As spring turned to summer in 1941, America’s thoughts turned unwillingly toward war. While the nation was still reluctant to enter World War II, it now realized it needed to prepare its military, which had languished in the funding-starved 1930s. Read more
I love shooters as much as the next adrenaline-pumping gamer; it’s practically a requirement if you want some kind of interactive war experience outside of strategy titles. Read more
Few mortals commanded such intense devotion from their troops as did French Emperor Napoleon I, and fewer soldiers still can claim to have had a direct hand in helping to save the life of their commander. Read more
Whenever I look at names on a war memorial, I can’t help but wonder about who those people were, what they looked like, what kinds of lives they led, and the circumstances of their deaths. Read more
John Pope’s second campaign as an army commander went considerably better than his first. Not that it did his reputation—or Abraham Lincoln’s, for that matter—any particular good. Read more
One of the great things about being a military historian is that you get to go places and meet people you might not ordinarily get to see and meet. Read more
I have strangely fond memories of the original Top Gun game. I say “strangely” because, for all intents and purposes, it was practically impossible for myself and almost everyone else I knew at the time. Read more
The Battle of Waterloo was A nightmare from hell. Musket balls, shot, and shell flew back and forth, tearing apart men and horses and leaving their broken bodies to litter what had been a pristine field just days before. Read more
The short-lived Whig Party had a fair degree of success electing candidates for president, winning two of the five presidential elections in which it fielded a candidate. Read more
On April 18, 1942, scarcely five months after the devastating Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and other American military installations on the island of Oahu, the U.S. Read more
Field Marshal Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, was in Vienna when the news arrived in early March 1815 that Napoleon had escaped from exile on Elba and returned to France. Read more
Keeping with the theme of team-based tactical shooters is H-Hour: World’s Elite, which is currently in the works at SOF Studios, which has former SOCOM talent—the project is spearheaded by David Sears, creative director of the original SOCOM—among its ranks. Read more
The River Mersey was fog shrouded on the morning of November 6, 1865, and the city of Liverpool was scarcely visible from the deck of the CSS Shenandoah. Read more
The USS Franklin was not a lucky ship. In March 1945, off the Japanese mainland, the Essex-class aircraft carrier was hit by two 550-pound bombs that struck her flight deck and penetrated into the hangar deck. Read more
Twenty-five-year-old Mississippi River pilot Samuel Clemens (not yet known by his famous pen name, Mark Twain) was in his home port of New Orleans in late January 1861 when word reached the city that Louisiana had seceded from the Union. Read more
World of Tanks: Xbox 360 Edition continues to roll out updates of its own, and one of the recent additions introduced a bunch of new Japanese vehicles along with a brand new map. Read more
The ghosts of World War II continue to surface in remote corners of the globe.
Decades after the war in North Africa ended, another reminder of the early and uncertain days in that theater came to the attention of the media and excited historians with a snapshot of a pilot’s ordeal in the unforgiving Egyptian desert where he was forced to land a crippled fighter plane. Read more
Reclusive 80-year-old Cornelius Gurlitt kept his secret for nearly 70 years. Apparently, in February 2012, a treasure trove of paintings confiscated or stolen by the Nazis was recovered in the old man’s Munich apartment. Read more
Many of the massive budget triple-A war games don’t have the luxury of focusing too closely on realism. Read more
As the early days of the Civil War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was beginning to be contested on the battlefield, Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more
