MHM December 2021/January 2022

The December 2021/January 2022 issue of Military History Matters, the British military history magazine, is out now.

The best way to access the magazine is to subscribe. Click here to find out more. To read the digital archive, click here. You can also access the magazine online (as well as exclusive extra content) at our new website, The Past.

IN THIS ISSUE:
Pearl Harbor

The attack on the US naval base at Pearl Harbor 80 years ago signalled the start of the Japanese blitzkrieg. The campaign in the Far East that followed was every bit as spectacular as the Nazi conquests in Europe. But the attack also ‘awakened a sleeping giant’ and thereby guaranteed the eventual defeat of the Japanese Empire. Our special charts the rise of Japan and then offers a detailed analysis of the attack – one of the greatest triumphs of naval aviation in military history.

Invading a ‘frontier of Europe’: the Tudor Conquest of Ireland

The Tudors were determined to crush Irish independence, but as Tim Newark describes, Gaelic warriors fought back against the armies of Elizabeth I

All Sir Garnet! The Battle of Tel El-Kebir, 1882

In an extended extract from his new book, MHM Editor Neil Faulkner analyses the battle in which Victorian Britain destroyed an Egyptian nationalist movement

Luck and pluck: How the Americans won the Revolutionary War

William V Wenger offers a forensic analysis of the American victory, apparently against the odds, in the war of 1775-1783

‘Signposts to a momentous history’: memorials of the Mighty Eighth

Sam Edwards explores the many markers in the English countryside to the former presence of America’s WWII bomber fleet

Also in this issue:

The latest in a new series on classic military history books, Behind the Image, War Culture, Book Reviews, Museum Review, Back to the Drawing Board, Listings, Competitions, and more.

To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. You can also access the magazine online (as well as exclusive extra content) at our new website, The Past. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

From the editor:

It was perhaps the most tactically brilliant operation by naval aviation in military history: the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. But, as David Porter explains in our special this time, it was a desperate gamble. Like Hitler in Europe, the Japanese were betting on a short war, a blitzkrieg that would bring their enemies to thenegotiating table, knowing they could not win a long war of attrition against the European colonial powers and the United States.

They misjudged. The US aircraft carriers – the most important targets – were absent, and six months later they would win the Battle of Midway and turn the tide of war in the Pacific. Worse, Pearl Harbor enraged a sleeping giant that would wage a relentless war until the Japanese Empire was destroyed.

The Tudor conquest of Ireland in the late 16th century is the focus of Tim Newark’s article. As well as offering a vivid narrative, he dispels some myths about the supposed ‘backwardness’ of the Irish military resistance.

Also this issue we have an account of the Battle of Tel el-Kebir in 1882, when a modern British expeditionary force crushed an Egyptian nationalist army; an analysis of the Rebel victory in the American Revolutionary War; and a survey of the East Anglian memorials to the Mighty Eighth, the US bomber fleet stationed there during WWII.

To subscribe to the magazine, click here. To subscribe to the digital archive, click here. You can also access the magazine online (as well as exclusive extra content) at our new website, The Past. Find us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.