Just before dawn, the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise turned into the wind to launch her planes. Nervous and excited pilots roared into the darkness of the vast Pacific toward the unsuspecting Japanese. Read more
Some Tommies swore it had been St. George, the warrior saint of England. Others said the “Angels of Mons” might have been St. Read more
Defeat has a funny way of producing heroes.
The British lost an embarrassing battle to Zulu tribesmen at Isandhlwana, but the improbable defense of an insignificant river crossing 10 miles away by a handful of rear-echelon soldiers, overage officers, and civilians created a new crop of heroes for the public to idolize. Read more
On May 4, 1942, American Volunteer Group (AVG) pilots Charlie Bond and Bob Little were in the alert area at Paoshan, China, a small grass aerodrome just north of Burma. Read more
A horrible siege on the Eastern Front occurred at the outset of 1915. The city of Przemysl in southeastern Poland belonged to Austria Hungary. Read more
Fans of classic turn-based strategy games might recall 1985’s Colonial Conquest. Argonauts Interactive ran a successful Kickstarter campaign for a reboot earlier in 2015, reimagining and rereleasing the conquest simulator for today’s strategy-loving PC players. Read more
The English commander, William de Aumale, heard the roar of the Scots army even before it appeared out of the early morning mists. Read more
In 1611 Tokugawa Ieyasu had every reason to be pleased with himself. His son Hidetada was Shogun, supreme warlord of Japan, but in truth it was Ieyasu who ruled the country behind the scenes. Read more
Admiral General George Monck, first Duke of Albemarle, walked into the great cabin of his flagship Royal Charles with a calm and determined air, tersely greeting his assembled captains before they all sat down at a large table. Read more
The Kokoda track campaign involved a trail that leada south along the western side of the Eora Creek Gorge and through the villages of Deniki and Isurava to a trail junction at Alola. Read more
In 1994 James Anderson and a few other adventurers retraced the Australian Army’s withdrawal from Kokoda in 1942, and followed the track across the Owen Stanley Mountains. Read more
Most Americans can recite the second line of the immortal “Marine Hymn” by memory, but few actually know what it means. Read more
The men who wore Confederate gray were notoriously high-strung and quick to anger—none more so than Stonewall Jackson and Ambrose Powell Hill. Read more
Dashing hussars in beautifully braided dolmans and fur-lined pelisses; chasseurs in their brilliant green uniforms; the heavy cavalry of cuirassiers in their glistening breastplates, mounted on magnificent chargers; and the dragoons, wearing brass Grecian helmets with long, flowing manes of black horsehair—all magnificent in their martial and fashionable airs. Read more
In 1863 the tide was running against the South—except in Texas. A new Confederate commander, John Magruder, chased the Yankees out of both Galveston and the Rio Grande Valley. Read more
On the morning of July 8, 1758, the largest field army yet gathered by the British Empire in North America stood a mile from a French stone fort in the forests of what was then the colony of New York. Read more
In the harbor of Tripoli, the 38-gun frigate USS Philadelphia, pride of the Mediterranean Squadron, lay at anchor. Read more
Napoleon Bonaparte’s Russian campaign of 1812 ranks as one of the worst military disasters in history. Only 50,000 men returned from an orginal 600,000, or of the 100,000 who marched into Moscow, less than 10,000 were to see France again. Read more
At age 28, new king Frederick Wilhelm II (the Great) burst out of Prussia in an attack on Silesia, which lay within the domain of Maria Theresa, Queen of Austria and Empress of the Holy Roman Empire. Read more
It’s not often we get to dig into the shoot ‘em up genre in these pages, and no, I’m not talking about the other type of shooter we actually do get to talk about on a regular basis; I’m talking the games lovingly referred to by fans as “shmups” for short. Read more
