The Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in December 1979. It was supposed to be a swift operation to install a loyal communist government. The Soviets were initially successful in gaining control of the cities and major infrastructure but became bogged down and flummoxed fighting against mujahideen g…
Odin & Aesop
by Bill Redman & Tony Faust
Interested in military history? Please join Join Bill Redman and Tony Faust two retired Marines as they review military history books and provide a unique look at how the book’s contents relate to current trends in military operations. Each episode provides a detailed book discussion along with some recommendations for related reading on the topic.”
Latest Episodes
Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nassar announced Egypt was taking control of the British and French owned Suez Canal Company in July 1956. He took this action to fund the Aswan Dam he wanted built. In response to Nassar seizing the canal, Britain, France, and Israel secretly planned a joint invasio…
Bill Richardson was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and enlisted in the Army in 1945. He deployed to Korea when war broke out in 1950 and fought northward up the length of the Korean peninsula as part of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division. On November 5th, 1950, Richardson was captured by the Chin…
Among other things, Thomas Edward Lawrence was an author, archeologist, and British Army officer. During the First World War, he served as a liaison between the British and the Arab tribes fighting Ottoman rule in the western Arabian desert. Lawrence spent approximately two years and covered hundr…
Within a few short years, drones went from being a niche capability reserved for technically advanced militaries to something ubiquitous on the modern battlefield. According to the Atlantic Council, Ukraine was producing 200,000 first person view drones per month by early 2025. The Ukrainians used…
Tameichi Hara descended from Japan’s samurai class. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1921 and began a career at sea. When war started with the United States in 1941, Hara was serving as the captain of the destroyer Amatsukaze. He went on to command a destroyer division and…
On 30 April 1980 six Iranian Arabs seized the Iranian Embassy in the center of London and took 26 people hostage. They demanded the release of prisoners in Iran and safe passage out of the United Kingdom. British authorities managed to get five hostages released in return for minor concessions, bu…
The A Shau Valley is in the mountainous northwest corner of what used to be South Vietnam. It is right across the border from Laos. Because of its location, the A Shau formed a natural hub for the North Vietnamese Army to move their units and supplies into South Vietnam and threaten the more heavi…
The island of Crete sits in the Eastern Mediterranean. In 1941 the Germans decided to seize Crete, “As a base for air warfare against Great Britain in the Eastern Mediterranean”. The elite paratroopers of Germany’s 7th Air Division were assigned to lead the attack. They would be reinforced by mor…
The 24th Marine Amphibious Unit (MAU) landed in Beirut Lebanon on May 29th, 1983, as part of a peacekeeping force during Lebanon’s Civil War. Once ashore, the MAU’s battalion landing team, BLT 1/8, took up positions around Beirut International Airport. Things escalated and the Marines began regula…
Japan devastated the United States’ fleet with a surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on December 7th, 1941. The Japanese followed up on their Pearl Harbor attack by seizing Guam, Wake Island, Hong Kong, Singapore, and the Philippines. The Japanese seemed almost unstoppable while the United Sta…
Rhodesia, now called the Republic of Zimbabwe, used to be a self-governing British colony. In November 1965, the Cabinet of Rhodesia unilaterally declared independence from Britain in an effort to preserve white minority rule. The Rhodesian Bush War, also known as the Rhodesian Civil War, follow…
South Vietnam has a long coastline and lots of waterways, particularly in the Mekong River Delta at the southern tip of the country. In 1968 U.S. Naval Forces Vietnam had roughly 38,000 sailors serving in country. Their main tasks were to prevent supplies from reaching the Viet Cong, stopping Viet…
The Germans launched “Operation Citadel” on July 5th, 1943. They wanted to encircle and destroy Soviet forces in a salient centered on the city of Kursk. The Soviets knew they were coming and had spent months preparing. What followed was the greatest land battle in history. About two million men…
John G. Bourke won the Medal of Honor during the American Civil War. He stayed in the army and graduated from West Point in 1869. Between 1869 and 1883, Bourke served on the frontier with much of that time spent as an aide to General George Crook. Bourke saw action in the Apache Wars and Great Si…
The Korean peninsula was split into two countries after the Second World War. The Soviet backed North and the U.S. backed South. North Korea tried to unify the two by invading South Korea in June 1950. Initially North Korea had great success. It pushed South Korea's small military aside and rush…
Japan captured and occupied China’s sea ports at the onset of World War Two. That lead to hundreds of thousands of Chinese laborers building a road through Burma to get supplies to China. That road got blocked when Burma fell to the Japanese. Next, American engineers began building another road t…
In 1899, the British went to war with the Boer Republics. This was when the British Empire was close to its blazing zenith and unquestionably the ranking world power. Any war against the somewhat backward Boers on a remote border of the empire in southern Africa would surely be quick and decisive.…
The United States and Soviet Union stood on opposite sides of the Cold War. Both tried to project strength and both possessed immense arsenals of nuclear weapons. A fundamental problem for both superpowers was figuring out what the other side was doing. What were they capable of? What were they …
The Japanese attacked the Philippines almost simultaneous with their December 7th, 1941 attack on the U.S. fleet at Pearl Harbor. Following Japanese air attacks, the Japanese 14th Army landed in the Philippines on December 8th. By January 1942, the Japanese had U.S. and Filipino forces bottled up …