Harold Auten VC
Harold Auten was born in 1891. He joined the P&O Line as an apprentice in 1908. He became a member of the Royal Naval Reserve two years later and was promoted to Sub Lieutenant just before the...
View ArticleThe Royal Navy Attacks on Kronstadt, Russia, 1919 and 3 VCs
In 1918, the leading British secret agent in Petrograd, as St Petersburg was then known, was Paul Dukes, code number ST/25. In order to provide a courier service for Dukes two Coastal Motor Boats were...
View ArticleThomas Crisp VC: Father and Son against a U-boat
Thomas Crisp, born in 1876, was a Lowestoft fishing captain before the First World War. His age and the importance of his profession to the war effort meant that he continued to be a fisherman in the...
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Top Secret: London Science Museum
I recently attended Top Secret, an exhibition at the Science Museum in London about codebreaking, ciphers and secret communications. It has now finished but will open again at the Manchester Museum of...
View ArticleHow a 13 Year Old Girl Helped to Win the Battle of Britain
In 1934, there was a debate within the RAF about whether its next generation of fighters, the Hawker Hurricane and the Supermarine Spitfire, should have four or eight 0.303 inch Colt Browning machine...
View ArticleThe Days of August, 1945
This detailed analysis of why President Truman decided to drop the atom bomb on Hiroshima 75 years ago was sent to me by Allen Gray, author of the excellent blog Wayne’s Journal, about his uncle’s...
View ArticleFalklands Flagship to be Scrapped
The Indian aircraft carier INS Viraat, previously HMS Hermes, made her last journey to the breakers yard at Alang, India in September 2020 and is now being scrapped: see this video report from the...
View ArticleDNA analysis helps America identify its unknown soldiers | The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/dna-analysis-helps-america-identify-its-unknown-soldiers-q5pcs8vhn?shareToken=ff2a6e1d3c513897dc7ea94b8d07ca5b
View ArticleWWII GI’s Letter Home Delivered in 2021
On December 6 1945, Sergeant John Gonsalves, a US soldier stationed at Bad Orb in occupied Germany, posted a letter to his mother. In it, he asked her to stop sending him packages, as he expected to...
View ArticleSMS Seeadler: A First World War Sailing Warship
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/wreck-sheds-light-on-the-downfall-of-one-of-the-last-sail-raiders-0mppjwbw0?shareToken=87b75d3ec84295b899a2ccce31ce0225 The wreck of the German First World War...
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