Articles Archive

Return to Leyte

By David H. Lippman

Apprised of an approaching LCM full of VIPs, the beachmaster surveyed his busy dock full of ships loading and unloading troops and supplies at Red Beach on the Philippine island of Leyte. Read more

An early version of the hwacha “fire cart” rocket launcher was developed by the Chinese about 1450 CE, and could be carried on a cart that could be easily moved on the battlefield. Tubes contain arrows with rockets attached that are lit by the gunner holding a match at left.

The feudal Korean ‘fire cart’ was a precursor to modern barrage rocket systems.

By M.G. Haynes

Korean General Kwon Yul shouted the one-word order down the hill. Scarcely had it left his lips before it was lost in a deafening crash. Read more

The Story of Ruby Boye, Australia’s Only Female Coastwatcher

By Patrick J. Chaisson

For Australian coastwatcher Ruby Boye, an Allied agent stationed on the South Pacific island of Vanikoro, it started much like any other morning. Read more

The Story of Bill Millin, Lord Lovat’s Mad Piper of Sword Beach

By Michael D. Hull

It was the evening of Monday, June 5, 1944, and an armada of almost 5,000 ships stood off the southern coast of England, primed and ready for the greatest amphibious invasion in history. Read more

The Battle of Corinth

By Robert L. Durham

In the fall of 1862, Confederate armies were making their first and only coordinated effort to carry the war into the North. Read more

Soldiers of the 369th Infantry charge a German position during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive on September 29, 1918, in “Hell Fighters from Harlem,” by H. Charles McBarron. The village of Séchault was taken, earning the Croix de Guerre for the entire regiment, which lost nearly a third of its men in the offensive.

Known as ‘Black Death,’ Henry Johnson finally earns U.S. recognition for valor.

By Kevin Seabrooke

In the early hours of May 15, 1918, U.S. Army Corporal Henry Johnson and Private Needham Roberts sat in an outpost along the French lines at the western edge of the Argonne Forest. Read more

Pearl Harbor: Irredeemable Defeat

By Frank R. Shirer

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following is a work of fiction written as if it were historical fact. It is a chapter in a book of alternate history entitled Rising Sun Victorious (Greenhill Books, London, 2001), which is a compilation of like chapters and was a Main Choice of the Military Book Club and Alternate Selection of the History Book Club. Read more

Winston Churchill’s Two Battles

By David Alan Johnson

During the summer of 1940, Winston Churchill was fighting a two-front war. The first was against Adolf Hitler and his war machine, particularly his Luftwaffe. Read more

The Ambitious Vietnam Operation

By Victor Kamenir

By January 1967, the buildup of Communist forces in the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) convinced Gen. William Westmoreland that a large-scale incursion by North Vietnam’s People’s Army of Vietnam (PAVN) was only a matter of time. Read more

At the battle of Bladensburg, Maryland, U.S. Marines helped stop the British attack as American militia fled the field. The “greatest disgrace ever dealt to American arms” allowed British forces to capture and burn Washington, D.C.

The Tragic Story of Mordecai Booth and the Burning of the Washington Navy Yard.

By Robert P. Watson, Ph.D.

News arrived in the capital city that the British army had defeated a hastily-gathered and rag-tag collection of American soldiers, sailors, militiamen, and government clerks in Maryland at Bladensburg. Read more

Get the Transports!

By Eric Hammel

The seesaw land, air, and sea battles on, over, and around desperately contested Guadalcanal island had been raging since August 7, and still there was no victor. Read more

Layton intercepted Japanese Admiral Yamamoto’s itinerary. Army P-38s rose to shoot down the admiral’s plane on a inspection tour of Bougainville in 1943.

Edwin T. Layton

By Mike Mclaughlin

On the morning of December 31, 1941, Admiral Chester W. Nimitz assumed command of the U.S. Pacific Fleet. Read more

Alfred the Great’s Anglo-Saxons watch Viking ships approach the shores of England in the painting “How the Danes Came up the Channel a Thousand Years Ago: Off Peveril Ridge, Swanage, AD 877,” by Herbert Arthur Bone (1853–1931).

Alfred the Great: Scholar, Strategist, Swordsman

By David A. Norris

In January 871 Alfred, prince of the Saxon kingdom of Wessex, waited for his brother in the tense moments before battle. Read more

11th Battalion, East Lancashire Regiment, 1916

Headgear: The steel Brodie helmet became standard by July 1916.

Uniform: Khaki woolen 1902 Pattern Service Dress Tunic and Trousers.

Gas Mask: His gas mask, called a gas helmet, is in a canvas bag slung under his left arm. Read more

The USS West Virginia, Tennessee, and Arizona smolder and smoke in the aftermath of the surprise aerial attack by a fleet of Japanese aircraft carriers.

Presaging Pearl Harbor

By Steven Weingartner

When Lt. Cmdr. Matsuo Fuchida, commander of the Japanese strike force at Pearl Harbor, arrived over the naval base on the morning of December 7, 1941, the sight that greeted him—enemy battleships resting placidly at anchor—put him in mind of an earlier war. Read more