The American Army that stormed the beaches of Normandy was mostly green but well trained. For months men practiced climbing down rope ladders into landing craft, exiting in columns of threes, racing across a beach, assaulting pillboxes, storming bluffs, and digging foxholes. Read more
Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest’s fighting blood was up. It was mid-morning on June 10, 1864, and the Tennessean cavalry commander had just hurried Colonel Hylan Lyon’s brigade of Kentuckians from along the muddy Baldwyn road toward Brice’s Crossroads in northern Mississippi. Read more
Fresh off a tense telephone conversation with Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., climbed into a jeep and rumbled over to Truscott’s 3rd Infantry Division headquarters east of Terranova, on Sicily’s northeastern coast. Read more
For nearly a month, 4,000 New England militia aided by the Royal Navy had surrounded the great fortress of Louisbourg, the key to French Canada. Read more
By Christopher Miskimon
Thirteen Panzerkampfwagen IV tanks advanced down the Chouigui-Mateur road in an attack against the newly arrived American First Armored Division. Read more
The debate over the outcome of famous battles, or how aspects of them might have happened differently, often begins almost before the wounded have healed or the long-lasting results have been understood. Read more
Lieutenant Colonel Ben Vandervoort’s 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (2/505) was fighting its way through the Dutch town of Nijmegen on September 19, 1944. Read more
As Confederate General Robert E. Lee and his I Corps commander, Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, rode together on horseback along the dust-choked Quaker Road from Glendale to Malvern Hill on the morning of July 1, 1862, they stopped to confer with Maj. Read more
The Philippine Sea encompasses two million square miles of the western part of the Pacific Ocean. It is bounded by the Philippine Islands on the west, the Mariana Islands on the east, the Caroline Islands to the south, and the Japanese Islands to the north. Read more
Tired, hungry, and typhoid-ridden, the French veterans in the Grand Army of Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte staggered through the Fulda Gap in central Germany on October 27, 1813. Read more
On the evening of May 23, 1945, in the northern German state of Schleswig-Holstein, five men in a British Army jeep were driving down a dark road. Read more
The American pilots did not see the North Vietnamese Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-17 fighter jets approaching their strike aircraft as they zeroed in on Than Hoa Bridge on April 3, 1965. Read more
For Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and the people of the Soviet Union, the capture of Berlin was of great political and symbolic importance. Read more
Smoke swirled amid the thunderous noise that roared from powerful Dahlgren guns and Brooke rifles. Thousands of spectators along the shore watched the two most dangerous warships in the world at each other at point-blank range. Read more
During its history, the Lockheed Aircraft Corporation has earned a reputation for building versatile airplanes. Its 1950s era C-130 Hercules is no doubt the most famous, but it was not the first. Read more
The French cavalry thundered ahead, straight for the British open square. The red-coated infantry made ready for them, the front-rank knelt with muskets planted in the ground and their fixed bayonets pointed outward. Read more
World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Josef Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more
The European wars of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were characterized by large-scale clashes between similarly armed soldiers employing sabers, cannons, and weapons like the iconic Baker rifle. Read more
For the Western Allies, the war in Europe ended with more of a whimper than a bang. Read more
One evening around Christmas of 1861 Union Maj. Gen. Henry “Old Brains” Halleck, commanding the Department of Missouri, dined with his chief of staff, Brig. Read more
