“Battles are won by slaughter and maneuver. The greater the general, the more he contributes in maneuver, the less he demands in slaughter.”
|--||Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill|
- On the outbreak of World War I, France had the largest air force in the world, with c. 450 aircraft, though there were only about 300 trained pilots.
- After a taste of military life during the Spanish-American War, Carl Sandburg applied to West Point, only to fail the qualifying exam, to the greater glory of American literature.
- It appears that the U.S. Navy’s World War II 5”/38 dual purpose gun required nearly 1,200 rounds to kill a kamikaze using ordinary shell, but only 417 with proximity fuzed shells.
- Quite possibly the oldest operational commander in history was the Venetian Doge Enrico Dandolo, who directed the siege and capture of Constantinople by the Fourth Crusade, in 1204, at the age of 97, not to mention being blind.
- Mayonnaise was invented in 1757, to commemorate a French victory over the British at Puerto Mahon, in the Balearic Islands.
- Outlining the personnel of the headquarters of an army corps, French Marshal Michel Ney specified, in addition to various staff officers, paymasters, and medical personnel, “four laundresses.”
- Two of the most famous commanders in World War II were adopted, Japan’s Adm. Isoruku Yamamoto and German’s Generalfeldmarschal Erich von Manstein.
- From October of 1940 through July of 1944, agents of the German government and armed forces in Western Europe confiscated 5,281 paintings, 5,825 other objets d’arte, 2,477 pieces of furniture, and 18,320 other items of artistic, historic, or cultural value, for a total of 21,903 items, sufficient to fill 137 freight cars.