Pour One Out For: Lord Cochrane

On this date in 1820, Thomas Cochrane, 10th Earl of Dundonald, completed the daring capture of Valdivia during the Chilean War of Independence.  Using subterfuge and audacity, Lord Cochrane led 250 men and two ships in a nighttime assault on seven forts bristling with 110 guns, 700 soldiers, and 800 nearby reinforcements.  Cochrane and his men routed the forts on the southern shore of the bay in the night, and the troops guarding the northern shore fled in the morning.

The Chilean capture of Valdivia

Lord Cochrane was invited to the Chilean cause by the (terrifically-named) Bernardo O’Higgins, and became instrumental in securing Chile’s independence from Spain.  Yet the capture of Valdivia on February 3-4, 1820 was only one of Lord Cochrane’s many exploits on or near the High Seas.

Lord Cochrane with his second-favorite spyglass

Nicknamed “The Sea Wolf” by his French adversaries, Cochrane served the British Navy with great flair and distinction.  Cochrane commanded the HMS Speedy’s14 guns and 54 men in the audacious capturing of the Spanish frigate El Gamo (32 guns and 319 men) on May 6th, 1801.  He was captured during the French Revolutionary Wars by a French admiral who sought the advice of his prisoner.  Lord Cochrane got into a duel at a Maltese fancy dress party because a fellow officer mistook Cochrane’s common-sailor-costume for the real thing.  He was kicked out of British politics and the navy after being found (dubiously) guilty in the Great Stock Exchange Fraud of 1814.  Not one to sit on his hands, Cochrane aided the Chilean, Brazilian, and Greek wars of independence until he was reinstated into the British Navy in 1832.  Considered a brilliant practitioner of coastal warfare, Lord Cochrane planned his missions meticulously and frequently bluffed or disguised his way into victories over numerically superior opponents.  Lord Cochrane is buried in Westminster Abbey, and has served as inspiration for C.S. Forester’s Horatio Hornblower and Patrick O’Brian’s Jack Aubrey.

So if you find yourself drinking gin in a coastal port, watching the sun set beyond an old harbor fortress and imagining leading an assault on that position, pour one out for Lord Thomas Cochrane.  He would know how to capture that fort, and with fewer troops than you would think were required.

Pour One Out For: Stonewall Jackson

Thomas Jonathan Jackson was born on this date, January 21st, in 1824.  A devout Presbyterian, he attended West Point Military Academy and was the most-promoted American officer in the Mexican-American War.  He was an instructor at the Virginia Military Institute when the Civil War broke out.  Brigadier General Jackson found himself in command of a Virginian brigade at the First Battle of Bull Run.  Under heavy Union pressure, Brig. Gen. Barnard Elliott Bee, Jr. made an exclamation which would forever alter Brig. Gen. Jackson’s life.  While several accounts of the quote exist, one of them is as follows: “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall.  Rally around the Virginians!”

Stonewall at his sharpest

It is the rare man who can acquire a nickname in the heat of battle from a soldier who dies very soon after (as did Bee).  Stonewall Jackson was a rare man indeed.  An aggressive and tactically brilliant commander, his troops were known for their discipline and courage under fire.  He was the Confederacy’s most celebrated soldier (apart from Gen. Lee), a darling of Confederate women who took the buttons off his worn uniform as souvenirs.  A devout Presbyterian, he disliked fighting on Sundays and was not a vocal proponent of slavery.  He was known before the war for organizing Sunday School education classes for slaves in Lexington.

At the Battle of Chancellorsville in May 1863, Jackson led a surprise assault on an unguarded flank of a Union army, sending them into retreat.  Returning to the Confederate lines after dark on May 2nd, Jackson and his officers were mistaken for Union cavalry and fired upon.  Jackson was hit three times, and his injuries were severe enough to require the amputation of his left arm.  General Lee, upon hearing of Jackson’s amputation, said that Jackson had lost his left arm but Lee had lost his right (awwwwww).

Jackson developed pneumonia after the surgery, and died on May 10th.  His last words, said in delirium, were battle orders to the air.  But the last part of his orders, delivered calmly and quietly, were thus: “Let us cross over the river, and rest under the shade of the trees.”

So if you find yourself drinking in Virginia (or his birth place, West Virginia, where lord knows one should drink), resting under the shade of the trees, pour one out for General Stonewall Jackson.

The Battle of Britain

A classic game in British pizza parlours

In the summer of 1940, Nazi Germany was on a roll.  Surprised that Britain was not seeking an armistice against his seemingly-invincible war machine, Hitler ordered plans for a cross-Channel invasion.  His generals advised him that the powerful British navy meant that any successful invasion would require air superiority.  Thus began Hitler’s attempt to destroy the Royal Air Force, known widely as the Battle of Britain (re-released in 2005 in Japan as “Unstoppable Strike Be-Bop Force Go!”).

The Battle of Britain lasted from July 10th, 1940 until October 1940, when the German attacks subsided.  The showdown between the Royal Air Force (“RAF”) and the Nazi Luftwaffe (“Luftwaffe”) progressed through several stages.  Initially the Luftwaffe targeted British air defenses and air fields, trying to whittle down the RAF’s strength.  That strategy transformed into bombing raids against British infrastructure.  In September, motivated by desperation, the Luftwaffe targeted civilians.  The excitement and nonstop action of the Battle of Britain induced young boys all over Europe to skip school and soccer practice to come watch.

The backbone of the British defense was the communication network known as the “Dowding System,” after its chief architect, Air Chief Marshal Hugh Dowding.  The Dowding System was a complicated but efficient network for tracking incoming German sorties, determining their makeup and potential targets, and organizing a defense.  Radar, radios, telephones and human observation fed an informational grid updated constantly with weather, RAF plane and pilot status, and other relevant circumstances.  Decision-making rooms scattered around England coordinated four RAF Groups responsible for a zone defense of the Island.  Dowding tried to conserve his fighters by focusing on German bombing runs and avoiding, whenever possible, strict fighter-on-fighter aerial combat (as cool as those were).  Exceptions included going after power-up and extra-life bonus sorties.

Fighter pilots with high kill counts, like TSG, AAA and ASS, became heroes

The German Luftwaffe outnumbered the RAF in both pilots and aircraft.  The Nazis continuously revised their bomber protection schemes and sortie makeups in an attempt to thwart British defenses.  The most common German attack involved long lines of ships engaged in the “increase speed, drop down, reverse direction” maneuver (see above).  The Luftwaffe flew at least five different kinds of ships, and also used tactics like the box, X-formation, and fly-up-and-back.  Yet the Nazis set themselves the near-impossible task of destroying the RAF while preserving the Luftwaffe for the subsequent invasion.  This hampered their ability to engage British fighters.  To limit losses, Luftwaffe pilots were told to engage enemy fighters only when the odds were favorable, or when they were flying a Boss Ship.

Secret of the British air defense

Both sides suffered from poor evaluation of their opponent’s capabilities.  However, this poor estimation favored the British.  The complexities and confusion of three-dimensional aerial combat meant that kill counts were usually overstated (even before score-multiplier bonuses were factored in).  The British overestimated the Luftwaffe’s strength, and thus prepared for a stronger assault than the Nazis were capable of sustaining.  The Luftwaffe underestimated England’s manufacturing capacity, the importance of the Dowding System, and the number of quarters Britain brought to the fight.  Therefore, the Luftwaffe became convinced that they were causing much more damage to the RAF than they were, and that the RAF was much weaker than it actually was.  To experienced Nazi pilots, it must have seemed like the British had freaking unlimited continues, or were cheating somehow.

As the battle continued into August and September, it became increasingly clear that the RAF was far from destroyed.  In response to this and Britain’s bombing of Berlin, Hitler rescinded his ban on civilian bombing in early September.  Hitler hoped civilian casualties would demoralize the British, perhaps to the point that the RAF pilots’ mothers would get mad and order their sons home to do their homework.  But it did not work.  Smooth-talkin’ British Prime Minister Winston “WLC” Churchill applied health crates to his nation’s psyche with emotional cut scenes.  Most famous was his “The Few” speech on August 20th, 1940.  The German attacks peaked on “The Greatest Day,” August 15th.  By mid-September, with increasing Luftwaffe casualties, Hitler indefinitely postponed the invasion plan.

Britain was not able to completely stop German bombing raids against its cities, and the British suffered 23,000 dead and 32,000 wounded civilians between July and December 1940.  Nevertheless, the Battle of Britain was a huge psychological boost for the Allies.  It was the first clear defeat of the Nazi military, and showed a skeptical United States that Britain would survive and should be supported.  The RAF’s heroism made pilots like HTF and ASS into national heroes, and September 15th is now recognized in the United Kingdom as Battle of Britain Day.

Drink: The Blitz

[ingredients:]

• Jagermeister
• Worcestershire sauce

[preparation:]

1. Pour a shot of Jagermeister and add a splash of Worcestershire sauce.
2. Shoot it!