Thomas M. Barker, "A Debacle of the Peninsular War: The British-Led Amphibious Assault Against Fort Fuengirola, 1415 October 1810," Journal of Military History 64/1: 9-52.
The article examines a multinational landing operation near French-held Málaga in Spain during the Peninsular War. Previous accounts blaming the poor generalship of the British commander, Andrew Lord Blayney, are incomplete and misleading. The disaster was due also to a bad plan devised by other leaders, fortuitous winds, faulty cooperation between the militarily less proficient Spanish and the often arrogant British, partial reliance upon an ethnic hodgepodge of Napoleonic deserters, slow communications, and, in particular, a lack of reconnaissance by Blayney's Gibraltar associates. Had Blayney in fact implemented the original scheme of merely pretending to assault the fort and then suddenly sailing off in order to seize a Málaga which the main Franco-Polish garrison would have left to relieve the post at Fuengirola, he would have been too weak to repel an enemy counterattack. The monograph is essentially a case study of military failure at the start of the Industrial Age.
Joseph Allan Frank, "Measuring the Political Articulateness of United States Civil War Soldiers: The Wisconsin Militia," Journal of Military History 64/1: 53-78.
Using a population of 841 Wisconsin soldiers, the article explores the role of political convictions in motivating Civil War soldiers after the initial enthusiasm for the war faded in 1863. The paper finds that a significant portion of the soldiers remained politically motivated even after the carnage of 186162. It goes on to design and apply a set of Social Science indicators for measuring three dimensions of political articulateness: the acuteness of soldiers' perceptions, their sense of political effectiveness, and the breadth of their political interests. The study goes on to examine factors that shaped the men's political outlook. Finally, the paper examines the soldiers' opinions on the political issues of the day.
T. R. Brereton, "First Lessons in Modern War: Arthur Wagner, the 1898 Santiago Campaign, and U.S. Army Lesson-Learning," Journal of Military History 64/1: 79-96.
This essay describes Arthur L. Wagner's contribution to the Spanish-American War, chiefly in charting strategy for the invasion of Cuba and commenting upon the Santiago campaign. Wagner was a well-known author of military history and tactics, and one of the U.S. Army's chief proponents for reform. His work at the Infantry and Cavalry School advanced the cause of Army postgraduate education, while his observations of the Santiago campaign and subsequent work in military maneuvers served as the earliest examples of Army lesson-learning.
Jeffery A. Gunsburg, "The Battle of Gembloux, 1415 May 1940: The 'Blitzkrieg' Checked," Journal of Military History 64/1: 97-140.
For more than half a century, "accepted wisdom" has it that the German conquest of France and the Low Countries in the spring of 1940 demonstrated the tactical superiority of the German "tank-plane team" over the French "artillery-infantry" team. This article draws on archives and eyewitness accounts of the two sides at the Battle of Gembloux of 14-15 May 1940 to demonstrate that quality units of conventional French infantry, deployed according to the French doctrine then in force, were perfectly capable of defeating the German "Blitzkrieg." This Allied success requires a rethinking of the true causes of the German victory in 1940.
Bernard D. Cole, "A Noglow in Vietnam, 1968: Air Power at the Battle of Khe Sanh," Journal of Military History 64/1: 141-158.
The Vietnam conflict was tearing at the heart of America in 1968, a year marked by the Tet Offensive and the battle of Khe Sanh. Marines occupied this base in northwestern South Vietnam, which from late January to early April was besieged by several North Vietnamese Army divisions. Its survival was determined by U.S. air power, in terms both of logistics and firepower. The author served as Naval Gunfire Liaison Officer (NOGLOW) with the Marines at Khe Sanh, in the Command/Fire Support Coordination Center. He describes the artillery and air power that underwrote the successful American defense.
Jeremy Black, "Britain as a Military Power, 16881815," Journal of Military History 64/1: 159-178.
A companion to the author's hisotiographic essay of recent books on British naval history during this period (JMH 63 [October 1999]: 683-703), this essay comments on a selection of books on British ground forces published from the 1950s on.