"The Hansa-Brandenburg D.I, also known as the KD (Kampf Doppeldecker) was a German fighter aircraft of World War I. Despite poor handling, it was built for Austria-Hungary, some aircraft serving to the end of the war...The D.I entered service in Autumn 1916. Its unusual arrangement of interplane bracing gave rise to the nickname "Spider",[5] while its poor handling gave rise to the less complementary nickname "the Coffin".[6] The D.I was the standard fighter aircraft of the Luftfahrtruppen until mid 1917, being used by several Austro-Hungarian air aces such as Godwin Brumowski and Frank Linke-Crawford.[5] Some Phönix built D.Is remained in use until the end of the war, being used briefly by the armed forces of The Republic of German Austria (Republik Deutschösterreich), where they were used to fight Yugoslav attacks on Klagenfurt in Carinthia.[1][7]"

en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hansa_Brandenburg_D.I.jpg
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hansa-Brandenburg_D.I

"Vimy Ridge is located in northern France, about 175 kilometres north of Paris. It is a long, high hill that dominates the landscape. Germany captured Vimy Ridge early in the war and transformed it into a strong defensive position, with a complex system of tunnels and trenches manned by highly-trained soldiers with machine guns and artillery pieces. Previous Allied assaults on Vimy Ridge in 1914 and 1915 had cost the British and French hundreds of thousands of casualties and had been largely unsuccessful.

The Canadians moved to the front lines across from Vimy Ridge in late autumn 1916. The Battle of Vimy Ridge would be the first time all four divisions of the Canadian Corps worked together as one formation. The planning and preparations for the battle were extensive. They spent the entire winter strengthening the lines, preparing for the assault on Vimy. The Canadians were trained rigorously. Models of the trench systems were built and the soldiers drilled on what they were to do. They also raided German positions to gather intelligence on enemy defences.

Extensive “mining” operations were undertaken in which the Allies dug tunnels beneath the German lines and set huge explosives to be detonated when the time for the attack came. Elaborate tunnel systems with train tracks, piped water, lights, and huge underground bunkers to stockpile supplies and arms were also established to aid the Canadians in the battle.

To soften defences in preparation for the attack, Canadians made a massive and prolonged artillery barrage. The heaviest shelling was spread over a week in order not to tip off the Germans of exactly when the assault would take place. More than a million shells rained down during what the Germans called the “Week of Suffering.” Even the early military aircraft of the day played a role in the battle by sweeping enemy aircraft and observation balloons from the skies."www.veterans.gc.ca/eng/remembrance/histo...war/fact_sheets/vimy

"Summary of the Harlem Hellfighters
Summary and Definition: When America entered WW1, on April 6, 1917, there were four all-black regiments consisting of the 9th and 10th Cavalry and the 24th and 25th Infantry.  In 1917 the US War Department created the 92d and 93d Divisions, primarily as black combat units. One particular regiment, the 369th Infantry, later known as the "Harlem Hellfighters" heroically fought on the front lines and received the French Croix de Guerre. Their story is recounted in a 2014 novel by Max Brooks and a movie version of the novel to be produced by Will Smith."
www.american-historama.org/1913-1928-ww1...llfighters-facts.htm

that's great war hawk, it looks like Will Smith's son may be in the movie he is one of the producers. Will be great to see these men are getting the recognition they deserve,at least their descendants will be able to see it.

"WORLD WAR I was shaped by the new vehicles developed during the fours years of conflict. A century after the start of the war, we’re looking back at the most remarkable planes, cars, tanks, zeppelins it helped bring about.

Aviation was in its infancy at the start of World War I, but it had revolutionized warfare by the time the armistice was signed in 1918. It is perhaps ironic, then, that one of the most important airplanes of the war never saw combat—even if it did give rise to civil aviation in post-war America and introduce the wonders of flight to much of the country.

The Curtiss JN-4, built by the Curtiss Aeroplane Company in Buffalo, New York, became a mainstay of the US Army Air Service, which bought thousands of them to train pilots. It was a rudimentary plane, even then, with one seat for a student and another for the instructor. It had two fixed wheels and a wooden tail skid. Fitted with a 90-horsepower Curtiss OX–5 V8 engine, the biplane could hit 75 mph and fly as high as 11,000 feet. It had a wingspan of 43 feet, weighed less than a ton fully loaded, and could stay airborne for just over two hours. Most of them carried no weapons and were used solely for training.

What made the plane so special, and so popular, was the fact that it was mass-produced. The JN-4D, the most popular model, came out in 1917, and four other companies joined Curtiss in producing enough of them to meet wartime demand. All told, nearly 7,000 Jennies were built, most of them JN–4Ds produced during the 12 months before the end of the war.

As popular as the plane was with the Army, the Jenny came into her own after the war. The government sold hundreds of surplus JN-4s, some of them still in their shipping containers, to anyone with $300 (about $4,130 today), says Jeffery S. Underwood, a historian at the United States Air Force Museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio. The plane proved especially adept at barnstorming, becoming the most popular aircraft used in that daring sport. Thousands of pilots learned to fly in a Jenny, including Amelia Earhart.



Less daring pilots flew around the country offering rides to paying customers. The Jenny also was the first plane to carry mail for the postal service. “It popularized the idea of flight across the continent,” says Underwood, and the plane was most likely the first many Americans ever saw. Its image even made its way onto one of the most famous stamps of all time, mistakenly printed upside down. Only 100 “Inverted Jenny” 24 cent stamps are known to exist. One was sold at auction in 2007 for just shy of a million dollars.

The large supply of cheap JN-4s for sale hurt the profits of new aircraft manufacturers for years, but in the long run, it was a major boon for the budding commercial aviation industry. It “helped to create a much larger market for faster, more modern airplanes,” Underwood says. More than 100 years after the start of the war that spurred its development, the Jenny is still flying. You can catch it at air shows around the country."www.wired.com/2014/08/the-humble-wwi-bip...ch-commercial-flight
This article includes videos and pictures of the jenny at the link above

I'm cleaning up an old 3D model of a DH4, and while googling about for reference photos I found this interesting origional silent documentary how they made one for the American Expeditionary Forces.

If you are an airplane or history nerd, you gonna love this. (Also notice the working conditions and the number of women factory workers. Society was moving into a whole new era.)


youtube.com/watch?v=GIn0YnhTqqw

[IMG]pin.it/TAjgVUu[I\IMG]
Check out these Uhlan helmets

This is very intresting article about Winston Churchill's failed Gallipoli plan in WW1 ( we have already talked about gallipoli a lot on here but this is intresting)
www.history.com/news/winston-churchills-world-war-disaster

I felt like drawing a diagram of the German Soldier's weapons and accessories so here you go!!

all of these are circa. 1917
now of course my drawings are not to scale and are not an exact replica XD

Hope you like this

WB|War hawk1-5 wrote: I felt like drawing a diagram of the German Soldier's weapons and accessories so here you go!!

all of these are circa. 1917
now of course my drawings are not to scale and are not an exact replica XD

I think you gave the German soldier the allied's weapon.. Geman soldiers primarily carried the Gewehr 98 rifle, nice drawings btw!

ZebraUp wrote:

WB|War hawk1-5 wrote: I felt like drawing a diagram of the German Soldier's weapons and accessories so here you go!!

all of these are circa. 1917
now of course my drawings are not to scale and are not an exact replica XD

I think you gave the German soldier the allied's weapon.. Geman soldiers primarily carried the Gewehr 98 rifle, nice drawings btw![/quote
you're right, I did. How in the world did I do that!
Well, i need to draw a different gun then, thank you for pointing that out, kinda embarrasng
maybe he stole it

some interesting facts about how potatomashers worked

"Mesopotamia invasion
On 5th November 1914 Britain declared war on Turkey and a few days later the first echelon of an expeditionary force, consisting of the 16th Infantry brigade and two Indian mountain batteries under Brigadier-General Delamain, landed at Fao, a fortified town near the head of the Persian Gulf.

After two stubbornly contested engagements both Fao and Basra were captured. The invasion of Mesopotamia was ostensibly to protect the oil wells at the head of the Persian Gulf. This motive became obscured, however, when, lured by the prospect of capturing the legendary Baghdad, the British commander Gen. Sir John Nixon sent forces under Maj. Gen. Charles Townshend up the Tigris. After overwhelming a Turkish outpost near Qurna in an amphibious assault on May 31 1915, Townshend began to move inland. By September the British had taken Kut-el-Amara. Refusing to stop there, Nixon ordered the reluctant Townshend to continue northward.

Arriving (November) at Ctesiphon, Townshend discovered that the Turks had fortified extensively and had been reinforced to a strength of 18,000 regulars and additional Arabs, with 45 guns. Townshend mustered approximately 10,000 infantry, 1,000 cavalry, and 30 guns. He also had, for the first time in that theatre, a squadron of 7 aeroplanes. Townshend attacked Ctesiphon savagely on November 22, but after 4 days of bitter battle, during which more Turkish reinforcements arrived, Townshend withdrew to Kut. Kut was invested by the Turks on December 7.

In Mesopotamia, Townshend's besieged force at Kut-el-Amara vainly waited for help. The British suffered 21,000 casualties in a series of unsuccessful rescue attempts, and with starvation near, Townshend capitulated on April 29, surrendering 2,680 British of the 6th Division. By the time the Armistice was signed in 1918 1306 of these had perished and 449 remained untraced.

Of the 10486 Indians who surrendered, 1290 perished and 1773 were never traced. British and Indians alike left a trail of whitening bones along the awful road from Kut to Baghdad, to Mosul from there to Fion Kara Hissar in Asia Minor, Aleppo and even Constantinople. Never, until the disaster at Singapore in 1941, in the whole history of the British Army, had there been a surrender on the same scale."-http://firstworldwar.com/diaries/edwinjones.htm

One of the most feared hand weapons in ww1 ..it was such a devastating weapon it became banned in war fare.

I cant find the quote i saw about it being banned if and when i can i will post it

darraxx wrote:

One of the most feared hand weapons in ww1 ..it was such a devastating weapon it became banned in war fare.

I cant find the quote i saw about it being banned if and when i can i will post it

ouch, looks painful....
here is a really cool map of the Pacific Theatre in 1914, made by Zalezsky on deviantart-->zalezsky.deviantart.com

smthn cool
www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/great-war/

On this day in History, Manfred Von Richthofen received the Order of the Red Eagle (3rd Class)
(April 6, 1918)
America also was entering the war this day in 1917

m.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/germ..._source=facebook.com

Some daily facts the anniversaries of which were within the past four days.

May 31, 1915: The Battle of Jutland begins in the North Sea. Jutland was the largest naval battle of the First World War, with a grand combined total of 250 warships of all types from either side involved, and was the sole "full-scale" battle between battleships during the war.

May 31, 1915: The first zeppelin raid over London occurs. During the night of the aforementioned date, a lone German zeppelin, LZ 38, passed above the dark streets of London, carrying 90 incendiary bombs. The raid left 7 dead and another 35 wounded, and resulted in £18,596 in damage (nearly $24,000 in today's U.S. currency and $1,002 in 1915). The raid marked the first time London had been attacked from the air in history - and it certainly wouldn't be the last. Ironically LZ 38 was destroyed in its hangar in Evere, Belgium a few days later during a British bombing attack on June 7, 1915.

Just a friendly ad: I'm a military historian and currently operate an account on Instagram dedicated to the history of both the World Wars. Feel free to check it out here .

[NLR]Jacob10000 wrote: m.warhistoryonline.com/world-war-ii/germ..._source=facebook.com

oh I love that book so very much! Franz Stigler was truly a chivalrous person

The Canadian Corps, a 100,000 strong fighting formation, was ordered to the Passchendaele front, east of Ypres, in mid-October 1917.

Horrible Conditions

Launched on 31 July 1917, the British offensive in Flanders had aimed to drive the Germans away from the essential Channel Ports and to eliminate U-Boat bases on the coast. But unceasing rain and shellfire reduced the battlefield to a vast bog of bodies, water-filled shell craters, and mud in which the attack ground to a halt. After months of fighting, Passchendaele ridge was still stubbornly held by German troops. Sir Douglas Haig, the commander-in-chief of the British Expeditionary Force, ordered the Canadians to deliver victory.

Deliberate Preparation and Attack

Sir Arthur Currie, commander of the Canadian Corps, objected to the battle, fearing it could not be won without a terrible expenditure in lives, but Haig was desperate for a symbolic victory and insisted on the effort, believing that even a limited victory would help to salvage the campaign. Having no choice but to attack, Currie prepared carefully for the fight, understanding that deliberate preparation, especially for his artillery and engineers, was the key to advancing over this shattered landscape.

The Canadians arrived in Flanders in mid-October to relieve Australian and New Zealand troops and were shocked by the terrible battlefield conditions. Currie ordered the construction of new roads, the building or improvement of gun pits, and the repair and extension of tramlines (light railways). Horses and mules transported hundreds of thousands of shells to the front to prepare for the artillery barrage that would prepare for the infantry’s attack. The Germans atop Passchendaele ridge fired continuously on these efforts, killing or wounding hundreds.

His preparations ready, Currie launched a deliberate or ‘set-piece’ attack on 26 October, the first of four phases in a battle he estimated might cost 16,000 Canadians killed or wounded. By mid-November, having captured the ridge, his estimate proved eerily accurate, with 15,654 Canadian fallen.

The Legacy of Passchendaele

The British lost an estimated 275,000 casualties at Passchendaele to the German’s 220,000, making it one of the war’s most costly battles of attrition. The more populous Allies could better afford the losses, especially with the recent entry of the United States on their side, but the battle had delivered a blow to the collective morale of the British Expeditionary Force. Passchendaele, often remembered as the low point of the British war effort, remains synonymous with the terrible and costly fighting on the Western Front.
from-->www.warmuseum.ca/firstworldwar/history/b...ttles/passchendaele/

sorry for the inactivity, other things have been consuming my life right now,

Mk. V tanks of the 301st Tank Battalion, Tank Corps on the move at Saint-Souplet, France on the morning of October 17, 1918.

The 301st Tank Battalion was the only heavy tank battalion in the American Expeditionary Force that saw combat during the First World War. Eight heavy battalions were formed between 1917 and the beginning of 1918, but only the 301st was sent to the frontline. Under the command of Maj. Ralph Sasse, the battalion solely operated the latest and last wartime variant in the lineage of the British Mark tanks, the Mk. V and Mk. V* (star), possessing about 40 by the time they initially went into action against positions on the Hindenburg Line in late September 1918 (19 Mk. Vs, 21 Mk. V*s). In fact 85% of its Mk. V* tanks were lost during the Battle of St. Quentin Canal - 18 of the 21 were either destroyed, broke down, or disabled beyond repair. The 301st's first taste of combat was a disaster. But despite these losses, the battalion met its objectives and continued to see combat until the armistice in November.

16 of the battalion's Mk. V*s were Males, while the remaining 5 were Females.

"During the early days of the Second Battle of Ypres a young Canadian artillery officer, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed on 2nd May, 1915 in the gun positions near Ypres. An exploding German artillery shell landed near him. He was serving in the same Canadian artillery unit as a friend of his, the Canadian military doctor and artillery commander Major John McCrae.

As the brigade doctor, John McCrae was asked to conduct the burial service for Alexis because the chaplain had been called away somewhere else on duty that evening. It is believed that later that evening, after the burial, John began the draft for his now famous poem “In Flanders Fields”."
"In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields."
from-->www.greatwar.co.uk/poems/john-mccrae-in-flanders-fields.htm

Overview
At 7:30am Saturday morning on July 1, 1916, 101 years ago today, along an 18 mile front in northern France, almost 200,000 British and French infantryman of 18 combined divisions clambered over their primitively constructed trenches at the Somme and began walking the gauntlet of No Man's Land towards the trenches of their anxiously waiting German adversaries.

In hopes to ease the pressure on the French at Verdun, the British and French launched one of the largest operations of the Western Front and of the First World War as a whole. Originally proposed by Ferdinand Foch to take place along a 28 mile front from Lassigny to the Somme, with a joint British attack along a 16 mile front from the Somme to Thiepval, it envisioned 42 French and 25 British divisions taking part. However, these French divisions were soon diverted to Verdun, and the operation was downsized to a primarily British effort, with a few French divisions in support. The Somme offensive would be the British Expeditionary Force's first mass-scale offensive of the war, and would incorporate much of the New Army divisions (Kitchener's Army, which initially was all British volunteers). British General Douglas Haig and the infantry were confident, and expected victory. But this would not be the case. The ill-trained and experience-lacking British troops received a rude awakening on July 1, 1916, and the offensive at the Somme, unsurprisingly, ground down to a stalemate. And so the battle wore on; for five months. The offensive helped in the sense that it forced Germany to divert some of her divisions at Verdun to the Somme, but the battle at Verdun did not ease, nor did it cease.

The First Day
July 1, 1916. Saturday. 7:30am. The Somme in Picardy, northern France. The British line stretched from Mametz to Gommecourt, with the French line right of Mametz. In all, the allied line covered 18 miles.

Nine corps from the British 4th and 3rd and French 6th Armies assaulted the German 2nd Army from Foucaucourt south of the Somme all the way up to Gommecourt. The objectives were to capture the German first and second positions at Serre and south down to the Albert–Bapaume road. The Germans, caught by surprise here, were overrun and the French in this area of the offensive enjoyed much success. The British III Corps' attack on both sides of the Albert–Bapaume road ended in disaster, making little advance south of La Boiselle. Here the 34th Division suffered the highest number of casualties of any Allied outfit in the offensive on July 1st. The British XV Corps was also able to capture Mametz and isolate Fricourt.

Further north, X Corps captured Leipzig redoubt, but their attack at Thiepval failed. On the north bank of the Ancre, VIII Corps was cut to pieces in No Man's Land. VII Corps' attack at Gommecourt was very costly, and they were only able to advance little (temporarily at that) south of the village. German defeats from Foucaucourt to the Albert–Bapaume road rendered them incapable of resisting further Allied attacks, and a large retreat began from Foucaucourt to the west bank of the Somme. Fricourt was abandoned during the night. The situation for the Allies was an unprecedented disaster.

Very little had been gained on the first day of the Somme offensive, which the British referred to the initial stages of (July 1-12) as the Battle of Albert, and controversy began to rise. That day in Picardy in northern France, July 1, 1916, was an unequaled day of horror for the British military. On the bloodiest day in its history, the British armies lost 57,470 men, of whom 19,240 were killed. The French suffered just 1,590 casualties, while those for the Germans ranged between 10,000-12,000.

On June 24, 1916 the British and French kicked off the largest artillery bombardment of the Great War thus far, in preparation for the Battle of the Somme. The bombardment would last nonstop for an entire week, during which over 1.5 million shells were fired along a 15 mile front by 1,438 guns of all sizes and caliber. The bombardment was reported to have been heard all the way in the London, 165 miles away.

Pictured here is a British Ordnance BL 6 inch Mk XIX gun in action, June 1916. The British Army deployed 20 of these for the pre-Somme barrage.

Manpower
The German Army at the Somme totaled 315,000 men amongst 10½ divisions on July 1, 1916. Comparably, the 13 British divisions they faced totaled 390,000 men, and the French 330,000 (in 11 divisions). The underestimation of the strength of the Germans by the British was just one of the many reasons the early phases of the battle for the Allies were disastrous.

German infantry marching with captured British equipment, most notably Lewis Guns, July 1916.



German Trenches
The British artillery barrage that had lasted for an entire week had done little to wither the Germans. Though the bombardment was deafening, the majority of the German trenches remained more or less intact by July 1st. The bombardment had failed to unearth the barbed wire barricades, destroy machine gun nests, and crumble the trenches. The Germans simply slipped underground into their dugouts during the barrage. To add insult to injury, many of the British shells failed to explode. The result? An entire front line of enemy trenches waiting anxiously for an exposed advance of men. A recipe for disaster...

German trenches at the front, July 1916.

100 years ago today began the Third Battle of Ypres, more commonly known as the Battle of Passchendaele.

In the spring and summer of 1917 the Allied armies on the Western Front had succeeded in breaking two of the strongest German positions on the front. In April it was Vimy Ridge, and then it June it was Messines Ridge. With these two positions silenced, Allied commanders knew the time was now for a breakout offensive.

British General Sir Douglas Haig believed, mistakenly, the German Army was nearing collapse by the summer of 1917 (as a result of the Nivelle Offensive, which actually was a disaster for the Allies, and recent victory at Messines) and was convinced a well-organzized Allied offensive in the Ypres Salient would deal the crippling blow, or at the very least improve the situation in the salient for the Allies. On June 19th Haig traveled to London to discuss the operation with the Cabinet. It was during this meeting that news from the admiral of the Royal Navy was broken that severe shipping losses due to German U-Boat operations would bode it nearly impossible for the British to carry on the war into 1918. Haig's operation did not receive an outpouring of support from the Cabinet, especially from Prime Minister David Lloyd George, but the Allies had no other credible plans to fall back on. Thus the Cabinet was reluctantly forced to agree to Haig's offensive on June 21st.

The plan called for the British Army to break out east through Flanders in Belgium, the heart of the dreaded Ypres Salient, towards Roulers, and northeast towards Ostend on the Belgian coastline, from which a move could be made on the major German submarine depot at Zeebrugge. Nine divisions of the British 5th Army, five of the 2nd Army, and a pair of French divisions were mustered to carry out the great offensive of 1917. Eventually that number would grow to 56 Allied divisions overall, and would draw in troops from all over the British Empire, including New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. It was the British Army's largest effort since the Battle of the Somme the previous summer.