Beyond All Praise: British Defense of Crete

By Jon Diamond

Brigadier Eric Dorman-Smith, serving as a liaison to Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor during Operation Compass, the Western Desert campaign, traveled to General Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command headquarters in Cairo on February 12, 1941, to seek permission to advance British XIII Corps farther west to Tripoli after the total victory over the Italian Xth Army at Beda Fomm, which gave Britain and her Commonwealth Allies control of the Cyrenaican half of Libya. Read more

Operation Aphrodite

By Mason B. Webb

When it came to advanced military technology in World War II, arguably no one was better at it than Nazi Germany, whose scientists Adolf Hitler keep busy trying to invent the ultimate “super weapon” capable of defeating his enemies. Read more

Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon

By Glenn Barnette and André Bernole

Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more

Tragic Surrender

By Mark Simmons

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more

The Trampled Swastika

By Eric Niderost

On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Reich Chancellor and Führer of Germany, emerged from his underground bunker in the center of Berlin. Read more

Battle of Chickamauga: Death in the Deep Woods

By Cowan Brew

It was nearly 11 on the morning of September 20, 1863, and the woods around slow-moving Chickamauga Creek in northwest Georgia were ominously quiet. Read more

Union Balloon Corps

By Don Hollway

A week after the first shots of the War Between the States at Fort Sumter in April 1861, the future of warfare came to Appalachia. Read more

Greek Triumph at Plataea

By Eric Niderost

Persian King Xerxes I “The Great” was a man who liked to solicit different opinions before he made a decision on any important matter. Read more

Smashing Hitler’s Atlantic Wall

By Flint Whitlock

After overrunning France and other Western European countries in 1940, Adolf Hitler was certain that the Allies would one day attempt to invade the European continent and attack through the occupied countries to destroy his regime. Read more

Attack on the USS Panay

 By Chuck Lyons

For some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more

Bloodbath at the Chosin

By John Walker

When dawn broke on December 1, 1950, on the barren hillsides on the eastern shore of the frozen Chosin Reservoir in northeastern North Korea, the ragged, tenuously held perimeter of the U.S. Read more

Bloody Brawl on Guadalcanal

By Mike Phifer

The column of sweaty, exhausted Japanese soldiers trudged single file through the thick, dark jungle. For days they had been pushing inland from the western end of Guadalcanal. Read more

The Last Banner Falls at the Siege of Acre

By William E. Welsh

The Latin Crusaders manning the battlements were armed with spears, axes, and crossbows. They shared with each other a desire to fight and die for the Cross. Read more

Waves of Murderous Assault: The Battle of Britain

By Phil Zimmer

Gerald “Zulu” Lewis peered from his Hurricane and spotted 20 German Bf-110s circling with a heavy escort of fast and deadly Bf-109 fighters over Redhill, south of London. Read more

Storming the “Splendid City”

By Eric Niderost

U.S. General Winfield Scott’s army climbed through the mountains of central Mexico, an arduous trek that included blistering hot days and bitterly cold, rain-drenched nights. Read more

Paratrooper Brawl at Carentan

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

The two exits from the American landing zones at Utah Beach were entrusted to the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Read more

Blood on the Village Green: Battle at Concord

“Soldiers, don’t fire!” In the half light of dawn on April 19, 1775, war was breaking out on a New England town common, and Major John Pitcairn of His Majesty’s Marine Forces was trying to stop it. Read more

The Fall of Seringapatam

By Charles Hilbert

As converging columns of British and native infantry surrounded the inner palace of his capital, Seringapatam, Tipu Sultan did not hesitate. Read more

Hobart’s Funnies

By Phil Zimmer

The elite German paratroopers, who were some of the finest fighters in the service of the Third Reich, believed they were exceptionally well prepared to defend the deep water port of Brest on France’s Brittany coast against an impending attack by the Allies. Read more

“A Bloody Miracle” at Dunkirk

By Eric Niderost

Captain William Tennant stood on the deck of the Wolfhound, grimily observing the progress of a German air raid as his ship approached Dunkirk. Read more