Longer Military History quotations removed from the Quotes collection inside apps to save space
“I was one of the lucky ones to go in on the first wave at Leyte,” says Bob Seiler. “The night before my platoon sergeant made a racquet, similar to one for tennis, using a piece of cardboard. Because I was the tallest in the platoon, I was to stand up and bat away any hand grenades that the Japs might try to throw into our amtrac."
— Crisis in the Pacific, The Battles or the Philippines Islands
In limited war, we can achieve a positive aim by seizing and occupying a part of the enemy's territory. However, this effort is burdened with the defense of other points not covered by our limited offensive. Often the cost of this additional defense negates or even outweighs the advantages of our limited offensive.
Karl Von Clausewitz
Bowmen bend their bows when they wish to shoot; unbrace them when the shooting is over. Were they always kept strung they would break and fail the archer in time of need. So it is with men. If they give themselves constantly to serious work, and never indulge awhile in pastime or sport, they lose their senses and become mad.
Herodotus
After WWII the Red Army raised the German Aircraft Carrier Graf Zeppelin and launched aerial bombardments against it to learn how easy it would be to sink an aircraft carrier -- after several waves of attacks it turned out that it was much harder to sink carrier than what Soviets had thought.
The Navajo code is the only spoken military code never to have been deciphered. During WWII, since only 30 non-Navajo people could understand Navajo, the US used Navajos as code talkers. They could encode, transmit, and decode a three-line message in 20 seconds, versus 30 minutes for machines.
Millennium Challenge was a major war game exercise conducted by the US military in 2002. The combatants were the US, referred to as Blue, and an unknown adversary know as Red. After Red's commander defeated Blue Team using asymmetric warfare, the game was reset and rigged so Blue would win.
During the WWI fight for Belgrade, Serbia, German troops encountered a very stiff resistance, so German Field Marshal August von Mackensen erected a monument to the Serbian soldiers who died defending Belgrade, saying: We fought against an army that we have heard about only in fairy tales.
During the eleven month campaign, from Normandy to the Baltic, Scotland's 51st Highland Division's battalion the Gay Gordons suffered 986 casualties among its ranks. On top of this, seventy five officers were killed or wounded. This amounts to almost a complete turn round of the famous battalion.
The 1942 combat results reveal the Red Army lost an average of 6 tanks for every German panzer destroyed. T-34 had countless design flaws: Tank commander was also a gun aimer and a gun firer, quality of the gun's optics were poor, lack of radios meant there was no coordination -- to mention a few.
From Pearl Harbor to V-J Day the U.S. Industry-Ordnance team manufactured to the Army and 43 foreign nations 47 billion rounds of small arms ammunition, 11 million tons of artillery ammunition, more than 12 million rifles and carbines, 750,000 artillery pieces and 3/2 million military vehicles.
In 1942, a US Navy Captain successfully sank a German U-Boat off the Louisiana coast. The Navy disbelieved his report because he hadn't received anti-submarine training and reprimanded him and his crew for what they presumed must have been a sloppy attack. He was removed from command.
The Confederacy hoped its first ironclad, the CSS Virginia, would smash the Union naval blockade of the Southern states. But not long after its combat debut in March of 1862 at the Battle of Hampton Roads, the state-of-the-art warship had to be scuttled by her own crew. It was considered a tragedy by many in the Rebellion.
The V1 rocket attack on Britain started on the night of 13-14 June 1944 and ended on March 29 1945. A total of 10,500 missiles were launched, 3,957 were destroyed by defences, 3,531 reached England and 2,420 fell on London. The toll from these missiles was 6,184 killed. 17,981 persons were seriously injured.
American Lieutenant General Lesley McNair was killed by friendly fire while in France, taking part in Operation Quicksilver, which disguised landing sites for the Invasion of Normandy. He was posthumously promoted to general and is currently the highest-ranking military officer buried in the Normandy cemetery.
Bryan Hopkins, a former marine, was able to board the aircraft carrier USS Constellation using an old ID card, and a uniform he found in a rubbish bin. He spent several weeks on board without being discovered, although he never bother hiding - he just ate, used the gym and bunked down with the regular crew.
In a last attempt to save France and keep her army fighting, Churchill and General De Gaule proposed that Britain and France become one united nation. The proposal caused an uproar in the French Cabinet of which Churchill wrote 'Rarely has so generous a proposal encountered such a hostile reception'.
The last combat action of WW2 took place over Tokyo on August 18, 1945, when two Consolidated B-32 Dominators, 42-108532 and 42-108578 were attacked by Japanese fighters. The American gunners claimed two kills and one probable, but 42-108578 was badly shot up and one of her crew was killed with two being injured.
We come as conquerors, but not as oppressors ... We shall overthrow the National-Socialist rule, dissolve the party and abolish the oppressive and discriminatory laws and institutions which the party has created. We shall eradicate the German militarism which has so often disrupted the peace of the world.
-- Eisenhower
Germans were surprised that American artillery barrages were not followed up by determined infantry assaults. An experienced corporal in the German 275th Infantry Division summed up German attitudes: Americans use infantry cautiously. If they used it the way Russians do, they would be in Paris now.
Japanese pilot Shigenori Nishikaichi, among those who bombed Pearl Harbor, crash-landed onto Hawaii. The locals, unaware that the Japanese had just set off hostilities with their country, welcomed the enemy fighter graciously, offering him breakfast and even throwing him a luau, with Nishikaichi grabbing a guitar and treating the crowd to a traditional Japanese song.
On a bombing raid on German military installations near the German-Swiss border on April 1st 1944, a force of 23 B-24 bombers from the US 392nd Bombardment Group inadvertently entered Swiss air-space and owing to a navigational error mistakenly bombed the Swiss town of Schaffhausen. Fifty Swiss civilians were killed.
Women used to be allowed to live on Navy ships to keep company for their sailor husbands and friends. On occasion, a woman delivered a baby whose paternity could not be established with certainty. In the birth certificate, authorities just noted 'Son of a gun,' referring to the artillery found on the ships.
The Battle of Buironfosse in France, in the 1300's, is considered the opening of the Hundred Years' War but in fact it never took place. A rabbit dashed between the lines of the two armies and the sight was so hilarious that the soldiers on both sides roared with laughter and withdrew - without exchanging a blow.
In March 1944 I experienced a disagreeable shock. In a casual conversation, General Leslie Groves, the head of the Manhattan Project, said, 'You realise, of course, that the real purpose of making the bomb is to subdue our chief enemy, the Russians!' Until then I thought that our work was to prevent a German victory.
-- Professor Joseph Rotblatt
American Revolutionary War: Privates in 1776 earned $6 a month plus a bounty at the end of their service. That pay would equate to $157.58 today, a pretty cheap deal for the poor Continental Congress. Unfortunately for soldiers, Congress could not always make ends meet and so troops often went without their meager pay.
I remember when I was in the army, we had the toughest drill sergeant in the world. He'd get right up next to your face and yell, and if you didn't have the right answers, mister, you'd be peeling potatoes or changing the latrine. Hey, wait. I wasn't in the army. Then who WAS that guy?!
-- Jack Handey
18th Century Norwegian swashbuckler Peter Tordenskjold once ran out of ammo during a sea battle so he sent his enemy a letter thanking him for 'a fine duel' and asking him to send more ammo so they could carry on. The two crews then toasted each other's health and went their separate ways.
During WWII , a German U-boat attacked a convoy in the Atlantic and then surfaced to see the effect. The merchant ship it sank had material strapped to its deck including a fleet of trucks, one of which was thrown in the air by the explosion, landing on the U-boat and breaking its back, effectively sinking the vessel.
H-Hour for Operation Barbarossa was 03:30 hours German summer time, 04:30 Moscow time, on Sunday 22 June - the time to which all the orders for an attack by more than 3 million men on a 3,000 km front were related. But special forces, advance patrols, artillery and air attacks went in or opened fire before H-hour.
The Imperial Japanese Army was less mechanized than European countries or the U.S. They relied heavily on horses for artillery and transport of men and supplies. The typical IJA division had approximately 22,000 men and 5,800 horses. The IJA Infantry regiment T/O called for roughly 3,800 troops and over 700 horses.
The forty-eight hours after the march into the Rhineland were the most nerve-racking in my life. If the French had then marched there, we would have had to withdraw with our tails between our legs, for the military resources at our disposal would have been wholly inadequate for even moderate resistance.
-- Dr. Paul Schmidt
Although Japan fought on the side of Britain, France, and the U.S. during WWI, it felt cheated by its failure to gain much territory when the peace treaty was composed. Additionally, in the 1920s, its government came under control of fanatical nationalists and allied with the army, which eventually prompted Japan to side with Germany.
On March 24 1944, 79 men broke out from a POW camp at Sagan in Silesia through a handmade tunnel 360ft long and 20ft deep. The last three men out gave themselves up to the guards to delay the search of the rest. Ultimately, however, only three escapees managed to reach England, while the others were recaptured.
Stalin's son, Jakov Dshugashvili, a 2nd Lieutenant in the artillery corps, was captured on May 16th, 1942. A year later, an attempt was made by the Germans to exchange him for Field Marshal Paulus. Although grieving for his son, Stalin refused saying 'I will not exchange a private for a Field Marshal'.
Averrell Harriman US ambassador to Moscow said to Stalin at the Potsdam Conference, 'Marshal, it must be a great satisfaction to you after all the trials you've been through and the tragedies you've been through, to be here in Berlin.' Stalin stared at him and replied, 'Tsar Alexander got to Paris.'
-- Stalin
The first submarine attack in history took place in NY Harbor on September 6, 1776. The Connecticut inventor David Bushnell's 'Turtle', made of 6-inch thick oak timbers, was supposed to attach a cask of gunpowder to the hull of the British HMS Eagle and sneak away before it exploded, but it lost ballast and surfaced before the blast could be planted.
The last WW2 POW to return home was the Hungarian Andras Tamas, who was captured by the Soviet Army in 1945. Tamas was confined in the Kotelnich mental hospital in northern Russia in 1947, where he remained until 2000 when a Slovak doctor treating him was surprised to discover that his patient knew no Russian but could speak some Hungarian.
In WW2, 3,363 German officers achieved the rank of general. 819 of them had passed on by the time of the surrender: 352 were presumed lost in action; 310 died naturally; 101 killed themselves; 57 received death sentences from Allied courts; 25 received death sentences from German courts; (26 of these had their sentences commuted).
The last Cavalry charge in history took place on August 23 1942 at Izbushensky on the River Don. The Italian Savoia Cavalry Regiment charged against 2,000 Soviet troops who had opened a breach between the German 6th Army and the Italian Army. The Italian Lancers destroyed two Soviet Infantry armoured vehicles before being forced to withdraw with 32 casualties.
Prior to the capture of Wismar in northern Germany, the German 102nd Infantry Division contacted the British, offering to surrender. Instead they were asked to continue holding a 20km line at Bad Doberan against the approaching Russians. As soon as Wismar was fully in British hands the Division could then withdraw to the west, thus avoiding capture by the Russians.
The Action of 9 February 1945 refers to the sinking of the U-boat U-864 in the North Sea off the Norwegian coast during WWII by the Royal Navy submarine HMS Venturer. This action is the first and so far only incident of its kind in history where one submarine has intentionally sunk another submarine in combat while both were fully submerged.
In 1944 the USSR began a massive air attack on the Finnish capital Helsinki to force Finland to leave the war. Finns used fires and searchlights to re-create the city lights elsewhere to trick Soviet bombers into dropping bombs outside the city. Russian diplomats were surprised to find an intact Helsinki after the war.
The biggest loss for the RAF in WW2 was on the Nuremberg raid of March 30 1944, when, of the 795 aircraft taking part, 62 were shot down by German fighters, 14 shot down by flak, 2 were lost in collisions, and 16 listed as missing. Of the total aircraft lost, 64 were Lancasters and 30 were Halifaxes. In the city itself, 74 people were killed and 122 injured. Of the RAF crew members, 545 were lost.
During the WW2, no German POW escaped from Britain. The most audacious attempt was made by Lt. Heinz Schnabel and Oblt. Harry Wappler on November 24, 1941, when they managed to make their way to an airfield near Carlisle. However, once in air they realized that they had picked a plane with a range less than the 365 miles needed to Holland, forcing them to turn back.
The origins of the catapult are unknown. They appear in the historical record as early as a 9th-century BCE relief from Nimrud in modern-day Iraq. Early catapults were large bows that included winches able to draw the weapon for firing, but at some point during the 4th century, bow arms were replaced by tight bundles of sinew or rope which functioned as 'springs'.
Members of the uniformed services are encouraged to render salutes to recipients of the Medal of Honor as a matter of respect and courtesy regardless of rank or status, whether or not they are in uniform. This is one of the few instances where a living member of the military will receive salutes from members of a higher rank.
The first RAF raid of WW2, on the day after war was declared, ended in near disaster. Ten bombers failed to find the target, seven were shot down by German anti-aircraft batteries, three planes prepared to attack British warships in the North Sea until they discovered their mistake and returned home. Only eight bombers found and attacked the targets battleship 'Scheer' and cruiser 'Emden'.
Unconventional forces in Burma, including Merrill's Marauders, used mules quite effectively. A Liberty ship brought 275 mules of the 35th Pack Troop to India, then to Ledo by train. An overland march 300 miles down the Ledo Road brought them to Camp Landis, Burma. The mules were divided among the units and served to carry machine guns, mortars, ammunition and other supplies in terrain where no other method was feasible.
Ju 87 Stuka dive bombers performed so well as tactical bombers that their success became a curse. Ernst Udet, in charge of the technical department of the Luftwaffe, was so convinced in the capability of dive bombers that he requested all German bombers to be designed with dive bombing capability; this killed any chance German had to develop a long-range bomber.
John R. McKinney was on guard duty in the Philippines when he was attacked in May 1945 by a large group of Japanese fighters. Over 36 minutes, he fought off the men using his skills with an M1 rifle, then hand-to-hand combat, ultimately killing 38 of their troops, over two waves of fighting. His courage on that day earned McKinney a Medal of Honor.
The Home Guard's job was simple: as well as sending information, they were to hold up the enemy as long as possible. In total they numbered a million-and-a-half. Nor were they untrained civilians: many of these men were old WW1 soldiers - they knew how to fight. A Home Guard unit might only hold the German Army up for half an hour, but just down the road would be another unit and behind them another, for mile after mile. The survivors of each beaten unit would join up with the next, and so on. Eventually, the regular British army would counter attack.
After the sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, President Roosevelt searched for a bulletproof car. However, because government regulation prohibited spending more than $750 to buy a car, the only one they could find was Al Capone's limo, which had been seized by the Treasury Department after he was arrested for tax evasion. FDR said: I hope Mr. Capone won't mind.
Switzerland accidentally invaded Liechtenstein not once, but twice. The first time the Swiss army set up an observation post in Triesenburg. They somehow forgot, that Triesenburg actually belongs to Liechtenstein. The second time 171 Swiss soldiers took the wrong turn in the darkness, entering Liechtenstein for 2km until noticing their mistake.
The ill-fated Hunley, which sank 3 times, was just one of a number of submarines to see service in the war between North and South. The American Diver (Pioneer II) mounted a trial attack on enemy ships off Mobile in February of 1863, but the vessel's slow speed prevented it from reaching a target... CSS David steamed to within a stone's throw of the Yankee ironclad USS New Ironsides moored off Charleston before being spotted by a lookout... The first operational military submarine was part of the Union navy: the Alligator was ordered into action off Charleston, but while en route, she foundered in a storm off North Carolina.
WW1: An American private, private second class, or bugler in his first year of service in 1917 was entitled to $30 a month. In exchange for this salary, which would equate to $558 today, privates could expect to face the guns of the Germans and other Axis powers. WW1 was the first war where, in addition to their pay, soldiers could receive discounted life insurance as a benefit.
In February, 1945, Bill Lipton, an infantryman serving with the U.S. 407th Infantry Regiment, joined American troops in a night assault across the Roer River. Shortly afterward he got hit, limping into a town to escape a German artillery barrage, only to discover 41 German soldiers waiting to surrender to someone, even a wounded GI.
I believe everybody in the world should have guns. Citizens should have bazookas and rocket launchers too. I believe that all citizens should have their weapons of choice. However, I also believe that only I should have the ammunition. Because frankly, I wouldn't trust the rest of the goobers with anything more dangerous than string.
-- Scott Adams
In Sicily and Italy during WWII, horses were used to overcome terrain that stymied mechanized units. On the drive to Palermo, 3d Inf. Div. captured hundreds of horses and mules. Gen. Truscott pressed them into service on his drive to Messina and they added enough value to be shipped to Italy when the fighting moved there.
The largest and longest air battle on the European theatre in WW2 took place in October 14 1943 over the town of Schweinfurt. A total of 60 American bombers (B17s and B24s) were shot down or crashed, while the crews claimed to have brought down 288 German aircraft. The actual figure obtained after the war, however, was 27. A total of 599 airmen and 276 airmen were killed.
On November 29 1941, the program for the annual Army-Navy football game carried a picture of the Battleship Arizona, captioned: 'It is significant that despite the claims of air enthusiasts no battleship has yet been sunk by bombs.' Today you can visit the site -now a shrine- where Japanese dive bombers sunk the Arizona at Pearl Harbor only nine days later.
On February 15 1944, US bombers dropped 427 tons of bombs on the mountain-top monastery of Monte Cassino in Italy. The Allied ground forces had requested the strike believing the monastery to be a German stronghold. No enemy troops were there at the time but over 300 women and children from the town of Cassino, who had fled and taken refuge in the monaster.
The idea of the tank, with all-round tracks to provide the vital need for a vehicle that could traverse small trenches, crush barbed-wire-type defenses, withstand machine gun fire and exert its own firepower was put forward by Levavasseur of the French Artillery in 1903 and by Donahue of the Army Service Corps in 1908. The first actual vehicle was made up of the body of a Delaunay-Belleville armoured car on the chassis of a Killen Strait tractor in Britain, 1915.
In 1995 Russian generals told President Yeltsin that the nation was under attack and he had to launch Russian nuclear weapons. They had mistaken the launch of a Norwegian weather rocket for a US submarine-launched ballistic missile they believed was going to blind Russian sensors as a prelude to an all-out nuclear assault. Fortunately, Yeltsin was not drunk; he did not believe that his friend Bill Clinton would do this.
WWII Myth: The Polish cavalry charge against German tanks. The most likely origin of this myth is a skirmish at the village of Krojanty on the first day of the German invasion of Poland. Polish lancers, whose units had still not been motorised, did charge a German infantry battalion but were forced to retreat. By the time war correspondents got there, some tanks had arrived and they joined the dots themselves.
Germans placed POWs taken on the Western Front to camps on the Eastern Front, and vice versa. Consequently, the Allied powers fighting on the two Fronts found themselves liberating each others' POWs. The US and the USSR conducted a POW exchange after the war, but the British did not. As a result, 33,000 POWs were allegedly never given a deal, and thus taken by the Russians to Siberia. Of these, only 3 are recorded to have escaped and got back.
Until they invaded Russia, the Germans thought their tanks were invincible. But the Soviet T-34 stopped them, literally, in the tracks. They had no foreknowledge of the Soviet development, which was simple to produce and to operate and so could be turned out in large numbers and be manned by raw crews. The T-34 had wide tracks for good cross-country performance, a range of 250 miles on the road, armour that was sloped, and a 76-2-mm gun.
Russian military administration remains much as it used to be. Train timings are chaotic, motor transport is seldom available at the right time and place, petrol supplies break down, and no one has any clear idea at what time anything is going to arrive. In spite of it all something happens... one is left with the impression that the Russian genius for piecemeal improvisation will always carry them through to a strictly limited extend.
-- A British Intelligence officer
There exists a real danger that our friend Rommel is becoming a kind of magical or bogey-man to our troops, who are talking far too much about him. He is by no means a superman, although he is undoubtedly very energetic and able. Even if he were a superman, it would still be highly undesirable that our men should credit him with supernatural powers. I wish you to dispel the idea that Rommel represents something more than an ordinary German general. - I am not jealous of Rommel.
-- General Claude Auchinleck, in a directive to his officers
The 21-gun salute originated as a British naval custom. Firing a round disarmed the gun for the considerable amount of time it took to reload and this period of disarmament, even more than the bang, was the real sign of respect. An important person was given a multi-shot salute (maximum 21), but always an odd number because sailors thought that even numbers bring bad luck.
Percentage of population killed in WWI: Serbia: 16.7 percent - Ottoman Empire: 13.6 percent - Romania: 7.7 percent - France: 4.3 percent - Austria-Hungary: 3.5 percent - Bulgaria: 3.4 percent - Germany: 3.4 percent - Greece: 3.2 percent - Italy: 2.9 percent - Britain: 1.9 percent - Russia: 1.7 percent - Portugal: 1.5 percent - Australia: 1.2 percent - US: 0.1 percent
The last German soldiers to surrender in WWII were a company on the tiny Channel island of Minquiers. When a French fishing boat anchored nearby, a German soldier approached and asked for help: 'We've been forgotten by the British, perhaps no one on Jersey told them we were here. I want you to take us over to England, we want to surrender.' This was on the 23rd of May, 1945, 3 weeks after the war ended.
One type of weapons that the Germans considered unleashing on their enemies was an army of potato beetles, which they thought could dropped on England to destroy its crops and cause famine. But the scientists realized that 40 million insects would be needed for the effort if it were to make an impact, though several million were stockpiled by the time the war ended.
In a research into Fear in Combat, the US Army questioned the men of four infantry divisions (6,020 men). 304 admitted to a heavy pounding of the heart, 254 to a sinking stomach feeling, 207 to shaking or trembling, 190 to a sick stomach, 183 to coming out in a cold sweat, 74 to vomiting, 46 to losing control of the bowels and 28 to urinating in their pants.
In the 1920s the Navy began to view airships as platforms that could be used for long-range reconnaissance and antisubmarine warfare. Initial enthusiasm was so high that some analysts believed that airships were the true future of the Navy and that the aircraft carriers being concurrently developed were nothing but an expensive fad.
During WWII, the US Army Veterinary Corps handled over 56,000 horses and mules used by the Army, as well as thousands of war dogs. When mobilization began in 1939, it was predicted that the Army would need 200,000 horses. In 1940, mechanization was well under way, but the Army still had 2 horse cavalry divisions, 2 horse-drawn artillery regiments, and 2 mixed horse and motor transport regiments, with a total authorization of 16,800 horses and 3,500 mules.
During the Korean War, Luxembourg contributed a 44-man contingent, attached to the Belgian contingent, to the United Nations force. Luxembourg achieved the dual distinction of deploying the largest proportion of its military force (10%) amongst all states contributing to the United Nations forces, and suffering the highest proportion of casualty (more than one third) amongst all United Nations contingents.
American Civil War: Union privates in 1863 brought home $13 a month which translates to $237 in modern dollars. Confederate privates had it a little worse at $11 a month. The Confederate situation got worse as the war went on since the Confederate States of America established their own currency and it saw rapid inflation as the war situation got worse and worse.
While some reports list General Lesley McNair as the highest-ranking American casualty, that's only if you consider his posthumous promotion to general. In fact, he was one of four lieutenant generals killed in action, the others being Frank Maxwell Andrews, Simon Bolivar Buckner, Jr., and Millard Harmon.