Driant: Fighting on the Face of the Moon

By Kevin M. Hymel

Before retreating from Fort Driant, Private Tom Tucker lit the fuse on 6,000 pounds of explosives. “We pulled the fuse lighter and took off,” recalled Tucker. Read more

Hell on New Britain

By Adam Lynch

The American effort to neutralize the big Japanese air-sea base at Rabaul on the island of New Britain in the South Pacific was heating up, and 18-year-old aviation radioman John Kepchia was about to feel the heat. Read more

The Abwehr’s Man in Havana

By Peter Kross

In espionage fiction, there are three types of spies. The first is the suave, dapper James Bond, 007, license to kill, a hit with the ladies. Read more

King as Pawn

By Eric Niderost

On May 6, 1939, King George VI of Great Britain and his wife Queen Elizabeth arrived in Portsmouth to board the liner Empress of Australia, which was to take them to Canada and subsequently to the United States. Read more

Daring Doolittle Raid Survivors

By Joseph Connaughton

The first good news in the war for the United States had been the Doolittle Raid on April 18. Read more

Boyd Wagner: Early American Ace

By Sam McGowan

Common wisdom has long held that Japanese pilots and aircraft, particularly their fighters, were superior to the American, Australian, and British counterparts they faced in combat in the Philippines and Southeast Asia in the opening months of U.S. Read more

How the Cossacks Were Betrayed by Britain in World War II

By Blaine Taylor

An estimated four million Red Army soldiers were captured by the Germans during the six months after the launching of Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941.  Read more

An Army Combat Engineer’s Story of the D-Day Invasion

By Rob Morris

Nineteen-year-old army combat engineer Jay Rencher blinked the salt spray from his eyes, filled his lungs, and again plunged beneath the cold, roiling waves. Read more

The St. Nazaire Raid

By Flint Whitlock

Britain badly needed a victory. As if to underline Britain’s difficult fortunes, on May 21, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen dealt the island kingdom a serious blow by sinking the battlecruiser HMS Hood and severely damaging the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales during a furious engagement in the Denmark Strait.  Read more

Armored Blitz to Avranches

By Kevin M. Hymel

Lieutenant General Omar Bradley had reason to be pleased by the last week of July 1944. His First Army had scratched out a substantial foothold on the Normandy coast, capturing three times more French territory than his British allies. Read more

Lightning Strike in Sequatchie Valley

“As the pace quickened, these captures thickened along the way; and after going ten or twelve miles down the valley to the vicinity of Jasper, there opened the richest scene that the eye of a cavalryman can behold. Read more

Theodore Roosevelt’s Cowboy Regiment

by Christopher Miskimon

The late morning of July 1, 1898, was a tense time for the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry. Read more

Italy’s Failed African Gambit

By Gregory Peduto

Under the cover of the dusty Ethiopian night, the 17,000-man Italian Royal Expeditionary force scrambled over ragged hills and inactive volcanoes in the early morning hours of March 1, 1896. Read more

General Arthur Percival: a Convenient Scapegoat?

By Jon Diamond

On February 15, 1942, the island fortress of Singapore surrendered with 130,000 men, thus ending the defense of Malaya as one of the largest military disasters in the history of British arms since Cornwallis’s capitulation to Franco-American forces at Yorktown in 1781 during America’s Revolutionary War. Read more

Six-Pounder Versus Panzer

By Christopher Miskimon

Sergeant Charles Callistan looked through the sights of an antitank gun at an approaching enemy tank. His weapon, a six-pounder cannon, was in the perimeter of a surrounded British outpost named Snipe. Read more

The 45th Infantry Division Museum in Oklahoma City

By Christopher Miskimon

The 45th Infantry Division of the United States Army earned an impressive record during World War II. Originally formed from an Oklahoma National Guard unit, the division was rounded out by National Guard formations from Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. Read more

The U.S. Army’s Humvee

By Albert Mroz

The High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle, or Humvee, was created as a light, multipurpose, off-road vehicle that would supersede the venerable jeep and other light trucks. Read more

Bloodbath in New England

By Chuck Lyons

In the autumn of 1621, Massasoit, a sachem (chief) of the Pokanoket and Wampanoag tribes, entered American legend when he and some his people joined the Pilgrim harvest celebration that would later be called the first Thanksgiving. Read more

The Red Baron’s Band of Brothers

By O’Brien Browne

Like a swarm of ungainly dragonflies, a squadron of six British RE8 observation aircraft droned over the trenches of northern France on the afternoon April 13, 1917. Read more

The Legendary Kit Carson: Scout and Soldier

By Mike Phifer

The two Indian scouts ignored the gawking soldiers as they rode into where the bluecoated troops had bivouacked for the night at Mule Springs in the Texas Panhandle on November 24, 1864. Read more