Weapon History

On the suggestion of my exquisite prophetess Qamara, we’re heading to the Traisel Commonwealth, a land of myriad beastkin communities. I’m not sure what we’ll find there, but I expect my uninvited frequent visitor will make an appearance. You’d think that having a smoking hot catgirl following you around would be a good thing, but it’s not in this case. She’s an assassin, and she’s tried to kill me several times already. Truly a bad kitty.

Few raids of the Second World War have captured the public imagination like Operation Chastise. Here is the full story—not the familiar headlines, but the unexpected details that reveal how ingenuity, improvisation, and human courage combined to pull off one of history’s most audacious bombing missions.

Here are the extraordinary tales behind the ingenious weapons and technological wizardry that determined the outcome of the war. From radar, huff-duff (high-frequency direction finding), invisible radio beams, electronic-guidance systems, homing devices, and submarine-detection equipment, Breuer deftly exposes the gargantuan efforts employed by both adversaries and the fascinating details of the high-stakes warfare waged behind the well-known scenes of combat.

Un recorrido de seis siglos, de las primeras armas de fuego a la bomba atómica, que da cuenta de las relaciones entre industria, diplomacia y destrucción. La entrada de los países europeos en la modernidad no es ajena, como ningún proceso histórico, al desarrollo armamentístico y militar: los imperios españoles, portugueses, británicos u holandeses se consiguieron y se administraron con pólvora.

In his shocking and revelatory new work, celebrated journalist William Langewiesche investigates the burgeoning threat of nuclear-weapons production and the inexorable drift of nuclear-weapons technology from the hands of the rich into the hands of the poor. As more unstable and undeveloped nations acquire the ultimate arms, the stakes of state-sponsored nuclear activity have soared to frightening heights. Even more disturbing is the likelihood of such weapons being used by guerrilla non-state terrorists.

As it prepared to ward off an invasion by five well-equipped neighboring armies in 1948, newborn Israel lacked the weapons to defend itself. Enter Al Schwimmer, an American World War II veteran who feared a repeat of the Holocaust. He created factitious airlines, bought decommissioned airplanes from the US War Asset Administration, fixed them in California and New Jersey, and sent his pilots - Jewish and non-Jewish WWII aviators - to pick up rifles, bullets, and fighter planes from the only country willing to break the international arms embargo: communist Czechoslovakia.

Facing an insurmountable deficit in resources compared to the Union navy, the Confederacy resorted to unorthodox forms of warfare to combat enemy forces. Perhaps the most energetic and effective torpedo corps and secret service company organized during the American Civil War, the Singer Secret Service Corps, led by Texan inventor and entrepreneur Edgar Collins Singer, developed and deployed submarines, underwater weaponry, and explosive devices.

Nazi Germany was driven by a desire to dominate the world and create a new master race. Every aspect of life in the Third Reich was focused on the goal of Aryan supremacy, and science and technology were no exception. Under the Nazis, conventional science and a range of fringes sciences were legitimate areas for research and development.

Between 1961 and 1967 the United States Air Force buried 1,000 Minuteman intercontinental ballistic missiles in pastures across the Great Plains. The Missile Next Door tells the story of how rural Americans of all political stripes were drafted to fight the Cold War by living with nuclear missiles in their backyards - and what that story tells us about enduring political divides and the persistence of defense spending. By scattering the missiles in out-of-the-way places, the Defense Department kept the chilling calculus of Cold War nuclear strategy out of view.

Never Mind, We'll Do It Ourselves is the character-driven story behind the origins of the Predator drone program and the dawn of unmanned warfare. A firsthand account told by an Air Force team leader and a CIA team leader, Never Mind, We'll Do It Ourselves takes the listener into the back offices and secret government hangars where the robotic revolution went from a mad scientist idea to a pivotal part of global air power.

From 1951 to 1967 Egypt pursued a secret program to build military rockets that could have conceivably posed a threat to neighboring Israel. Because such an ambitious project required Western expertise, the Egyptian leader President Nasser hired West German scientists, many of them veterans of the Nazi rocket program at Peenemünde and elsewhere. These covert plans soon came to the attention of Israel’s legendary secret service, Mossad, and caused deep alarm in Tel Aviv.

The Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union lasted for more than 40 years. In general, this was a war of spies and subterfuge, of covert action and espionage. There was always a danger, however, that an error of judgment on either side could suddenly cause the Cold War to turn red-hot with an exchange of nuclear weapons. On many occasions, tensions between the countries increased, but the prospect of all-out nuclear war between America and Russia was never closer than during a two-week period in October of 1962.

Nikola Tesla was one of history’s greatest scientists, and though he is best known for his pioneering work with electricity, the fact that he is mostly remembered solely for that actually does a disservice to his legacy.

This explosive look into the dawn of chemical warfare during World War I is "a terrifying piece of history that almost no one knows" (Hampton Sides). In 1915, when German forces executed the first successful gas attack of World War I, the world watched in horror as the boundaries of warfare were...

Paul Struhsaker’s new book, How the Hell Did We Get Here? is a comprehensive guide to this emerging new Cold War and our need to rebuild deterrence. The book unpacks the players and politics that have brought us to the brink of world war and how deterrence, the application of soft and hard power, can restore peace. Deterrence is a complex subject. Historically, the subject of Cold War deterrence and resilience has been dealt with piecemeal, and a comprehensive overview of deterrence has not been available. The purpose of this book is to fill that void.

Douglas Webster was a young pilot from Ohio, newly married and with 17 combat missions under his belt. On December 5, 1965 he strapped into an A-4 Skyhawk bomber for a routine weapons loading drill and simulated mission. After mishandling the maneuver, the plane and its pilot sunk to the bottom of the South China Sea, along with a live B43 one-megaton thermonuclear bomb. A cover-up mission began.

On July 16, 1945, just weeks before the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought about the surrender of Japan and the end of WWII, the US unleashed the world's first atomic bomb at the Trinity testing site located in the remote Tularosa Valley in New Mexico. In The First Atomic Bomb Janet Farrell Brodie explores the history of the Trinity test and those whose contributions have rarely been discussed—the men and women who constructed, served, and witnessed the first test—as well as the downwinders who suffered the consequences of radiation.

While the bow was used throughout ancient times and the Middle Ages, on mainland Europe it was mostly replaced by the crossbow in the early 13th century. But that would change with the introduction of the longbow; a more powerful weapon than the traditional hunting bows. The original longbowmen were Welshmen recruited by King Edward I of England after he conquered Wales, and the weapon got its name from the fact that it was almost as tall as the man using it. This gave it a longer draw and therefore more force as longbows were generally made of yew, a strong and pliable wood.

This one-volume anthology provides a comprehensive analysis of the role that air power has played in military conflicts over the past century. Comprising 16 essays penned by a global cadre of leading military experts, A History of Air Warfare chronologically examines the utility of air power from World War I to the second Lebanon war, campaign by campaign.

Deborah is a British First World War tank that rose from the grave after taking part in one of the most momentous battles in history. In November 1917, she played a leading role in the first successful massed tank attack at Cambrai. Eighty years later, in a remarkable feat of archaeology, the tank's buried remains were rediscovered and excavated, and are now preserved as a memorial to the battle and to the men who fought in it. John Taylor's book tells the tale of the tank and her crew and tracks down their descendants to uncover a human story every bit as compelling as the military one.