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Revue d'Action Militaire: The Ziz Valley Campaign, Operation Dragon Noir
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Revue d'Action Militaire is a monthly feature which publishes reports about a battle of military interest. This is the third article a five-part series on the operations of French Paratroopers during the Rif-Atlas War.

On September 2nd, French paratroops of the 1ere Regiment Chasseurs Parachutistes recaptured the Moroccan city of Midelt, seized by Berbers during the opening months of the Rif-Atlas Revolt. The Berber rebels offered scattered resistance to this attack (Operation Dragon Rouge) before fleeing to the Atlas Mountains, south of Midelt.

Intelligence
Upon liberating Midelt, the French field intelligence officers received a wealth of intelligence sources amongst the local Arab population, which had suffered at Berber hands. Although many of the Arabs did not support the French military effort, they opposed the Berbers and were happy to see the French rooting out their enemies. Thus Arab civilians, who knew the country as well as the Berbers, volunteered information about the movement of Berber bands and the location of their hideouts.

The French military encouraged this in several different ways. French intelligence officers opened up the regiment's field hospitals to locals, and often sat in while military corpsmen treated various ailments and injuries, chatting convivially with the locals to glean information. Occasionally, money would change hands, but just as often, the intelligence officers would barter cigarettes, alcohol, medical supplies, protection, and even cattle. The 1ere RCP, on September 4th, paid out five goats and one donkey, and a squad of paratroopers was dispatched to rebuild a house destroyed by the Berbers - payment for reliable intelligence.

Over the course of September 3rd and 4th, the 1ere RCP's intelligence staff started to build a comprehensive picture of the Berber resistance in the Ziz Valley. On the 4th, Colonel Delarue and his staff met to assess the intelligence picture. The Arabs had provided substantial information identifying a number of Berber food and weapons caches hidden in the mountains south of Midelt, and Delarue determined to wipe them out. Delarue planned a detailed operation, code-named Dragon Noir, to enter the mountains, capture, and destroy the caches. Simultaneously, a second operational force (Dragon Bleu) would advance seventy kilometers down the main highway to secure the town of Rich. Delarue's battalion commanders drew lots for the mission, with the task falling on 2nd (Dragon Noir) and 3rd (Dragon Bleu) Battalions. Operation Dragon Bleu will be covered in next month's issue of LSM.

Ascent
The 2nd and 3rd Battalions rested through the day on September 5th, and mustered just after dusk. Chef de bataillon Laurent took command of the Dragon Noir forces and moved out from the 1ere RCP's camp, marching at night to avoid drawing too much attention. Laurent organized two of his three parachute infantry companies (A and C company) in a line abreast, leading the battalion; B and D companies, the latter with the headquarters and mortar units, advanced together as a reserve force. This worked well through most of the march, with the units keeping good contact with each other. However, an hour before sunrise, A Company under Capitaine Robert Chardin turned slightly left to follow a dried out gulley.

According to the French maps, this gully was relatively shallow, and led straight to one of the mission objectives. Laurent's mission orders sent Chardin's company up the gully, and then anticipated that they could cross the ridge to rejoin the rest of the battalion. However, unbeknownst to Chef de bataillon Laurent, the gully was deeper than the maps or aerial photographs showed, and took a dogleg away from the rest of the battalion's course of march.

Shortly before dawn, Capitaine Chardin began to feel increasingly uneasy about his company's position, and instructed Lieutenant Jean Victor to take one of the company's platoons and scale the gully on his right flank. Chardin them moved up the gully another two hundred meters as Lieutenant Victor's platoon picked their way through the high ground. At this point, Chardin realized his company was off course, and had the rest of his men climb out of the gully. Once in an elevated position, Chardin spotted his objective (a gap in a ridge to the southeast) approximately three hundred meters away. Chardin sent Victor's platoon to the right flank, where he expected to link up with the rest of the battalion, and advanced towards the gap in the ridge with the main body of his company.

At some point during this series of movements, a Berber sentry higher in the mountains caught sight of the French paratroopers and tried to raise an alarm. A dozen Berbers were encamped just out of sight of the French, in the process of restocking their food and ammunition. Both the Berbers and the French were unaware of each other's proximity, and closed to less than fifty meters distance. The Berber sentry, trying and failing to warn his comrades, finally fired his rifle at the paratroopers, wounding Captain Chardin in the shoulder.

The Chasseurs Parachutistes responded with an immediate and well-disciplined reaction. One squad began to lay down covering fire, killing the Berber sentry, while the rest of the paratroopers advanced at double time. The startled Berbers at the cache, belatedly alerted by their sentry's rifle shot, had little time to scatter, and three of them were gunned down only a few moments later. The rest took to their heels, pursued by Lieutenant Victor's platoon. In a few violent moments, the French paratroopers took the cache, killing four Berbers.

Captain Chardin's injury was severe, however, and as the French began preparing to destroy the weapons cache, they moved him into the cover of the rocky depression while the company's corpsman treated him. Although Chardin lost a great deal of blood, he would survive the ordeal.

The Berbers Return
Unbeknownst to the French, the Berbers who had fled from the sudden French attack were mere outriders of a much larger force of rebels, numbering some four hundred men scattered within a ten-kilometer radius. The fleeing Berbers soon linked up with their comrades, who sent messengers to the other scattered groups. These men quickly rallied and started moving towards A Company, which was still engaged in preparing the weapons cache for demolition. Within ten minutes of the first fight, Berber marksmen began shooting at the French paratroops. Lieutenant Victor's platoon, having unwisely pursued the fleeing Berbers, were isolated from the main body by a steep ravine, and took refuge in a stone hut. The rest of the company sought new defensive positions up the slope from the Berber supply cache, in a position nicknamed "The Bowl."

With Chardin wounded, command of A Company devolved on Lieutenant Charles Gabriel Duveyrier. A tough, no-nonsense officer, Duveyrier had been one of the first ten officers in the Regiment Chasseurs Parachutistes. As more Berbers appeared to snipe at the company, Duveyrier contacted Chef de bataillon Laurent by radio and requested instructions.

Laurent quickly assessed his mission objectives. Now that he was on the ground and seeing the terrain with his own eyes, he started to doubt the accuracy of his maps. In spite of Laurent's unease, his main force found two more Berber food caches without opposition or incident, and began preparing them for destruction or transport. After a cursory discussion with his company commanders, Laurent instructed Duveyrier to hold his position for six hours, whereupon the rest of the battalion would arrive to engage the Berbers. Laurent also called for air support from Fes. In his official report, Laurent justified his decision: "So long as A Company held out, their position would draw more Berbers into a fight, like bees to honey. This would allow me to maneuver with the rest of my battalion to outflank and destroy the Berber troops."

Lieutenant Duveyrier took stock of his situation, and tried to open contact with Lieutenant Victor's isolated platoon near the Stone Hut. Victor's platoon was pinned down by fire from higher in the hills, and separated from the rest of the company by a sheer ravine. In spite of this, Duveyrier and Victor established contact through the use of message grenades and, during brief periods of sunshine, signal mirrors. Lieutenant Victor opined that his men would be slaughtered if he attempted any movement to rejoin Duveyrier's group, but he felt his own position near the Stone Hut was tenable, despite sniper fire from the ridge.

Battle for the Stone Hut
The Stone Hut, probably built by herdsmen, remained a keystone of the French position throughout the next two days. A low broken-down stone wall, once intended to enclose animals, ran around two sides of the house, and provided limited protection to the French paratroopers. The hut itself was firmly built, and nearly impervious to rifle fire, making it a nearly unassailable bastion to the lightly-armed Berbers. However, about a hundred meters to the southwest, the ground rose up in a series of three ridges, each connected by a narrow crest of rock wide enough for only one man. Berber snipers quickly found this was a perfect position to snipe down on the French platoon sheltering at the Stone Hut.

Lieutenant Victor set up two of his three machine-guns to fire back at the Ridge, and sent one of his squads (sans machine gun team) to drive off the Berber snipers. (This position was dubbed "the Knife" by the paratroops). Covered by the machine-gunners, seven men negotiated the narrow path, killing two Berbers and driving away an unknown number more. However, once the squad had seized the Knife, they came under fire from the Berbers who had simply retired further up the slope. With no cover in this exposed position, the senior sergeant decided to return to the Stone Hut. In this maneuver, the French had one man lightly injured.

Within a half-hour, Berbers had returned to the Knife, and Lieutenant Victor dispatched another squad to drive the snipers away, establish a position, and hold the ridge. Three snipers were killed and one paratrooper was wounded. The paratroopers tried to establish a defensive position on the ridge, but once again, sniper fire threatened to drive them off the ridge, and the commanding sergeant ordered a withdrawal. Within thirty minutes, Berber snipers returned to the Knife, firing down on the Stone Hut and killing one of the French paratroopers.

Frustrated by this seesaw battle for the Knife, Lieutenant Victor sent a squad to clear the Knife for a third time, and then brought his four-man command squad and a second rifle squad up the ridge with large rocks and improvised sandbags. As the Berbers retreated, the French used the opportunity to construct a very basic stone-and-sand breastwork on the third ledge of the Knife. Victor posted one of his light machine guns in this tiny fortification and then retreated to the Stone Hut, leaving three men. This small machine-gun team held their isolated position for thirty-six hours, protected by nothing more than a stone wall barely thirty-five centimeters in height.

Battle for the Bowl
Unlike Lieutenant Victor's position at the Stone Hut, Lieutenant Duveyrier's troops at the Bowl had a relatively safe position against sniper fire, but faced a different sort of difficulty. To the northwest of the Bowl was an extensive rockfall that provided excellent cover to Berbers attempting to infiltrate the position. Sheltered behind large boulders, the Berbers could make their way to within only a few meters of the French position. This required extreme vigilance on the part of the French paratroopers, as the company mortars and headquarters were set up in the depression. Shortly before noon, three Berbers launched a suicidal attack by means of the rockfall, aiming for the command staff. Lieutenant Duveyrier shot one of the men at point-blank range, and the other two men were gunned down by the other defenders. One man from the company headquarters was killed.

Air support arrived at 1230 hours, but the MS410 fighters from Fes could not identify the French combatants from the Berbers. They requested for the paratroops to lay out colored panels on the ground to identify their positions, but lacking a radio connection to the paratroops, it took two hours for the request to be transmitted - by which time the aircraft had used all of their fuel and had returned home. Later in the day, a twin-engine bomber (MB.170) flew over and dropped eight 40kg bombs in the general vicinity of the combatants, but did not hit anything notable.

Having learned from their previous experience, the Berbers never attempted overt charges aimed at overwhelming the French paratroopers. In retrospect, it appears the Berbers did not even have an existing command and control structure, but had simply gravitated toward the fight in small groups of three to five. These men occasionally formed into larger bands, only to break up again the moment it seemed expedient to do so. On one occasion, two groups of Berbers, each mistaking the other's identity, spent three hours sniping at each other while the French watched.

By far the most feared weapon of the paratroops was the company AT team, equipped with two Russian PTRS 14mm rifles. Acting in the counter-sniper role, the two AT rifles could demolish virtually any bit of cover used by the Berber snipers, and the report of the big rifles, and their impact, often caused Berber marksmen to flee, even if the rounds missed. When they hit, the results were even more impressive.

The Battalion Arrives - Eventually
As A Company remained encircled under the irregular Berber gunfire, the rest of the battalion dismembered the unguarded and uncontested caches of food and ammunition. After a cursory cataloging of captured equipment, it was either destroyed or carried off by the paratroops. Chef de bataillon Laurent remembered seeing one soldier "festooned with five or six belts filled with grenades, like a decorated Christmas tree." Whatever the paratroopers didn't want to take with them was piled and burned, although a stash of dried goat meat, buried in the ground, was simply scattered across the area to spoil or be found by scavengers.

Once this litany of pillaging and destruction reached its conclusion, Laurent began to focus on relieving A Company. Before this could happen, Laurent had to find A Company. It did not take long for Laurent to determine his maps and aerial photographs were not very helpful. Radio communications with Lieutenant Duveyrier were difficult, and Duveyrier's description of his environs was no material help to his commanding officer. Laurent determined to march to the sound of the guns. Unfortunately, this took him the wrong way. Due to a quirk of acoustics in the mountain air, Laurent marched his men three different directions, chasing echoes of the distant gunfire. It was only in the afternoon, following the otherwise unhelpful bombing run by the MB.170, that Laurent figured out the proper direction to find A Company.

As this comedy of errors played out, and night fell before Laurent managed to reach A Company's position. The paratroopers, who had marched all of the previous night and much of the day, were exhausted. Calling a halt, Laurent and Duveyrier consulted by radio, and A Company's acting commander assured Laurent that his men would hold until relieved. Unable to do much more, Laurent ordered his men to rest, rousing them before dawn.

A Company continued to see sporadic action throughout the night, as Berbers attempted to infiltrate the French lines or find new firing positions. Three men from A Company's mortar team were killed during a Berber infiltration attack on the Bowl at 0300 hours. Berber casualties during the evening are difficult to reconstruct, but the paratroopers found twelve enemy combatants inside the Bowl come morning. From bloodstains and tracks, it seems likely other enemy combatants were injured but crawled out of the Bowl without being spotted.

Encirclement
Before dawn, Laurent goaded his men to rise and prepare for combat. C Company later determined they had camped only half a kilometer southwest from the Bowl. Quietly ascending the ridge, one C Company platoon achieved an elevated firing position over a nest of nearly a dozen Berber snipers. Their commander, Lieutenant Dubois, later wrote: "As we finished moving into position, the first rays of the sun appeared over the eastern horizon, piercing the freezing mountain air. One of the Berbers sat up and began a loud wailing cry for Islamic prayer, echoed by other voices around the mountainside. All the Berbers laid down their rifles and prostrated themselves to pray. We waited in silence for them to finish, none of us wishing to open our ambush while they were disarmed and praying; it was only when they finished and reached for their rifles that we pulled the pins in our grenades and sent them on their way."

The unexpected arrival of the rest of 2nd Battalion decisively turned the tide. The Berbers, with no clear commander or organizer, did not entirely realize the numeric superiority the French now had in play. Laurent's encirclement, crude as it was, netted nearly a hundred Berbers between the French paratrooper companies. These men attempted to scatter and sneak away from the encirclement, but on the barren mountainside, they were relatively easy to spot, and very few actually evaded death or capture. By noontime, the paratroops of B Company cautiously advanced to link up with the exhausted men defending the Bowl.

The Knife - Second Day
Berber opposition continued on the northeast extent of the line, focused around the Stone Hut. Sniper fire prevented Lieutenant Victor's platoon from receiving aid until well after dusk on September 7th. Constant sniper fire threatened the tenuous French position on the Knife, and rose to such a level that Victor did not believe he could send any more men up to relieve the machine gun team. These three isolated men continued to fire back at the Berbers. By dusk, they had only eight 6.5mm rounds left between them. One of the men crawled out to take a rifle from a fallen Berber, but was wounded in the leg as he crawled back to position. A Berber sniper, perhaps believing the position abandoned, attempted to follow the wounded man, whereupon the two uninjured men threw a rock that knocked the Berber off the narrow path and down a rocky slope.

Laurent, viewing the position from the next hilltop over, had difficulty trying to determine a way to relieve Victor's platoon. Virtually every approach required a body of men to move across long stretches of open ground visible to Berber marksmen, and some of the routes required climbing across a boulder-strewn slope. Laurent called on the expertise of the regiment's Groupe Franc troops, requesting them to find a route to drive the Berbers off the high ground over the Knife and the Stone Hut. A six man team (l'equipe) set off, skirting the high ground and finding a thin crevasse running through the mountainside in the rear of the Berber position. The six men scaled the crevasse and took a Berber prisoner, interrogating him about the strength of the enemy positions. Once this was done, they radioed Laurent, who sent another platoon from C Company to follow them to the top.

Once the platoon was in position on top of the mountain, they began working their way back down the slope, attacking the snipers from the rear. As darkness fell, most of the Berbers, still fighting on personal initiative alone, decided to abandon their positions and leave the battlefield, although a number continued to contest the ground until the next morning.

Summary
2nd Battalion remained in the area until late on September 8th, where they conducted an impromptu analysis of the battle, gathering bodies, stacking captured arms, and searching for more food and weapons caches.

The French suffered five men killed during the course of the operation, a figure which belied the ferocity of the combat. The French Army later awarded three Croix de guerre des théâtres d'opérations extérieures to the three men of Lieutenant Victor's platoon who had manned the position on the Knife; a fourth went to the leader of the l'equip, and a fifth to Lieutenant Duveyrier. When the 1er Regiment de Chasseurs Parachutistes, at the close of the war, was decorated with the Legion of Honour, their performance during Operation Dragon Noir was specifically noted in the citation.

Berber casualties, as always, were extremely difficult to quantify, but French troops confirmed fifty-eight dead and twenty-nine wounded and captured Berbers. Interrogations of the prisoners resulted in French intelligence estimating a total of four hundred Berbers involved at some point or another in the battle; Chef de bataillon Laurent, by contrast, claimed his battalion had faced approximately seven hundred Berbers, a figure he used in his official report on Dragon Noir. Most official documents use the lower figure.

Unlike its predecessor operation, Dragon Noir represented a different style of fighting than many of the Paratroopers were trained for. Unlike Dragon Rouge, Operation Dragon Noir had no airborne assault element, and sent the paratroopers into the mountain strongholds of the Atlas Berbers. Colonel Delarue later commented "because of the agressivité exhibited by all of the officers and men, the Chasseurs Parachutistes became most efficient at fighting and killing the enemy wherever he appeared."

That aggressiveness and emphasis on initiative often resulted in near-disasters, as evidenced by Lieutenant Victor's foolhardy pursuit of fleeing Berbers, which resulted in his platoon's isolation. In Colonel Delarue's cover letter to the official report, he supported Lieutenant Victor's actions, although he added a note of warning. "On many occasions, I have seen timid officers spend precious minutes to make decisions or prepare a plan, allowing the enemy time to regroup and prepare. A vigorous and immediate attack, by contrast, may throw the enemy into confusion and panic. In this state, the enemy seeks to preserve themselves first, and strike back at our men only as an afterthought. The difficulty for the platoon and company commander is to retain that aggressiveness and initiative while still maintaining his focus on the objective, and not being lured into disaster by a more cunning or disciplined enemy."

Revue d'Action Militaire: The Ziz Valley Campaign, Operation Dragon Bleu
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Revue d'Action Militaire is a monthly feature which publishes reports about a battle of military interest. This is the fourth article a five-part series on the operations of French Paratroopers during the Rif-Atlas War.

On September 2nd, 1938, French paratroops of the 1ere Regiment Chasseurs Parachutistes recaptured the Moroccan city of Midelt during Operation Dragon Rouge. Berber troops briefly resisted this attack before fleeing to the Atlas Mountains. In Operation Dragon Noir, the 2nd Battalion of the 1ere RCP defeated a significant force of Berbers in the mountains south of Midelt. Simultaneously, the 1ere RCP's 3rd Battalion marched overland to seize the city of Rich in Operation Dragon Bleu.

Dragon Bleu: Target Rich
The city of Rich (sometimes Er-Rich) is the second-largest city of the Midelt Province, and an important old fortress town. With a population of eleven thousand people, French commanders placed a high value on securing the city against further Berber attacks.

To complicate matters, however, the political situation in Rich was particularly confused. Aside from the tribesmen of Berber strongman Ismail Mokhtari, three factions emerged within the city during its occupation. The first and most militant, the Alqb'eat Alhmra (or "Red Berets"), were a paramilitary band formed and led by Algerian-born Rabah Boulmerka. A lieutenant in the Algerian Spahis from 1925 to 1928, Boulmerka had left the Army to pursue a civilian career in his home city of Mécheria. In late 1937, when the situation in Morocco started to escalate, Boulmerka was accused of fraud by his employer; he fled to Morocco with several friends, and ended up in Rich. He offered his military expertise and skills to the Arabs, leading a low-level resistance against Mokhtari's Berber tribesmen. Recruiting from the local Arab populace, Boulmerka eventually gathered approximately a hundred and fifty poorly-armed fighters. French Intelligence officers contacted Boulmerka in July, but found him unresponsive to overtures.

The largest faction was a group of Berbers led by Ibn Yaqub Yusef. Although a Berber, Yusef and his supporters were from the Kabyle peoples, while the vast majority of the revolting Berbers came from the Chleuh and Riffian Berbers. Yusef strongly counselled against Berber revolution, and maintained a relatively small group of supporters who had determined to maintain neutrality in the war. Unfortunately, Boulmerka's militia drew no distinctions between Yusef's neutral followers and Ismail Mokhtari's tribal fighters, and indiscriminately attacked both. Yusef also had an enemy in Ismail Mokhtari, who had spent no small amount of time attempting to capture or kill him. Mokhtari had, in fact, come quite close on two occasions, and Yusef's wife and youngest son had been killed by Mokhtari's Berbers. With enemies on both sides, Yusef and his followers had waged a three-way war against Mokhtari's tribesmen and Boulmerka's militia.

The final faction in Midelt was similarly led by an Algerian, David Macias, a young Algerian Jew born in 1916. A native of Algiers, Macias had traveled extensively in Algeria and Morocco, and had a number of friends in a small Maghreb Jewish community in Rich. In early 1938, Macias volunteered to travel to Rich as an agent of the French Intelligence Service. Macias and his friends quickly rallied both the small Jewish community and pro-French Arabs and Christians, acquiring small arms and taking control of Rich's market area. Despite Macias' lack of formal training, his energy, charisma, and born cunning won him the approval of much of Rich's population. Unlike Boulmerka, Macias provided protection to the local Arab women, who in turn provided him both supplies and information. One of Macias' preferred disguises to escape Berber searches was to dress as a woman, moving invisibly amongst the Berbers and Arabs alike. Macias had contacts with both Boulmerka's Red Berets and Yusef's Kabyles, and often served as the contact between them.

With Operations Dragon Noir and Dragon Bleu launching simultaneously, Colonel Delarue, the commander the 1ere RCP, had his battalion commanders draw lots. Operation Dragon Bleu fell to Chef de bataillon Marc-René Chantraine. Of all the senior officers assigned to the 1ere RCP, Chantraine demonstrated the highest level of political acumen necessary for negotiating with the factions in Rich, making him a perfect choice for the Dragon Bleu command.

Rapid Advance
Chantraine's 3rd Battalion gathered just after dusk on September 5th, preparing for the seventy kilometer march from Midelt to Rich. The road ahead was a wide but unpaved track which plunged through three major ridges of the Tell Atlas, constructed in the late 1920s to service mining explorations in the Rich area. The road had fallen into some disuse since its construction, but had been kept clear and flat.

Chef de bataillon Chantraine anticipated extensive opposition from Berbers along the roadway, and negotiated with the Armee de l'Aire for scheduled air cover flying out of the airfield at Fes. Much of the 3rd Battalion embarked in trucks at Midelt, while the lead company moved on foot as skirmishers.

To the surprise of all, the Berber rebels gave almost no resistance to the column while it was on the march, and only a few notable incidents occurred. One body of Berber horsemen was spotted by air moving towards the road, and the pilot of the MS.406 fighter launched a strafing run. His guns jammed, however, and the Berbers scattered and fled back into the mountains. Several sharpshooters did take potshots at the column, but these shooters were driven off or killed, and did not substantially slow the advance.

By the afternoon of September 7th, Chantraine's battalion reached the edge of Rich. Immediately upon the arrival of the French paratroopers, Ismail Mokhtari's Berbers holed themselves up in the center of the city in a complex of tall stone buildings.

Occupation of the City
With the rebel Berbers encircled in the city center, Chef de bataillon Chantraine wanted to move his paratroops into the city at once to surround them and prevent their escape. However, he had not counted on the factionalism amongst the city's population. When the paratroops approached the city gate, the citizens, members of Boulmerka's Red Berets, refused to open the door and demanded to speak with "the French marshal in Morocco." This was of course impossible, and Chantraine's attempts at diplomacy, via a shouted conversation in broken Arabic, failed to resolve the difficulty.

In the middle of attempted diplomacy, a horseman arrived with a message from Ibn Yaqub Yusef. In his message, Yusef declared his hatred for Mokhtari, his desire of living peacefully with the Arabs and the French, and his declaration that he was the true ruler of the city of Rich. Chantraine, anticipating that Yusef's proposal might provide a quick fix, agreed to provide "protection and peaceful relations" with the Kabyles. Chantraine also requested a meeting to discuss whether or not Yusef could be of material assistance in a bloodless reconquest of Rich.

While the Berber horseman returned with this message to his chieftain, David Macias walked into the French paratroopers' camp disguised as a woman. Although he was spotted quickly by the guards, the revelation of his true identity caused significant confusion until Macias was finally able to speak directly to Chef Chantraine. Unlike the city's other faction leaders, Macias had the advantage of a rank in French intelligence, and was willing to inform Chantraine about all the details of the internal politics within the city - and he also informed Chantraine of a tunnel, held by several Jewish fighters loyal to him, which ran into the city center.

Chantraine was unable to move immediately on Rich via the tunnel due to the arrival of Ibn Yaqub Yusef in the French camp. Chantraine cleverly interrogated the Berber chieftain, pretending to still be in the dark about the situation inside the city. For his part, Yusef acknowledged that he had too few men and too much opposition to be of assistance in actually controlling the city, and was instead negotiating for protection. The Berber's honesty impressed Chantraine, and he agreed to assist Yusef with protection in exchange for local native scouts and information about rebel Berbers.

Once Yusef left, Chantraine called in Macias again, and instructed him to lead one of the battalion's paratrooper companies through his hidden tunnel and into the city. Macias agreed, showing the tunnel to a French NCO and dispatching orders to gather his own band of resistance fighters. The French paratroops emerged in a building immediately adjoining the complex occupied by Mokhtari's rebel Berbers, but successfully infiltrated without incident. As the city woke up that morning, the Berbers found themselves surrounded by Macias' fighters and the French paratroops. Seeing the hopelessness of their situation, the commander of the Berbers hung out a white flag and requested terms. Chantraine offered fairly magnanimous terms: all weapons would be surrendered and all men would be required to swear a new oath of loyalty.

The Riot
By this point in the operation, Chantraine felt fairly confident that he had overcome all of the obstacles to the successful completion of his mission. However, he had neglected to deal decisively with Rabah Boulmerka and his Alqb'eat Alhmra fighters, who'd come to hate the Berbers with a passion. Chantraine sent several messages to Boulmerka asking for a meeting, but the partisan commander was uninterested. At dawn, with the French already inside the city, Boulmerka withdrew his men from the city gates and gathered them in a garden in town. Addressing his men, Boulmerka reminded them of all the defeats and humiliations they had suffered at the hands of the Berbers, and called for revenge. The crowd quickly grew to include regular citizens, and swelled to nearly five hundred men and boys.

A number of David Macias' informants quickly brought news of this growing mob, but Chantraine, distracted by dealing with his own issues, ordered a single French paratrooper squad to reconnoiter the situation and, if possible, order the crowd to disperse to their homes. Many of the rest of the French troops were either processing Berber prisoners or securing a new perimeter on the outside of the city. The lone squad observed the mob and quickly retreated, fearing for their safety.

Boulmerka finally descended from his soapbox and called for his mob to follow him to deal with the remaining Berbers. About five hundred strong, the mob made their way into the market, which Chantraine was using to process prisoners. Although they momentarily paused at the sight of the French paratroops, Boulmerka and his men pushed forward through the French troops and began beating, and then stoning, the Berber prisoners.

With the situation now completely out of hand, Chantraine responded with force. Calling two of his parachutist platoons, Chantraine gave the order to fix bayonets, and waded back into the market to recover surrounded guards and assaulted Berber prisoners. While some of the mob panicked and fled the scene, others, including Boulmerka and his loyalists, turned on the French troops. Chantraine, in the middle of attempting to disperse the mob, was struck over the head by a sword and knocked down unconscious, and another three men were killed. Despite this, the French troops held their fire, and kept pressing back the rioters with their bayonets.

More French troops arrived momentarily, including the battalion's B Company, which had twelve war dogs attached. Incited by their handlers, the dogs pulled at their leashes, snarling and snapping at the rioters, who determined that these animals were more fearsome than the French bayonets. The thin line of French troops encircled the rioters, and many of the rioters began to surrender. With his mob collapsing and the French troops closing in on him, Rabah Boulmerka shouted "God wills it!" and tried to break through the French ranks with his most loyal men. In the scuffle, he was twice bayoneted in the leg and stomach. The riot was over.

Aftermath
Taking stock of the riot, Capitaine Jolivet, the battalion's second in command, issued an immediate curfew order for the entire city. Chef de bataillon Chantraine was badly wounded and appeared unlikely to survive, while six French paratroops had been killed, and another forty-eight wounded. Eighteen Berber prisoners had also been killed. On the side of the rioters, there were two dead and dozens more wounded. The French corpsmen who inspected the injured rioters noted that only one in four showed blade wounds; the majority had been trampled by their fellows or bitten by dogs.

Wasting little time, Jolivet assembled a court in the market even as most of the injured were still being treated. Rabah Boulmerka, still bleeding from his wounds, was asked if he had started the riot, which he proudly acknowledged. Jolivet ordered him hung immediately, in the sight of most of the rioters. David Macias, sensing the mood of the crowd better than the French captain, intervened, demanding that the city fathers pronounce judgement and carry out any punishment. It took a half hour to find the local judge, who confirmed a guilty sentence and had Boulmerka beheaded in the Arab tradition.

With Boulmerka's execution, the Alqb'eat Alhmra collapsed. David Macias, however, used his contacts within their number to recruit and bring their members into his own smaller organization. Over the next few days, he proved vital to the process of bringing order back to the city of Rich, particularly due to his deep intelligence contacts, which revealed Berber sympathizers as well as Alqb'eat Alhmra diehards.

Chef de bataillon Chantraine survived the sword-stroke which knocked him unconscious during the riot. Although his men feared he was mortally wounded, Chantraine's injuries were less severe than they looked. Chantraine was eventually recovered by a medical aircraft and flown back to first the hospital in Fes and then on to Tangier, where he made a slow but complete recovery.

Revue d'Action Militaire: The Ziz Valley Campaign, Operation Dragon Gris and Operation Dragon Vert
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Revue d'Action Militaire is a monthly feature which publishes reports about a battle of military interest. This is the fifth article a five-part series on the operations of French Paratroopers during the Rif-Atlas War.

Through the month of September 1938, the 1ere Regiment Chasseurs Parachutistes launched three operations (Dragon Rouge, Dragon Noir, and Dragon Bleu) against Berber insurgents in the Ziz Valley of Morocco. These three major operations successfully returned control of the region to the French authorities after several months hiatus. However, significant rebel Berber forces still remained in the area, hiding in the mountains, including the Berber leader, Ismail Mokhtari.

Operation Dragon Vert: Seven Nights of War
As the French troops worked their way back into the Ziz Valley, they brought with them a growing intelligence organization. The seizure of the cities of Midelt and Rich allowed French intelligence the opportunity to expand their network of agents, which happened quickly. In Rich, a French intelligence agent, David Macias, had accumulated a particularly efficient network of agents, including Kabyle Berbers who had rejected the original rebellion. Interrogations of prisoners added even more depth to the picture French intelligence painted of the rebel Berbers. Lieutenant-General Jean de Lattre de Tassigny, eventual commander of the French forces suppressing the Berber revolt, commented "The suppression of this rebellion is more a triumph of our superior human intelligence-gathering organization than of military supremacy."

By October, Berber rebel activity in the Ziz Valley region slowly started to pick up again after their catastrophic defeats in September. This rise in activity, however, found the French troops well-prepared. Intelligence sources had identified a number of the paths Berber irregulars used, and Colonel Delarue, the commander of the 1ere RCP, began to dispatch groups of his paratroopers to ambush Berber raiders as they came into the open. Accompanying the French patrols were friendly Berber and Arab "native scouts", who were hired for their loyalty and their knowledge of the terrain.

Despite their martial prowess, Ismail Mokhtari's Berber tribesmen were suffering from acute shortages of all manner of supplies, and morale had fallen substantially. Mokhtari, acting on the advice of his son, terminated raids in mid-September as he feared further defeats would cause the desertion of his remaining tribesmen. Although Mokhtari had counted over twelve hundred men in his ranks at the beginning of September, by the end of the month he could contact only two to three hundred irregulars. The remainder had either been killed or captured by the French or, more likely, had simply deserted.

Delarue's ambush operations were called "Operation Dragon Vert", and grouped into eighteen distinct phases. Of these eighteen phases, roughly half resulted in some manner of combat between the French and Berbers, all fought on the seven days between October 5th and October 11th. In each of these nine combats, French parachute infantry squads (up to platoon size) laid careful ambushes along known Berber infiltration routes. Although the Berbers consistently demonstrate a high capacity for fieldcraft, the French "native scouts" were able to help predict Berber responses and take preventative measures. In only two of the nine ambushes, small groups of the Berber rebels managed to evade the French ambush.

By October 11th, French forces had killed or captured eighty-five Berber rebels in different phases of Dragon Vert, at which point their ambushes stopped yielding results. The remaining Berber rebels stopped their attempts to attack French forces in the Ziz Valley, and desertions - and defections - began to take their toll. One Berber rebel, weighing only forty kilograms, turned himself in to a French patrol because he knew he'd be fed in prison camps.

Operation Dragon Gris: The Capture of Ismail Mokhtari
As Mokhtari's Berber rebels collapsed due to hunger and low morale, a number of them turned to the French Army for surrender. The Armee de Terre encouraged these defections, and on certain occasions offered employment to some of the prisoners. The French usually used these defectors as scouts, placing them with two to three soldiers as "handlers" and sending them out to identify prisoners or suspected rebels.

On the night of October 17th, however, two Berber tribesmen made their way to a French checkpoint outside the city of Rich, where they surrendered and were handed over to intelligence officers for interrogation. They divulged the whereabouts of Ismail Mokhtari and his son Mohammed in exchange for a solid meal. As they ate, French intelligence officers approached Colonel Delarue and asked for permission to capture the leader of the local Berber rebels. Delarue quickly agreed, assigning the task to B Company of the 3rd Battalion, under Lieutenant Philippe Hubert Lefebvre. Lefebvre, standing in for his ill company captain, took nearly a hundred men to capture the rebel leaders in an operation dubbed "Dragon Gris".

The two defectors, promised both payment and food if they cooperated, led the French paratroops to a mountain hut northeast of Rich. Arriving shortly before dawn, the initial French reconnaissance effort failed when the men were spotted and fired on by a Berber sentry. Lefebvre ordered a general attack, and the chasseurs parachutistes overwhelmed the six men who were guarding the hut. However Ismail and Mohammed Mokhtari, alerted to the assault, dashed out of the camp with four of their followers, and managed to disappear into the countryside.

Lefebvre, having inspected the six Berber slain, quickly realized his men had missed their intended prey. He turned to the company's war dog handlers, asking if the dogs could track a scent. A quick inspection of the hut turned up some of the Mokhtaris' clothing, and the dogs quickly picked up the scent. Sending home all but one of his platoons, Lefebvre and his men moved light, literally hounding Mokhtari through the mountains.

When they realized they were being tracked, Mokhtari attempted to throw the French off his trail, briefly splitting his party, then attempting an ambush on the third day. This attempt miscarried badly; when the wind shifted, the French dogs alerted their handlers to a human presence and Lefebvre halted pursuit. The French, seeing a potential ambush site, fired three rifle grenades into the undergrowth where Mokhtari and his ambushers hid. One man was killed, two more injured, and a fragment of grenade penetrated Ismail Mokhtari's butt cheek. Bleeding and in severe pain, he was carried away while the French closed in, making two prisoners of the injured men.

Despite the French having a trail of blood to follow, Mokhtari, his son, and final companion struggled on for two more days until they collapsed from exhaustion in a cave. An hour later, with the fall of night, Lieutenant Lefebvre's men arrived and took the three men prisoner without further incident.

With the capture of their most prominent chieftain, the Atlas Berbers slowly laid down their arms, accepting the inevitable return of French authority in southeastern Morocco. The 1ere RCP was relocated in November 1938, moving back north to fight in the Rif Mountains, which remained a hotbed of Berber activity. But in the Middle Atlas, the war was over, and by December 1939 the French Resident-General declared the entire region "fully pacified".

Special Article: Intermediate Caliber Repudiation?
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

On February 12th, the German Heereswaffenamt Ballistische und Munitionsabteilung (the Ballistical and Ammunition Branch of the German Army Armaments Office) confirmed reports that they would procure the Swiss SK-42 rifle, known to the German Army as the G5, for standard use by all branches of the Heer. This monumental decision is highly noteworthy, as the G5 rifle is chambered for the 7.92x57mm Mauser rifle round, not the 7x40mm round adopted in 1931. The German newspaper Frankfurter Zeitung, in an article published February 16th, reported that the Waffenamt's decision was based on the poor performance of the 7x40mm Kar.37 semiautomatic rifle, which suffered continued stoppages (failures to feed or extract the cartridge) as well as high corrosion in the barrel. The German Ministry of Defense declined to comment on the matter. While this appears to have satiated the opinion of the laymen, Le Spectateur militaire's staff believes the real reason for the Waffenamt's decision is not as simple as Frankfurter Zeitung reports.

By procuring the G5 rifle for all branches of the German Army, the Waffenamt's decision will terminate all production of the Kar.31 and Kar.37 rifles, the only German weapons chambered for the 7x40mm round. While production of the 7x40mm round will undoubtedly continue in order to maintain stockpiles for existing weapons, it appears that the Heer has decided to abandon further development and production of 7x40mm chambered small arms in favor of the 7.92x57.

The First Intermediate Cartridge
Development of the 7x40mm cartridge appears to have started in the late 1920s. German cartridge designers claim the round - and a number of other rounds considered for adoption - was spawned by the Gewehr-Prüfungskommission's studies of combat ranges on the Eastern Front of the Great War. As discussed in the May 1941 issue of Le Spectateur militaire, these "intermediate cartridges" ostensibly provide the shooter with less recoil, which translates into faster follow-up shots, at the expense of range, accuracy, and hitting power.

Although details are not entirely clear owing to the Heereswaffenamt's silence regarding their internal politics, it appears that the German intermediate cartridge advocates, led by the then-head of the Heereswaffenamt, Oberstleutnant Karl Becker, found themselves superbly well-placed within the Heereswaffenamt during the period between 1930 and 1936 to adopt a cartridge of their choosing, regardless of the consequences to the German Army. In May 1929, the Heereswaffenamt placed a request for proposals for a self-loading rifle chambered in an intermediate cartridge, with a case length not to exceed 45mm. Specific instructions were given to ensure that the trajectory and accuracy of the new round would be comparable to the 8x57mm Mauser out to a range of six hundred meters.

A number of prominent German generals have stated that the original intermediate cartridge was proposed primarily to lower the size and weight of bolt-action carbines used to arm support troops (for instance, artillerists, mortar operators, tank drivers, and vehicle maintenance personnel). It did not became clear to many senior German Army commanders that Oberstleutnant Becker and his fellows within the Heereswaffenamt intended to change the caliber of all frontline small arms until late 1931, by which point the 7x40mm round had already been selected, and significant quantities of Kar.31 rifles were ordered for the Heer. Becker initially reassured opponents that the Kar.31 would be limited to support troops only, and appears to have kept this promise until 1933, when the first frontline infantry troops began receiving Kar.31s. Becker then used bureaucratic inertia as an argument against returning to the 8x57mm round.

When the German Army, traditionally one of the world leaders of small arms innovation, adopted the 7x40mm round in 1931, world small-arms developer took note. The Indian Army, which aped most German developments of all types since the 1900s, quickly adopted their own 7x40mm round, although it now appears to be in more limited service than Western army observers once thought. Other countries, most notably Great Britain, began development of similar intermediate cartridges.

Controversy
In 1931, while prominent members of the Waffenamt strongly pushed for the development of the 7x40mm cartridge, a number of voices were raised in opposition to the round's adoption. The most prominent of these came from the Gebirgsjäger (Mountain Infantry) troops, who felt the 7x40mm round lacked the range and punch necessary for their anticipated tactical employment. According to documents released by Gebirgsjäger commanders, the expected engagement ranges for rifle combat, as proven from Great War experience, usually exceed three hundred meters, sometimes ranging up to five hundred meters. Although the 7x40mm round's advocates in the Waffenamt insisted that the 7x40mm round is "flat-shooting" and has sufficient range for these sorts of engagements, it shall be shown later that this is not the case.

Further objections, not as loud but carrying perhaps more weight, came from within the German Army's quartermaster corps, which objected to the principle of supplying more types of ammunition. According to the German Army's tables of organization and equipment, each squad would still receive quantities of 8x57mm Mauser ammunition for the squad's MG33 or MG3 general-purpose machine gun, while infantrymen would receive 9mm Parabellum and 7x40mm ammunition for their sidearms, pistols, and rifles. The quartermaster service believed it would be better, if possible, to use a single cartridge for both the infantryman's rifles and the squad machine gun. Some proposals to create a 7x40mm-chambered squad machine gun were advanced, but went nowhere following a series of angry exchanges within the Waffenamt itself. All experts on machine-gun design adamantly insisted that the 8x57mm Mauser round be retained in German squad machine guns.

All of these objections, however, are minor compared to the main issue of the round's suitability. The intermediate round's advocates in the Heereswaffenamt claimed that the 7x40mm round performs on par with the 8x57mm round out to four hundred meters. This is not, in fact, the case.

An Unsuitable Cartridge
The 7x40mm round was billed as an ideal cartridge for modern military service, permitting lighter recoil for faster follow-up shooting by automatic and semiautomatic rifles. It appears that this has been achieved at the expense of other qualities desirable in military ammunition.

In 1935, as part of a trial for new small arms, the French Army tested three German Kar.31 rifles chambered for the 7x40mm cartridge. The results, given in a report declassified in 1942, show how the 7x40mm round performs badly at range compared to the standard 8x57mm round. These tests, conducted in a variety of climates, reportedly caused significant backlash among the Armee de Terre's own weapons designers and evaluators, who rejected the intermediate rifle rounds proposed at that time.


[SIZE=1]A comparison of bullet drop between the 7x40mm round and 8x57mm round.[/SIZE]

Despite these results, 7x40mm proponents within the Waffenamt still proclaimed that their intermediate round was "flat-shooting", a claim which seems incredible when viewed objectively.

The French Army's 1935 tests also evaluated that bullet drift due to wind, air pressure, and temperature variations caused similar inaccuracy in the horizontal plane. One French soldier responsible for testing the German Kar.31s reportedly said "Beyond three hundred meters, the Kar.31 is only marginally more effective than spitting at the enemy."

Proponents of 7x40mm cartridge claim that these results are part of the attraction of the intermediate rifle round - a feature of the design, rather than a failure of it. According to the Gewehr-Prüfungskommission studies cited by the Heereswaffenamt in 1929 (which have unfortunately never been released to the public), combat ranges on the Eastern Front and Balkan Front during the Great War dominantly took place between the ranges of fifty to a hundred and fifty meters. This is well within the 7x40mm cartridge's range of best accuracy. With lighter recoil and smaller size, the soldier can take faster follow-up shots, and carry more ammunition.

These arguments may carry weight. However, empirical data from a number of recent military engagements appears to fly in the face of the cited Great War studies. According to figures released by the Chilean Army in the aftermath of the Andean War, Chilean infantry generally engaged the Bolivians at three hundred to five hundred meters. These results were confirmed by the Irish, Czechoslovakian, and Yugoslavian Armies during their participation in the Afghanistan Peacemaking Operation, as well as by French forces in Morocco. Similar studies of Persian Civil War battle reports echo this trend, although less data is available. Combat ranges in the South American War differed drastically based on the region of the fighting, so examples of both point-blank and long-range rifle combat may be found. Indeed, the only recent example that appears to confirm the opinions of lower combat ranges comes from the Wilno Rebellion in Lithuania. In this case, however, ranges were generally low enough that submachine guns chambered in pistol calibers, rather than rifle fire using intermediate rounds, seems to have been more useful.

The Armee de Terre's tests also investigated the 7mm bullet's ability to wound and kill. Firing at slabs of beef or blocks of gelatin, the inspectors determined the 7x40mm bullet had a marked tendency to leave a very narrow, straight wound channel. Postulating its effect on a human, this means that a gunshot wound would be less serious than it could otherwise be. The 7x40mm bullet design appears to underperform in this fashion even compared to similar 7mm rounds such as the American .276 Pedersen (7x51mm) and the smaller 6.5x51 FAR, both of which demonstrate tendencies to yaw when striking flesh, increasing the potency of the bullet. In fact, in terms of wound channel width and depth, the 7x40mm rifle round shows almost no advantage over the 9x19mm Parabellum round fired from a submachine gun!

While the aimed rate of fire for a 7x40mm-chambered semiautomatic rifle rises somewhat in comparison to the 8x57mm-chambered alternative, it is important to realize that the majority of the German Army's intermediate-chambered rifles are actually bolt-action Kar.31s rather than semiautomatic Kar.37s. The Kar.31's rate of fire thus depends entirely upon the rifleman's skill at working the bolt, chambering a new round, and re-acquiring his target; the low recoil of the 7x40mm round has almost no role to play in this process. When chambered in semiautomatic rifles, the 7x40mm round does provide a substantial increase in both aimed and unaimed rate of fire. However, semiautomatic rifles still have a rate of fire significantly below both 9mm-chambered submachine guns and the Heer's highly potent squad machine guns.

By comparison to the Armee de Terre's cartridge tests in 1935, the Heereswaffenampt's 1931 trials were unusually abbreviated, and aimed at choosing from one of the five intermediate cartridges rather than comparing their suitability against the 8x57mm Mauser. Accuracy and ballistic tests were only conducted out to two hundred meters in low wind conditions and in moderate temperatures, where the intermediate rifle rounds were most closely comparable to the 8x57mm. A rifle chambered for the American .276 Pedersen was also presented for evaluation, although Lt. Colonel Becker rejected it out of hand as the case length was longer than the specifications required. The winning entry amongst the five intermediate cartridges was the 7x40.

In a February 1942 demonstration, Gebirgsjäger Regiment 4 conducted a series of small arms exhibitions to demonstrate the capabilities of the Swiss-designed G5 rifle, chambered in 8x57mm Mauser. As part of the demonstration, troops shot at automated moving targets at a variety of ranges up to five hundred meters using the bolt-action 7x40mm Kar.31, the semiautomatic Kar.37, the MP-36 submachine gun, and the 8x57mm-chambered semiautomatic G5. At ranges under one hundred and fifty meters, the MP-36 submachine gun achieved the most hits (albeit with a 170% larger expenditure of ammunition per hit), while the Kar.37 and G5, with aimed fire from both standing and prone positions, achieved roughly identical but lower numbers of hits. Beyond one hundred and fifty meters, the MP-36 submachine guns failed to achieve almost any hits. The Kar.31 and Kar.37 rifles also showed significant drops in accuracy out to three hundred meters, at which range they ceased to be an effective factor in the competition. Only the 8x57mm-chambered G5 was successful at hitting targets reliably throughout the entire engagement range. An observer for the German Militär-Wochenblatt summed up the results in a comment to the regiment's commander: "The 7x40mm-chambered rifles appear to have no place in the front line troops."

Rejection
A year after Gebirgsjäger Regiment 4's demonstration, the Heereswaffenamt, now under new leadership since Becker's retirement, indicated that all combat branches of the German Army would be equipped with the 8x57mm-chambered G5 rifle. Although it will take some time for production to catch up to the Heereswaffenamt's decisions, this announcement appears to spell the doom of the 7x40mm cartridge.

It remains to be seen what the German decision to move away from the intermediate rifle cartridge will have on other foreign developments. The Indian Army, the only other user of the German-designed intermediate cartridge, has not put as many 7x40mm-chambered firearms into service as intelligence sources have previously thought. It has only recently come out that the Imperial Ordinance Board is developing and testing alternate weapons and calibers. The political criticism once aimed at the IOB for their conservatism in adopting the 7x40mm has decreased substantially in recent years, and the government has made no official comments on the issue of small arms.

The British, by contrast, still seem interested in developing their own .280 (7x43mm) intermediate rifle round. No firearms chambered for .280 have yet been demonstrated in declassified circumstances, and so the British round's comparability to the German 7x40mm remains a matter of conjecture.

The United States, France, Atlantis, and Russia have all adopted calibers that are much larger than the intermediate rounds proposed by Germany and Britain. In 1936, France, Atlantis, and Russia introduced the Type-36 semiautomatic rifle and the Type-37 general machine gun, both in the 6.5x51mm FAR cartridge. The FAR armies are reportedly extremely pleased with their choice of calibers, although both France and Atlantis have continued to experiment with small-arms calibers. It seems probable at this point that these developments are purely for experimental data, rather than serious consideration for a new rifle round.

By contrast, the US Army has adopted the .276 Petersen (7x51mm) rifle round which was rejected in 1931 by the Germans. Like the Germans, the US Army has not yet switched over their machine guns to the .276 caliber, partly due to difficulties caused by the extreme taper of the Petersen round. However, the US Army also began low-rate production of the M1 Carbine chambered for the .276 Petersen Carbine, a 7x36mm round that's smaller than the German 7x40. This has seen more widespread service, being sold to Chile, Ireland, and according to rumors, the Philippines. In all cases, the M1 Carbine seems to be tailored not towards frontline troops, but to rear-echelon soldiers (artillerists, supply troops, who place greater value in lightweight weapons rather than long-range engagements. In these circumstances, the M1 Carbine appears to take on the role of a cheap long-ranged submachine gun.

Given the American experience with the M1 Carbine, one has to wonder what the German experience with the 7x40mm round might have been had it only been distributed to the rear-echelon troops, rather than foisted off on frontline soldiers.

Special Article: The Atlanteans in Ireland
by Com. James Touhey, Irish Naval Service
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

The harbour of Cobh, Ireland now serves as the base for the sloops and destroyers of the Irish Naval Service, but twenty-six years ago, another navy's destroyers filled the anchorage. These destroyers flew the gold, red, and black banner of the Imperial Atlantean Navy. Their job was to protect critical Entente shipping on the Western Approaches.

Blockade versus Handelskrieg
At the start of the Great War, Britain and the other members of the Entente launched a naval blockade against the German Empire. This was possible due to the strength of the British Royal Navy, and its location directly on the sea-lanes to and from the German ports. The blockade was punishing and effective: by the end of 1915 it had severely limited Germany's imports of food, raw materials, and manufactured goods from abroad. Regimentation of the German economy helped keep the German people fed - albeit at a rather minimal level - allowing the German Empire to continue fighting.

In order to strike back at the British for their choking naval blockade, the Germans turned to commerce-raiding, or "Handelskrieg." Handelskrieg was carried out in the first months of the war with scattered German forces such as the famous Emden, auxiliary cruisers such as SS Kronprinz Wilhelm, and surreptitious mining operations; but soon the submarine began to appear in force against the Allies. Initially, the German U-boats had success against Allied warships (three Cressy class armoured cruisers were sunk in September 1914), but the German naval command eventually discounted mines and submarines as decisive weapons against the greatest concentration of British naval power, the Grand Fleet. Instead, submarines were loosed upon defenseless merchant shipping bringing vital trade into - and out of - the United Kingdom.

Protestations by neutrals, chiefly the United States, resulted in two abortive German attempts to declare unrestricted submarine warfare in an exclusion zone around the British Isles, where German submarines might attack any ship without any warning. The first attempt ended after the May 7th, 1915 sinking of the Cunard liner Lusitania off Kinsale Head, Ireland. But as the British blockade continued to take its grim effect on Germany, the pressure to take Britain out of the war mounted, and on March 1st, 1916, unrestricted submarine warfare began a second time. This lasted just over two months before being cancelled on May 10th, 1916.

Still struggling to break the blockade, the German Navy sailed from their ports in late May with the goal of entrapping, then destroying, a portion of the British Grand Fleet somewhere in the North Sea. This attempt resulted in the greatest naval battles of modern times. In the aftermath, the British retained control of the sea - and the blockade of Germany continued. Anger in Germany mounted over the British blockade, and it became clear to the Entente that further unrestricted submarine warfare lay in the offering.

Atlantis and the Entente
Although the responsibility for the blockade rested strongly on the shoulders of the British Royal Navy, the Imperial Atlantean Navy provided a strong backup force. Through 1914 and 1915, the Atlanteans assisted the British and French navies in bottling up the Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman Fleets in their Mediterranean ports. The Atlantean GHQ, after consultation with the other members of the Entente, determined to focus their main ground efforts against the weaker members of the Central Powers - the Ottomans, Bulgarians, and Austro-Hungarians. Unfortunately, the Atlantean Army suffered delays due to manpower and equipment, and did not participate in the failed 1915 attack on Gallipoli; but by February 1916, the Atlantean industry had forged an army that opened the Second Dardanelles Campaign, opening the straits by August. Bulgaria switched sides and the Atlantean Army, accompanied by smaller international contingents, began to put the pressure on Austria-Hungary.

In order to supply this massive effort in the Balkans, in March 1916 the Atlantean Navy requested permission to assume control of all Entente naval forces operating in the Mediterranean. The Italians, focused on the Austro-Hungarians across the Adriatic, refused absolutely. Britain similarly declined, although they moved most of their warships out of the area. Atlantis found a more sympathetic response from France, which was unable to pay much heed to naval matters, given their titanic struggle on the Western Front. The French bases at Bizerte, Tangiers, and Toulon were made available to the Atlanteans, and by mid-1916, the Atlanteans commanded most of the Entente naval forces active in the Mediterranean.

Despite the substantial increase in Atlantean naval and military power and their success against the Ottomans, the seas around the British Isles remained an absolutely critical theater. Britain was dependent upon merchant traffic carrying everything from raw materials to food - but the German High Command believed Britain could be starved into submission. Without Britain, the rest of the Entente could not sustain the blockade alone.

In April 1916, during the second period of unrestricted submarine warfare, Atlantean naval commander-in-chief Spyridon Konstantinidis visited Great Britain aboard the armoured cruiser Lyra. Meeting with First Sea Lord Sir Henry Jackson, Konstantinidis discussed whether the Royal Navy might benefit from the dispatch of Atlantean destroyers to assist in fighting the submarine threat. Atlantean destroyers had already operated as far north as Brest, and the British destroyers were all badly overworked. After some discussion, Admiral Jackson accepted the offered destroyers in order to relieve Royal Navy units on the Western Approaches, suggesting that they deploy to Queenstown, Ireland.

The Atlanteans Arrive
On July 30th, 1916, the first four Atlantean destroyers, belonging to the 5th Destroyer Flotilla, arrived in Queenstown under the command of Rear Admiral George La Havas. La Havas, a native of Favonus, was a very senior officer for command of a destroyer squadron: he was chosen primarily for his English language skills and ability to work with foreign naval officers, and would remain in Great Britain as an official liaison between the Imperial Atlantean Navy and the British Royal Navy. La Havas and his ships arrived less than a week after their British commander, Vice Admiral Sir Lewis Bayly. La Havas's first impression of the commander of the Western Approaches was poor, but it soon became clear that Bayly would be a genuinely good commander of multinational forces.

For the moment, La Havas and his Atlanteans were equipped only with older Spathi class destroyers, barely six hundred tons in displacement; they were ill-designed for the stormy Western Approaches, as was quickly proven in August 1916 when the destroyer Arrow was disabled and nearly sunk in a storm. Four weeks later, Spike and the repaired Arrow sought shelter from weather in Bantry Bay. Both Arrow and Spike dragged their anchors in the night and were thrown violently ashore, miraculously without loss of men.

Vice-Admiral Bayly, in private correspondence with Rear Admiral La Havas, expressed his worries. "You now have eleven destroyers here in Queenstown, but I fear I am forced to withdraw them from patrol at the first sign of weather. I do hope your navy realizes that even though the men are eager and willing, the ships are sadly second-rate and in more constant danger from the sea than from the enemy."

Admiral Konstantinidis did, in fact, recognize the difficulties his small destroyers faced on the Western Approaches, but he had few options. Before the start of the war, the Atlantean Navy had copied the small French destroyers such as the Spahi and Chasseur classes, and while they worked well in the Caribbean and Mediterranean, as well as the central Atlantic, they were badly overtaxed in more extreme situations. The Atlantean Admiralty, determined not to copy other navies' bad designs, put together a design commission and designed the first modern Atlantean destroyer, called the "Admiralty Type 1." To fill the IAN's shortfall of destroyers, thirty-two ships were laid down in 1916, and sent north to relieve the battered Spathi class boats as they completed.

First to arrive in Queenstown was Upstart on October 3rd, followed two days later by the class leader Uproar. Uphold, Umbra and Uprising arrived before the end of October, and seven more Type 1s arrived in November. The battered Spathis were withdrawn to Brest, then to Gibraltar.

The newcomers, now known as the 6th Destroyer Flotilla, went to work with the same willingness as their predecessors, but with more capability. Their range, speed, firepower and seakeeping was significantly improved, and they labored through the winter of 1916 and 1917 to protect merchant shipping on the Western Approaches. More Type 1s arrived in January of 1917, forming up in the 8th Flotilla and bringing the total number of Atlantean ships in Queenstown to twenty-four. With the arrival of all these ships, the British destroyers deployed to Ireland were withdrawn to other stations, leaving Vice-Admiral Bayly in charge of only Atlantean ships. Bayly got along extremely well with the Atlantean officers, calling them "my Atlanteans" and sticking up for them against any possible British interference.

Although German U-boats sank a number of ships on the Western Approaches, none of the Atlantean destroyers managed to sink a U-boat until December 21st, 1916. Uphold, on patrol west of the Scilly Isles, received a distress call from a freighter under attack by the newly-commissioned UC-39. Dashing to the scene, Uphold spotted the the U-boat trying to sink the Belgian-flagged Anna with gunfire. The freighter had already been abandoned by her crew, and was burning brightly in the fading light. Approaching from the west with the sun behind her, the U-boat's crew did not see Uphold until the Atlantean destroyer opened fire at fifteen hundred yards.

Crash-diving, the UC-39 managed to escape, but only momentarily. Uphold dropped four depth charges - the first time they were used in action by the Atlantean Navy - and then circled to look for a response. The UC-39 was battered by the underwater explosions and the destroyer's gunfire, and struggled to keep underway, her rudder locked over into a hard left turn. Her captain elected to come out fighting, and managed to maintain periscope depth long enough to fire three torpedoes at Uphold. The Atlantean destroyer put her helm over quickly and slipped between the spread, attempting to ram the U-boat. She missed, but dropped two more depth charges which knocked out the submarine's engines. UC-39 surfaced and her crew ran to man the deck guns; but this was a contest the destroyer could win with ease. Her searchlights illuminated the crippled U-Boat and a dozen four-inch shells finished it off. UC-39 sank stern-first with seven survivors, including her commander, Kapitänleutnant Otto Heinrich Tornow.

The Return of Unrestricted Submarine Warfare
By January 1917, Germany's economy was suffering badly under the British naval blockade, and the nation's leaders pressed for the resumption of unrestricted submarine warfare. The Russian government was reportedly considering peace; if the British could simultaneously be starved into submission and the blockade ended, the German government believed the war would be won. Although Chancellor Bethmann-Hollweg opposed this move, senior military leaders such as Hindenburg and Ludendorff felt that the desperate situation called for desperate actions. If Britain could be defeated fast enough, then the protests of neutrals such as the United States might not matter in the end.

Over Bethmann-Hollweg's protests, the German Navy began unrestricted submarine warfare for the third and final time on February 1st, 1917. The results were dramatic. In January, U-boats sank 222 ships, but in February, they sent 328 ships to the bottom. The number would rise again in April. To the Entente, these losses were unsustainable; Britain faced the potential of starvation, both for her people and her war industries. The Royal Navy demanded more escorts to protect against submarine attack. With twenty-four Atlantean destroyers already in Queenstown, eight more - all the Type 1s built - were sent north in mid-April.

Increasing the number of escorts was not enough; something new needed to be done. Wild plans were proposed, such as an antisubmarine net stretching from Cap Gris Nez to Dover; a mine barrage across the narrowest part of the North Sea; and a proposal to scuttle eighty old battleships and cruisers to block the German Navy in port. Several sea commanders, Rear Admiral La Havas among them, proposed convoys, but this was viewed with some uncertainty. A board composed of British merchant captains did not believe they could keep station in a convoy, and preferred to take their chances.

In April 1917, over five hundred ships totalling a million tons were sunk in the Atlantic and Mediterranean - but mostly in the Atlantic. On April 1st, the Russian government began negotiations with Germany and Austria-Hungary for a cease-fire. Although Austria-Hungary was in grave trouble due to the persistent advances of the Atlantean Army and the Entente, Germany had many reasons to be confident. The Entente knew that the sinkings had to stop before Britain starved.

Convoys
Although the British had used convoys in certain places since the start of the war - troop convoys in the Mediterranean and across the Channel - there was uncertainty that they would work for more general use. The Atlanteans had used convoys occasionally as well, predominantly in the Mediterranean. One of the major worries was a lack of escorts. However, by the end of 1916, the Atlanteans had thirty-two modern Admiralty Type 1 destroyers in service, and another thirty-two ships, the A class, ordered for immediate construction. The French Navy ordered twenty-four Arabe class destroyers from Japan. The United States, bending the limits of neutrality, started to build mass-produced merchant ships for sale to the Entente.

In late April, the Royal Navy decided to test the convoy system on the Western Approaches. Two convoys, one bound from Atlantis via Gibraltar, and one bound from the United States, were met by the Atlantean destroyers operating from Queenstown and escorted safely to Britain. The only losses suffered were ships that had fallen behind and been separated from the convoy. Despite the fears of the merchant mariners, the cargo ships generally maintained good stationkeeping. First Sea Lord John Jellicoe ordered the formation of more convoys.

The Atlantean destroyers took up most of the responsibility for escorting these convoys, both even with thirty-two Type 1 destroyers in Queenstown, the Western Approaches were still undermanned. In April, the Atlantean Navy began sending armed yachts and trawlers to supplement the destroyers, and in June 1917, the new IAS Arrow, a new A-class destroyer, arrived in Queenstown. First of the "Alphabet Destroyers", Arrow was even more modern than the proud Admiralty Type 1s. More "Alphabets" arrived at Queenstown as soon as they were completed, crowding the harbor - on the few occasions they were not escorting convoys.

Sinkings of merchant ships dropped dramatically, and the escorts began to hit back. The convoys forced the U-boats to take greater risks for fewer rewards, and a mistake could prove deadly for a submarine commander. UC-31 found this out the hard way. Attacking a convoy west of Fastnet, she scored a hit on the British steamer Matador, which sank the freighter. The now-veteran Uphold and the armed yacht Tigress both spotted the submarine's periscope and charged overhead, dropping several depth charges. The new destroyer IAS Crossbow, on her first cruise out of Queenstown, joined them within ten minutes, listening for the submarine with her new hydrophones. Crossbow's operators heard the telltale noise of a propeller, and dashed forward to launch an attack, nearly ramming Tigress on her way in. Uphold took another go a few minutes later, and UC-31 surfaced in a rush. The Crossbow, coming around for a second session of sprint-and-drift, could not depress her guns fast enough, and instead rammed the submarine. She sank almost instantly, while Crossbow returned to Queenstown for repairs.

The Uphold would prove to be one of the most efficient escorts on the Western Approaches. Conducting the first depth-charge attack and scoring the first Atlantean U-boat kill of the war, she went on to sink, or assist in the sinking, of five German U-boats. Her first commander, Lieutenant-Commander Isidore Montero, gained further fame when he commanded the carriers which sank the Peruvian battleship Huascar in 1937.

Uphold's closest rival, IAS Black, sank two U-boats on the very active evening of September 10th, when two U-boats attempted to mine the entrance to Queenstown. The armed yacht Placidus, working as a picket boat, spotted unusual activity and called for backup. The Black, having been delayed from joining a convoy escort due to engine troubles, came out of the harbor and joined Placidus in sniffing around. Placidus was the first to spot a German submarine, and opened fire with her popguns, scoring hits on the surfaced UC-42, which submerged and dove for safety. The Black, summoned to the scene, dropped several depth charges in desultory fashion, but lost the scent. In the midst of this hunt, the UC-33, lurking close nearby, fired a torpedo at the Black - but the torpedo instead hit Placidus, which sank in minutes.

UC-42's captain, Oberleutnant zur See Hans Albrecht Müller, presumed that the explosion and sounds of sinking meant that he could surface again in safety. Unfortunately, he came to the surface only a few hundred yards ahead of the Black, which tried to ram him. The destroyer hit a glancing blow, scrapping alongside the submarine and puncturing her starboard ballast tank. Unable to submerge, the UC-42 attempted to fight it out on the surface with her deck guns, but the Black's stern gunners opened fire on the submarine. The UC-42 abruptly exploded - possibly the result of an explosion in her onboard mines.

Before the Black could search for survivors of either the UC-42 or Placidus, two more torpedoes from the UC-33 missed ahead and astern of the destroyer. Now aware that she was fighting more than one submarine, the Black began a careful series of maneuvers to sniff out the enemy using her hydrophones. After several false starts, the Black spotted a periscope and charged, dropping a dozen depth charges. UC-33 was damaged and breached the surface, unable to submerge, but otherwise under perfect control. Her captain, Oberleutnant zur See Alfred Arnold, applied power and turned tightly inside the Black's own turning circle, under the angle of the destroyer's guns. Black's captain, Lieutenant-Commander Argus Lycurgus, instead turned away from the submarine and then opened up with guns. Two hits knocked out UC-33's engines, and the destroyer came in for a second ramming attack, sinking the submarine. After a search for survivors, Oberleutnant Arnold was plucked from the sea. None of UC-42's crew survived, although ten men from Placidus were found the next morning.

The Victory
By the end of July 1917, with the introduction of the convoy system and the flood of new escorts and merchant ships, losses on the vital Western Approaches dropped back down to a low of 199 sinkings per month. While still severe, these losses could - barely - be managed, and the blockade did not loosen. Vienna was under siege by the Entente's Army of the Orient, and on August 6th, they surrendered unconditionally. The Austro-Hungarian collapse left Germany fighting virtually alone, and their position only got weaker. Unrestricted submarine warfare had failed; the British blockade had succeeded. By November, Germany had enough, and asked for terms.

On April 19th, 1918, Rear-Admiral La Havas and the Atlantean destroyer captains presented Vice-Admiral Bayly with a silver model of an Admiralty Type 1 destroyer, saying "The care and concern you've shown to our ships and men is worthy of the highest regard," La Havas said. Bayly reciprocated: "The Imperial Atlantean Navy has shown the greatest degree of professionalism imaginable - a willingness to serve humbly alongside an ally and friend for the preservation of our mutual cause." Tributes completed, the Atlantean destroyers worked up steam and began heading home; the last ship, IAS Danger, departing on April 22nd.

Twenty-six years later, four Irish Naval Service destroyers Connacht, Ulster, Munster, and Leinster, lay anchored in the cove Queenstown, now renamed Cobh by the Republic of Ireland. The Irish destroyer quartet are the descendents of the Atlantean ships which once packed the harbor, as they were designed for Ireland by the same Atlantean design bureau which designed the Admiralty Type 1 destroyers.

Author: Captaen James Touhey is a native of Cobh and a senior officer in the Irish Naval Service. Prior to joining the Irish Naval Service, he served as an officer in the British Royal Navy aboard HMS Iron Duke from 1915 to 1917. He now commands the flagship heavy cruiser LÉ Granuaile.

Military Unit Spotlight: École de guerre aérienne in Limoges
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Military Unit Spotlight is a monthly feature which focuses on a unit or type of unit fielded by either the French military or another world army.

Associated with the Armee de l'Aire's fighter-pilot training system, the École de guerre aérienne (Eng. "Air War College") is an academic school intended to instruct both pilots and commanders about the past, present, and future of air combat.

Chief among the missions of the ÉdGA is instructing fighter pilots in advanced combat tactics. The ÉdGA's instruction is integrated with the final stages of advanced pilot training, with courses in aerial gunnery, teamwork between aircraft, escadrilles, and squadrons, and modern planes. For many new pilots in the Armee de l'Aire, the ÉdGA offers them their first taste of a fully-functioning front-line fighter aircraft. Pilot trainees, sorted into four-man escadrilles led by an experienced senior pilot, begin by warming up with several flights in the school's older VG.39bis fighters. The first week concentrates almost exclusively on aerial gunnery, with the trainees targeting both towed gunnery sleeves and ground targets using live ammunition. Recovered targets are inspected, and ammunition expenditure is logged, providing the trainees with quick feedback on the success of their gunnery.

In the second week, trainees receive classroom instruction in aerial maneuvers and tactics, and provided the opportunity to test these skills in the air against other groups of trainees. It is not until the third week that trainees are introduced to the ÉdGA's instructor squadron, composed of senior and highly-skilled pilots flying American-built P-51D Mustangs. The instructors, working together as a single unit, demonstrate to the trainees the benefits of practice and teamwork. Their goal is to sharpen the skills of the trainees by pitting them against the most experienced pilots France and its allies have to offer.

Amidst training new fighter pilots, the ÉdGA additionally serves as a laboratory for new tactics. The school is most famous for their collection of flightworthy aircraft from around the world, with the collection focusing on fighters in active use by other countries. This collection is used for research by fighter tacticians seeking to develop new theories about potential enemy tactics, with the goal of understanding how different aircraft design may affect doctrine. The ÉdGA's instructors are reportedly even developing new tactics for jet-powered fighter aircraft, seen by many as the next great leap for air combat. The ÉdGA's international flavor is most prevalent here, as contingents from foreign air forces, primarily allied, travel from across the globe to participate in exercises, share information, and learn new techniques.

Special Article: Bolivia Buys a Navy, 1931-1933
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

As the Bolivian military prepared to attack Chile to begin the Andean War, military dictator General Jose Ignacio Gazcón authorized the re-creation of the Bolivian Naval Forces, starting a strange three-year military misadventure that ranged from the west coast of South America to the posh hotels of Monaco and the shipyards of Poland. Gazcón's goal was to acquire Bolivian-owned warships to disrupt Chilean control of the sea, disrupting seaborne reinforcements and paving the way for Bolivia to bring in arms shipments from overseas.

Bolivian Strategy
According to the Bolivian Army's 1929 war plans which called for an invasion of Chile, the Bolivian Naval Force had two primary objectives. After the Bolivian Army had seized the port and province of Antofagasta, the naval forces would conduct a coast defense campaign along the western seaboard. Other forces would additionally conduct commerce raiding against the large Chilean merchant marine in order to hinder Chilean supplies from being moved by sea.

The Chilean merchant marine which the Bolivians intended to raid was significant, consisting of several million tons in shipping. The Chilean merchant marine had been massively rebuilt since its near-destruction in 1849. At one point, the Chileans had more merchant ships sailing the Pacific than any other power except Great Britain, but with the start of the California Gold Rush, masses flocked in ships of all flags to arrive at the gold fields. Arriving in San Francisco, crews deserted ship with the promise of great riches. With such a large percentage of Chile's merchant ships engaged in trade along the west coast of the American continent, nearly ninety percent of Chile's merchant ships ended up rotting in San Francisco. Most of them never returned home. After this disaster, Chile's economic fortunes were in the hands of foreign shippers, and the state had to rebuild its merchant marine laboriously. However, by 1930, the Chilean merchant marine had grown substantially. During the aftermath of the Great War, Chile's Directemar, the government-organized shipowner which leased vessels to shipping companies, picked up contracts for cancelled merchant steamers, and purchased dozens of vessels sold as surplus by the victorious Entente. By 1930, over three hundred merchant ships flew the Chilean flag, making their merchant marine a large, juicy target for attack by the Bolivians - if they could manage it.

Although the Bolivian military was able to allocate significant manpower for this purpose, materials, particularly ships, were lacking. In early 1930, the new Bolivian Navy attempted to build a small motor torpedo boat, inspired by the British Coastal Motor Boats and the success of the Italian torpedo boats in the Great War. The first of these boats, named T1, was built in a factory near La Paz, and equipped with imported American aircraft engines. The design was intended to be extremely lightweight and compact, as the Bolivian Navy intended to transport the boats down to the sea using the meter-gauge FCAB Railway. The first run, which took place on Lake Titicaca in November 1930, was disastrous: the boat caught fire and sank in the shallows. The engines were later recovered and re-used, but the hull itself was a total loss. The T2 followed in January 1931, but the fifteen-ton craft failed to achieve more than thirty knots, well short of its design speed. More troublesome by far was Bolivia's inability to build the torpedoes that would arm the boats. Foreign assistance would be required.

To Europe and the World
In January 1931, frustrated by their unsuccessful attempts to build the torpedo boats, General Gazcón authorized a foreign purchasing commission to travel to Europe with the goal of acquiring naval materials. The commission would be led by Major Andronico Quintanilla, a Bolivian Army officer who'd transferred to the new Naval Force. Quintanilla and three aides shortly thereafter left La Paz, where they began visiting the major naval forces of Europe.

Quintanilla quickly discovered that his mission would be more difficult than anticipated. Although the Bolivians met a polite response in Germany and Italy, it quickly became clear that neither nation was willing to sell warships for the prices Bolivia wanted to pay. In Paris, Quintanilla had a disconcerting encounter with the suspiciously well-informed Chilean naval attache, and in London, the Bolivians were shadowed by a group of men later identified as Sicilian gangsters. However, the London trip was beneficial when Quintanilla was informed about an arms dealer who operated surreptitiously in Monaco.

Arriving at the famous Monte Carlo casino, Quintanilla made contact with the arms dealer, a Pole named Krzysztof Kordylewski, who pretended to be a British expatriate named Christopher Cord-Lewis. Kordylewski had ties to Polish shipyards in Gdansk, and quickly ingratiated himself with Quintanilla and his assistants with copious amounts of alcohol and women. However, Kordylewski was still a businessman, and proposed a number of unique ideas for the creation of the Bolivian Naval Force.

Kordylewski's Follies
The Polish arms-dealer offered the Bolivians a number of intriguing ideas, all intended to cause the anticipated Chilean enemies the most amount of trouble possible in any commerce-raiding campaign. Quintanilla quickly acceded to one of the most radical of these ideas, which Kordylewski named the "Mothership". Ostensibly similar to the armed merchant cruisers of the Great War, Kordylewski's Mothership was designed to resemble a large civilian cargo-liner. 15cm gun turrets would be hidden in the superstructure, and the ship would have minelaying rails and hidden torpedo tubes. However, the ship would not depend entirely upon her own onboard armament for attack. Two large cranes, placed fore and aft of the superstructure, would be able to lift and launch attack craft of up to a hundred and ten tons. Kordylewski's proposal called for each Mothership to carry six torpedo boats and two miniature submarines. A central hold within the hull, with electrically-operated cradles for each of the vehicles, could be exploited to hide the torpedo boats and submarines from prying eyes.

Quintanilla enthusiastically endorsed this proposal, and in April 1931, the Bolivian government ordered the construction of three ships from the Polish shipyards, naming them La Paz, Presidente Saavedra, and Antofagasta. In an effort to disguise the purchase of the ships from the Chilean intelligence services, Quintanilla went to exorbitant lengths to disguise the purchases as civilian vessels, setting up no fewer than six front companies with headquarters in locations like Czechoslovakia and Paraguay. These expensive efforts, which cost the Bolivian government as much as the ships themselves, were completely pointless: it later emerged that Quintanilla's assistant for the entire purchasing trip, the man entrusted with setting up five of the six false front operations, was working for the Chilean ANI (Agencia Nacional de Inteligencia).

To arm the Motherships, Quintanilla also ordered a set of six ninety-ton midget submarines, and eighteen twenty-ton torpedo boats.

War
None of the three Bolivian warships were yet complete when Bolivia launched their invasion of Chile in early 1932. Through the end of 1931, senior generals within the Bolivian Army, including First Army commander General Raúl Angelo Quiroga, convinced the leaders of the military government that Chile could be defeated by land and air attack alone. The naval forces, Quiroga argued, were an expense that should be left until the end of a victorious war. Major Quintanilla's expenditures had soared, caused not only by his own mismanagement, but also by constant attempts to bribe officials to maintain secrecy and speed along construction.

With the declaration of open war between Bolivia and Chile, the Chilean government opened communications with Warsaw requesting that the Polish government recognize the three Motherships as "warships intended for a belligerent power". The Chileans wanted the Polish government to seize and intern all three ships. Warsaw offered the Chileans verbal assurances of their good faith, but construction continued on all three vessels.

In May 1932, the La Paz was completed, although she still lacked her intended complement of torpedo boats and midget submarines. Quintanilla, anxious to prove that the Bolivian Naval Force could contribute to the war effort, waited only long enough to receive the first two midget submarines. Hiring an international crew to make up for the massive shortfall of Bolivian sailors (particularly trained men), Quintanilla took command of the ship, conducted a single shakedown cruise on the Baltic Sea in July 1932, and then set off for the Atlantic. Arriving in the English Channel, the La Paz broke down and then drifted ashore on the French coast. French naval officials in Dunkerque quickly determined the ship's onboard midget submarines, towed her off the shore, and interned her.

The Chilean government, irritated at the Polish government's inability to intern the ships, made another quiet but angry diplomatic protest to Warsaw. This time the Polish government listened, and placed armed guards on the incomplete Presidente Saavedra and Antofagasta. Both ships remained incomplete through the rest of 1932 and all of 1933, and remained in Polish waters when Bolivia surrendered to Chile and Peru in December of 1933.

Fate of the Ships
With the disastrous end of the war for the Bolivian government, the fate of all three of Kordylewski's Motherships would be determined at the Bogota Conference, where the combatant powers determined the disposal of Bolivian military assets. The Chilean government requested that the Motherships be transferred to the Armada de Chile. Peru and Brazil both demanded that as co-belligerents they deserved to receive one ship each. The Chileans eventually got their way, but the Peruvian and Brazilian governments insisted that the ships would not be commissioned into the Chilean Navy. To this Chile agreed, and Directemar acquired all three vessels.

However, the La Paz, interned in Dunkerque by French authorities, had degraded during her time in port, and the damage from her accidental grounding had never been repaired. After a cursory inspection, Directemar ordered the vessel stripped of useful materials and sold for scrap prices to a shipbreaker in the Netherlands. The two midget submarines embarked aboard the La Paz were similarly scrapped. (None of the planned MTBs or midget submarines were ever completed.)

The remaining two ships were turned over to Directemar, which ordered their completion as true merchant vessels. Unsatisfied by their initial work with the Polish yards, Directemar had the ships towed to Denmark for completion, where they were equipped with diesel engines instead of their overcomplicated Polish steam plant. The internal spaces intended for hiding midget submarines, and the high-capacity cranes, turned out to be almost ideal for storing and unloading railway cars and locomotives. Leased from Directemar by the Compañía Sudamericana de Vapores, the Presidente Saavedra was renamed CSAV Hamburg, while Antofagasta was renamed CSAV Antwerpen. They remain in service delivering railway equipment from Europe to places around the globe.

Fate of the Bolivian Naval Force
Although Bolivia was defeated in the Andean War and remains a landlocked nation, the Bolivian Naval Force continues to exist. Their operations have shifted to the rivers of their eastern region, but they purchased two midget submarines for use on Lake Titicaca. This has sparked a response from the Peruvian government, which placed their own patrol ships on the lake. Although the Bolivian government has stated their wishes to improve defense, the country's economy is still reeling from the successive disasters of war and earthquakes. The only substantial contribution the Bolivian Naval Force makes to the country today is through the Bolivian Marine Battalion, which operates as part of the Bolivian Army. Experts in canoes and river craft, the Marine Battalion helps to patrol the rivers in the eastern half of the country.

Literature Review: La Brigade du Diable and the World of the Future
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Literature Review is a monthly feature which reviews literary works of interest to military readers.

The novel La Brigade du Diable (tr. "The Devil's Brigade"), published in March of this year, has achieved a spot on French bestseller lists ever since its publication, a feat attributed to both its outstanding writing and the depth of its ideas. Authored by wargaming umpire Pierre Michaux and François Genefort, this novel inhabits the science fiction genre of Jules Verne and Arnould Galopin, being set in the near-future of the 1970s.

The Plot
La Brigade du Diable is primarily a war story about the fictitious 2e Brigade Aéromobile, under the command of Général de brigade Antoine Merle. The 2e Brigade is part of a larger unit called the Corps Afrique, a joint Franco-Italian-British unit fighting in North Africa against the Egyptian Army, which has seized the Suez Canal and closed it to shipping. The Corps Afrique faces more threats than the Egyptian Caliphate, however, as shadowy powers supply the enemy with weapons and troops. Worse, the members of the tripartite alliance are all poised to negotiate with the Egyptians and leave their alliance to pick up the pieces. It falls to Général Merle's brigade, the only battle-ready unit in the Corps Afrique, to secure the Suez Canal and defeat the Egyptians before the politicians destroy the alliance.

The book succeeds due to the talent of the two co-authors. Pierre Michaux, a former French naval attache and wargame umpire, has drawn notice in these pages before with his novels Les Actes des Aigles and Bruits de guerre lointaine. (The next novel in this series, Sous un ciel de feu, will be published in September of this year.) Michaux has demonstrated a talent for narrating a military campaign, and his deft touch is clearly evident in both the book's backstory and the execution of the plot. François Genefort, by contrast, has extensive experience as a pilot during the Rif-Atlas Revolt, and remains a senior officer in the French Army's Aviation Légère de l’Armée de Terre (ALAT). This shows in the book's assumptions of the futuristic technology in this fictional world.

Glimpse of a Future Army?
La Brigade du Diable is one of the most unique books of this generation, as it attempts to predict the appearance of warfare thirty years from now, all under the guise of fiction. The military roots of the authors are clearly seen within the book's plot. Military units of all the powers face the possible threat of rocket-delivered chemical and biological weapons, as well as so-called "superbombs", if they remain immobile for too long on a particular piece of terrain. War becomes a deadly dance, as neither belligerent wishes to remain static long enough for rockets to be launched and decimate their force. In this fictional treatment, the British and Italian armies have responded by deploying fully-armoured brigades, units equipped with small high-speed armoured vehicles that are protected against chemical weapons. The French Army, by contrast, places their trust in the "aéromobile infantry".

Général Merle's 2e Brigade Aéromobile is part of a futuristic version of the Aviation Légère de l’Armée de Terre: five thousand soldiers that can be landed anywhere in a hostile land with only a few hours' notice, carried into battle by high-capacity cargo helicopters. The Brigade's numerous helicopters carry hundreds of troops or small tanks. Based aboard a fleet of converted, high-speed merchant ships that can evade Egyptian rocket retribution, the Brigade strikes out at Egyptian Army targets in a sort of aerial guerrilla warfare, descending on the enemy with overwhelming strength and speed.

Summary
This book is highly recommended for its unusual insight, and possible foresight, into the futuristic world of warfare. It is well-written, with likeable characters, an intriguing plot, and well-researched ideas that should be of interest to both amateur and professional strategicians the world over.

L'analyse de l'équipement: the Polish 26TP wzór.40 and wzór.42
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. L'analyse de l'équipement is a new monthly feature which analyzes a particular piece of military equipment used by a French or foreign military.

Genesis
By the start of the 1940s, the Polish Army felt they had fallen seriously behind in the design and construction of tanks. Although the Polish had unified their armoured forces in the Bron Pancerna (Tank Branch), their research and development efforts lagged due to conflicting priorities and inefficient research and development procedures. In past years, Poland maintained a high standing among world tank designers, developing novel vehicles based on foreign developments, and leading the way in new technologies. Poland was among the first armies to field diesel-powered tanks, and they developed the tankette design to its full potential.

However, in the late 1930s, spurred on by rumors of massive and well-protected Asian tanks, the European armies were forced to adopt larger and more heavily-armed vehicles. Faced with the obsolescence of their tank forces and without a clear successor vehicle in development, the Bron Pancerna determined to license-produce the German Panzer IV medium tank at PZInz. This proved to be an extremely controversial decision, as many feared that adopting a foreign tank design would result in the atrophy of the design skills necessary for further Polish R&D developments. (Similar qualms were raised over the Polish Air Force's selection of the Bf-109 fighter around the same time.) Senior commanders in the Bron Pancerna also feared that the Panzer IV design had already reached the limits of its design potential, and would not be as upgradable as the Polish Army wished. PZInz's shop-workers even threatened industrial action to prevent the design's construction. The license-built Panzer IV, dubbed the 26TP wz.40, was nevertheless ordered into production by General Rejewski in late 1940.

26TP wzór.40: Polski Panzer
In most aspects, the 26TP wzór.40 is virtually identical to the German Panzer IV Aus.F, with very few alterations. This came to the great dismay of the Polish tanker commanders, who had desired that their patented Gundlach tank periscope, a development pioneered by the Bron Pancera, should be installed on the tank. Lacking a Gundlach tank periscope did not favorably dispose the 26TP to Polish tankers. In February 1941, three officers of the 1st Polish Armoured Division were court-martialed after they published a letter protesting the replacement of their 7TP tanks with 26TPs. Many parts originally intended to be license-built in Poland were never produced due to difficulties with Polish worker unions, and German-manufactured parts had to be used instead. Due to strikes by Polish worker unions, only sixty wz.40 tanks were completed according to the original design, although over a hundred incomplete vehicles were partially finished. Despite this, those few wz.40 tanks that were manufactured tended to be particularly high quality.


A 26TP wzór.40 on Polish maneuvers.

26TP wzór.42: Faults Fixed
General Rejewsky's dismissal from the Polish Army in January 1941 was largely due to his efforts at forcing the adoption of the 26TP wzór.40 design. Rejewski's replacement, General Stanislaw Maczek, offered a compromise position. PZInz's designers to use the Panzer IV design to back-engineer a "sufficiently Polish" design using the hull, suspension, running gear, and transmission of the wz.40, PZInz created the wz.42. The original imported 300hp Maybach engine which was not part of the original licensing agreement was replaced with an Ursus-built V12 diesel, a locally-built version of the Renault engine used in the French Char-6 light tank. This gave the wz.42 more power and a slightly higher top speed. A brand-new turret using the licensed KwK 40 gun was designed, giving the tank a substantially different profile than the wz.40. Critically, the new design featured a Gundlach tank periscope. The wz.42 design was unveiled in May 1941, and PZInz settled a number of other outstanding issues with the worker unions between June and September. The factories returned to normal production, beginning with a conversion of all incomplete vehicles to the wz.42 standard before starting wz.42 production in earnest in January 1942.


Three 26TP wzór.42s pose for the cameras. Lacking in this photo are the side-skirts that often appear on the wz.42 type.

Legacy
The 26TP has proven to be unusually controversial for a tank, partly because it became a symbol of the shortcomings of the Polish Army and industry in the late 1930s. Foreign officers who have had the opportunity to inspect the 26TP have praised the vehicle for its strengths, particularly with the wz.42, which reportedly has better performance than even the final batch of German Panzer IVs. A senior British officer who toured Poland in 1942 said "Unequivocally, the wz.42 could hold its own against any of the European tanks in its size class." He went on to say, "It would be a mistake to think that the 26TP's unpopularity is due to any shortcomings of the vehicle itself. Rather, it had the misfortune to be forced on the Polish industry at a time when they were struggling with labour issues and were troubled by their own uncertain development efforts. It, and other foreign equipment adopted simultaneously by the Polish military, became a gadfly to Polish nationalists."

However, as many in the Bron Pancerna warned before the adoption of the Panzer IV, the Polish Army found that the wz.42 represented the furthest possible development of the Panzer IV chassis. Even before finishing the wz.42 upgrade, PZInz began designing a new tank intended to reach production by 1944. Although this new vehicle has been displayed to Polish government and military officials, the veil of secrecy has yet to be lifted on the project.

Quoted

Specifications
Dimensions:
-- Length: 5.92 metres (19 ft 5 in) (hull), 7.02 metres (23 ft 0 in) (with gun)
-- Width: 2.88 m (9 ft 5 in)
-- Height: 2.68 m (8 ft 10 in)
Weight: 26 tonnes
Armament:
-- 75mm/L48 with 87 rounds [1]
-- 2x MGs
Speed:
-- Road: 42 km/h (26 mph)
-- Offroad: 16 km/h (9.9 mph)
Range:
-- wzór.40: 200 km (120 mi) with 470L fuel
-- wzór.42: 275 km
Engine:
-- wzór.40: 12-cylinder Maybach, 296hp
-- wzór.42: Ursus V12 diesel, 22.4L, 342hp [2]
Transmission: (Synchromesh ZF SSG 77) 6 forward and 1 reverse ratios
Suspension: Leaf spring
Protection: 10–88 mm (0.39–3.5 in)
Constructors: PZInz

[1] Licensed German KwK 40 L/48
[2] Licensed Renault V-12 diesel.

Special Article: EX Bantry Bay, August 1943
by Jean-Christophe Houdon
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

"Away assault boats!" announces the ship's intercom, and I raise my binoculars to watch them go. Five rubber craft, each propelled by a small outboard motor, dash away from the side of the Irish warship LÉ Meath, heading towards the shore of the port of Castletown-Berehaven, a small town on Ireland's Beara peninsula. My Irish local guide, an Irish Naval Service officer-trainee by the name of Colin Masterson, notes my interest. "American-built rubber landing boats," he explains. "They seat seven. That will be the first platoon of A company that's going ashore in them."

I nod, and hold onto my cap as the wind tries to blow it off. I've been allowed to observe this joint exercise between the Irish Naval Service and the Irish Army, but the Meath's captain has emphasized that he doesn't want me getting in the way of his crew. The Meath, which is normally used as a destroyer and torpedo-boat support ship, is packed deep with infantry. As the ship creeps slowly into the bay of Castletown-Berehaven, I stay out of the way by perching in a gun tub for the ship's 20mm cannon.

Meath barely fits at the pier, which has been vacated for the morning by the local fishing boats. Despite the ongoing military exercise, the Meath will need to back off and anchor near Dinish Island for the night. With no time to waste, the ship's master immediately moors the ship and begins unloading. The first to disembark are the rest of 9th Battalion's A for Ailill Company, toting their Enfield rifles, Breire machine guns, and big Boys antitank rifles. The Irish troops look like an odd cross between the British and German armies: they tote Enfields and wear British-manufactured uniforms, but wear Germanic stahlhelm helmets, ironically manufactured by Vickers.

This is amphibious assault on the cheap: two ships with a company of infantry and another of combat engineers. The exercise is intended to represent an intervention by Irish troops in support of the League of Nations. Whimsically, the locals are named 'Rockistanis' while the ethnic rebels are named 'Badistanis'. I'm told that there may be Badistani guerrillas in the hills above town, but they don't seem interested in attacking the troops as they come ashore. Masterson grins as he points out the obvious. "We might be just setting infantry ashore, but the Meath has three-point-seven guns and forty-millimeter Bofors. That beats rifles!"

Once the ship is mostly unloaded, I make my way down to the pier with my bag in hand. An Irish military policeman shoos me off the pier, frowning at my press credentials and exhorting me not to get in the way. I take his advice and walk to where A Company's soldiers, and the 2nd Engineer Field Squadron, are cleaning out the old British barracks for use as their casern. Abandoned for fifteen years, it requires some repair.

The local population plays the part of the Rockistani civilians, who the Irish troops are ostensibly protecting from the depredations of Badistani guerrillas. I encounter Sublieutenant Andrew Keen, a member of the 9th Infantry Battalion's headquarters company 'interrogating' some of the locals for information. His most productive agents are teenaged boys, whose loyalty can be bought with chocolate bars and hard candies. Keen's playbook for intelligence gathering is right out of the Irish experience in Afghanistan - cultivating the trust of the locals with free medical help, food, and general help. As I watch curiously, Keen chats with a local farmer who's in town for the afternoon. The farmer is irritated by the exercising troops, but Keen knows just how to sooth the man's concerns. Achieving a sort of studied neutrality, Keen goes on the offensive. It seems the man's horse has gone lame, and the farmer was hoping to borrow his brother-in-law's in order to remove some tree stumps. Instead, Keen grabs three of the combat engineers and directs them onward with one of the two heavy tractors the troops brought along. The farmer leaves with the engineers, a very happy man. "It doesn't matter if he didn't give me any solid leads," Keen says to me. "This sort of operation is less about military might and more about capturing influence with the locals. At the start of insurgencies, a good commander must give as much thought to cultivating influence as he gives to seeking proper terrain. Perhaps our farmer friend will see the guerrillas tomorrow, and will report them to us then."

Leaving Keen behind to trade chocolates for influence, I spoke with one of the military engineers responsible for setting up the casern. The Irish attribute much of their successes as part of the Afghanistan Field Force to the capabilities of their engineers and supply troops. Corporal Devin White, who served five months in Afghanistan, explained the reason to me. "We won battles because we were able to keep up a faster tempo of operations. That was only possible with regular deliveries of food, fuel, and ammunition. In order to get those things to the troops, we had to build roads, bridges, and infrastructure where there was none. The route of the League Field Force became Afghanistan's largest highway."

In the exercise, the engineers were responsible for setting up a series of fortified caserns for the use of the infantry. White took the time to show me around. "The casern serves as a defensible barracks," he explained. "A fully-developed casern, as we used in Afghanistan, would have mortar pits, barbed wire fences to restrict approaches, and defensive minefields."

The next day, I watched an infantry platoon march out of town toward the hills. According to the rumors, Keen's intelligence-gathering efforts had borne fruit, and a platoon was dispatched to hunt down a small band of guerrillas in the hills overlooking the peninsula. The 'Badistani' guerrillas were portrayed by Irish Army Rangers, who were influenced by the Yugoslavian Pandurs as combat and terrain specialists. At dusk, the platoon returned, having taken seven prisoners and one 'casualty' - a cheerful private from County Mayo who'd been declared injured by the exercise umpires.

That evening, as I halted for dinner at a local Irish pub, I encountered Naval Service Lieutenant Nicolas Porterfield, and discovered the bright young twenty-six year old was the commander of the Irish motor gunboat M-3. Upon learning I was observing the exercise for Le Spectateur Militaire, Porterfield invited me to join him on the M-3 the next day to show me the naval side of the exercise. Porterfield's command, a seventy-five ton motor torpedo boat, was one of the vessels participating in the naval patrol phase.

Departing Castletown-Berehaven at the crack of dawn, M-3 made her way to her assigned patrol zone. Porterfield told me that a group of civilian motor-boats, trawlers, and sailing craft had been chartered to ferry 'arms and guerrillas' across Bantry Bay into the exercise zone. Although none of the M-3's crew knew what the ships would look like, each of the chartered ships flew a special pennant identifying them as a permissible target to stop, board, and search. M-3's lookout spotted our only such boat of the day just before noon, and Porterfield signaled the boat to halt. Initially reluctant to comply, the fisherman eventually was exhorted to stop her engines, whereupon Porterfield's second-in-command inspected the craft. Half the size of M-3, she nevertheless offered many hiding spots, and it didn't take long for the Irish sailors to find a dozen (empty) ammunition cases being transported to the guerrillas.

On the fourth day of the exercise, I hitched a ride with a local salesman in order to travel to nearby Adrigole, a quaint little seaside village of three hundred where the 9th Battalion had established another temporary casern. The trip through the Irish countryside was uneventful. It is not without cause that the country is dubbed 'The Emerald Isle', and my traveling companion pointed out to me the region's tallest mountain, named Hungry Hill. I knew from my previous evening in Castletown-Berehaven that most of the 'Badistani Guerrillas' had slowly migrated there, making it their temporary base. Indeed, arriving at the Adigole casern, I discovered only a single platoon defending the impromptu fortifications: the rest of C for Cian Company was combing Hungry Hill for the guerrillas. One platoon straggled back into the casern just before dusk, tired and frustrated: the Irish Rangers had apparently led most of the company on a fruitless chase up and down Hungry Hill.

Despite the difficulties, the Irish troops have benefitted immensely from their hard-won experience in Afghanistan. Though the troops of C for Cian Company had been demoralized by their apparently fruitless chase, it turned out that it had not been for naught: B for Brighid Company's soldiers had come down from the north and swept up a band of thirty guerrillas, completing the terms of the exercise.

I took the bus back to Cork, where I'd get on the ferry to return home. My seatmate, as it turned out, was Karel Syrovy, a Czech veteran of the Afghanistan Field Force who'd been invited to observe the exercises, as I had done. When we finally parted ways in Cherbourg, Karel helped me gain a new understanding into the Irish Army. "For the Irish nation and their army, Afghanistan is very important," he said. "For decades they fought against British occupation. Now they are almost completely independent, with only a few threads left to tie them to Britain. In four hundred years they have either fought for their freedom, or at Britain's command: but in Afghanistan they fought beneath their own tricolor to bring a lasting peace to another land. They still quietly worry a bit about British invasion, but now they are heavily-committed to the League of Nations. It's a strange sort of half-war they're preparing to fight - idealistic, gritty, and quixotic. I think that suits the Irish well."

Literature Review: Sous un ciel de feu
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Literature Review is a monthly feature which reviews literary works of interest to military readers.

Sous un ciel de feu (Eng. "Under a Sky of Fire") is the long-anticipated third book in a popular military fiction quartet written by French wargaming umpire Pierre Michaux. Following on the best-selling success of the previous volumes (Les Actes des Aigles and Bruits de guerre lointaine), Michaux's third novel shows the continued war between the alliance of Brazil and the US on the one hand and the South African Empire. The conflict is based on a realistic kriegspiel carried out by the French military war college in 1938, which Michaux umpired. Through the course of Sous un ciel de feu, the reader receives the feeling of a tide turning. Although in the previous two books the South African military has captured Rio de Janeiro, hamstrung the US Navy, and then fought a seesaw battle for the Brazilian industrial heartland of Minas Gerais, the manufacturing brawn of the United States is starting to flex.

In the face of the rising capabilities of their foes, talented South African general Nicolaas Blomkamp advises his government to seek a peace settlement which will allow the Empire to achieve its original goals in starting the conflict. Buoyed by victory, however, the government allows the moment to pass, and orders Blomkamp to push for the unconditional surrender of Brazil. To do this, Blomkamp must push the Brazilian and American armies out of the ports of Recife and Fortaleza, far to the north. On the side of the opposition, however, the American armoured forces under the brilliant US General Starkweather are just as ready to attack, and they get in the first blow. Smashing the front line and pouring through to attack the South African rear-echelons, Starkweather's eighteen American divisions practice against the South Africans the same successful tactics Blomkamp has used with such success over the past year. At sea, the American submarine fleets threaten to strangle South African reinforcements. Although Blomkamp's heroic efforts stabilize the line, it is clear that the war must go on until it reaches its conclusion.

As is Michaux's habit, the short novella "Propagande" is included at the end of the published edition. This short narrative shows the efforts of American and South African propagandists, as well as the two nations' competing diplomats at the League of Nations.

Once again, Michaux demonstrates unusual sagacity in his concept of military operations. Many senior military commanders in the French Army are avid fans of Michaux's works, and noted general Charles de Gaul famously declared "In no place does Pierre write what cannot be, only what was not." The armoured tactics used to such great effect by the characters of Blomkamp and Starkweather are based on the actual training documents used by their respective armies. Similarly, Michaux makes a great effort to treat the characters of both sides as neither heroes nor villains; the author has stated that he has received positive comments from both American and South African military commanders.

Although the action rises in the second half of the novel, the first third of the book was somewhat slow, as the two armies, exhausted by their seesaw battles for Minas Gerais in the previous book, attempted to recover and resupply. The internal political scenes where Blomkamp tries to push for a negotiated end to the war occasionally lagged. This is Michaux at his weakest point, but it is still superior to most other military fiction of the last twenty years. Where the politics ended and the combat resumed, the reader is once again thrust into a non-stop action story that cannot be put down.

The fourth and final volume of the quartet, Marée haute (En. "Flood Tide") is due for publication late next year.

Special Article: Iron Hand Over Benevolent Heart
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

In shifts of fifty, the men of Infantry Regiment 36 'Tonkin' move into the exercise area, clad in light blue exercise uniforms with yellow belts. These young men, drawn from the ranks of Tonkin's lower and middle class, are future infantrymen in the Forces de sécurité territoriaux, a force being raised to take over the defense of Indochinese territory. Under a blazing sky, each of the fifty men greets his sparring partner with the salutation 'Iron Hand Over Benevolent Heart' before beginning their martial exercises.

Lieutenants César-Auguste Pépin and Nguyen Muoi stroll through the practice area, watching carefully and conferring with each other about the progress of their students. While Pépin wears the Lizard camouflage of the French Army, Muoi wears the uniform brown-green of the Forces de sécurité territoriaux. For the last year, Lieutenant Pépin has been detached to assist in training Indochinese infantry troops, partnering off with an Indochinese-born officer. By contrast, Nguyen Muoi is a native of Hanoi and a rising star in a new martial art called Viet Vo Dao, or 'Vovinam'.

As Indochinese cadets come into the Forces de sécurité territoriaux, they are initiated into this Indochinese martial art. Founded in 1938 by Indochinese martial artist Nguyen Loc, Viet Vo Dao focuses on providing its practitioners with basic self-defense skills, with weapons ranging from the hands and feet to bo staffs and swords. Although the art first became popular among Vietnamese nationalists, The Forces de sécurité territoriaux has adopted Viet Vo Dao into the training of their soldiers, and the popularity of the sport is growing by leaps and bounds.

This martial art was created with the intention of promoting a sense of national unity for the Indochinese people. Nguyen Loc designed the art from his studies of ancient Vietnamese martial arts, Chinese kung fu, and a smattering of Korean and Japanese martial arts. Viet Vo Dao masters exhort their pupils to act generously and promote the welfare of others. These qualities appealed to the senior officers of the Forces de sécurité territoriaux, who observed Nguyen Loc and his pupils conducting a demonstration in 1941. FST officers and enlisted men are exhorted to live to high standards, and are forbidden from taking political stances in a region which is preparing for a plebiscite on independence in two years. If the Indochinese people vote for independence in October 1945, then the Forces de sécurité territoriaux will become the army of the new Republic of Indochina.

Revue d'Action Militaire: Ambush at Chefchaouen
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Revue d'Action Militaire is a monthly feature which publishes reports about a battle of military interest.

Shortly before dawn on August 21st, 1938, a convoy of military supplies set out from Tetouan, Morocco, bound for the military garrison of Chefchaouen, a distance by road of approximately sixty kilometers. The supply convoy was expected to arrive in Chefchaouen two hours later, and then return to Tetouan before nightfall.

The Berber rebels of the Rif mountains had fought hard in Abd el-Krim's campaign to create an independent Rif republic, but with el-Krim's capture on June 4th at the Battle of Meknes, and the devastation visited upon his over-eager army, the Berbers had suffered crippling losses. Many of the Berbers living in the Chefchaouen region had been killed or captured at Meknes, when General de Lattre's 14e Division Légère d'Infanterie and Touzet du Vigier'‘s Armored Cuirassier Regiment smashed through the rebel army. Before the beginning of the rebellion, an estimated ten thousand Berbers lived within forty kilometers of Chefchaouen, and a full four thousand of the men had followed Abd el-Krim to Meknes and Rabat. By August, only four hundred returned to the Rif.



Tribal leadership fell on the shoulders of the seventeen year old Khalid Wahrouch, known as "Khalid the Younger". Driven by his hatred for the French and Arabs, Khalid the Younger spent late July and early August marshalling the tribesmen remaining in the western Rif, and preparing to continue the campaign which had already resulted in the death of his father and three uncles. Khalid was aided by his mother Fatima, who, like most of the spirited Berber women, rose to defend her tribe in times of trouble. In August, Khalid finally felt his force was sufficient to begin attacking French patrols and convoys. On August 17th, Khalid's men ambushed a French patrol outside Chefchaouen, resulting in two killed and two wounded, as well as the retreat of the patrol.

Shortly after dawn on the 21st, a horseman arrived in his camp bearing news that a French convoy was leaving Tetouan and advancing down the road to Chefchaouen. Khalid immediately roused fifty old men and boys to join him, and left his mother to gather reinforcements. Eventually, around a hundred and fifty Berbers would participate in the action, including a dozen young women who followed Fatima. Although numbers are uncertain, less than a tenth of the combatants were men between the ages of eighteen and forty, evidence of the desperate manpower situation to which the Berbers had been reduced.

The convoy bound for Chefchaouen was intended to help support the garrison of the town, which was a key location for the control of the western Rif. Composed of nineteen trucks, six Citroen-Kregresse P-19 halftracks, nine Renault UE artillery tractors, and one Panhard 178 armoured car, the convoy escort fell under the command of Capitaine Antoni Wieviorka of the French Foreign Legion. Wieviorka commanded two platoons of Legion infantry, totalling eighty-two men, plus the crew of the Panhard armoured car.

Setting the Ambush
Khalid had already picked several spots which he believed suitable for ambush, and arrived in his chosen spot roughly one half-hour before the convoy arrived. The Berber position overlooked a one-lane stone bridge running north to south across a creek. At 0815 hours, the convoy came into sight from Khalid's hilltop position. By this point, his force of fifty had swelled somewhat to between seventy to eighty men, though most of the combatants were the men too old or too young to have joined Abd el-Krim earlier in the year.


[SIZE=1]The terrain around Chefchaouen is rugged agricultural land.[/SIZE]

Khalid's position was well chosen. On the southeast side of the bridge, a low hill, covered in scrub, overlooked the closer bank. Khalid's plan, formulated in no small part by his older and more experienced advisors, was to lay in wait until half the convoy had crossed the bridge. The Berbers had a captured 50mm mortar with seven rounds, and Khalid hoped to use the mortar to collapse the bridge, thus cutting the convoy in half. However, Khalid's plan immediately went awry: the convoy was accompanied by a Dorand G.II helicopter as an aerial scout.

Although a crude and unreliable machine, the Dorand was to prove itself in Morocco, primarily as a spotting unit. Among their most useful roles was in convoy escort missions. Flying a zig-zag course ahead of the convoy, Dorands often spotted ambushers moving into position. On other occasions, poor Berber fire-discipline led to futile attempts to shoot down the helicopter using single-shot rifles. Although several helicopters were nevertheless lost in this fashion, the shooting usually alerted convoys to an impending ambush in time to react.

Despite Khalid's attempts to maintain concealment, the younger Berbers all took the opportunity to try to gain the prestige of shooting down the Dorand, even though they did not know what sort of machine it was. The Dorand pilot, Sous-Lieutenant Philippe Laurin, did not immediately take note of the dozen young riflemen shooting at him, and only radioed a warning right as the armoured car crossed the stone bridge. Wieviorka quickly called for the column to halt as the helicopter dropped a red smoke grenade on the Berber position.

The Berbers, seeing that the French convoy had not finished crossing the bridge as planned, decided to open fire with their mortar. The inexperienced Berbers wasted four of their seven rounds trying to find the range to the bridge, as it seemed only one of them had ever fired a mortar before. By a near miracle, they hit the bridge with their fifth round, but the light 50mm round failed to make much of an impression on the stone bridge. The round did, however, damage one of the leading trucks, starting it on fire and wounding the driver.

As the Berber mortar crew cheered their apparent success, their operations were cut violently short. The Panhard armoured car at the front of the column, under Caporal Chef George Van Mechelen, had spotted the mortar crew and sent three 47mm high-explosive rounds into their rocky position. The second shell killed two of the Berbers manning the mortar, and caused the sympathetic detonation of the remaining mortar rounds.

Retaliation
The loss of the mortar had relatively limited effects on the fighting spirit of the Rif Berbers, who opened up with their rifles. Wieviorka's men, disembarking from their trucks and half-tracks, quickly returned fire with their Berthiers. The armoured car, one halftrack and two trucks had been caught on the far side of the bridge. Two sections of Legion infantry, under Sergeant Accola and Sous-Lieutenant Chauderon, dismounted on the southeast side of the bridge and began firing back at the attacking Berbers. By this point, the Berber reinforcements had swelled Khalid's numbers to nearly a hundred men, most of whom focused on the small band of Legionnaires. The Panhard armoured car fired several rounds at the general vicinity of the Berber riflemen, and supported the Legionnaires with machine-gun fire. The Berbers, wisely wary of the armoured car's firepower after the loss of their mortar, remained hidden as much as possible in the rocks and scrub bush.

Sous-Lieutenant Laurin, flying overhead in his helicopter, continued to attract small-arms fire. However, the ALAT officer had used his radio to good effect, calling for heavier artillery and air support. During the months of July and August, five French fighter and light bomber squadrons, flying from Tangier and Rabat, logged an average of two hundred and ten sorties per day. Although the air and ground forces initially had some difficulty working together, procedures were being streamlined and cooperation improved immensely as a result of earlier failures. On this morning, Laurin's call for air support was quickly answered by a flight of four MS.406 fighters and three Loire-Nieuport LN.401 dive bombers flying out of Tangier. Thirty minutes after the start of the ambush, Laurin dropped two smoke bombs on the Berber hill, and five minutes later, the first dive bomber 'went over', dropping a 225kg bomb on the hilltop. The other two dive-bombers followed. While the dive bombers returned to Tangier, the fighters took their time strafing the hilltop. Although it caused relatively few casualties, the bombing and strafing proved devastating to the Berbers' will to fight.

As the Berbers wavered, Sous-Lieutenant Chauderon called for his two dozen Legionnaires to advance. Chauderon led the right-hand section while Sergeant Accola led the left-hand section. Capitaine Wieviorka had simultaneously sent the third section of Chauderon's platoon, which had been on the northwest side of the bridge when the ambush was sprung, to cross the ravine on foot. This was accomplished with some difficulty due to deeper and fast-moving water in the ravine, but this twelve-man section, under Sergent Kristof, reunited on the left flank of Chauderon's line just in time to participate in the attack.

The Legionnaires fired rifle grenades and then scrambled up the slope with fixed bayonets, covered by gunfire from the Panhard armoured car. At this moment, Khalid the Younger's mother Fatima, his most trusted advisor, was hit by a bullet and critically wounded. The youthful Khalid was enraged, and rather than retreat as he had been advised, shouted for the Berbers to counterattack. He was almost immediately hit and wounded, while a dozen of the most youthful and hotheaded Berber fighters attempted to charge. Although the Berbers had an advantage of a higher position, they were outmatched by the older, larger, and more numerous Legionnaires; Legionnaire 2e Classe Claude Jaccotet distinguished himself by killing four Berber tribesmen with three shots from his rifle, finishing with the bayonet. Despite this success, two Legionnaires were wounded and one killed.

The Berbers fled in disarray, with the wounded Khalid the Younger being carried off the field. Fatima, badly wounded, was captured by the Legionnaires and died before she could receive medical aid. A dozen other Berbers were captured as Capitaine Wieviorka moved to support Lieutenant Chauderon's advance.

An hour after the start of the ambush, Wieviorka had his men inspect the damaged truck which blocked the bridge, and used one of the UE tracked carriers to tow it clear. Although the bridge was lightly-damaged by the mortar hit, it remained standing and allowed the convoy to cross without further incident.

Analysis
Sixteen Berbers, including four women fighting alongside the men, were taken prisoner. One of them, Khalid the Younger's half-sister Souad Wahrouch, related most of the Berber side of the action to interrogators, and was present at Fatima's death. (After the war, she married an Algerian lieutenant and is now a noted singer in Oran.) Another fifteen Berbers were killed in the course of the ambush, and intelligence reports recently made available indicate that up to ten more Berbers were wounded and carried off the field by their comrades. Conversely, one French soldier was killed and six wounded, and one truck was written off.

Following the unsuccessful ambush, Khalid the Younger tried to lead further ambushes against French and Moroccan troops. However, with his mother's death he lacked wise advice, and quickly isolated himself from neighboring Berber tries. His death in early 1939 came not at the hands of the French, but rather by another Berber chieftain who he'd offended during discussions of a planned marriage alliance.

Capitaine Wieviorka attributed victory in defeating the ambush to the rapid reaction of air support, which he felt was decisive in breaking the Berber will to fight. This would not have been possible without the presence of Sous-Lieutenant Laurin's Dorand helicopter, which spotted the Berber position, called for air support, and correctly marked the hill with smoke bombs, allowing the dive-bomber pilots to precisely target the Berber position. This made up for the helicopter's earlier failure to spot the ambush, despite the Berber riflemen giving away their position by shooting at it.

Additionally, the inability of the Berbers to deal with the Panhard armoured car proved highly detrimental to their ability to overwhelm the isolated front section of the convoy. Although the Berber mortar could have disabled the vehicle, it does not appear the Berbers made any attempt to adjust their plans to account for the armoured car. The Panhard's combination of a 47mm gun and armour impervious to small-arms fire made it a significant counterbalance to the more numerous Berber riflemen.

Finally, the lack of Berber experience, particularly in the critical element of leadership in changing circumstances, was a clear disadvantage. Although fighting spirit was always high in rebel bands, the Berbers never were able to retain competent and capable leadership personnel who knew how to adjust to mistakes, new tactics, and the new equipment fielded by the French Army.

Leaving Tocopilla: A Study in Defeat
by Capt. Marcel Alphonse Fouroux
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

As the destroyer Almirante Lynch turned westward into the Pacific Ocean and her guns fell silent, Capitan de Fragata Horatio Tilgher stood on her bridge and looked down at the deck of his crowded ship. The deck of his destroyer was crammed with two hundred mountain troops and another hundred and fifty civilians from the city of Tocopilla. Back on the shore, the Bolivian Army moved in to occupy the town. It was the second major Chilean city that had fallen to invasion in three weeks.

In 1932, the Bolivian First Army under Raúl Angelo Quiroga had advanced into Chile's Antofagasta Province, following the route of the FCAB railway. The outnumbered Chilean defenders of Antofagasta, the city and the province, fought a valiant but losing battle against the Bolivian invaders; but the Chilean Army, under Commander-in-Chief Sanfuentes, had been taken by surprise by the invasion. General Sanfuentes had refused to allow the Chilean Navy to evacuate Antofagasta, declaring that it could 'hold out indefinitely against the enemy attack.' But on June 10th, seven thousand men surrendered in the city of Antofagasta, and Bolivia realized their war aims of reaching the sea. Chile was cut in two.

For the Republic of Chile, the outcome of the campaign was nothing less than a disaster. Before the start of the war, the Ejercito de Chile numbered only forty-five thousand men. In the months leading to the loss on the city of Antofagasta, four thousand men had been killed or captured by the Bolivians. When the city fell, another seven thousand men came into enemy hands. Of the pre-war army, one in four men had been killed or captured in six months. Their fourth-largest city, and the rich copper and nitrate-producing regions, had been lost. Several foreign governments extended quiet offers to the Chilean government to help negotiate a peace with Bolivia.

As the nation reeled, General Sanfuentes was sacked and replaced by General Ricardo Larrain, a man of a different caliber than his predecessor. Larrain had to answer the hard questions brought forward by the politicians while still dealing with the realities of the war. The Bolivian Army did not stop their operations in order to give him breathing room. On June 18th, Larrain met with the senior field commanders of Army, Navy, and Air Force at the town of Taltal, where he laid out his strategy for turning defeat into victory.

To reach the conference, General Mathias Aravena, commander of the Army of the North, boarded the destroyer Almirante Lynch in the port town of Iquique. Sailing south, the Lynch dodged an attack by Bolivian aircraft in order to deliver the general to the conference. Aravena's presence was necessary: the Army of the North had fended off a halfhearted attempt to take Iquique and Arica, and they were now encircled in the north, supplied only by sea. Aravena brought news of Bolivian operations on the 'northern flank': Bolivian General Cusincanqui had started toward the port of Tocopilla with the 2nd Bolivian Division, a force which outnumbered the entire Chilean Army of the North. Defending Tocopilla were four hundred and ninety-seven men of the 12th Infantry Battalion (Mountain).

The Defeated
The 12th Infantry Battalion had been on the front lines of the defenders of Antofagasta Province during the invasion. Once nine hundred men strong, they had suffered terrible attrition in the battles in the Andes and the Atacama. They'd lost fully a third of their men escaping from near-encirclement on Cerro Palpana on the second day of the war. The battalion's beloved lieutenant colonel, Manuel José Palacios, had been wounded by artillery fire in February, and had been captured when the battalion's hospital was overrun by the Bolivians. There was no replacement, and the battalion executive officer, Major Claudio Bennett, was killed in action two weeks later. The company commanders were killed, and without replacements, command of the battalion devolved on Captain Adolf Guissen. An immigrant to Chile, Guissen had fought for the German Army in the Great War. Guissen's tactical skill had been sufficient to extricate the 12th Battalion from no fewer than five desperate battles where the battalions on both flanks of the 12th had been destroyed in their entirety.

For six months, the 12th had fought and retreated. By June, at half-strength, Guissen's tired men found themselves with their backs to the sea, at Tocopilla. Taking a survey of his men, Captain Guissen reported that they subsisted on nine hundred calories per day. The battalion had lost their mortars at Cerro Palpana - the llamas used to tow them were eaten - and they had an average of only five rifle rounds per man. They had no chance of defending the town against Cusincanqui's ten thousand Bolivians.

Though the desperate state of the 12th Battalion was not known to General Larrain or General Aravena, both commanders knew the battalion was still in grave danger. The Chilean reserves were still being called up and organized, and there were no men to send as reinforcements to defend the port. The Bolivians were moving slowly due to their supply situation, and Cusincanqui was known to be one of the more slothful Bolivian commanders. His slow approach gave Larrain time to take action. In the conference at Taltal, Larrain listed to Aravena's report. Turning to his naval commander, Contrealmirante Vincente Foxley, Larrain asked what the Navy had available. "Can you get them out?"

"General, we'll do it," Foxley replied.

In the Hands of the Navy
After returning General Aravena back to Iquique, Capitan de Fragata Tilgher pointed the bows of his destroyer back southward. A chartered merchant ship, the Condor, was charted with steaming to Tocopilla and rescuing the remains of the 12th Battalion. The Almirante Lynch would escort the steamer and assist as far as they were able. Little was expected of the destroyer, aside from her services as an escort.

The Lynch and the Condor arrived off Tocopilla in the wee hours of June 23rd, and Capitan Tilgher went ashore in his boat to begin arranging for the withdrawal of the 12th Battalion. He was stunned to get his first glimpse of the mountain troops. "They stood watching me with vacant eyes and downcast expressions. Every man was haggard beyond belief. None had shaved in weeks or months, and their beards had grown long even as they had grown thin and gaunt. Their uniforms had devolved into scraps, and grime covered them from head to foot." Expecting to meet a colonel, Tilgher instead found himself dealing with a captain. "We've come to take you to Iquique," Tilgher informed Guissen.

"At that moment," Tilgher later related in an interview, "The town's bells began ringing as the aircraft spotter saw Bolivian aircraft. Three Bolivian biplane bombers flew over the town and dropped their bombs on the ship. The Lynch opened fire with her machine guns and main gun, knocking one down. But then a plume of smoke rose over the Condor."

The Bolivian flyers had dropped only two fifty-kilogram bombs, but one of the bombs had plunged into the side of the steamer, hitting her engine rooms. The ship sank in twenty-nine minutes with the loss of six men from her crew of thirty-nine. The men of the 12th Battalion lined up on the shore and watched in dead silence as their salvation slowly turned onto her starboard side and went under the ocean.

Tilgher, returning to the Almirante Lynch, felt much the same dejection of the troops ashore, but he determined to defy the despair. Radioing a call to Contrealmirante Foxley, Tilgher moved his destroyer up to the pier and began making preparations to bring the men aboard the destroyer. To his surprise, the troops did not start lining up. Guissen came to the pier to explain the difficulty. "There are civilians here who want to leave. Will you take them?"

Evacuation
By noon on the 25th, Captain Tilgher had organized the evacuation of Tocopilla. Nearly two thousand of the town's civilians decided to flee, and Tilgher, supported by Guissen, organized them into groups. The Lynch's sistership, the Almirante Riveros, arrived on the morning of the 25th and took on four hundred civilians, sailing later in the day for Iquique. The Lynch remained. The morale of the troops was near the breaking point, but the presence of the warship helped rally the battalion's survivors. In a nation always so close to the sea, the Chilean Navy holds a special place with the people it protects, and the Almirante Lynch symbolized that to the town of Tocopilla.


The destroyer CNS Almirante Lynch was a veteran of the Battle of Jutland before being transferred back to the Chilean Navy, which ordered the ship shortly before the Great War.

Four years later, Adolf Guissen explained his theory. "When the battalion reached Tocopilla, our world had shrunk until we were its only inhabitants. The destroyer was an interruption in our claustrophobic nightmare. It reminded us that the rest of the country was behind us: the Navy had not abandoned us to death or captivity."

At dawn on the 26th, the rumble of artillery fire woke the town. Bolivian artillery for Cusincanqui's 2nd Division had taken the heights above the town, and started firing down into the town. Immediately, Capitan Tilgher ordered his gunners to man their posts and fire back. 4.7" shells flew through the air and landed near the Bolivian battery. For ten minutes, Bolivian soldiers and Chilean sailors carried on their artillery duel before the Bolivian guns fell silent. The Bolivians had run out of ammunition.

More civilians decided to evacuate the town, and more Chilean naval ships arrived to help. A radio-message came to Tilgher from Contrealmirante Foxley. "No matter what ship comes to Tocopilla, you remain in command of the evacuation," Foxley ordered. Later on the afternoon of June 26th, Tilgher was tested when the light cruiser Maunga Terevaka steamed to Tocopilla, her captain expecting to take command of the evacuation. Tilgher demurred and ordered the cruiser to take on six hundred of the last civilians. When night fell, the cruiser departed, heading north and leaving the Almirante Lynch as the last defender of Tocopilla.

As the town emptied, Capitan Guisson asked for volunteers from his mountain troops to be the last men off. Guisson would stay to the end, organizing the evacuation. There was little thought of defense, as the Chilean soldiers had too little ammunition to repel an attack. Nevertheless this was exactly what they did early on the evening of the 26th, when Bolivian cavalry tried to move into town to loot. A short firefight forced them to withdraw in disarray. By midnight, however, all of the civilians had been evacuated to six fishing boats and the Almirante Lynch, which waited faithfully at the pier for Guisson and his men.

At 0550 hours on the morning of June 27th, Capitan Guisson boarded the Lynch, the last man out of Tocopilla. The Bolivians heralded the occasion with artillery fire, opening up on the Almirante Lynch with their freshly-resupplied guns; the Chileans fired back while Tilgher got his ship underway. After another ten minute artillery duel, the Bolivian gunners realized they weren't hitting anything, and stopped firing. It took General Cusincanqui another twenty-four hours to cautiously creep forward far enough to find the town deserted. He proudly reported to his commander "the city of Tocopilla has fallen to the glorious troops of the Republic of Bolivia after two days of fierce fighting."

As the survivors of the 12th Battalion came ashore in Iquique, a British photographer snapped a picture of the dirty, half-starved, ill-equipped men. Asking the soldiers if they were going home, Sergeant Francisco Chaparro stunned the reporter with his reply. "Go home? Don't you know there's a war on? The football match is only at halftime, and we're still here to win!"

Aftermath
The Chilean nation endured the surrender of Antofagasta and the evacuation of Tocopilla. Defeat shook the country to the core. As foreign powers offered to help Chile negotiate peace with Bolivia, Chileans came to the recruiting stations to enlist. General Larrain's armies, composed of the battle-hardened troops who had thus far survived the invasion, regrouped and began eeking out victories, now under the control of commanders who had proven competent in the field. The trickle of victories shortly turned into a flood; the Chilean Army's reserves, swelling with new volunteers, came north to the Atacama with new equipment and a fierce desire to win.

The 12th Infantry Battalion (Mountain) was among them. Transported to Iquique, the battalion spent the month of July rebuilding, receiving new equipment and replacement troops. Captain Guisson was promoted to Major. On August 29th, the 12th Battalion joined a battle-group that rotated to the front lines. Their confidence restored, the men rested and re-equipped, the 12th Battalion fought hard, and on the 2nd of September broke through Bolivian lines in a night attack, emulating the stormtroop tactics used in the Great War by the German Army. The broken Bolivian line allowed a lightning raid by the Chilean cavalry, which destroyed the main Bolivian supply depot. Starving, the Bolivians retreated in disarray.

As the Bolivians retreated, the Chilean Army moved to recover lost ground. But it was the Chilean Navy which retook Tocopilla. On the morning of October 1st, 1932, two Chilean predreadnoughts appeared off Tocopilla and opened fire on the Bolivian artillery batteries. A line of destroyers, led by the Almirante Lynch, dashed toward the pier and unloaded two thousand Chilean Marines. The Bolivian garrison surrendered after a cursory fight. Tocopilla was liberated.

Oftentimes defeat is more instructive a teacher, particularly in regards to the characters of leaders and of nations. In the chaos of the Bolivian invasion, Captain Guisson preserved a battalion that, against all odds, survived their bloody initiation into battle. Captain Tilgher refused to be swayed from his course by challenges. They inspired their men to endure and keep fighting despite the plague of defeat, and together, they helped turn the tide of the war.

Author note: Capitaine de corvette Marcel Alphonse Fouroux served for two years at DCNS before becoming the French naval attache to the Chilean Navy. He is a qualified naval aviator.

Military Unit Spotlight: Polish Armed Forces
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Military Unit Spotlight is a monthly feature which focuses on a unit or type of unit fielded by either the French military or another world army.

Wojska Ladowe - Army
The Polish Army (Wojska Ladowe) constitutes the primary branch of the Polish Armed Forces. Founded in 1918 following the nation's independence, the Land Forces were originally modeled off the French Army. Over the last two decades, the Land Forces have grown in capability, diversifying their role as their nation's defenders.

The Land Forces are organized into five Operational Groups, or Grupa Operacyjna, which are named Karpaty, Krakow, Lodz, Warszawa, and Poznan. These five operational groups each field between two and eight infantry or alpine divisions, all built on the triangular pattern, with three infantry regiments, an artillery group, and various supporting units. At present, the Land Forces maintain twelve infantry divisions and two alpine divisions at full strength, with another fifteen infantry divisions in the reserves. In case of war, these divisions could be mobilized within two to three weeks. The Land Forces additionally fields three armoured divisions (Dywizja Pancerna).


Order of Battle for the Dywizja Pancerna (Armoured Divisions). As in the British and French armies, each Armoured Regiment represents a battalion-sized tank unit, each with fifty-one tanks.

Since gaining their independence, the Polish Land Forces have established a distinct preference for trying to design and build their own military hardware. Since the 1920s, the Polish have invested heavily in the development of the tank and the armoured car, and they were one of the originators of the tankette concept, along with Italy. In recent years political upheavals have threatened this longstanding policy of favoring home-designed weapons, as a past government ordered the Land and Air Forces to buy German tanks and fighter aircraft. Although this move may have proven sound in permitting the Poles to catch up rapidly in a technologically-changing world, political backlash resulted in a new government which renewed interest in indigenous weapons designs. Poland's membership in the Eastern European "Warsaw Pact" has given the Polish industry a group of friendly nation-states to which they might export arms.

In recent months, the Polish company PZInz has prototyped the new 32TP wzor.44 medium tank, which is almost entirely of indigenous Polish design. Armed with an 85mm/L55 gun and capable of a top speed of fifty kilometers an hour, this tank favorably comparable to developments elsewhere in Europe. It seems highly likely that the Polish Army intends to produce enough 32TP tanks to completely equip its three armoured divisions and it's tank training center (with the expectation of over six hundred vehicles), though at what rate and cost remains unknown at present. In addition Bulgaria, which contributed financial support to development, has already ordered sixty tanks, while Romania has expressed interest in purchasing some as well.


The new PZInz 32TP wzor.44 is one of the most modern tanks in Europe.

In 1941, Poland also started production of the versatile Transporter TO-2 wzor.42. The Transporter is a unique fully-tracked vehicle built on a 1.5-ton truck chassis, with everything highly simplified for ease of production and maintenance. The Transporter has also seen some export sales to minor powers such as Hungary and Switzerland.


The Transporter, seen here with a Hungarian Army unit on maneuvers, has seen mild export success.

Marynarka Wojenna - Navy
The Polish Navy (Marynarka Wojenna) was once one of the premier arms of the Polish Armed Forces. However, rationalization efforts and changing budgets by the Polish government have seen the importance of the Navy drop dramatically in the last few years. Although Poland still fields two predreadnoughts and a secondhand Italian battleship, the Warzawa, Poland also fields significantly more modern cruisers and destroyers. Even this force seems over-ambitious given Poland's lack of seacoast and extensive overseas trade, and it is estimated that the Polish Army could have fielded another armoured division for the cost of each destroyer built in the last decade.

Since 1940, no new ships have been purchased or constructed, and given the state of the Polish government's budgetary reorganization, this seems unlikely to change in the immediate future. The Polish Navy has instead focused on keeping its ships updated and in good repair. For some time, the Polish Navy received control of naval aviation assets; but this ended in 1942, and all aircraft but naval floatplanes were returned to the Air Forces.

Sily Powietrzne - Air Forces
Second to the Land Forces in importance, the Polish Air Forces represent a highly modern and dynamic service. Founded in 1917, the Polish Air Forces acquired significant quantities of Great War era aircraft for bargain prices. However, new aircraft construction firms such as Lublin and PZL Aircraft have been founded in the country to develop planes. Up until 1939, PZL offered an extensive line of Polish-developed fighter, tactical bomber, and liaison aircraft, but poor political decisions in 1939 resulted in PZL's indigenous design capabilities being almost irrevocably harmed, a decision which mirrored policies aimed at the Polish Army's armoured corps. However, unlike the armoured forces, the Polish Air Force has been slower to recover, as much was lost before political backlash resulted in a change in elected governments.

At present, the Polish Air Force remains highly focused on air defense, using license-built versions of the German Bf109 fighter (designated the P.109), and aging P.80 and P.50 fighters. There are five fighter brigades (each with five fighter squadrons), and four bomber brigades (with a varying number of light or medium bombers). Although efforts to design an indigenous replacement for the P.50 and P.80 have been ongoing since 1940, PZL's development staff have not yet produced an acceptable and competitive design. Although the Polish Air Force intended to refine the Bf109 design beyond what was intended by the original German manufacturer, it seems that the airframe had too little room for further growth. Indeed, the most successful refinement was a dramatic effort to turn the plane into a twin-engine, twin-boom heavy interceptor. Armed with heavy cannon, it's speed and rate of climb have turned it into an impressive defender of the skies, although its maneuverability is reportedly 'constrained'.


Poland's most successful adaptation of the German Bf109 has turned it into an odd twin-engine fighter.

As PZL has been unable to work out a new fighter design, or offer further competitive upgrades to the license-produced P.109, the Polish Air Force was again forced to seek answers outside the country, from allied Yugoslavia, which has recently fielded the highly impressive Soko Orao. PZL has recently purchased a license for production, and is planning to exchange the American-made Pratt and Whitney P-2600 radial for the Bristol Centaurus. Series production is expected to begin within six months.

PZL additionally resurrected their work on the PZL.49 Mis medium bomber, which was successfully put into series production in early 1943 after significant delay. Designed as a replacement to the PZL.37 Los, this new bomber offers speeds of over five hundred kilometers per hour, with acceptable range and payload. Work on a light bomber, as a replacement for the PZL.23 Karas and the failed PZL.46 Sum, has proceeded in fits and starts.

Additionally, Poland license-builds the American DC-3 / C-47 military transport plane, and holds the export licenses to Eastern Europe.

Another sign of Polish recovery in aircraft design has been the recent display of a new radial-engine advanced trainer, designed by PZL. Although it currently lacks a known designation, this plane is expected to be displayed at the Paris Air Show later this year.

Special Article: The Indochinese Naval Forces
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

I. OVERVIEW
A. History
Bordering the South China Sea and the Gulf of Thailand, Indochina possesses approximately thirty-nine hundred kilometers of coastline. Numerous navigable rivers and deltas cut through the landscape, requiring patrol and policing. To help police this vast area, the Indochinese Parliament created the Patrouille Navale Indochinoise (PNI) to serve as the region's coast guard force.

Over the last several years, agreements between France and Indochina resulted in an increasingly-independent Indochinese state, with its capital in Hanoi, under the broad aegis of the French Union. From 1941 onward, the Indochinese peoples received authority to elect their own governor-general, who exerts in Indochina powers equivalent in many ways to a head of government. In 1945, Indochina shall hold a plebiscite offering the choice between full independence and continued association with the French Union, in a relationship similar to that between Britain and her dominions of Canada and Australia. Regardless of the outcome of that plebiscite, local armed forces will be created under an Indochinese banner. The Patrouille Navale Indochinoise, which currently serves as the coast guard of Indochina, may soon become its official navy.

Up until 1941, the Marine Nationale alone was solely responsible for protecting the coastline of Indochina from attack, as well as patrolling against pirates, smugglers, and shipwreck. In addition, numerous French gunboats policed the internal waterways of the region. French investment, in ships, men, and infrastructure, has been significant, and to date, France still deploys three capital ships at the naval base of Cam Ranh Bay. From its starting point, Indochina is undoubtedly the smallest and least-experienced naval power in all of East Asia, neighbor to the large and bellicose Chinese Navy, the increasingly modern and well-funded Philippine Navy, and the more comparable Thai Navy, which nevertheless had several decades to develop their fleet with the help of European allies. Guided by French advisors and supported by French funding, the Patrouille Navale has begun a program of construction and development.

B. Mission
The goals of the Patrouille Navale Indochinoise relate to the region's close relationship with the sea and the numerous navigable rivers and deltas which flow through the area. Although there has been relatively little unrest in recent years as Indochina transitions to an autonomous, democratic and westernized society, major social, ethnic, and societal issues, as well as a lower state of human development, offer potential pitfalls.

Hanoi's stated worry on the international front remains the northern neighbor of China, with its massive population. The Indochinese people once regarded China as a potential ally to support nationalist sentiments against France, but within the last ten years, this regard has been shattered: Chinese wars against the Philippines and Chosen, attempted intervention in the Persian Civil War, and China's refusal to talk with Indochinese officials all played badly in the local press. Hanoi's concerns about Chinese militarization have proven particularly apt in light of the China-Chosen War.

The military imbalance between Indochina and China means that cooperation with French forces remains key to Indochinese strategy. The Patrouille Navale's growth largely began with the transfer of French warships, used for coastal and riverine policing, to Indochinese control. The mission of blue-water combat against potential armed invaders thus belongs entirely to the French Marine Nationale, and this seems unlikely to change unless Indochina should vote for independence in their 1945 plebiscite.

II. ORGANIZATION
A. Command Structure
1. Administration: The Patrouille Navale answers to the orders of the elected government by means of an appointed Naval Chief of Staff, who reports to the Governor-General of Indochina by way of the Military Chief of the General Staff for National Defense. A new naval command center is currently under construction in Hanoi, and once operational in October, will oversee intelligence, operations, and services.

2. Personnel: The PNI's greatest challenge is not, as is often the case in most nations, primarily financial. It is instead the human element which constitutes the greatest boundary on their growth. Through the 1930s, very few young Indochinese men saw the navy as a viable career field, as they would have to enlist in the Marine Nationale, or pass tests to get into the premier Ecole Navale in Brest, France. Nevertheless, some few did just this, and it is on the shoulders of these men that the future of the PNI falls.

First ranked among the native leaders is Contreamiral Charles Van Phu. The son of a French mother and a Vietnamese father, Van Phu served in the Marine Nationale between 1924 and 1941 under the pseudonym Dubois. Although he never attended the prestigious Ecole Navale, Van Phu achieved recognition as an officier marinier before moving to an officiers subalternes track. By 1938, he had taken command of a patrol boat in the Marine Nationale. With the start of the PNI, he was offered the opportunity for transfer, and became the senior-ranked Indochinese officer. In early 1944, Van Phu was promoted to Contreamiral and is preparing to assume the role of Chief of Staff (senior officer) of the PNI, replacing the French admiral who currently holds the command.

Other Indochinese-born officers, such as Capitaines de Fregat Duong Cao Ky and Tran That Dong, have also risen to senior positions within the PNI. Capitain Cao Ky is the first captain of the frigate Tran Nhat Duat, the PNI's official flagship, while Capitaine That Dong serves as the Assistant Chief of Naval Operations. Most other senior roles are still filled by officers of the Marine Nationale, on temporary loan; but as more Indochinese officers are promoted, these officers expect to return home or remain in advisory roles. Controversially, the Indochinese leadership has tried to avoid the appearance of favoritism to Indochinese officers simply to promote them in order to replace French officers: the government in Hanoi has maintained the line that they "desire roles to be filled by competent officers, even if they are not Indochinese."

Assisting with building a local officer corps is the Indochinese Naval Academy (Hoc vien Hai Quan Ban dao Dong Duong in the local Vietnamese language), which was established in 1937 in Nha Trang. With a three-year program for officer cadets (as well as a recently-introduced accelerated one-year program for junior sea officers and warrant officers), the Indochinese Naval Academy is preparing for the graduation of its fourth class in May 1944. Over two hundred new officers are expected to be commissioned into the PNI, nearly doubling the size of the current officer corps. An officer candidate at INA is expected to learn about the fine points of navigation, naval gunnery, antisubmarine warfare, minesweeping,

After graduation, an Indochinese naval officer may expect to spend three to four years in junior roles before advancing to command one of the numerous small patrol boats being built or acquired by the Patrouille Naval. With the recent transfer of fifty submarine chasers to the Patrouille Navale, there are numerous postings for qualified commanding officers, even ones of junior rank. The officers in these postings are closely observed for possible promotion.

B. Doctrine
1. Surface Warfare: The Patrouille Navale's focus on coastal and riverine patrol translates into a strengthening focus on surface warfare. Although the PNI currently lacks large dedicated surface combatants, discussions about the acquisition of French coast defense ships and destroyers have been undertaken.

2. Aviation: Supported by French resources, the Patrouille Naval established seaplane depots at Da Nang, Nha Trang, and Ha Long. Single-engine seaplanes, including several modern types, were acquired in 1942, while further purchases were delayed by difficulties with training. The Indochinese Air Defense Group argued in 1943 for the transfer of all Indochinese aviation assets to its control, but this was not granted Cooperation with aviation assets, including French aviation from the Armee de l'Aire and Aeronavale, remains a high priority for the Patrouille Navale.

3. Antisubmarine: Sparked by concern over unlimited submarine warfare in the China-Chosen War, Contreamiral Van Phu successfully petitioned for the Patrouille Navale to take control of fifty submarine chasers formerly operated by the Marine Nationale out of Indochina. Coastal patrol flotillas of ten ships each have been formed, and each has received a dedicated region of responsibility along the coast, and are supported by a system of patrolling aircraft.

4. Submarine: The Patrouille Navale operates no submarines at the present time, but some officers within the force have petitioned for the acquisition of a coast-defense submarine force.

5. Amphibious Operations: Indochinese amphibious capability is focused into a small number of small landing units, mostly used for riverine patrol and police work. No dedicated amphibious forces exist above company size. However, Indochinese troops have participated in exercises alongside the French 2nd Dinassaut, which is stationed in Vung Tau. This unit is a fully-realized amphibious division, and the Indochinese Corps de la Marine has sufficient manpower and training to form units up to regimental size.

6. Trade Protection: In time of war, Indochinese forces would engage in the laying of a defensive mine belt offshore in order to protect coastal trade. Additionally, coastal convoys covered by light escorts and aircraft would be instituted, followed by a general arming of merchant steamers.

7. Communications: In wartime, ships at sea are ordered to maintain radio silence wherever possible to limit enemy interceptions and triangulation of positions. Particularly on smaller ships, formations are maneuvered using signal flags or semaphore lamps. Aircraft transmit their sightings back to their mothership if ship-launched, or back to their base if land-based. When complete, the PNI headquarters near Hanoi will maintain a plot of the situation and advise ships and commanders at sea.

8. Special Forces: The Patrouille Navale maintains an intense interest in riverine warfare and has a number of company-sized marine units trained in the operation of small arms, river craft, and close combat. Additionally, a twelve-man section has recently begun training in France as combat swimmers.

III. MATERIEL
A. Ships
Armed with twin 100mm and a twin 57mm guns, and equipped with the latest in antisubmarine equipment, the Tran Nhat Duat was the first large combatant to hoist the banner of the Patrouille Navale, and currently serves as the fleet flagship. This vessel was designed in France by DCNS for use as a seaplane tender, and in most situations, the Tran Nhat Duat can carry four Liore-et-Olivier LeO-400 floatplanes. Additionally, in the aft part of the ship, there are cabins for use by naval cadets, although these can be removed and replaced by minelaying rails. Completed in November of 1943, the Tran Nhat Duat is preparing to take on the graduates of the 1944 Indochinese Naval Academy class for their graduation cruise, following which they will be formally commissioned into the PNI.

Recent developments have resulted in the transfer of two aviso-drageurs of the Arabe class to Indochinese control. These ships are still under construction and the first, to be named Chi Lang, will be completed in May. More ships of this class will likely be ordered. In 1943, Germany also donated six patrol boats, reconstructed in Saigon and introduced into service as the Song Me Kong class. Originally armed with two 88mm guns, these vessels received modern detecteur electromagnetique equipment and a new 75mm gun.

In addition to these larger craft, Indochina fields a large force of submarine chasers, most formerly in French service. These wooden craft, manufactured in the early 1930s, are numerous and highly suitable for coastal work. However, they lack sophisticated sound detection gear. This shortcoming has been rectified on the newest class of submarine chaser, the Cam Ranh class, which was designed in Indochina and features more advanced detection equipment.

Other light craft used by the Patrouille Navale include the FOM river gunboats, small, lightweight craft at home in the shallow rivers and broad deltas of Indochina.

B. Aviation
1. Ship-based: With the commissioning of Tran Nhat Duat, the Patrouille Navale acquired its first ship-based air assets, four Liore-et-Olivier LeO-400 floatplanes. No further plans exist for increasing this force.

2. Shore-based: Most of the Patrouille Navale's shore-based aviation originates from either the French Aeronavale and Armee de l'Aire, or from the Indochinese Air Defense Group. Exercises have focused on operations with land-based scouting aircraft as well as with overhead air cover in the form of fighters and maritime strike aircraft. Recently, the Patrouille Navale has initiated talks with Breguet-Nord for the acquisition of twin-engine flying boats suitable for air-sea rescue and patrol.

C. Weapons Systems
1. Gunnery: At the present time, Indochina uses naval artillery solely of French origin, primarily of the 57mm, 75mm, and 100mm types. Indochinese officers have also reportedly begun the process needed to acquire 130mm/L54 guns, and they are reportedly engaged in the indigenous design of a single-gun mount for this weapon. The purpose of this mounting is as yet unclear, but rumors indicate the Indochinese hope to someday field a force of destroyers for defense on the high seas.

2. Torpedoes: At present, few ships of the Patrouille Navale offer torpedo capability; only the four Vedette Rapide 23m type motor torpedo boats carry torpedoes. These consist of either 40cm 26W or 55cm 23DT torpedoes. The latter are similar to those used on older French destroyers and submarines, while the former are modified versions of the air-dropped antiship torpedoes. The newer and heavier 42G torpedoes are unable to be launched from these MTBs due to size and weight.

3. Antisubmarine Warfare: Most seagoing patrol vessels carry the lightweight Guiraud Model 1930 depth charge, a modern weapon with a total weight of 130 kilograms and a charge of 100 kilograms.

4. Mines: As part of the Patrouille Navale's wartime expectation of defensive minelaying, stockpiles of Breguet B4 moored contact are held in readiness at depots operated jointly with the Marine Nationale. These mines have an eighty kilogram TNT charge, and forty-four can be accomodated on the Decauville tracks of the Tran Nhat Duat. Smaller mines, intended to be laid from motor torpedo boats and subchasers, are also held in readiness.

D. Infrastructure
1. Logistics: Perhaps uniquely in the world, the Patrouille Navale has adopted the diesel engine as its sole power-source for all of its warships. Aside from stocks held locally by the Marine Nationale, Indochina has funded the stockpiling of approximately seventy thousand tons of marine diesel fuel for use in wartime, sufficient for several months at wartime consumption. Due to concerns about aerial bombardment, most of the oil tanks are buried and spaced to prevent large-scale destruction.

2. Bases: The Patrouille Navale operates a number of bases along the Indochinese coast. The excellent port of Cam Ranh Bay, which serves as the home-port of the joint Franco-Russian Force Opérationnelle Indochine, is also one of the major ports of the Patrouille Navale, which operates the local patrol and service boats for the base. Saigon, although inland, is accessible by river and serves as another major center of gravity for the PNI. Smaller bases, useful for supporting light coastal forces and riverine units, exist at Da Nang, Hai Phong, Kampot, and elsewhere.

3. Industry: Although the Forges et Chantiers de Indochine yard in Saigon is not well-known internationally for their shipbuilding expertise, this yard, founded and expanded over the last several decades by the French Navy, is one of the keystones of the Patrouille Navale's growth. Over the last few years, FCI constructed warships ranging from submarine chasers and coastal submarines to naval auxiliaries, avisos, and riverine gunboats. The most recent project of note was the construction of the Patrouille Navale's new flagship, the frigate Tran Nhat Duat. Named after a prince and admiral of the Tran Dynasty, the victor of the Battle of Ham Tu, this new ship is designed to serve primarily as a training vessel for the Patrouille Navale's burgeoning officer corps. Forges et Chantiers de Indochine also reconstructed six German-designed patrol boats, donated in 1943.

Until just recently, FCI depended upon ship design bureaus in France to undertake all of their design work, with the yard solely involved with conducting the work according to plans. However, this is slowly changing, as FCI's small design team, composed of both French and Indochinese designers, drew up designs for the local rebuild of the Vorpostenboots. The company intends to eventually propose their own indigenously-designed warships sometime in the next few years, which will be a major step forward in local development.

Special Article: Schweizer Panzer
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

Only in recent years has the Swiss Army started to pay attention to the development of armoured and mechanised infantry units, reflecting changes in the understanding of armoured warfare within harsh terrain.

Development of Doctrine
Until recently, the Swiss Army saw almost no need for an armoured force of the type currently being refined by the armies of the Great Powers. However, Swiss observation of military exercises undertaken by European militaries convinced a number of influential observers, including Lieutenant General Ludwig Jacob, that tanks could operate in mountainous terrain long thought to be highly disadvantageous to armoured forces. General Jacob thus championed the creation of the first Swiss armoured unit in 1941.

Jacob's experimental unit was a company-sized squadron of eighteen tanks, organized in five troops: four tank troops (each with four tanks) and one command troop, with two tanks and a supply section. The tanks were fifteen-ton Renault AMC-35s on loan from the French Army - the vast majority of that type ever produced - and they served as useful exemplars for training young Swiss tank commanders, as well as developing a doctrine.

More crucial to the Swiss armoured arm, however, was their study of the League of Nations tank operations in Afghanistan. In autumn of 1941, Czech Lieutenant General Helidor Pika, second in command of the force, spoke to the Swiss Army staff college about the League's experiences in Afghanistan, where he highlighted the fluid roles that Irish and Czech armoured vehicles played in the successful execution of the campaign goals. The experience General Pika shared was at the same time causing the reworking of the Czech armoured forces. Pika's experience, and his insistence that tanks could contribute to fighting even in hostile terrain, convinced many senior Swiss commanders that it could in fact be done.

General Jacob spent much of late 1941 and early 1942 developing Technical Instruction SP-48842, the official doctrine for the development and use of a Swiss armoured unit. Although this document is classified, it resulted in the creation of the Schützenpanzer Regiment (also known as the Regiment Inter-Armes in French and the Reggimento Motomeccanizzata in Italian).

Combined Arms Forces
The Schützenpanzer regiment is in fact a battalion-sized combined-arms unit, similar in many ways to the Battlegroups used in Afghanistan by the League troops. Each battalion has two mechanized infantry companies and two tank companies, for a total of thirty-six tanks. A regimental train, an artillery company with six self-propelled guns and nine mortar carriers, a headquarters company and a reconnaissance company round out the Schützenpanzer Regiment.

Compared with the armoured divisions fielded by most of the first-rank nations, the Schützenpanzer Regiment is small, lacking in sheer overwhelming firepower. But in the Alps, neither the Swiss nor any potential attacker would be able to find the necessary room to employ such massive units. The sheer size of an armoured division plays against it in restricted terrain. The Swiss have sensibly chosen to keep their tank units integrated with the infantry on a much lower level than is usual in Europe. The Schützenpanzer units thus incorporate at the battalion level all of the major elements of a modern army: armour, infantry, artillery, reconnaissance, and combat support. This microcosm of mixed forces is perfectly sized for operations in rough and constricted terrain, where the units possess a more intimate working relationship. Although it lacks staying power in a large fight, the Regiment's small size allows it to react quickly to developments, either on the attack or the defense.

In order to accomplish this closer pairing of infantry and armour, the Swiss followed the lead of other nations in outfitting the two rifle companies with armoured carriers. However, this is where the similarity ends. Unusually, the Swiss chose to procure fully-tracked infantry carriers for use by their infantry, whereas most nations use a more economical half-track or wheeled truck conversion. This allows the infantry the surety of supporting the tanks in whatever terrain they should find themselves.

Experimentation by General Jacob's test units, as well as studies composed in France, Germany, and elsewhere, has proven that combined operations between infantry and armour are the keys to successful utilization of armoured units in closed terrain. In open terrain - for instance, the European plains or the North African desert - armour may lead the way, with infantry moving in close support. The tanks, with their mobility and long-range guns, become the dominating force of the battlefield - but this does not reduce the need for infantry to come up in support. In closed terrain, this calculus must change. The infantry must lead, while the tanks follow in support. This follows the general methodology used by the League forces in Afghanistan - although it does not prevent the on-scene commander from exercising his prerogative to change tactics. In both cases, adherence to one methodology or the other may be fatal: cooperation and flexibility by combined arms units is demanded.

Materiel Component
The first Swiss tanks were retired AMC-35s leased from France, but it soon became clear that these vehicles were both insufficient for Swiss requirements (lacking mobility and potency) and already well-aged. Through 1942 and early 1943, the Swiss sought out tank designs for evaluation. Development of an indigenous Swiss tank was considered, but rejected; the Swiss evaluators determined that the country lacked sufficient design experience to build their own tank, and estimated that a homemade design would not be able to benefit from sufficient economies of scale to be financially sound. However, the greater number of required armoured carriers made this a possible field for Swiss innovation. Thus, the Swiss adopted a two-pronged approach.

First, in late 1942 the Swiss acquired a set of used Czech LT.38 light tanks, which they converted at the Swiss Federal Constructions Works (EFW) into prototype armoured infantry carriers, dubbed the Schützenpanzer 42. A license for local production of the basic LT.38 chassis was shortly acquired, and the new vehicle, dubbed the Schützenpanzer 43, is now being manufactured by EFW, with an initial order for two hundred and sixty vehicles. At just under twelve tons, the SP-43 can carry a crew of two and a slimmed-down squad of eight riflemen. Once the troops are unloaded into battle, the SP-43 remains on the battlefield, providing fire support to the infantry with its 20mm gun.

In November 1943, the Swiss Army selected the Czech LT vz. 42 as the main Swiss tank, picking it over offers made by larger European firms such as Renault and Fiat/OTO. CKD/Skoda was just finishing up the LT vz. 42 production run for the Czechoslovakian Army, and they quickly transitioned into building tanks for the Swiss. These vehicles received a slightly different armament from the Czech tanks, adopting the longer-barreled 75mm/L48 M40 gun, manufactured in Yugoslavia. This potent weapon is capable of penetrating ten centimeters of armour at ranges up to a kilometer, which the Swiss believe is sufficient to deal with most of the light and medium tanks currently found in Europe.

Appendix I: Panzer 44

Quoted

Panzer 44 / CKD LT vz. 42 Tank
The LT vz. 42 tank was designed in Czechoslovakia between 1939 and 1942 as the successor to the LT vz. 38 light tank and the ST vz. 39 medium tank. In April 1943, the Irish Army ordered thirty-six regular tanks and two training tanks to replace worn out Crusader cruisers. The Swiss Army ordered one hundred fifty tanks at the end of 1943 to form their new armoured branch.

Specifications
Dimensions:
-- Length: 6.13m (hull)
-- Width: 3.2m
-- Height: 2.755m
Weight: 22.7 tonnes
Armament:
-- 75mm/L48 (modified M40 gun)
-- 7.5mm machine gun (Coaxial)
-- 7.5mm machine gun (pintle mounted)
Protection:
-- Turret face: 45mm (sloped)
-- Glacis: 25mm-45mm (sloped)
-- Sides: 25mm
Crew: 4
Engine: Two Tatra V910 V-12 diesels, 180-207hp each
Speed: 55kph (road)
Range: 250km (road)
Transmission: Manual
Suspension: Torsion spring pendant arms
Power to Weight Ratio: 18.23 hp / tonne
Constructors: CKD (primary developer), Skoda[/SIZE]

Appendix II: Schützenpanzer 43 and Variants

Quoted

CKD / ŠSkoda LT Schützenpanzer 43

Specifications
Dimensions:
-- Length: 4.65 metres (15.25 ft)
-- Width: 2.2 metres (7.2 ft)
-- Height: 2.65 metres (8.7 ft) (overall)
Weight: 11.7 tonnes
Armament:
-- 1x 2 cm HMG
Protection:
-- Glacis: 12mm
-- Sides: 5mm
Crew: 2
Passengers: 8 infantry
Engine: Tatra V910 V-12 diesel, 180 hp
Speed: 42 km/h, 26.1 mph (road)
Range: 250 kilometres (160 mi) (road)
Transmission: 5 + 1 Praga-Wilson Typ CV
Suspension: Leaf spring
Power to Weight Ratio: 15.4 hp / tonne
Constructors: CKD (primary developer), ŠSkoda[/SIZE]

Appendix III: Schützenpanzer Regiment Order of Battle

Quoted

Swiss Schützenpanzer Regiment: 991 men, 4 60mm mortars, 9 120mm mortars and carriers, 64 field cars, 43 motorcycles, 4 light trucks, 27 medium trucks, 11 scout cars, 6 self-propelled guns, 36 tanks, 54 infantry carriers
---- 1 headquarters squadron: 48 men, 2 medium MGs, 6 field cars, 2 light trucks, 6 medium trucks, 2 scout cars, 2 infantry carriers
---- 2 tank squadrons: 98 men, 1 field car, 2 medium trucks, 18 tanks
---- 2 mechanised infantry companies: 182 men, 2 60mm mortars, 16 field cars, 3 motorcycles, 2 medium trucks, 18 infantry carriers
---- 1 artillery company: 163 men, 9 120mm mortars and carriers, 14 field cars, 3 motorcycles, 5 medium trucks, 10 infantry carriers, 6 self-propelled guns
---- 1 reconnaissance squadron: 102 men, 3 field cars, 10 motorcycles, 2 light trucks, 4 medium trucks, 9 scout cars, 6 infantry carriers
---- 1 regimental train: 118 men, 7 field cars, 24 medium trucks

Literature Review: La nécessité d'un Missile Intercepteur
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Literature Review is a monthly feature which reviews literary works of interest to military readers.

La nécessité d'un missile intercepteur (Eng.: "The Necessity of an Interceptor Missile") was recently published by Birkhäuser in Switzerland. This anonymous volume saw significant controversy within the last few months following a claim by a Swiss socialist newspaper that the French military attempted to sue the publishing house to prevent the volume's appearance. This was denied by both Birkhäuser and the French military, but successfully bolstered public interest in the volume. As a result, the thousand-volume run sold out within three days of its appearance.

Despite the book's apparent popularity, most of the one hundred and thirty page volume is a dull mathematical treatise discussing the interception of bombers. The book's anonymous authors, identified by Birkhäuser only as an English expatriate and a retired French military officer, spend a great deal of time developing their central thesis. The rising cruise speed and operational altitudes of both heavy and medium bombers means that the window for defending fighters to intercept inbound strategic bombers narrows substantially. Similarly, increasingly large anti-aircraft cannon must be deployed in order to try to shoot down attacking aircraft.

"The crux of the matter," writes the authors, "Is that it becomes increasingly difficult every year for fighters to shoot down strategic bombers." The authors address efforts to continue making fighters perform at ever-faster speeds and higher altitudes in response - research in jet aircraft are specifically cited - but note that any aeronautical advances applied to interceptor aircraft will inevitably be countered by similar developments within the bomber force.

The solution, claims the authors, is to develop an unmanned, autonomously-guided missile system to shoot down attacking strategic bombers. The French Air Force and Navy have reportedly engaged in research into such vehicles, with... We're sorry, but your free web preview of Le Spectateur militaire archives has ended. Become a member to read the full text of this and other archived articles.

Revue d'Action Militaire: Uyuni: Tanks Clash in the Andes
Article from Le Spectateur militaire.

In the frozen pre-dawn hours of March 18th, 1933, Chilean troops of the Army of Valparaíso-O'Higgins massed outside the Bolivian town of Uyuni. For the first time in the Andean War, the Bolivians were on their home ground, facing the Chilean Army as it pushed slowly through the Andes Mountains toward their objective of Potosí.

Bolivian General Felix Stiles, commander of the defending Colorados Division, faced a desperate situation. For the past four months, the First Bolivian Army, once 60,000 men strong, had been encircled and trapped in the Chilean city of Calama, slowly succumbing to a combination of starvation, dehydration, disease, and combat. The Colorados had only narrowly escaped the Calama encirclement, retreating back to the border in defiance of the ruling military junta's orders. When the Colorados had first crossed into Antofagasta in February 1932, they had numbered twelve thousand strong - the elite mountain division of the Bolivian Army. Attrition over twelve months of fighting had cut their numbers to just under five thousand men. Yet along the way they had made an impression on their Chilean enemies: General Ricardo Larrain, the chief of the Chilean Army during the Andean War, classed them as an elite unit, and commented later "the Colorados were twice as good as the other Bolivian divisions."

The seige at Calama prevented the Chilean Army from moving in force into Bolivia, but during late February and early March, General Agustín Sommermeier's "Army of Valparaíso-O'Higgins" skirted the edge of the seige and advanced up the Ferrocarril de Antofagasta a Bolivia (FCAB) railway. Cresting the Andes Mountains, the seven thousand men of Sommermeier's command came down towards the Salar de Uyuni, one of the largest salt flats in the world. On the eastern shore of the salt flats lay the railway town of Uyuni, where Bolivian High Command wished to halt the Chilean advance.

General Stiles made Uyuni his headquarters as he fell back from the Calama encirclement, and Bolivian High Command sent him what reserves they could, swelling his force to nearly eleven thousand men. The new arrivals were a source of irritation to Stiles; most had received only two to three weeks of military training, or were boys and old men; they had no modern artillery, and most carried rifles removed from service twenty to twenty-five years prior. These troops meshed poorly with the professional, battle-hardened Colorados, and Stiles organized the newcomers into the six-thousand man Reserve Brigade. But one unit impressed Stiles with their professionalism and level of equipment: the 19th Cavalry Squadron, which was equipped with sixteen carefully-hoarded SCT-1D tanks.

Armour in the Mountains
During 1932, both Chile and Bolivia used tanks in combat on the Atacama. At the end of the war, researchers discovered that Bolivia had, at the start of the war in February 1932, secretly built the largest armoured force in South America. The first tanks to arrive were surplus Fiat 3000s, the Italian-built version of the Renault FT-17, known as the first truly successful tank in history. While records are still unclear, it appears that Bolivia surreptitiously acquired between fifty and sixty Fiats from international arms dealers. The Bolivians then smuggled in dozens of Carden-Loyd tankettes, and purchased over fifty SCT-1D Scout light tanks from South Africa.

The Chilean Army, by contrast, moved more lackadaisically, acquiring a number of AT-17s (the Atlantean version of the same FT-17 base tank as the Bolivian Fiat 3000s), and a dozen Carden-Loyd tankettes. Very few of these initial vehicles survived the early days of the Andean War, being squandered in counterattacks on strong Bolivian positions. More AT-17s arrived from Atlantis, however, as did sixteen highly modern machine-gun armed AT-32 1A2s and a pair of 37mm-armed AT-32 1A3s.

Both Bolivia and Chile discovered, to their disgust, that the operational use of their Fiat 3000s and AT-17s was limited in the Andes. The motors struggled to get enough oxygen to function, and the low engine power reduced speed to walking pace... or less. At points, the Chilean Army resorted to desperation measures, putting their AT-17s on flatbed trailers, hitching together three artillery tractors, and literally carting their tanks to the battlefield. The Carden-Loyd tankettes were much more successful, having enough reserve power to operate in the high altitude environment. But Bolivia found their South African SCT-1D tanks to be the cream of the crop. Even though the Scouts only carried a 15mm machine gun, they had the best balance of power, reliability, speed, and protection of any of the Bolivian tanks. The Chileans, less impressed, dubbed the SCT-1D's "Scoots".

On the Chilean side, the AT-17s soldiered on until AT-32s arrived from Atlantis. These machine-gun armed tanks were Chile's closest approximation to the Bolivian SCT-1Ds, but were significantly heavier, at fourteen tons. Nevertheless, they had a high power-to-weight ratio and good protection, usually shrugging off the improvised Bolivian antitank weapons. More importantly, they were far more reliable than the well-used AT-17s. (In the early days of the Bolivian invasion, a Chilean counterattack led by AT-17s fell apart when seven of the participating twelve tanks broke down. The tanks had to be abandoned, and were captured and repaired by the Bolivian Army.) No AT-32 was ever permanently lost to mechanical failures, although one was irreparably damaged when it was driven off a small cliff into a river. The Chilean Army also acquired a pair of AT-32 1A3 tanks, armed with 37mm antitank guns. These two tanks, nicknamed "Razon" and "Fuerza" (Reason and Force), were handed over to the 10th Cavalry Regiment, a battalion-sized unit which served as the reconnaissance force of the Army of Valparaíso-O'Higgins.

Through the course of 1932, Bolivia lost most of their Fiat 3000s, Carden Loyds, and SCT-1Ds in combat during the Battle of the Atacama. On only one occasion during this time did Chilean and Bolivian tanks meet each other in combat. On September 20th, outside the city of Antofagasta, a quartet of Chilean AT-17s encountered six Bolivian Fiat 3000s, and launched into a ten minute artillery duel. The Bolivians knocked out two AT-17s without loss before the Chileans withdrew, but not before calling in naval gunfire support. A dozen 20.3cm shells knocked out all six Bolivian tanks, ending the first tank-versus-tank battle of the Andean War. Chilean and Bolivian tanks would not meet again until the Battle of Uyuni, when the Bolivians committed their last SCT-1Ds and Carden-Loyds to the fight.

The Battle of Uyuni
The Chilean commander, General Sommermeier, wanted to seize the railway town of Uyuni before Stiles' Colorados Division could erect more formidable defenses. At Uyuni, the FCAB split, with one track heading northward toward La Paz, and another heading northeast to Potosí. The capture of Uyuni would sever the last major thoroughfare through southwestern Bolivia. General Stiles' goal, stated in an address to his troops on March 11th, was to "stop the Chilean invader cold, push him back, and defeat him utterly." More pessimistically, in communications to Bolivian High Command, Stiles observed "In three weeks time I will be forced to fall back into the mountains behind me to defend the road to Potosi."

Bolivian High Command, led by junta leader and effective president Juan de la Juanquino, refused to hear of retreat, and issued Stiles their last remaining armoured reserves, consisting of sixteen SCT-1D scout tanks, and twelve Carden-Loyd tankettes. At Uyuni, the tanks would be able to use the favorable terrain to their best advantage: although the altitude was high, the ground was flat and hard, which would hinder Chilean infantry's attempts to dig in for shelter from the tanks. Stiles hoped the open terrain, with minimal ground cover, would prevent Chilean infantry from employing their traditional anti-tank tactics. Carefully-organized infantry teams would attack Bolivian tanks, and their accompanying infantry, with machine guns and rifle grenades, forcing the Bolivian tankers to "button up" for safety. With the tankers' visibility thus hindered, Chilean soldiers would dash forward carrying explosive charges or gasoline bombs, which they would throw under the tracks or onto the engine compartment. The most popular type of anti-tank charge was the "Spider", a 4kg charge with eight hooked arms splayed out to catch, like grappling hooks, on the target tank. Mortars and rifle grenades were also favorite tools of the Chileans.

Sommermeier's Army of Valparaíso-O'Higgins was smaller than the defending Bolivian Army, boasting seven thousand men - four thousand less than their opponents. However, the Chileans had significant advantages. The Army of Valparaíso-O'Higgins had been raised the previous year from new recruits, with a healthy leavening of combat veterans and officers to season them. However, unlike the Bolivian recruits being rushed to join Stiles at Uyuni, Chilean recruits were in a different class: they had received a full four months of training, while the Bolivians had only a few weeks. The infantry carried new rifles, wore fresh uniforms with ponchos made of alpaca wool, and topped everything off with new stahlhelms. The Army of Valparaíso-O'Higgins had six mortar companies with brand-new 81mm Brandt mortars, and two artillery batteries with German 105mm guns. The supply troops were mostly motorized; the Chilean soldiers received three times as many calories per day as their Bolivian counterparts, and received medical attention on an almost daily basis. In the high altitudes, soldiers who had difficulty breathing the thin air received caramelized candies made from cocoa leaves in order to help with altitude sickness. When a Chilean battalion suffered significant casualties in combat, it was quickly returned to the reserve, where the casualties were made good with new recruits, and the unit was rested. In a war fought in a wilderness, the Chileans organized their tactical forces on the battalion level, while the Bolivians tried to control all tactical and strategic maneuvers at the division level. The inevitable result was that the Chilean infantry remained fresh and combat-ready, able to march further, fight harder, and take fewer casualties than their Bolivian opponents.

On the afternoon of March 16th, Sommermeier's lead battalions opened the attack on Uyuni, striking out at a misplaced Bolivian infantry battalion on the Bolivian southeast flank. Three Chilean alpine battalions attacked from the west and south, catching the Bolivians in a closing vice. The Bolivians, inexperienced troops of the Reserve Brigade, immediately fled, suffering high casualties during their withdrawal, which threatened to instill panic in neighboring Reserve Brigade troops. To shore up the line, Stiles dispatched one battalion from his tough, unflappable Colorados, supported by the Bolivian armour. By the time they arrived, the Chileans had already withdrawn. They suffered twenty killed and thirty-nine wounded in exchange for over two hundred Bolivians killed or made captive.

As the sun set that evening, two more Chilean infantry battalions came up and launched a harassing attack on the northern end of the Bolivian defenses, supported heavily by the Chilean artillery. Both sides held their positions through the night, but the Chilean artillery, trained for Prussian precision, caused further Bolivian casualties. Stiles decided to bring his elites into play, planning a dawn counterattack on the forward-most Chilean troops, supported by the tankettes. While the Reserve Brigade manned the line, the main force of the Colorados fixed bayonets and charged. They succeeded in dislodging Sommermeier's two battalions, but the Chileans suffered fewer casualties.

As the Chileans withdrew to the north on the morning of March 17th, Sommermeier's active force attacked again on the southeastern end of the line. Facing more inexperienced troops of the Reserve Brigade, the Chilean 32nd and 35th Cazadores Battalions briefly broke the Bolivian line. Stiles sent his tanks to respond. Due to mechanical delays, only four set out; but they stopped the attack. The battlefield then fell silent for the afternoon as Sommermeier evaluated his foe's dispositions.

March 18th
As darkness fell on the evening of the 17th, Sommermeier decided to go forward with a pre-dawn attack on the Bolivian defenders. He would first strike out with the 10th Cavalry Regiment in order to conduct a reconnaissance-in-force on the southern end of the Bolivian line, where he believed Stiles had positioned many of his weakest units.

The seven hundred man strong 10th Cavalry Regiment had two AT-32 1A3 tanks and a dozen Carden-Loyd tankettes - half of them war captures - scattered between their three squadrons. But these vehicles would be used as a follow-on to the initial attack, made be a dismounted squadron of cavalry, attempting to infiltrate the Bolivian lines in the fashion of the German sturmtruppen. Chilean cavalrymen moved forward at 0500 hours, using their curved corvos on the Bolivian sentries. When the Bolivians finally raised the alarm at 0550 hours, the infiltrators were already in their midst, armed with submachine guns. A panic started, and the Chilean commander fired two flares to summon his reinforcements. The rest of the 10th Cavalry moved forward, led by their armoured vehicles.

Stiles, discerning that the southern end of his line was in jeapordy, sent his "fire brigade" - the SCT-1D tanks and the attendant tankettes, supported by his most mobile troops. For the second time in the war, Bolivian and Chilean tanks came into each others' gunsights.

Sergeant Rafael Para, the commander of the AT-32 1A3 tank Razon, received his first clue about the Bolivian tanks through the radio. A cavalry scout car, equipped with a radio, reported to the commander on the regimental radio-net. The commander of the 10th Cavalry, a Valparaiso native by the name of Major Antonio Sanmartin, barked out the order, "Enemy tanks! Let's hit them!" Sanmartin called for the regimental mortars to launch parachute flares, and moments later, Sergeant Para spotted a tankette. He quickly gave directions to his three fellow crewmen, and the 37mm gun fired. "The first shot went over," Para recalled later. "I overestimated the range. We reloaded quickly, and I kept the tankette in my crosshairs. He heard the shell whistle over, and stopped in confusion - and then I saw a crewman poke his head up. Sergio [the gunner] then announced 'Loaded!' and I replied, 'Fire!' The shot was perfect."

In the gray light of the dawn, the Bolivians believed their lead tankette had run afoul of a Chilean anti-tank team, and spread out, calling on their infantry to protect them. Para chose another target, a SCT-1D, as it drove past the burning Carden-Loyd, clearly silhouetted against the flames. "I ordered 'Turret track five left! Load! Range two hundred!' Sergio shouted his affirmation, then fired. The shell hit the hull just to the right of the driver, and penetrated the armour. Then Fuerza opened fire."

To the northwest of Sergeant Para's tank, Lieutenant Paul Simpson, the commander of Fuerza, had his own target in sight, firing a 37mm shell into another SCT-1D tank, without apparent effect. Simpson ordered a second round fired, then a third, thinking he'd missed. "But then there was a little flash of flame from inside the turret," Simpson said. "The tank kept going, but there wasn't anyone left alive inside."

Clattering forward in the growing light, the two Chilean AT-32s spotted more Bolivian tanks, spread out over the desert; and the Bolivians spotted them. "I had barely put the hatch down when there was a sound like very loud hail against the front of the turret," Simpson said. "One of the Scoots had opened fire on me with his 15mm machine gun. Little flakes of metal and dust cascaded off the inside of the turret; only my goggles kept them out of my eyes. I turned the turret about and we fired a 37mm shell at the shooter. Immediately, the bullets stopped."

A similar situation plaged Sergeant Para's Razon. A machine-gun bullet entered through the driver's vision-slit, then bounced off the rear wall of the driver's compartment and hit the back of the driver's helmet, stunning him. Razon continued clattering forward, the driver momentarily heedless of Para's calls to halt. Despite the low speed, Para and his gunner were unable to keep the gun on target for long enough to shoot. Lieutenant Simpson followed the unplanned advance in Fuerza, stopping every twenty seconds in order to fire. In this fashion, Simpson's crew killed two more Scoots. "About that time, the Bolivians must have decided we were invincible," Simpson said. "They kept shooting with their machine guns, but they put their tanks into reverse and withdrew so fast that two of them backed into each other. Then Razon finally stopped, about a hundred meters from the two collided tanks, and we fired at them until they both blew up."

As the Bolivian tanks burned or retreated, the reserve infantry they'd come to protect completed their panic, and fled in total disarray. Major Sanmartin later opined, "On a different day, with more armour and mechanized infantry, it would have been a golden opportunity to run them down. We could have collapsed the southern end of the defense line. But the infantry was too busy with the Colorados to the north, and we had too little strength or mobility to exploit our success."

Gathering up the dismounted cavalry behind him, Lieutenant Simpson still tried to pursue the Bolivian armor. Para's tank killed another Scoot and a tankette, while Simpson targetted two more tanks. The first tank lost a track as a result of Simpson's 37mm hit, and got stuck, Switching targets, Simpson disabled another SCT-1D before returning to finish off the cripple. At last, low on ammunition, the two AT-32s withdrew.

Aftermath
The tank duel on March 19th was not decisive in winning the Battle of Uyuni. The 10th Cavalry Regiment lacked the manpower and the mechanized mobility to route the Reserve Brigade, of which three whole battalions had panicked and fled. General Stiles reacted by sending the Reserve Brigade to guard the railway toward Potosí, and shortened his battle-lines, leaving only his elite Colorados in the line of fire.

The two tank forces, small as they were, did not enounter each other again. In the post-battle analysis, the Chilean Army determined that Lieutenant Simpson's tank had destroyed seven SCT-1Ds in the space of fifteen minutes, while Sergeant Para claimed two tankettes and three tanks. Only six SCT-1Ds remained to the Bolivians; and two were destroyed later in the day by Chilean artillery. Over the next two weeks, the survivors were slowly picked off by grenade-armed Chilean anti-armour teams.

The fighting around Uyuni reached a high point on March 31st, when Sommermeier's forces finally broke the exhausted and bloodied Colorados Division and entered the devastated town of Uyuni. General Stiles, having been outmaneuvered and surrounded, surrendered the remaining twenty-five hundred men of his command. The Reserve Brigade, oddly, escaped the encirclement, marching to join the defenders of Potosí, pursued by the Chilean alpine troops of the Army of Coquimbo.

Nouvelle Technologie: New Power Plants for Warships of the Future
Article from Le Spectateur militaire. Nouvelle Technologie is a monthly feature which discusses technologies which may have an impact on warfare in the future.

For the last fifty years, the great navies of the world have depended upon the steam turbine to power their largest and fastest warships, ranging from the watershed Dreadnought and her descendants to the sleek destroyers and cruisers which patrol the oceans. But future warships may not be powered by steam at all, claim scientists and engineers working for DCNS Indret, responsible for developing powerplants used by the Marine Nationale.

Naval auxiliary ships, such as the replenishment ships and cargo-carriers of the fleet, have been powered by diesel engines for years, emulating developments in the civilian merchant ship field. Likewise, submarines have made extensive use of diesel propulsion. But only within the last fifteen years, however, have marine diesel engines started to appear in fast surface warships. Many German designs initiated in the early years of their rearmament had split powerplants - partly steam, partly diesel. The marine diesels would be used to provide economical propulsion for cruising speed, up to fifteen to eighteen knots, while steam plants would be brought online when full power was required, for instance in battle. In the late 1930s, the Marine Nationale adopted this sensible policy for several of the new combatants then in planning stages.

Authority was given to DCNS Indret, which also manufactures steam turbines for the Marine Nationale, to develop diesel propulsion systems for use aboard ship. Working with power industry leaders such as Alsthom, Sulzer, and Brown, Boveri & Cie (the latter two of Switzerland), DCNS Indret developed a series of marine diesels, the keystone of which eventually was placed aboard the Barfleur-class destroyers of the Marine Nationale. This introduced marine diesels to the fleet in a serious way. With success demonstrated by the Barfleur class, eight more destroyers with mixed power-plants were ordered to the same design in 1943 (Étendard subclass), along with six Forbin class destroyers. So far, experience has shown reductions in maintenance and operating costs, and no substantial alteration in fighting capability. The diesels additionally can provide electricity to operate equipment such as DEM and ASDIC units. Further use of marine diesels shall almost certainly occur in the future.

Earlier this year, DCNS Indret put the results of further experimentation to sea aboard the patrol ship Parséis. In 1943, the Parséis was sidelined following difficulties with her steam turbines, and DCNS Indret had the opportunity to turn the ship into a testbed for experimental propulsion. In her January 1944 refit, Parséis received a new prototype engine. While the centerpiece of this propulsion system is a standard high-compression marine diesel engine, the difference is in the details. A small power recovery turbine, powered by the recovered exhaust gases of the diesel engine, operates a blower which brings more air to power the diesel itself. This 'turbo-blown' diesel engine achieves higher operational performance than a standard marine diesel, and the engineers at DCNS Indret and Alsthom are looking at the possibility of placing a turbo-blown diesel engine into production in 1945 for use by motor torpedo boats.

Part of the systems used in the turbo-blown diesel are also used for other, more sophisticated proposals. As outlined in a 1941 article in Popular Mechanics, ships of the future may be powered by gas turbines, a larger cousin of the turbojet engines used on several upcoming jet fighters. While no nation has yet tested a gas turbine engine at sea, DCNS Indret has acknowledged that they have built several units with the assistance of Brown, Boveri & Cie. BB&C produced the world's first gas turbine for civil power generation, a unit which DCNS copied in 1941 for use as an emergency power plant for the naval shipyards at La Rochelle. Since that time, three more gas turbines have been constructed in France through the partnership between BB&C and DCNS. In 1943, DCNS prepared to place two of the units into service aboard the destroyer Épée, but concerns about space, fuel, and engine reliability, as well as difficulties with power transmission to the shafts, scuppered this project, although a DCNS representative noted the shipbuilders were considering a number of possibilities for use over the next two or three years. One of the greatest difficulties with gas turbines may limit their usefulness, however: these engines tend to run best at a single design speed, and the power requirements of a destroyer-sized vessel, which may change from minute to minute, may not suit the gas turbine's strengths.

Other more radical systems may still be possible. Indret engineers have built an experimental engine for use in submarines, powered by hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). This may allow submarines to achieve high underwater speeds for long time periods, without requiring the use of electric batteries. Another proposal, apparently 'being taken seriously' according to DCNS insiders, is a system which causes the division of atoms (the smallest known units of matter) in order to produce heat, which could, in theory, power a modified steam turbine.