Mike Markowitz

This author has not posted any biographical information.

Author Information

View all Authors »
  • Total Posts by Author: 22

Posts by the Author

Lewis and Clark Expedition

The Girandoni Air Rifle A weapon ahead of its time?

Featured Post

The alpine region of Tyrol, a borderland between Italians and Germans, has long bred skillful hunters and tough mountain warriors. Around 1778, a Tyrolean master gunsmith, Bartolomeo Girandoni (1729-1799), invented …

Read Story »

Advertisement
Fa 223 Drache mountain testing

Nazi Helicopters: Focke-Achgelis Fa 223 Drache and Fa 330 Bachstelze at War Part 2: Henrich Focke’s Helicopters

Featured Post

After Focke’s Fa 61 experimental helicopter (described in Part 1) proved stable in flight and reliable in service, in 1938, Lufthansa, the German airline, ordered a six-passenger version to whisk …

Read Story »

The first flight of the Focke-Achgelis Fa 61. The Fa 61 would make its public debut on Feb. 19, 1938. EADS Heritage photo

Nazi Helicopters: Henrich Focke’s Fa 61 German Helicopter Development 1932-1945; Part 1

Featured Post

Nature devised the rotary wing as a way to disperse tree seeds on the wind.  Generations of daydreamers, observing the spiraling flight of maple or ash seeds, imagined riding just …

Read Story »

Lance Cpl. Tyler Langford, anti-tank missileman, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, leads his pack mule during a hike at Marine Corps Mountain Warfare Training Center Bridgeport, Calif., Oct. 13, 2012. Langford used skills he learned in the Animal Packers Course, taught four times a year at MCMWTC. The 16-day course teaches Marines how to use animals in the region they find themselves in as a logistical tool to transport weapons, ammunition, food, supplies or wounded Marines through terrain that tactical vehicles cannot reach. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Lance Cpl. Ali Azimi

The Virtues of Stubbornness: Mules at War

Featured Post

Mules don’t exist in nature. They are an artificial product of human ingenuity, and like many such products, it didn’t take long before they found a place in the grim …

Read Story »

Lance Cpl. Steven Finlayson, a team leader with Headquarters Company, 3rd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, pauses before returning to Forward Operating Base Geronimo after providing security in Nawa, Afghanistan Nov. 17, 2010. Finlayson and his squad provided security while Afghan National Army Soldiers and U.S. Army personnel gave out supplies as a goodwill gesture during the Muslim holiday of Id al-Adha, the Feast of Sacrifice. U.S. Marine Corps photo by Sgt. Mark Fayloga

Camels at War

Featured Post

Superbly adapted to the desert, the single-humped Arabian camel was domesticated around 4000 B.C. for its meat, milk, and wool, as a beast of burden, and finally as a riding …

Read Story »

Blood smear of Plasmodium falciparum, the organism that causes the most severe form of malaria. Photo courtesy of Dr. Mae Melvin/CDC

Men Against Mosquitoes: Malaria in War

Featured Post

More than arrows, swords, bullets, or bombs, disease has been the biggest killer of soldiers until quite recently. Malaria was not the only illness that shaped the course of history, …

Read Story »

Mussolini reviewing the crew of the battleship Littorio in Taranto, June 21, 1942. Istituto Luce, Rome photo

Book Review – Mussolini’s Navy Mussolini’s Navy: A Reference Guide to the Regia Marina 1930-1945, by Maurizio Brescia; Naval Institute Press; 256 pages.

Featured Post

Long the butt of ignorant jokes, the Royal Italian Navy (Regia Marina) of World War II had capable professional officers, gallant sailors, and beautiful fast ships designed by gifted engineers. …

Read Story »

A U.S. Army soldier conducts bayonet training, Fort Bliss, Texas, Jan. 1, 1917. DoD photo

Knife on a Stick: The Rise and Fall of the Bayonet

Featured Post

Three hundred and eighty five men of Col. Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain’s 20th Maine Regiment held the Union Army’s left flank on July 2, 1863. Posted on a hill called Little …

Read Story »

USS Litchfield, Smyrna

Book Review – America’s Black Sea Fleet America’s Black Sea Fleet: The U.S. Navy Amidst War and Revolution, 1919-1923, by Robert Shenk; Naval Institute Press; 400 pages

Featured Post

In the aftermath of World War I, a U.S. Navy squadron, “America’s Black Sea Fleet,” was forward-deployed to the Turkish Straits in the midst of wars, famines, epidemics, ethnic cleansings, …

Read Story »

CSS Shenandoah

CSS Shenandoah and the Last Shot of the Civil War How the Rebels saved the whales

Featured Post

It is a matter of odd historical fact that the last shot of the American Civil War was a blank fired at a New Bedford whaling ship in the Bering …

Read Story »