Every year on the first Sunday in June, Canada celebrates Armed Forces Day. At the start of the First World War, the Canadian Armed forces had just 3,500 men, but by the end of the war with conscription announced, they expanded to 400,000. 24,000 of these took part in battles in Europe. The conscription for the Second World War was even larger, with more than a million Canadians serving and of these, 42,000 died in combat. Currently, the Canadian Armed Forces have just over 90,000 personnel.
The Great French Revolution shook the entire world, and one of the first and most important events of that time was the storming of the Bastille prison-fortress on July 14th, 1789. This date was not celebrated for almost a hundred years until 1880, when July 14th became a National Holiday. For this day, a large military parade on the Champs Elysees was established one hundred years later in 1980.
On the 15th of September, 1916, exactly 109 years ago, the world witnessed an event that forever changed the image of war. It happened in France, near the Somme River. The British army was assaulting German trenches when it deployed a brand-new weapon: armored, tracked monsters created specifically to breach defensive lines.
In the early 1940s, Italian fighter aviation had a serious problem on its hands. Its main fighters, the Fiat G.50 and the Macchi C.200, had good maneuverability but were clearly inferior to the newest aircraft in speed, climb rate, and altitude performance. Some of the issues were alleviated by the modernization to “Serie 2” and using licensed copies of the German DB 601 engine. But those were only temporary measures that still didn’t improve them enough to engage targets at high altitudes — altitudes now occupied by strategic bombers. Besides, the Italian fighters were mostly armed with machine guns, and that was another point for improvement.
It’s been almost seven years since the “Supersonic” update. It introduced the supersonic MiG-19 and F-100 fighters that remain popular even today. However, the third aircraft added by the update has been kind of overshadowed by its counterparts. Today we’d like to dust off a British interceptor, the Javelin F.(A.W.) Mk.9.
When it first saw the light of day, the Jagdtiger tank destroyer was truly a sight to behold. Combining a monstrous cannon and fantastic armor, it was an Ally tanker’s worst nightmare. But no matter how impressive this level of firepower looked, it couldn’t save Germany from defeat.
Compared to the armored vehicles mass-produced by the giants of the military industry, Italian tanks made in the middle of World War 2 looked pretty pale. The resource and technology scarcity that began in the Interwar period meant bad news for the mechanized units of the Kingdom. Italian crews could only dream of vehicles like the Soviet IS tanks or the German Tigers. The Ansaldo and Fiat companies were looking for a way to create a more modern machine for the army, but the only vehicle that reached mass production was a ‘light heavy tank’ called the P40.
The Lockheed brothers, early aviation engineers, developed an interest in flight shortly before the First World War. Allan Lockheed believed that airplanes would soon become the fastest and safest mode of transportation in the world. But within a few decades, the world was already bracing for another global conflict — World War II. Automakers shifted gears to making tanks and armored vehicles, while aviation pioneers began competing to build the most capable military aircraft, the new driving force of 20th-century warfare. Among those caught up in this rapid arms race was Lockheed, though by that time the company was no longer run by its founders. The challenging times compelled the company to enter the defense industry.
In late March 1994, the skies witnessed the maiden flight of Europe’s new symbol of military might: the Eurofighter Typhoon. Aircraft engineering companies from the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, and Spain joined their efforts at the last stage of the Cold War to create a contemporary combat aircraft that would fit their requirements. They couldn’t pick any of the available foreign offers for reasons of pricing, quality, or politics, so the only remaining thing was to design their own machine.