Articles Archive

Engineering Excellence, Political Dysfunction: Mercedes-Benz in WWII

by Albert Mroz

Few would argue that Daimler-Benz is one of the most prominent and highly regarded motor vehicle manufacturers in automotive history. Read more

Donald R. Lobaugh: From Delinquent to Medal of Honor Recipient

By Richard A. Beranty

Donald R. Lobaugh was a juvenile delinquent, a kid sent to reform school when he was 16 years old. Read more

Ubisoft Montreal Tries on Something New With for Honor

By Eric T. Baker

When you first get your hands on Ubisoft Montreal’s For Honor, you might not know quite what to make of it. Read more

Kalypso Returns With a Beloved Real-time Strategy Series

By Eric T. Baker

Kalypso is back with more from the Sudden Strike series, which means we get to return to the battlefields of World War II in an updated and more realistic manner than before. Read more

A line of American troops crosses a bridge and marches through one of the many small villages that dot the Hürtgen region. The difficult hilly and forested terrain is very obvious in this photo, taken November 16, 1944.

Forest of Horrors

The woods were close-planted fir trees, and the shell-bursts tore and smashed them, and the splinters from the tree bursts were like javelins in the half-light of the forest,” wrote war correspondent Ernest Hemingway of the experience of Lt. Read more

Legendary Panzer Ace Michael Wittmann

By Michael D. Hull

Straddling the River Orne nine miles from the English Channel coast, the French medieval city of Caen was the focal objective of Lt. Read more

Vladimir Peniakoff: Popski’s Private Army

By John Brown

In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more

Leningrad & Operation Spark: Breaking the Nazi Stranglehold

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

With the German Sixth Army in its death throes at Stalingrad in January 1943, Stavka, the Soviet High Command, sought to capitalize on the disaster by unleashing massive offensives along the entire German-Soviet front. Read more

The Chance-Vought F4U Corsair: Whistling Death in the South Pacific

by Sam McGowan

Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans. Read more

The amazing feat of sinking three Japanese submarines is commemorated in this painting by artist Alfred Johnson titled “Batfish Gets a Hat Trick.”

Famous Navy Ships: The Triumph of the USS Batfish

By Robert Barr Smith

She was a sleek, efficient, deadly killer, a home to six officers and 60 enlisted men, and a holy terror to the enemy. Read more

In this vivid painting by artist Jack Fellows, Douglas A-20 Havoc bombers of the 312th Bombardment Group, U.S. Army Air Forces, attack Clark Field in the Philippines on January 14, 1945. The planes use parafrag bombs against Japanese kamikaze aircraft on the ground at the air base near Manila. This was a follow-up raid to one that had taken place a week earlier, and both were intended to destroy suicide aircraft before they had the chance to damage American ships.

Kamikazes Caught on the Ground: Raid on Clark Field

By Robert F. McEniry, Lt. Col. USAF (ret.)

General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Allied Commander Southwest Pacific Area, kept his promise to return to the Philippine Islands when his Sixth Army under the command of Lt. Read more

The Controversial Harry “The Breaker” Morant

By Roy Morris Jr.

It is somehow fitting that the Boer War spanned the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th, since the conflict itself represented both the last old-fashioned war and the first modern one. Read more

Thick black smoke fills the sky as Rome burns in this allegorical 19th century painting depicting the city’s fall. LEFT: A Roman coin bears the image of Emperor Honorius.

The Goth Sack of Rome: Barbarians at the Gate in 410 AD

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

The tattered banners of Hercules fluttered in the howling wind along the Frigidus River in western Italy, hard athwart the Adriatic Sea, on the afternoon of September 6, 394 ad. Read more

Prospective Eagle Squadron pilots were required to undergo standard RAF flight training even though they already held certifications. In this photo American pilots fly trainers in formation above an RAF flight training school.

Yanks in the RAF: From Eagle Squadron to 4th Fighter Group

by David Alan Johnson

The first of the three Eagle Squadrons was formed at Church Fenton, Yorkshire, in September 1940. The idea of forming an all-American squadron in the RAF was not a wildly popular one— with either the British or the Americans. Read more

On April 18, 1945, only days before his death, famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle shares cigarettes with a group of Marines from the U.S. 1st Division on the wartorn island of Okinawa.

WWII War Correspondent Ernie Pyle

By Dr. Carl Henry Marcoux

Ernest Taylor Pyle was born August 3, 1900, in Dana, Indiana. He came from a farm family. Read more

The Red Army’s Bloody Clash at Izyum

By Pat McTaggart

During the winter of 1941, both the Red Army and the German Wehrmacht experienced a terrifying bloodletting. Adolf Hitler’s seemingly invincible armies, having advanced hundreds of miles inside the Soviet Union, were slowed by the October muddy season that had turned all but a few roads into almost impassible quagmires. Read more