Category: Arms & Armament
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White Death
A quick look at the world’s most successful sniper, Simo Häyhä of Finland. During the brief Russo-Finnish “Winter War” of 1939-40, Häyhä was credited with killing an astounding 500 Russian soldiers before he was wounded. In spite of being hit in the jaw with an explosive round he survived the war and lived into his […]
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Short Takes
States Rights—it’s not just for George Wallace any more. Whether it’s correctly called a movement, a backlash or political theater, state declarations of their rights – or in some cases denunciations of federal authority, amounting to the same thing – are on a roll. After 230 years the Army is dropping bayonet training. Lt. Gen. […]
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Those Rainbow Trajectories
Commentators on the rifle musket have made much of its so-called “rainbow” trajectory that made the rifle ball travel in a much higher arc than than today’s rifles due to its slow muzzle velocity. However, a lot of misunderstandings have also crept in. Most pundits seem to have looked at the illustration in Jack Coggins’ […]
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More on Battle Ranges
Last week I looked at a study by a serving US Army officer, Maj. Thomas Erhart, about the need for longer range infantry weapons in Afghanistan. While looking at some of the supporting material I came across a fascinating study the Army conducted in 1960 (once classified secret) that led directly to the introduction of […]
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Battle Ranges
The range at which an enemy soldier can be engaged on the battlefield is a factor that has occupied both soldiers and pundits since the invention of firearms. In Civil War circles much of the recent controversy has centered around Paddy Griffith’s revisionist work Battle Tactics of the Civil War, in which he argued that […]
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Combat Trash Talkin’
I found this amusing, from Afghanistan, about the verbal war between the Afghan Army and the Taliban. The foes chatter with each other over their Vietnam-era, two-way radio system. It’s such an antiquated system that the Taliban and the Afghan forces share radio frequencies, and verbal barbs, as they try to kill or capture one […]
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Short Takes
Following up on my post about the recent Dahlgren bio, an excellent dissection on HistoryNet about the authenticity of the papers found on that officer’s body: It can be accepted then that the authenticity of the Dahlgren papers is established beyond a doubt. There is not the least scrap of credible evidence for their forgery. […]