Arnhem Bridge: Why it was “Britain’s Alamo” in WWII

It was getting dark when they reached Arnhem bridge, but there it was, still intact.

Lieutenant Jack Grayburn’s No. Read more

Raid on Bruneval: Stealing the Enemy’s Eyes

The parachute of aptly named Major J.D. Frost cracked open in the freezing air high above the French Channel coast at 12:45 am, and he commenced drifting down through the moonlit gloom. Read more

Vyacheslav M. Molotov: Steel’s Hammer

The arrival of Vyacheslav M. Molotov, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union, in Berlin on a rainy November 12, 1940, was a solemn, strained occasion. Read more

Marshall Builds the U.S. Army

On July 17, 1941, United States Army Chief of Staff General George C. Marshall sat before the Senate Military Affairs Committee. Read more

George Beurling: Canadian Fighter Ace Known as “The Falcon of Malta”

In September 1943, Canada’s top air ace, the “Falcon of Malta,” Flying Officer George Beurling, was faced with two problems. Read more

Clear Skies Over Bastogne: Patton’s Prayers Answered

“This is the shortest day,” General Dwight D. Eisenhower, supreme commander of Allied forces in Western Europe, wrote in his diary for December 21, 1944. Read more

Liberating Cherbourg, Normandy’s Great Port

It was the storm that forced the battle. On June 19, 1944, a massive gale hit the English Channel, sweeping in from the west, hitting the gigantic artificial harbors the Allies had built on their D-Day invasion beaches. Read more

Commando Kidnapping: Capturing General Kreipe on Crete

Several Allied operations targeted a single enemy commander: the unsuccessful raid on General Erwin Rommel’s headquarters in North Africa to kill the Desert Fox; the assassination of the Butcher of Prague, SS Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia Reinhard Heydrich; and the shooting down of Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto’s plane in the sky above Rabaul in 1943. Read more

The First Day of World War II

Just after midnight on September 3, 1939, a stylish young former socialite from Boston, Massachusetts, made her way toward London aboard the Harwich boat train after crossing the English Channel. Read more

Easter Victory at Tobruk

In April 1941, things were going quite well for the German armed forces. In a series of earlier campaigns, they had conquered Poland, the Low Countries, Norway, and France. Read more

Tula: Hero City of the Soviet Union

In 1976, the Soviet city of Tula joined an elite group of nine other Soviet communities designated as “Hero Cities.”  Read more

Blue and Gray at Omaha Beach

The U.S. 29th Infantry Division was formed in July 1917, three months after America entered World War I. Read more

Submarine Special Missions in the Pacific

Sunsets over Manila Bay are nothing less than spectacular. Once  the sun dips below the horizon there is a lingering illumination known as “blue hour” as the sky gradually shifts from pale azure to deep indigo before fading completely into the black tropical night. Read more

Project Habakkuk’s Iceberg Aircraft Carrier

During World War II British and American aircraft carriers, serviced and ready for naval combat, averaged 20,000 to 30,000 tons. Read more

D-Day Funnies: No Joke to the Nazis

German defenders hunkered in their concrete and steel bunkers along the Normandy coast were in for two major shocks on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more

Hot Chow on the Frontlines

From the training grounds to the battlefront, soldiers and Marines usually dined on C and K rations. Read more

Undeclared War in the Atlantic

Between September 1939 and December 1941, the United States moved from neutral to active belligerent in an undeclared naval war against Nazi Germany. Read more

Sinking the Shokaku

On the morning of June 13, 1944, the brilliant new aircraft carrier Taiho weighed anchor and slowly moved out of Tawi-Tawi anchorage in the Sulu archipelago in the southwestern Philippines. Read more

Key to the Normandy Breakout: The Hill Over St. Lo

The darkness held a terror of its own—any false movement or unwarranted sound could easily betray the presence of the 16-man patrol that crept ever closer to the enemy lines. Read more

OSS in Germany

By the autumn of 1944, most of Nazi-occupied Europe had been liberated by Allied forces. The conquering armies now faced the invasion of the German homeland. Read more