20th Century
The Desert War – September 1940
80 years ago this month things started hotting up. The Italians invaded Egypt and there was a fair bit of action at sea. On the 5th 6 Blenheims and 6 Hurricanes arrived in crates at [more…]
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20th Century
The Desert War – August 1940
We reach August 1940, eighty years ago. Things still looking bleak for the Brits and it doesn’t really improve this month and we moan about the lockdown, albeit with some justification. The Italians had been [more…]
20th Century
The Desert War – July 1940
Now we reach the 80th anniversary of July 1940 in the Desert War. Slim pickings in Libya and Egypt this month, both sides were gearing up for battle but the Navies were kept on their [more…]
20th Century
The Desert War – June 1940
80 years ago this month the North African Campaign, or Desert War kicked off. On one side were the Italians, desperately trying to expand their Empire in Africa, on the other were the British who [more…]
20th Century
The most dangerous man in Europe
Otto Skorzeny was mentioned the other day and in the process of investigating something else I stumbled across his story. What a lad, his fearsome reputation didn’t quite match up to reality. He was in [more…]
20th Century
The Desert War – an Introduction
Something inspired me to do a series of articles on the North African Campaign or Desert War as it it is also known. A quick look at the timeline and it seemed to be oh [more…]
20th Century
Jonathon Jay Pollard
Jonathon Jay Pollard’s name cropped up in Ronen Bergman’s book. The Israelis wanted to attack PLO targets in Tunisia and the USA would not release any details they had about the air defences though it [more…]
20th Century
Operation Keelhaul
Come the end of the second world war, the last thing Stalin wanted was any number of Russians who were potentially his enemies wandering around the Western countries. To ensure this did not happen his [more…]
20th Century
Communist Flip Flops
The aspiration for this article is to enlighten some Puffins about the several about-turns the Communists were forced into before, during and after the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact when Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were enemies, [more…]