From 747 to B-17: An Interview With Airline Pilot Robert Trammell

By William Caverlee

Delta Air Lines and former Northwest pilot Robert Trammell, 45, has made numerous 747 flights on Asian routes across the Pacific. Read more

The Rise of Ike: Supreme Allied Commander in the Making

By Eric Hammel

Dwight David Eisenhower began life as David Dwight Eisenhower in Abilene, Kansas, on October 14, 1890, the third of five sons. Read more

Race to the Meuse

By William E. Welsh

The American airborne troops shivered in their foxholes as temperatures plummeted on Christmas Eve 1944. Behind them to the east lay the beleaguered town of Bastogne. Read more

Villers-Bocage: Wittmann’s Tigers, the Desert Rats, and Allied Disaster

By Major General Michael Reynolds

British General Sir Bernard Montgomery was given command of two Allied armies for the invasion of Normandy: Lt. Read more

USS Hugh W. Hadley: Surviving the Kamikazes of Okinawa

By Michael E. Haskew

Only 340 miles from the home island of Kyushu, the final objective of the American military surge across the Pacific during World War II, short of an invasion of Japan itself, was Okinawa in the Ryukyu archipelago. Read more

With the “Ragtag Circus” Across Europe: The Story of Frank Fauver

By Susan Zimmerman

The 83rd U.S. Infantry Division had been mobilized for World War I in September 1917. Its unit patch was a downward-pointing black triangle with the letters O-H-I-O stitched as an abstract gold monogram in the center. Read more

New Mexico: Atomic Spy Capital

By Richard Higgins

New Mexico and its capital of Santa Fe bring to mind some beautiful images. Stunning sunsets, unlimited vistas, a plethora of art galleries, the spectacular food enlivened with the local green chile, an ancient Native American culture that still thrives, and a Spanish heritage tradition going back to within 50 years of Columbus’s arrival all make for a unique cultural and physical environment. Read more

Takeo Yoshikawa and the Spies Behind the Pearl Harbor Attack

By Phil Zimmer

“You are probably the nearest to war that you’ll ever be without actually being in it,” said Commander Harold M. Read more

“I Survived the USS Franklin Inferno”

By George F. Black, as told to Howard Dunbar

On March 19, 1945, the Essex-class carrier USS Franklin (CV-13), dubbed “Big Ben,” lay 50 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s Home Islands. Read more

SCR-300 WW2 Radio Backpack: The “Walkie Talkie” That Shaped the War

By John Niesel

Early in 1945, in the Northern Appenine mountains of Italy, T/5 Harvey, a radioman with the 10th Mountain Division, is carrying his WW2 radio backpack, the ever-handy SCR-300, into combat for the first time. Read more

Bridge House Hotel: Crimes of the Kempeitai in Shanghai

By Eric Niderost

By the 1930s, Shanghai was already a legend in its own time––the most modern, populous, and decadent city in China. Read more

A Murderous Order at Culp’s Hill

By Joshua Sheperd

Although Union Colonel Silas Colgrove had previously led his men through some of the most horrific fighting in the eastern theater of the Civil War, the order he received on the morning of July 3, 1863, in the woods near Culp’s Hill at Gettysburg, was the most unnerving he had ever received. Read more

Bushrod Johnson: Yankee Quaker, Confederate General

By Roy Morris Jr.

Of all the unlikely heroes of the Civil War, none was more unlikely than Bushrod Johnson, Ohio-born Quaker turned Confederate general. Read more

Battle of the Bulge Tank Duel On Christmas Eve

By Christopher Miskimon

The Battle of the Bulge is famously known as the largest battle fought by the U.S. Army in World War II. Read more

U.S. Army Heritage Museum

By Mason B. Webb

In the heart of Pennsylvania, not far from the Civil War battlefields of Gettysburg, stands the U.S. Read more

Amazing Photography of Normandy: D-Day Plus 1 Year

By Kevin M. Hymel

On June 6, 1945, two Stars & Stripes newspaper reporters traveled to Normandy with a mission: to photograph the effects of the year-old D-Day landings on the beaches, towns, and fields. Read more

The WW2 Paratrooper: First-Hand Accounts of the D-Day Invasion

By Kevin M. Hymel

What was it like to be a WW2 paratrooper, parachuting into Normandy in the opening minutes of June 6, 1944—D-Day? Read more

Death of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

By Phil Zimmer

Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, commander of the combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, intended to press ahead with his morale-boosting visits to forward units in the South Pacific in April 1943, despite dire warnings from subordinates of possible enemy ambushes. Read more

Heroic Fight for Wake Island

By Joshua Donohue

“All hands have behaved splendidly and held up in a manner in which the Marine Corps may well tell.” Read more

Innovative Soviet Fighter Ace

By Christopher J. Chlon

According to contemporary Soviet news sources, fighter Ace Alexander Pokryshkin was the most famous pilot in the Red Air Force during World War II. Read more