Description

This Issues contents:
FIRST TO FALL
The first enemy aircraft to fall on British soil during the Second World War, a Heinkel 111 brought down over Scotland in October 1939, carried with it a secret hidden in plain sight as Andy Saunders explains.
ANTHRAPOID
The only government sponsored assassination of a leading Nazi official, Reinhard Heydrich, was carried out successfully albeit that a terrible price was paid by the assassins and innocent civilians alike.
ENIGMA AND ITS VARIATIONS
The astonishing story of Germany’s famous cypher encryption machine, Enigma, is outlined by Georg Wiessala with a focus on the all-but-forgotten inventor of the equipment, Arthur Scherbius.
OF FRIEND AND FOE
Chris Goss charts the story of war graves from both wars in the tiny village of Vladslo, Belgium, contrasting the differences as to how the resting places of German and Allied servicemen have been treated.
TWO-SEATER ACES
The late Norman Franks examines the stories of some of Imperial Germany’s largely ignored two-seater aces, some of whom later went on to serve Hitler’s Third Reich.
EVOLUTION OF THE 1939 IRON CROSS
The Iron Cross of 1939 was a decoration that had a complex, complicated, and surprising evolution from its original inception through to the end of hostilities as Dietrich Maerz, our subject specialist, explains.
FLUGZEUGTRÄGER GRAF ZEPPELIN
The story of Germany’s only aircraft carrier of the Second World War, Graf Zeppelin, is one of failure to get the vessel into service, the huge vessel becoming a ‘white elephant’ – albeit a target for the RAF’s famous Dambuster squadron!
FIRST BLITZ
The Blitz on Britain is generally thought of in terms of the attacks of 1940 – 1941, but a deadly Blitz had been launched on the country by Germany during the First World War by Zeppelins, aircraft, and through naval bombardment.
TANK’S TEUTONIC TRAINER
Barry Wheeler bucks that trend by telling the intriguing tale of the Focke-Wulf 44 Stieglitz trainer.
ONE-SIDED BATTLE
Just one single and very lucky shot fired from a civilian ship, the SS Umgeni, brought down a Focke-Wulf.Condor over the Atlantic in what Chris Goss describes as the first notable casualty suffered by the Luftwaffe’s Condor fleet.
GOLIATH
If ever a piece of Second World War German military equipment was mis-named, then it was the tiny Sd.Kfz.303 ‘Goliath’, a tracked device intended for remote battlefield demolition and clearance. Craig Moore outlines the story of this unusual vehicle which looked for all the world like a child’s remote-controlled tank. When examples of this strange device were captured by the Allies they were immediately subjected to extensive testing and evaluation. In this revealing feature, the author looks at this innovative contraption through the eyes of those who evaluated it in captivity.
EQUIPMENT IN COLOUR
In this issue, regular Equipment in Colour feature by Richard J Molloy, showcases the Zundapp K 800 W motorcycle which was used extensively by the Wehrmacht throughout the Second World War, this image being taken in France during the early war years.
FOLLOW-UP
The editor discovers an unusual – and probably unique – piece of surviving Luftwaffe history in the form of a tail-mounted grenade launcher as fitted to some examples of the Heinkel 111 bomber.