Gunline Archive

The 1923 Great Kanto earthquake struck the Kanto plain on the Japanese main island of Honshu at 11:58:44 am JST on September 1, 1923. Varied accounts hold that the duration of the earthquake was between 4 and 10 minutes.

The Spanish Civil War was a major conflict that devastated Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939. It began after an attempted coup d'état against the government of the Second Spanish Republic, then under the leadership of president Manuel Azaña, by a group of Spanish Army generals. The nationalist insurgency was supported by the conservative Spanish Confederation of the Autonomous Right (Confederación Española de Derechas Autónomas, or C.E.D.A), Carlist groups, and the Fascistic Falange (Falange Española de las J.O.N.S.). The war ended with the victory of the rebel forces, the overthrow of the Republican government, and the founding of a dictatorship led by General Francisco Franco.

Operation Dervish was the first of the Arctic Convoys of World War II by which the Western Allies supplied material aid to the Soviet Union in its fight with Nazi Germany. The convoy originally sailed from Liverpool on 12 August 1941 and via Iceland arrived at Archangelsk on 31 August 1941. No ships were lost.

RFA Aldersdale was deployed in support of this operation.

The invasion of Madagascar (or Operation Ironclad) was the Allied campaign to capture Vichy French-controlled Madagascar during World War II.

Operation Shingle (22 January 1944 – 1 February 1944), during the Italian Campaign of World War II, was an Allied amphibious landing against Axis forces in the area of  Anzio and Nettuno, Italy.

During World War II, Operation Dracula was the name given to an airborne and amphibious attack on Rangoon by British and Indian forces, part of the Burma Campaign.

Operation Deadlight was the code name for the scuttling of U-boats surrendered to the Allies after the defeat of Germany near the end of World War II.

The Suez Crisis was a military attack on Egypt by Britain, France and Israel commencing on 29 October 1956.

The Cod Wars, which have also been called the Iceland Cod Wars, were a series of confrontations between 1958 and 1976 between the United Kingdom and Iceland over fishing rights around the coast of Iceland.

Warfare between North Korea (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea) and South Korea (Republic of Korea) began on 25 June 1950 and paused with an armistice which was signed on 27 July 1953.

The Cod Wars, which have also been called the Iceland Cod Wars, were a series of confrontations between 1958 and 1976 between the United Kingdom and Iceland over fishing rights around the coast of Iceland.

In the late 1970’s a very secret operation took place that was kept under wraps until the Falklands war of 1982.  In November 1977 a group of fifty Argentinean “Scientists” landed on the island of South Thule, part of the Falkland Islands Dependency and proceeded to set up a military base on the island.

The Invasion of Grenada, codenamed Operation Urgent Fury, was an invasion ordered by U.S. President Ronald Reagan of the nation of Grenada, an island in the Caribbean Sea, 100 miles north of Venezuela, and over 1,500 miles southeast of the United States.

In July 1995, the island of Montserrat's Soufriere Hills volcano, dormant throughout recorded history, rumbled to life and began an eruption which eventually buried the island's capital, Plymouth, in more than 12 metres (39 ft) of mud, destroyed its airport and docking facilities, and rendered the southern half of the island uninhabitable.

Operation Barras was the name given to a hostage rescue operation by the Special Air Service, Special Boat Service, and Parachute Regiment in Sierra Leone on 10 September 2000. The men on the ground nicknamed the dangerous mission 'Operation Certain Death'.

OP Panlake was the UK's military contribution to the humanitarian relief effort following the earthquake in Haiti.

Picture Crown Copyright