Articles Archive

Boeing Wonderland: The Fake Cities on America’s West Coast

By Bill Yenne

When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. Read more

Battle of Reipertswiller: The 157th Infantry’s Heroic Stand During Operation Nordwind

By Christopher Miskimon

By mid-January 1945, the famous Battle of the Bulge, a massive and fatal failure for the Third Reich, was virtually over. Read more

Bovington Tank Museum

By Ray Stevenson

If armored vehicles are your interest, the Tank Museum at Bovington Camp, Dorset, is your holy grail. This cavernous museum, measuring 50,000 square feet, holds the world’s finest and most comprehensive collection of over 250 armored vehicles from 26 countries. Read more

Why the Douglas SBD Dauntless Had Such a Stunning Combat Record

By Martin K.A. Morgan

On August 7, 1942, Petty Officer 1st Class Saburo Sakai was piloting his Mitsubishi A6M2 “Zero” fighter in the skies over Sealark Channel in the Solomon Islands. Read more

Marine Air Power in the Philippines

By Eric Hammel

After the Japanese stopped resisting in the skies over Rabaul and pulled their aircraft out of the Solomons and Bismarcks battle area in mid-February 1944, it began to appear that U.S. Read more

The EUR: Mussolini’s New Rome

By Alan K. Lathrop

Visitors to a certain part of Rome today may not even be aware that they are walking in an area that came about because of an architectural vision of Benito Mussolini, Italy’s infamous fascist dictator. Read more

Heroic Stand at Hosingen

By Alice M. Flynn and Allyn Vannoy

First Lieutenant Tom Flynn and his fellow POWs remained locked inside their boxcar prison on a Frankfurt railroad siding on Christmas Eve, 1944, as air raid sirens wailed and bombs exploded throughout the city. Read more

Commandos Crack Hitler’s Atlantic Wall

By Mark Simmon

After successfully fighting seasickness during the crossing of the English Channel, Lance-Corporal Ted Brooks of Number 48 (Royal Marine) Commando arrived on Nan Red Beach—which formed the left flank of Juno Beach—on the morning of June 6, 1944. Read more

Kiwis Over the Pacific: The RNZAF in World War II

By Allyn Vannoy

During early World War II operations in the Pacific, Geoff Fisken would become one of the most outstanding pilots of the RNZAF—the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Read more

The Supply Front: The Allies’ Key to Victory

By Glenn Barnett

After the war in Europe was won, General Dwight D. Eisenhower had many opportunities to review various campaigns with the leaders of the Soviet Army–– including even Joseph Stalin himself. Read more

The Gothic Line: How the Allies Breached Germany’s Defenses in Italy

By Michael E. Haskew

The reason for it was unthinkable. The Gothic Line, the last line of defense in Italy, was necessary, but senior German commanders had not been concerned that it would ever be contested by Allied forces. Read more

Shootout in the “Slingshot”: First Day of the Guadalcanal Campaign

By John J. Domagalski

The fading daylight of August 6, 1942, found the American heavy cruisers Astoria and Chicago as part of Task Force 61, under the command of Vice Admiral Jack Fletcher, steaming toward the South Pacific island of Guadalcanal. Read more

Voices of the Axis: The Radio Personalities of Fascist Propaganda

By Chuck Lyons

Mildred “Midge” Gillars was born in Portland, Maine, took drama lessons in New York City, appeared in vaudeville, worked as an artist’s model in Paris and a dressmaker’s assistant in Algiers, and taught English at the Berlitz School in Berlin before—motivated by love and fear—she became the notorious “Axis Sally,” one of the Nazis’ leading radio propagandists. Read more

Nazi War Machine: Why the WWII German Army Was So Strong

By Michael E. Haskew

With the end of World War I, the German Army had not been defeated in the field. Read more

Saga of a Volksdeutscher: German Pole Goes to War

By Allyn Vannoy

As Russian and German tanks exchanged fire, German Corporal Erwin Engler realized that if he was to get his wound treated, to even survive—if he was to ever see his family again back in what had been the Polish Corridor—he was going to have to make a dash across open ground to reach the safety of a wooded area. Read more