not considered important; the world had to see the new aircraft at all costs. Behold the achievements of socialism! Feel the power of the Soviet war machine! Fear ye! Still, despite this air of ostentation, the achievements and the power were there beyond all doubt; the Soviet Union’s progress in aircraft and aero engine technologies was indeed impressive, especially considering the ravages of the four-year war. It just happened that, because of urgent need, some things which could not be developed in-country quickly enough had to be copied; and copied they were – and with reasonably high quality at that.

Thus by the end of the 1940s the Soviet Union had not only caught up with the West as far as jet aviation was concerned but gained a lead in certain areas. The first Soviet jet fighters dealt with in this post were instrumental in reaching this goal.


British Rocket Fighter Part I

Avro 720 mixed power interceptor

In 1945 the R.A.F. and U.S.A.F. had indisputably the world’s most powerful strategic bomber fleet, yet they were on the point of becoming obsolete, and the factor that was driving them obsolete was the jet fighter. The increase in performance that the jet engine gave to interceptors rendered the likes of the Lancaster and its derivatives hopelessly vulnerable. If airborne radar and guided weapons are added to the armoury of the fighter, the balance tilts even further away from the bomber.

One answer, of course, was to build jet powered bombers. The Air Ministry had been aware of this for some time, and before the war had ended, had issued the Operational Requirements that would lead eventually to the V bombers, which were probably, apart from the development of atomic weapons, the major part of the post war defence programme. Similarly, the Americans, while having pushed their propeller driven designs as far as feasible, were also busy designing jet bombers in the 1950s, culminating in the B52, still in service.

In post war Europe, the strategic focus for the Western Allies switched very rapidly from Germany to Soviet Russia. The Soviet Air Force was also a formidable fighting machine, although it had evolved along lines more tactical than strategic. It had on the drawing board, some impressive interceptor aircraft such as the MiG 15.

The first rocket powered interceptor of all was the German Me 163, which was used in the latter stages of the War against the high flying daylight bombing raids by American B17s. They were small and simple, using a wheeled trolley for take off, and a skid for landing. Their endurance was extremely limited, but they had by the standards of the time a phenomenal rate of climb. However, despite their impressive performance, they had very few “kills” credited to them.

But the Me 163 obviously impressed the British Air Staff, and proposals for a very similar aircraft began to emerge in the late 40s. The designs being considered were for a very similar aircraft: a rocket motor with no other means of propulsion, a simple skid for a dead stick (i.e., unpowered) landing, and a battery of unguided 0.5″ rockets. It was intended for point defence: e.g., for airfields and the like. With its limited endurance it was not suitable for much else. Such an aircraft would have been able to carry enough fuel for only 3 or 4 minutes powered flight. In effect, it was almost a manned guided missile. In addition, an unpowered landing technique would not have made it popular with pilots.

In 1945, the whole strategic equation had been rewritten with the advent of the atomic bomb. There was no great urgency for the rocket interceptor in the immediate war years, since the Russians had built a formidable tactical air force, but had almost nothing in the way of heavy bombers. In addition, in 1945 it was thought that the Russians would not have atomic weapons until the mid 50s. In the event, the first Russian fission bomb was exploded in 1949. And a further difficulty was that any jet atomic bomber would be flying very high, very fast. Up until the 60s, the bomber’s best defence had always been height. The higher the aircraft, the more difficult it is to detect and the more difficult it is to hit with conventional antiaircraft shells. For interceptor fighters, the choice was either to loiter at high altitudes, which, given their limited endurance, was not usually a feasible option, or to reach these heights as quickly as possible. In the 1940s, the performance of the jet engine was not sufficient to do this. The problem was to get an interceptor to that height quickly enough, and to give it sufficient speed differential to be able to manoeuvre into a position in order to be able to attack. It was further realised that such attack would probably be made by guided weapons of some form-either infrared, heat seeking, or radar controlled.

There was a fundamental problem, however, with an aircraft that small, in that it would have been able to fly only in daylight and reasonably good weather. This would be a problem that would plague all the designs until the later PI77 and F155 designs. It is curious, given these limitations, that there was so much interest in the design. When Churchill was returned to Government in 1951, he took a personal interest in the project, asking Lindemann, his scientific advisor and eminence gris, to look further into the idea. But the R.A.F strategic offensive had been entirely night based, and the R.A.F had rarely encountered the Mel63, and knew of it mainly by reputation. Similarly the German offensive against the U.K. had been mainly night based after the early attacks in 1940. It was only the Americans, with high flying well armed Flying Fortresses who attacked during the day. So why were the R.A.F so interested in a fighter that could be used only in daylight? One answer, of course, is the defence of the airfields where the V bombers would be based-effectively point defence.

But despite this, the Air Ministry issued Operational Requirement 301. The main points of the designs requested were that they should be relatively simple and would use rockets for the main propulsion. However, quick calculations would show that the endurance of such an aircraft is extremely limited. Let us do some order of magnitude calculations.

Given a rocket motor with an S.I. of 200 seconds and mean thrust of 4000 lb (the Spectre was rated at up to 80001b thrust, but could be throttled) then the fuel consumption is around 20 lb per second. Given that the aircraft might carry 6000 lb of fuel, this gives a powered flight time of 300 seconds or 5 minutes! This is not long in which to take off, intercept, and shoot down an incoming aircraft at an altitude of almost 10 miles.

There are other problems too: high speed, supersonic, aircraft make very poor gliders! If the pilot’s interception takes him too far from his base, then he will be forced to eject. Similarly, every landing will have to be one chance only. And landing such an aircraft unpowered would be a pilot’s nightmare. It soon became obvious that an auxiliary turbojet would have to be fitted. This extended the post interception phase and enabled the pilot to “go round again” if there was a problem on landing.

But there can be other criticisms of the basic concept. The OR stated “in order to facilitate ease and speed of production, the aircraft and its equipment are to be as simple as possible.” This, however, was a mistake. Although it is very tempting to go for a simple design on these grounds, any such design would have some fatal flaws. The first is that there was no inbuilt air to air radar, which would have been no novelty in 1952, and the lack of it would be a severe handicap for high flying interceptor aircraft. It can also be argued that owing to the limited nature of the O.R. that obsolescence was inevitable. The aircraft would be restricted to ground control and daylight interception. Would ground control be readily available in a nuclear war scenario?

Again, to quote from the O.R.: “Current day interceptor projects are expected to be adequate in performance to match the enemy threat in normal circumstances, but may be unable to destroy enemy aircraft carrying out special operations at exceptional heights.

“An aircraft to fulfil this requirement must have an outstanding ceiling and altitude performance. So far as is known at present, the characteristics can only be provided by rocket propulsion, and, although aware of the probable operating limitations of this method, the Air Staff consider that the promise of tactical advantage more than outweighs other considerations.”

It is surprising in other ways that the O.R. was put in this way. As mentioned, Bomber Command throughout the Second War carried out the vast majority of its raids at night. Indeed, in the late 40s and early 50s a considerable amount of work was carried out on a radio controlled weapon carrying a television camera-Blue Boar. But one of its problems was that if used at night, the TV camera was useless, which is one of the reasons the project was dropped. It was only the U.S. Air Force, accompanied by escort fighters, that carried out daylight raids. So O.R.301 was in danger of becoming a requirement for an interceptor without a target.

But another key phrase is, of course, “special operations at high altitudes”. This is an oblique way of referring to the nuclear armed bomber, and there is one crucial difference between a conventional and a nuclear bomber. With conventional bombing, it is acceptable that most get through the defences. Indeed, during the Bomber Command offensive, the German defences would be congratulating themselves if they inflicted 10% losses. In nuclear terms, this is completely reversed. Even 90% losses on a bomber fleet could mean devastation. This was the philosophy behind the rocket interceptor.


Bomber Harris thought the Dambusters’ attacks on Germany ‘achieved nothing’


Pilots Shannon and Maudsley tried time and again to position their laden bombers correctly before managing to release their weapons – but the dam still held. Now success depended solely on Knight carrying the last bomb! With time and fuel now a concern, Knight’s first effort to position, like Shannon and Maudsley before him, failed, but his second run favoured the brave. Knight released his bomb with absolute precision, striking the wall at precisely the crucial point. With a tremendous explosion the Eder Dam collapsed before their eyes. Robert Taylor’s sensational new painting vividly shows the dramatic moment of impact. In the cockpit Knight and flight engineer Ray Grayston fight the controls to clear the dam, combining their physical strength to haul the lumbering Lancaster up and over the dam and to clear the high ground that lies ahead. Below and behind them, the second of Germany’s mighty western dams lies finally breached.

Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, the wartime head of Bomber Command, privately dismissed the Dambuster air raids on German dams were a waste of men and aircraft, it has been revealed.

By Leo McKinstry

It has gone down in history as the most daring RAF operation of the Second World War. With its mix of heroism and technical ingenuity, the Dambusters Raid became a lasting symbol of Britain’s gallant fight against the Nazi regime.

In Winston Churchill’s words, the destruction of two key dams in May 1943 brought “unparalleled devastation” to Germany’s western industrial heartland. The success of the mission brought widespread public acclaim.

Yet it has now emerged that Air Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, one of the chief architects of the raid, was privately scathing about its effectiveness.

Research in the archives of the Harris papers, stored in the RAF Museum at Hendon, has revealed that he privately thought the assault on German dams was a waste of men and aircraft.

In one letter to the Air Staff, written in Dec 1943, just six months after the raid, Harris said: “For years we have been told that the destruction of the Mohne and Eder dams alone would be a vital blow to Germany.”

But, he continued, “I have seen nothing in the present circumstances or in the Ministry of Economic Warfare reports to show that the effort was worthwhile.”

Even as the legend of the Dambusters grew, Harris kept up this disparaging theme.

In a private letter to Sir Charles Portal, the Chief of the Air Staff, written in Jan 1945, Harris complained: “The destruction of the Mohne and Eder dams was to achieve wonders.

“It achieved nothing compared with the effort and the loss.”

He concluded: “The material damage was negligible compared with one small area attack.”

The correspondence shows that Harris was just as sceptical about the raid when the plans were initially put forward.

It was Barnes Wallis, the inventor and aeronautical engineer, who in 1942 had come up with the idea that each dam could be breached by a bouncing bomb.

Carried by a specially-modified Avro Lancaster, the RAF’s new four-engine heavy bomber, the unconventional bomb would leap over the water, reach the dam’s thick wall, sink below the surface and then detonate at the optimum depth, thereby unleashing a colossal flood tide into the surrounding area.

Early tests on the bouncing bomb, conducted at Chesil Beach in Dorset, revealed that the scheme was practical. The Air Ministry was quickly won over.

But, as the unpublished documents reveal, Harris was outraged. He thought his precious Lancasters should be allowed to concentrate on Bomber Command’s primary task of reducing Germany’s cities to rubble.

When first informed of Wallis’ proposal by Robert Saundby, his deputy at Bomber Command, in Feb 1943, he produced a scathing denunciation.

The bouncing bomb was “tripe beyond the wildest description. There are so many ifs and buts that there is not the smallest chance of it working.”

Harris urged that Air Staff should be stopped from “putting aside Lancasters and reducing our effort on this wild goose chase”. The war, he warned, “will be over before it works and it never will”.

A few days later, his opposition to the plan had only intensified. In a letter to his superior, Sir Charles Portal, he described the bouncing bomb as “just about the maddest proposition as a weapon we have yet to come across”.

Deprecating “any diversion of Lancasters at this critical moment”, he told Portal that “I am prepared to bet my shirt” that the bomb could not be produced within six months and “will not work when we have got it”.

He hoped that the new weapon’s enthusiasts would be “given one aeroplane to go away and play while we get on with the war”.

Harris, however, was overruled by Portal, the RAF’s chief, who was determined to press ahead with the plan. For all his doubts, the bomber commander had no choice but to obey his orders from the top of Air Staff.

To carry out the raid, he formed a new Lancaster squadron, named 617, under the leadership of Wing Commander Guy Gibson, a dynamic, brave and highly experienced pilot.

Meanwhile, the Lancaster aircraft were adapted by the Avro company to carry the special equipment for the bouncing bomb.

The raid took place in bright moonlight on the night of May 16 and into the early hours of May 17.

Harris’s claim that the bouncing bomb would fail proved hopelessly unfounded, as the successful breaches of the Mohne and the Eder led to the widespread destruction of homes, factories, bridges, railways, farmland and energy supplies, though a third dam, on the Sorpe, remained intact.

Contrary to Harris’s later arguments, Albert Speer, the German Minister for Armaments, said that raid was “a disaster for us for a number of months”.

Germany had to divert 20,000 labourers from building defences in France and Holland into repairing the dams, something that had a significant impact at D-Day.

Gibson won the Victoria Cross and his squadron became national heroes. The raid gave an enormous boost to British morale.

The triumph came at a heavy price, as eight out of 19 Lancasters on the raid were lost and 53 crew men were killed. But, unlike Harris, most of the RAF and the British public believed the sacrifice was worthwhile.

* Leo McKinstry’s book Lancaster: The Second World War’s Greatest Bomber is published in September by John Murray