DR DAVID MORGAN-OWEN Last week the Culture Secretary announced the government’s plans for the centenary commemorations of the Battle of Jutland. In addition to remembering the sacrifice of those sailors who lost their lives in the Battle itself, he described the anniversary as an opportunity to remember ‘the pivotal role that the Royal Navy played… Read More Commemorating the First World War at Sea
by Dr ROBERT T. FOLEY For most in Britain, September 1915 is best remembered for the battle of Loos, which saw the first British use of poison gas and the first extensive use of Kitchener’s ‘new army divisions’ in battle. It is also remembered as a great ‘what-if’ of history, as British successes at Loos… Read More German Defence of the Western Front, September-October 1915
by Dr DAVID JORDAN In the introduction to his excellent book on the battle, my colleague Nick Lloyd observed that the battle of Loos remained forgotten, ‘lost in the myths of rumour, hearsay and myth’, even though it was the largest land battle that Britain had fought up until that point, and was marked by… Read More The Royal Flying Corps and Preparing for the Battle of Loos, 1915: Developing an Air Force
by Dr ROBERT T. FOLEY In an earlier post, I examined the official histories of the First World War on the land. Obviously, the war on land was only one aspect of the First World War, combat in the air and on the sea played significant roles in the outcome of the war. Indeed, it… Read More Digital First World War Resources: Online Official Histories — The War at Sea and in the Air
by Ewan Lawson The campaigns in the Western Desert in the Second World War are well known with locations like Sollum and Bir El Hakim having secured their place in history. What is less well known is that this area had previously been fought over some 25 years before during the Great War. Part of… Read More Defeating the Senussi (December 1915-March 1916): The appliance of science?
This is the third of several posts running on Defence-in-Depth over the next few weeks arising out of the Military Learning and Innovation Roundtable held at the Joint Services Command and Staff College on Wednesday 17 June 2015. The roundtable explored the various ways in which armed forces have learned, adapted, and innovated in times… Read More Beyond the Western Front: Inter-Theatre Learning in the British Army of the First World War
by DR DAVID MORGAN-OWEN Historians seeking the origins of what would become a full-scale ‘continental commitment’ in 1916 have dissected pre-war British strategic planning in search of the decisions which led to the deployment of the BEF to France. Perhaps the most often cited precursor to the ultimate decision to send British troops to the… Read More British Grand Strategy in 1914
This is the second of several posts running on Defence-in-Depth over the next few weeks arising out of the Military Learning and Innovation Roundtable held at the Joint Services Command and Staff College on Wednesday 17 June 2015. The roundtable explored the various ways in which armed forces have learned, adapted, and innovated in times… Read More Organizational Culture and Learning during the First World War
VIPUL DUTTA The Great War inhabits an elusive space in India today. Not entirely forgotten nor actively remembered, it oscillates between memory and oblivion. However, the buzz surrounding the Centenary celebrations in India raised some important questions about how we remember our past and forget it at the same time. The First World War is… Read More India and the First World War
by Dr. DAVID MORGAN-OWEN The impact of technology upon warfare is a complex topic, but one which retains perennial relevance to militaries the world over. Can new weapons fundamentally alter the conduct of war, or do certain immutable ‘principles’ remain unchanged over time? These questions cut to the heart of history’s value to the military… Read More Does new technology render strategic theory irrelevant?
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