“Put the Boys In”: Confederate Cadets at the Battle of New Market

By Pedro Garcia

As the Civil War continued in the spring of 1864, a Shenandoah Valley resident lamented, “Our prospects look gloomy, very gloomy.” Read more

The Men Against the Bomb

By Andrew J. Rotter

The men and women who imagined and then built the atomic bomb thought they were doing something different from what makers of “conventional” weapons did. Read more

LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War

By Susan Zimmerman

In an age before television and instant communications, Americans wanted to see what was going on in the world’s “deadliest conflict in human history,” and LIFE magazine was making a name for itself as THE war magazine during World War II. Read more

Battle of Graignes: An HQ Company’s Heroic Last Stand in Normandy

By Martin K.A. Morgan

Some 16 million Americans served during World War II, and tens of thousands of sons of the State of Louisiana served in every branch of the U.S. Read more

The Amazing Voyages of the USS O’Brien

By Eric Niderost

At exactly three o’clock in the afternoon on February 25, 1944, a crowd gathered at the Boston Navy Yard for the commissioning ceremony of the USS O’Brien (DD725), a destroyer of the Sumner class. Read more

Shootout in Kula Gulf

By John Damagalski

The island of Guadalcanal loomed in the distance as the warships of Task Force 36.1 approached the waters of Iron Bottom Sound on July 5, 1943. Read more

The First and Last Flight of the Spruce Goose

By Allyn Vannoy

The Time magazine article was titled “It Flies!” It was a note of triumph and vindication, but also an epitaph, of an aircraft that was five years in the making—the “Spruce Goose,” a plane that should not have existed. Read more

How Many Japanese Planes Were Shot Down During Pearl Harbor?

By Tom Yarborough

On a serene Sunday morning the residents of Oahu enjoyed the dawning of another gorgeous day in paradise. Read more

Hiroshima’s Ground Zero Museum

By Flint Whitlock

Although located 420 miles west of Tokyo, the city of Hiroshima is today a tourist mecca, drawing tens of thousands of visitors from around the world for one single reason: to stand at the epicenter of history’s first nuclear explosion used against an enemy population. Read more

Sherman’s March to the Sea

By William Stroock

On September 3, 1864, a triumphant Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman telegraphed Washington, “Atlanta is ours and fairly won.” Read more

Operation Chastise: Night of the Dambusters

By Mark Simmons

May 16, 1943, had been a sweltering spring day in England. At 9:39 pm, as the sun was dipping below the western horizon, leaving a rim of light and still good visibility, the first three of 19 Avro Lancaster bombers of No. Read more

Fighting Back in Papua New Guinea

By Jon Diamond

After the carrier attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, Japanese forces conducted offensive operations across an incredibly broad front of 7,000 miles from Singapore to Midway Island. Read more

The U.S. Ninth Army’s Breakout: Crossing the Roer and the Rhine

By Michael D. Hull

After the Battle of the Bulge delayed their advance by six critical weeks, the British, U.S., and Canadian armies went on the offensive in mid-January 1945 and pushed toward the German frontier. Read more

Stalemate at Seven Pines

By David Norris

On the last day of May 1862, heavy gunfire rumbled and thundered in the distance beyond the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. Read more

War Thunder’s New Game Face: The ‘Assault’ Update

By Joseph Luster

For those who have yet to get sucked in, Gaijin Entertainment’s War Thunder is one of a small handful of successful free-to-play, massively-multiplayer military games available. Read more

The Guns of Finger Ridge: Airborne Artillery on the Defense in Market-Garden

By Joseph S. Covais

On September 17, 1944, a massive but hastily planned airborne invasion of the Netherlands was launched. Codenamed Market-Garden, the operation called for three Allied airborne divisions (British 1st and American 82nd and 101st) to land along a narrow corridor reaching from advanced positions along the Dutch-Belgian border to a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Rhine River at Arnhem. Read more

Blitzkrieg 1940: From the Invasion of Holland to the Fall of France

By John Brown

The ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote, “Go forth to the enemy’s positions to which he must race. Read more

The Battle of Biak: “A Terrifying Glimpse Into the Soul of Mankind”

By David Alan Johnson

“All I knew about Biak was that it was an island a degree south of the equator, one of the Schouten group lying north of Geelvink Bay toward the western end of New Guinea.” Read more

Operation Market Garden: the 82nd Airborne Division’s Pivotal Role

By Martin K.A. Morgan

By mid-August 1944, roughly one month before the now-famous Operation Market Garden, the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had been fighting off and on for over a year. Read more

The Bombing of Berlin by Doolittle’s Eighth Air Force

By Robert F. Dorr

He was widely regarded as America’s best pilot, he was already a recipient of the Medal of Honor, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force caught up in 1,000-plane bombing missions deep into the Third Reich, and he was mad as hell. Read more