Decisive Battle Research Articles

Influence of High-Grade Highway Construction on Industry-Economic Belt in Heilongjiang Province

With the victory of “Three-year decisive battle”of road construction in Heilongjiang Province and the formation of high-grade highway network, high-grade highways gradually have profound effects on promoting economic and social development and enhancing the public life level, as well as meeting the traffic demands in Heilongjiang province. The influence of the highway construction on industrial-economic belt in Heilongjiang province was analyzed. As an example, by forecasting various index of Harbin-Daqing-Qiqihar Industrial Corridor, we confirmed that the construction of high-grade highways in Heilongjiang play positive roles in industrial-economic belt.

Visions of Constantine

Early one bright afternoon, seventeen centuries ago, Constantine stood staring at the sun. According to his self-appointed biographer Eusebius, Bishop of Caesarea, who claimed to have heard the story from Constantine himself, the emperor was on campaign, when, ‘around midday, as the day was declining’ he saw a shining cross of light over the sun, with the attached text ‘By this conquer’. The understandably startled ruler slept on the matter, whereupon Christ appeared in a dream and instructed him to fashion himself a copy of the holy sign, which would protect him against his enemies. He did as he had been told, took Christian clerics as his advisers and, not long afterwards, set off for Italy to fight his rival, Maxentius. The rhetorician Lactantius, writing about twenty years before Eusebius, presented a different tale in hisDe mortibus persecutorum: Constantine, on the eve of his decisive battle against Maxentius ina.d. 312, at the Milvian Bridge to the north of Rome, was instructed in a dream to ‘mark the heavenly sign of God’ on his shields. Constantine's moment of epiphany, sometimes equated with his ‘conversion’, has traditionally been seen both as one of history's great turning-points and as one of its most enduring enigmas. The interpretation of Constantine's vision(s) is further complicated by an anecdote that appears in an anonymous panegyric of the emperor, delivered ina.d. 310. Having turned off from the road to visit ‘the most beautiful temple in the world’, Constantine was greeted by a remarkable sight: ‘For you saw, I believe, Constantine, your Apollo, accompanied by Victory, offering you laurel crowns, which each brought an omen of thirty years [of life or rule]’.

THE AFRIKANDER VOLUNTEER CORPS AND THE PARTICIPATION OF AFRIKANERS IN CONFLICTS IN RHODESIA, 1893–1897

During the last decade of the nineteenth century, British colonisation in Southern Africa, in particular in Rhodesia (today Zimbabwe) had coincided with uneasy relations with the native black population. Partly because of continuing disillusionment over stringent policy regarding native livestock, hostilities between the colonial officials and Matabele and Mashona tribal groups resulted in devastating wars. Within these warring circumstances, Afrikaner settlers who had immigrated to Rhodesia since 1891 – mostly in search of better living opportunities – subsequently found themselves amidst the crossfire of these conflicts. Though subjugated to British colonial authority, the Afrikaner minority were regarded by native blacks as collaborators in maintaining white military and political power in Rhodesia. Consequently, the mere safety of Afrikaners were threatened by sporadic military attacks and skirmishes during the Anglo-Matabele war of 1893, and most of all, for the duration of the Matabele and Mashona rebellions of 1896 to 1897. During the Matabele rebellion, an Afrikander Volunteer Corps (known as the Afrikaner Korps) was established as a military unit, which provided substantial support in two decisive battles. This article seeks to address the role and history of the Afrikander Volunteer Corps, as well as the involvement of ordinary Afrikaners in the turbulent colonial wars in early Rhodesia.

WESTERN MILITARY CULTURE AND COUNTERINSURGENCY: AN AMBIGUOUS REALITY

Contemporary campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan once again have demonstrated that conventional armies experience many problems in adapting to counterinsurgency operations. This article seeks an explanation for those problems by exploring the conceptual background of both Western-style conventional armies and counterinsurgency. In essence, Western military culture is about fighting large-scale decisive battles with armies of other states. This contrasts strongly with counterinsurgency, which is about outbidding the insurgents for the favour of the people with a minimised use of force. The article analyses the further consequences of this conceptual clash between Western military culture and counterinsurgency in the reality of counterinsurgency warfare. It is explained that the contrast between both concepts leads to an ambiguous reality in which soldiers are aware of the specifics of counterinsurgency theory, but refer back to Western military culture for fighting counterinsurgency campaigns.

2011 Presidential Address: Empire and the Study of Religion

I WENT TO VISIT Occupy Boston in mid-October. Some fifty tents in blue, red, and green filled Dewey Square in the financial district in downtown Boston. The square was named after Admiral George Dewey of the United States Navy, who won the decisive battle of Manila Bay in the Philippines during the Spanish-American War in 1898. The Square bears the mark of American imperialism. I was surprised to find that the tent-city was neatly organized, with a reception space, a makeshift kitchen, and a medical tent with a red-cross sign. Occupy Boston runs a Free School University featuring Noam Chomsky and other radical professors and has a library with well over five hundred books. The Occupy Wall Street movement has spread to many cities in the United States and around the world. On October 15, 2011, hundreds of

Was Las Navas a decisive battle?

From the perspective of military history, the Christian victory of 1212 was neither a decisive battle in the history of the peninsular kingdoms nor a significant tipping point in the balance of power between Christians and Muslims. Neither was the fate of the “Reconquest” resolved, nor was the “West” saved from Islam, on the morning of 16 July 1212. The historical events that took place during the following decades after the battle – the crisis of the Almohad Empire, the collapse of al-Andalus, the Christian expansion southwards – depended more on a range of complex socio-political factors than on the result of a mere pitched battle, important as it was.

Legende oder Sage? Der Fall Mäander

AbstractThis paper focuses on two modern Turkish folktales being recounted in Afyonkarahisar (Western Anatolia). Both tales appear to have their roots in ancient Greek mythology, in which Meander is the main character. The story line is that Meander vows to the mother Goddess Cybele to sacrifice the first person coming to greet him, if she would grant him the victory in a decisive battle. The first person coming up to him after the battle turns out to be a close family member. He becomes mad with grief and kills himself by drowning in a nearby river, which is subsequently renamed in his honour. The tales bear a striking similarity to the biblical story of Jephthah (Book of Judges), which will be discussed in detail here together with other pecularities. Finally, this paper will also touch on the matter of classifying folktales: how should such stories be considered according to the definitions set by modern narratological theories, mere 'legends' (as implied by the Turkish term efsane) or rather 'myths'?

디젤 및 가스터빈 엔진을 사용하는 전투함의 복합추진체계 기술 동향 분석

The large scale decisive battle will be gradually reduced on the sea in the future and surface combatant ship installed advanced weapon units as well as propulsion system will be continuously increased. The high level of military technology leads to appear state-of-the-art weapon system using high power energy. As a results, fossil fuel powered main prime mover as diesel engine and gas turbine which are composed of mechanical propulsion system should be decreased from combatant ship in the near future. The new building naval combatant ship with the latest technology has electric based propulsion method of the hybrid type combined with mechanical and electrical drive. U.S. and Royal Navy, especially, select the integrated fully electric based propulsion system for the next generation combat ship and play an important roll for developing them. In this context, this paper was focused on the deduction of implications through analyzing the combatant ship propulsion system using diesel and gas turbine engine which are promoted on the worldwide.

Exceptional Longevity in Okinawa:

Abstract The topic of this article is the exceptional longevity in Okinawa. This phenomenon should be thoroughly validated at both the individual and population levels. This contribution analyzes the demographic data available for the population of Okinawa, in order to explain the presence of large numbers of centenarians. The mortality crossover obtained by comparing mortality rates in Okinawa and Japan could be attributed either to different behavior of the generations born before and after WW II, or to bad data. Arguments are presented in favor of both possible explanations. The reconstruction of the Koseki to replace the original, which was destroyed during WW II, could be a source of misreporting of age and would support the bad data hypothesis. Nevertheless, no concrete proof of invalid data has been found. Therefore, the author does not favor either of these explanations, but is calling for a more in-depth validation of longevity in Okinawa. (ProQuest: ... denotes formula omitted.) 1. Introduction Okinawa is one of the 47 prefectures of Japan. It consists of a group of 44 inhabited islands that extend 800 miles south of the main Japanese islands, north of Taiwan. These islands, part of the Ryukyu Kingdom, were incorporated into the Japanese Empire in 1879. The people of Okinawa still consider themselves different from those of mainland Japan, and there are dissimilarities between some features of their cultures and traditional life styles. For 80 days in 1945 Okinawa was the site of the last and most decisive battle of WW II between Japanese and American soldiers. More than 100,000 soldiers died, as well as an equal number of civilians. The territory was subsequently under U.S. administration until 1972, when it was returned to Japan. Its population of 1.3 million inhabitants is considered to be among the less economically developed of Japan. Since the excellent contribution of Irene Taeuber (1955), no in-depth studies of the demography of Okinawa have been conducted, although these are essential in order to validate its alleged exceptional longevity. Studies of centenarians are frequently used to investigate the determinants of healthy aging and exceptional longevity. Most of these studies involve individual centenarians and compare their behaviors and characteristics with younger members of the same population.2 A few other studies have analyzed populations which are somewhat isolated and often ethnically distinct that experience exceptional longevity. These studies assess not only individual longevity but also the longevity of the population as a whole. The mountainous areas of Sardinia and Okinawa are the two most important regions where population longevity has been recently investigated in more detail.3 Verification of extreme age and exceptional longevity is crucial to the validity of all research on the oldest olds. Individual longevity and population longevity are complementary concepts that may contribute to the analysis of the determinants of longevity, but their validation process differs. For individual longevity, the age of every oldest old person is carefully checked before inclusion in the analysis, or exclusion in case of error. For population longevity, individual age validation is also required,4 but an exhaustive enumeration of the oldest olds has to be ensured from a basic analysis of the demographic evolution of the population. A recent paper by Willcox et al. (2008) might be considered to be a direct response to the need for a complete validation of population longevity in Okinawa. It presents a battery of arguments that support the conclusion that the high prevalence of centenarians in Okinawa is valid and warrants further study of its genetic and environmental correlates. The present article intends to revisit these arguments, to assess the demographic aspects of the longevity of the population of Okinawa, and also to consider recent research by Saito (2010) on the age validation of super-centenarians in Japan. …

Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes (review)

Reviewed by: Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes Peter Mansoor Military Orientalism: Eastern War through Western Eyes. By Patrick Porter. New York: Columbia University Press, 2009. 256 pp. $25.00 (cloth). Military Orientalism is a study of Western views of warfare as conducted by Eastern peoples and military institutions and Western fascination with (and often repulsion by) the seemingly bizarre and exotic military methods of “others.” Patrick Porter challenges the current popular view that culture underpins war in the postmodern age. To achieve a more nuanced understanding of the impact of culture on war, he analyzes the assumptions and myths through which Western leaders have viewed Eastern military institutions and methods of conflict. Well written and incisive, this book will appeal to military historians, defense intellectuals, students of international affairs, and others interested in the impact of culture on warfare over the ages. Porter argues that in times of strategic crisis, Western powers turn to anthropology, sociology, and area studies to explain military-strategic failures against Eastern enemies and to provide knowledge on how to overcome the challenges they pose to the existing order. A number of military and defense intellectuals, for instance, point to American ignorance of culture as the primary reason behind the surprise of 9/11 [End Page 359] and the strategic failures in Iraq and Afghanistan. Study of culture and the application of lessons learned in this regard are widely considered a necessary counterweight to the technology-driven conceptions of war propounded by the revolution in military affairs proponents in the 1990s and early 2000s. This trend is perhaps best exemplified by the U.S. military’s integration of anthropology and social science in newly formed “human terrain teams” that assist commanders in understanding the intricacies of local cultures and societies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the view of a number of defense analysts and military historians, distinguishable “Western” and “Eastern” ways of war exist that are largely determined by culture. Western militaries seek decisive battles, a tradition passed down through the ages from the ancient Greeks, while Eastern militaries prefer the indirect approach of stealth and guile, a tradition bequeathed by ancient Chinese and Persian armies, among others. Porter believes that these facile descriptions of strategic cultures of East and West do more to obscure than to clarify. Although culture has an impact on war, the actions and decisions of military forces cannot be understood without considering the action /reaction cycle of war. In war, the enemy always gets a vote, and the actions of one side inevitably cause changes in the ways of the other. Furthermore, competing strategic cultures within a state create a menu of choices for decision makers, who can mold culture to fit their desired policies. In Porter’s view, culture is a lot more malleable than popularly believed. At its core, Military Orientalism challenges the belief that culture drives conflict in distinct and immutable ways. Porter explores four case studies to examine Western fascination with and misconceptions of Eastern warfare: Japan during the Russo-Japanese War, Sir Basil Liddell Hart’s writings during the period between World War I and World War II regarding Mongol warfare in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the Taliban in Afghanistan after 2001, and Israel’s war against Hezbollah in 2006. In each case, Western observations concerning Eastern opponents shed as much light on the observers and their image of Western culture as they do on the military institutions being observed. Observations of foreign military forces often reaffirmed the West’s belief in its cultural and military superiority, while at the same time serving as a warning against hubris. The East can be the scene of the triumph of the West; it can also become the graveyard of empires. When considered in view of the historical record, Porter argues, the East is neither more warlike nor more peaceful than the West. In contrast to some analysts who view war in a postmodern context as returning to a more primitive state, Porter argues that the Clausewitzian trinity of reason, passion, and chance still applies even in a world [End Page 360] of nonstate actors and failed and failing states. Political goals drive Al Qaeda as...

The Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle Between Hernando De Soto and Chief Tascalusa (review)

The Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle Between Hernando De Soto and Chief Tascalusa (review)

The struggle for Arab independence: Riad el-Solh and the makers of the modern Middle East

1. Grandee of the empire 2. An Ottoman childhood 3. Education in revolution 4. In the shadow of the gallows 5. Faysal's false dawn 6. Fugitive from the French 7. The great Syrian revolution 8. A hero's return 9. Man of the people 10. Riad el-Solh, Zionism and the Hajj Amin al-Husayni 11. Ben Gurion and the Arabs 12. The making of a Lebanese patriot 13. Competing identities: the battle for men's minds 14. The politics of the street 15. The changing fortunes of war 16. Rashid 'Ali and 'Operation Exporter' 17. Riad Bey and general spears 18. The electoral challenge 19. The compromise of the national pact 20. The decisive battle 21. Painful awakening 22. Goodbye to the French 23. Master of the local scene 24. The unwanted war 25. The challenge from the revolutionaries 26. Murder in Amman.

Decisive Battles: From Yorktown to Operation Desert Storm - By Jonathon Riley

Decisive Battles: From Yorktown to Operation Desert Storm - By Jonathon Riley

Home of the Double-Headed Eagle: The Visionary Vernacular Architecture of Reverend H.D. Dennis and Margaret Dennis

Home of the Double-Headed Eagle:The Visionary Vernacular Architecture of Reverend H.D. Dennis and Margaret Dennis Ali Colleen Neff (bio) [F]orms abstractedly embody the dynamic that identifies cultures and locates among a culture's products those that are best. Deep in forms abides the power by which culture knows, claims, shapes, and conquers the world. When cultures collide, their particular dynamics erupt into visibility. —Henry Glassie, The Spirit of Folk Art I am a black German. A-woo!I am a black Jew. A-woo!I am a black Japanese! —Reverend H.D. Dennis, Vicksburg, Mississippi Vicksburg, Mississippi The Gibraltar of the Confederacy erupts gloriously from the southern tip-edge of the flat Delta flood plain to guard the lush Mississippi cotton empire with its jagged bluffs. This remarkable landscape, according to the 1948 WPA guidebook, materializes with a "wild, rugged contour that has the appearance of distant castles, and . . . the air of a city in perpetual siege." Nearly twenty thousand white tombstones memorialize the bloody and decisive Battle of Vicksburg that ended on the Fourth of July, 1863. Stretched along its highest contours are lush promontories that have provided escape from ravaging floods and overshadowed a century's deployment of Delta cotton by riverboat. Above all, Vicksburg is a city that emerges. Along the edges of these bluffs, in the deep peripheral ravines settled by the descendants of local black sharecroppers, The Home of the Double-Headed Eagle shoots up from a long row of kudzu-covered shotgun shacks and cracked pavement to entangle passersby. A five-foot strip of well-worn earth on either side of the fast road invites the curious and the inspired to make a U-turn and park before this strange landscape. From the windshield of a dusty vehicle traveling 45 MPH down this back road, this roadside shrine looks like a defunct, blurry carnival. Once at rest, the fixed eye discerns the delicate makeup of this acre-wide scene. [End Page 89] Ecstatic, attenuated spires jut twenty feet into the sky in alternating pink, white, red, and yellow brick and painted wood. These are grounded by heavy bases of cinder block, of which varying sizes have been perfectly alternated and aligned in a kind of mix-and-match grid pattern. This flock of spindly sculptures springs from the last patch of flat Delta landscape like the frozen paths of rare birds in flight, executed in multicolored brick, dyed 2 x 4s, and stacks of aligned block letters. Click for larger view View full resolution This visionary architecture is beautiful, strange, thick with meaning, and extraordinary in form. Its thin towers reach up from thick brickwork bases, its bright colors develop on the edge of the traveler's moving landscape, its shape and meaning change with each passing day as the Dennises add to and reconfigure the world around them. Its first name, among many, is "The Home of the Double-Headed Eagle," after the twin totems celebrated by Byzantium, the Holy Roman Empire, and Freemasonry of the Scottish Rite. All photographs courtesy of Tim Gordon and Ali Neff unless noted otherwise. The first-time observer will perceive something immediately holy about these forms. In the tallest reaches of the ensemble, the towers mime the great cathedrals in height and in style as they stretch endlessly into the otherwise impenetrable gray sky. A large five-pointed star and a cutout of an open scroll, the Black Masonic's [End Page 90] hieroglyphic welcome, anchor the assemblage. These are hung snugly at the entrance to an open-air nave decorated with collaged mirrors and found objects and topped with large baskets of silk flowers. Liturgical color wraps the strange shapes that compose the scene: alternating pink, red, white, and gold, flickering like a bright Pentecost candle. An old schoolbus, made to match the spires, glints back into the sun with bits of broken mirror and shiny beads. It faces the highway head-on as if to draw an imaginary crossroads, to the right of the main structure, and is decorated in hand-lettered bible verses, duct tape, and tin foil. The bus is connected to the main structure by a series of...

Lafayette and the American Revolution (review)

Reviewed by: Lafayette and the American Revolution Elizabeth Bush Freedman, Russell. Lafayette and the American Revolution. Holiday House, 2010. [88p.] illus. with photographs ISBN 978-0-8234-2182-4 $24.95 Reviewed from galleys R Gr. 5-8. Married at sixteen, a father at eighteen, and certainly one of the wealthiest men in eighteenth-century France, the Marquis de Lafayette could easily have settled into the privileged life of the nobility. With little taste for taxing manners and protocols, he scuttled his own opportunities at court and attuned his dreams to emulating the military distinction of his forebears. Smitten with the ideals of American colonists fighting for independence, he defied family, king, and official French neutrality and bargained for a commission in the Continental Army. Congress may have initially regarded him as little more than a promising connection to a future alliance, [End Page 128] but the untested Lafayette quickly proved himself a wily strategist and able commander (to say nothing of a generous donor to the cause), and his engagement at the decisive battle at Yorktown would be considered critical to the outcome of the Revolution. Freedman capitalizes on the inherent interest of a man who launched a heroic career while still in his teens, and the young general's story is told in fluent, polished prose. While more information on the complexity of his subsequent years during the French Revolution would have broadened the context of his career, the focus of this title is Lafayette's contribution to the American independence, and it's effectively explored. With its attractive, heavily illustrated layout, timeline, source notes, bibliography, and index, this invaluable addition to the collection of Revolutionary War material should serve report writers and engross middle-school fans of military history. Copyright © 2010 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois

The Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle between Hernando de Soto and Chief Tascalusa. Vernon James Knight, Jr.

Previous articleNext article No AccessBOOK REVIEWSThe Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle between Hernando de Soto and Chief Tascalusa. Vernon James Knight, Jr. Richard FlintRichard Flint Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Journal of Anthropological Research Volume 66, Number 3FALL 2010 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/jar.66.3.20798842 Views: 1Total views on this site © 2010 The University of New MexicoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The Politics of Ethnicity and the Crisis of the Peloponnesian League (review)

Reviewed by: The Politics of Ethnicity and the Crisis of the Peloponnesian League Johannes Siapkas Peter Funke and Nino Luraghi, eds. The Politics of Ethnicity and the Crisis of the Peloponnesian League. Hellenic Studies 32. Washington, D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2009. Dist. by Harvard University Press. ix + 258 pp. Paper, $29.95. Ethnicity emerged as an important issue in classical studies in the late 1990s. Now, we can add this volume, which represents the publication of the proceedings of the conference, "Ethnizität als Argument. Der Untergang des Peloponnesischen Bundes," held at the Westfälische Wilhems-Universität of Münster in 2003, to the growing number of publications that elucidate ethnicity in ancient Greece. As such, the contributors scrutinize expressions of ethnicity in the Peloponnese during the late fifth and early fourth centuries B.C.E. While I believe that this volume has much to offer scholars of the political history of ancient Greece, I have serious concerns with the overarching critical understanding of the concept of "ethnicity" throughout the volume (a problem that I feel is compounded by the lack of an introduction and conclusion). The main problem lies in the contributors' dependence on literary evidence and avoidance of archaeological materials and recent theoretical developments with regard to ethnicity, especially those located outside classics and classical archaeology. I will address these concerns after summarizing the main arguments of each contribution. Peter Funke gives the political background to the dissolution of the Peloponnesian League, arguing that political processes in place before the decisive Battle of Leuctra (371 B.C.E.) contributed to the dissolution of the Peloponnesian League. He concludes that the political world of the Peloponnese was "ethnicized" from the late fifth century onwards. Ethnicization, according to Funke, is a political process, "the tendency to overstep the narrow borders of the polis" in an attempt at "founding or recovering the identity of the group beyond the polis" (11). Klaus Freitag examines whether or not ethnicity was a factor in the relations between the Achaeans and the Spartans. He concludes that ethnic arguments were insignificant in this context. James Roy analyzes the development of political identities in Elis. He argues that Elis incorporated perioikic communities that had cultivated local ethnic identities and that the resultant multiple layers of ethnic affiliations led to tensions. Thus, Roy illustrates the contested nature of Elian identity. Claudia Ruggeri presents the rise and fall of the Triphulioi. This ethnic group emerged in 400 B.C.E. only to be incorporated into the Arcadian ethnos three decades later. She shows that the ethnogenesis of the Triphulioi was articulated through the construction of a common mythic past which was founded on the [End Page 517] arrival of the Minyans in deep prehistory, while the incorporation of Triphylia into Arcadia was articulated through a mythic genealogy in which Triphylos, a son of Arkas, appears. In the political realm this means that the descendants of Triphylos, the Triphulioi, came to be viewed as an Arcadian tribe. Maurizio Giangiulio discusses the ethnic Pisatis, which emerged during the fourth century and was applied to the inhabitants of the Alpheios valley. As this was one of the local ethnē that posed a threat to Elian cohesion, Giangiulio argues that the accounts of a sixth-century Elian conquest of a Pisatian state should be viewed as an invention of the fourth century. Maria Pretzler details the process whereby Arcadian identity was created and traces its development within the context of the foundation of an Arcadian state after the Battle of Leuctra. Again, in the wake of the Battle of Leuctra, Nino Luraghi emphasizes the existence of competing versions of the Messenian past in his discussion of the rise of Messenian identity and the Messenian state during the early fourth century. Luraghi argues that Messenian identity had already emerged in exile during the fifth century and that this identity was articulated lavishly in pan-Hellenic settings. The Boeotian version excluded the indigenous population from the Messenian past and stood in stark contrast to the Messenian version of the past which, evidenced for instance by eponymous heroes and cults, re-invested earlier Laconian culture with new meaning rather than eradicating it. Eric...

Hell to pay: Operation Downfall and the invasion of Japan, 1945-1947

Hell To Pay: Operation Downfall and the Invasion of Japan, 1945-1947 is the most comprehensive examination of the myriad complex issues that comprised the strategic plans for the American invasion of Japan. U.S. planning for the invasion and military occupation of Imperial Japan was begun in 1943, two years before the dropping of atom bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In final form, Operation Downfall called for a massive Allied invasion--on a scale dwarfing D-Day-- to be carried out in two stages. In the first stage, Operation Olympic, after the dropping of multiple atom bombs the U.S. Sixth Army would lead the southern-most assault on the Home Island of Kyushu to secure airfields and anchorages to support the second stage, Operation Coronet, a invasion of the industrial heartland of Japan through the Tokyo Plain, 500 miles to the north, led by the First and Eighth armies. These facts are well known and have been recounted-- with varying degrees of accuracy-- in a variety of books and articles. A common theme in these works is their reliance on a relatively few declassified high-level planning documents. An attempt to fully understand how both the U.S. and Japan planned to conduct the massive battles subsequent to the initial landings was not dealt with in these books beyond the skeletal U.S. outlines formulated nine months before the initial land battles were to commence, and more than a year before the anticipated climactic series of battles near Tokyo. On the Japanese side, plans for Operation Ketsu-go, the decisive battle in the Home Islands, have been unexamined below the strategic level and seldom consisted of more than a rehash of U.S. intelligence estimates of Kamikaze aircraft available for the defense of Kyushu. Hell To Pay examines the invasion of Japan in light of substantial new sources, unearthed in both familiar and obscure archives, and brings the political and military ramifications of the enormous casualties and loss of material projected by trying to bring the Pacific War to a conclusion by a military invasion of the island. This ground breaking history counters the revisionist interpretations questioning the rationale for the use of the atom bomb and shows that the U.S. decision was based on very real estimates of the truly horrific cost of a conventional invasion of Japan.

The Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle between Hernando de Soto and Chief Tascalusa

The Search for Mabila: The Decisive Battle between Hernando de Soto and Chief Tascalusa

The Battle of Keren - Medical support in a complex environment

Rapid developments of capability seen in the contemporary operating environment are a constant during any period of conflict. The Second World War is littered with numerous examples of adapting systems...