Christopher S. Dwyer, "Raiding Strategy: As Applied by the Western Confederate Cavalry in the American Civil War," Journal of Military History 63/2: 263-282.
During the American Civil War, cavalry operations were often considered peripheral to the actions of the main armies. The western Confederate cavalry, however, elevated raids to a primary function and exploited the Union's "Achilles heel" by interdicting the supply of Union armies over railroads. This essay examines the importance of long-range cavalry raids on Confederate military strategy in the western theater, analyzes their impact on the course and outcome of the Civil War, and explores their application by Confederate commanders.
Elizabeth Greenhalgh, "'Parade Ground Soldiers': French Army Assessments of the British on the Somme in 1916," Journal of Military History 63/2: 283-312.
Using the rich and virtually untapped resource of the postal control records and morale reports held by the French army archives, this essay presents a view of the French attitudes to the performance of their British allies during the 1916 Battle of the Somme. The evolution of French attitudes is charted from the waiting period during the first half of 1916 whilst the Battle of Verdun raged in eastern France, through the raised hopes and unfulfilled expectations of the opening months on the Somme, to the disappointments of the final weeks. The essay ends by describing the highly ambivalent French response to the British performance.
Alex Danchev, "Liddell Hart and the Indirect Approach," Journal of Military History 63/2: 313-338.
Basil Liddell Hart, perhaps the most influential military writer of the modern age, has been revered and reviled by three generations of strategists. This essay focuses on his master thesis, "the Indirect Approach," in relation to another of his famous coinages, "the British Way in Warfare," a parallel gestation. Both concepts smack of the invented tradition; both have been immensely controversial and at the same time extraordinarily fruitful; both continue to resonate. They are in every sense characteristic of their creator.
Carl Boyd, "U.S. Navy Radio Intelligence During the Second World War and the Sinking of the Japanese Submarine I-52," Journal of Military History 63/2: 339-354.
This essay is an examination of Second World War U.S. Navy radio intelligence and its detailed role in the destruction of the Japanese submarine I-52. The Japanese submarine that carried nearly pure bullion worth about $25 million by today's standards was en route to German-occupied France when it was sunk in June 1944. In the spring of 1995, it was discovered over three miles deep on the Atlantic Ocean floor. Attempts to retrieve the gold continue.
In 1944 the submarine was tracked across the Indian Ocean into the Atlantic. Shortly after rendezvousing with the German U-530, the I-52 was sunk by an acoustic torpedo dropped by an American aircraft from the small escort carrier USS Bogue. The carrier was guided to the vicinity of the anticipated rendezvous of the two Axis submarines by Ultra, the initial cover name for information obtained from intercepted and deciphered enemy radio traffic. This essay relies almost exclusively on recently declassified primary source material from the U.S. National Archives.
William Rawling, "The Challenge of Modernization: The Royal Canadian Navy and Antisubmarine Weapons, 1944-1945," Journal of Military History 63/2: 355-378.
Victor Davis Hanson, "The Status of Ancient Military History: Traditional Work, Recent Research, and On-going Controversies," Journal of Military History 63/2: 379-414.
Ancient military history is currently in a renaissance of sorts, as an enormous amount of specialized research is now finding its way into general treatments of all aspects of Greek and Roman warfare. This review tries to place contemporary work of Classical scholarship in some overall context of traditional military history, and aims to provide a comprehensive discussion of the major books written in English about Classical warfare (Greek and Roman) in the past half century. The essay is arranged in three parts: (1) General introductions, surveys, and illustrated works; (2) scholarly work arranged by topic (e.g. infantry, cavalry, fortification, navies, etc.); (3) scholarly work in chronological order - a discussion of books on ancient warfare from the Mycenaean Age to the end of the Roman Empire. Constraints of space precluded critiques of journal articles, works in foreign languages, and books about the ancient Orient or New World.
Barton J. Bernstein, "The Making of the Atomic Admiral: "Deak" Parsons and Modernizing the U.S. Navy," Journal of Military History 63/2: 415-426.