Articles Archive

Boeing Wonderland: The Fake Cities on America’s West Coast

By Bill Yenne

When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. Read more

A 1942-vintage M5A1 Stuart tank was one of the first vehicles acquired for Jacques Littlefield’s private collection.

Private Military Collector Jacques Littlefield

By Albert Mroz

What may be the world’s largest collection of tanks and half-tracks, as well as other treaded vehicles and related artifacts, is not in the hands of any government branch or army office. Read more

Yelling Like Demons

By Mike Phifer

Major General James Ewell Brown Stuart was in all his glory. It was June 8, 1863, and the Confederate cavalry commander was putting on a grand review of his horse soldiers on a plain west of the Rappahannock River near Brandy Station, Virginia, for none other than General Robert E. Read more

Soviet Katyusha rockets lift off in waves and speed toward their targets among the German defenses at Stalingrad. After months of relentless pounding, the Germans capitulated and over 300,000 prisoners were taken.

Operation Uranus: Marshal Georgi Zhukov’s Stalingrad Trap

by Pat McTaggart

In the fall of 1942, in a prelude to the now-famous Operation Uranus, the Red Army had its back to the wall once again. Read more

Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his men rode to their deaths at the Battle of Little Bighorn on June 15, 1876. Painting by C.M. Russell, 1903.

Could Custer have been saved at Little Bighorn?

By Adam Lynch

We can never know what frantic thoughts raced through George Armstrong Custer’s mind in the last hour of his life. Read more

A bus leans against the side of a terrace in Harrington Square after a German bombing raid on London. The bus was empty but 11 people were killed in the houses two days after the start of the attacks.

Taking the Brunt

By Alan Davidge

Most of the action during the Battle of Britain in the late summer of 1940 took place over southern England where Royal Air Force Spitfires and Hurricanes began to dominate dogfights against their German rivals. Read more

General Louis Faidherbe leads a marche regiment at a review at Bapaume on January 3, 1871. Faidherbe’s marche battalions comprised roughly 40 percent of the French Army of the North at the Battle of St. Quentin.

St. Quentin Miniature

By Bruce Weigle

Miniature wargames have been played by hobbyists for decades, both for pure entertainment and as part of legitimate research. Read more

The General Patton Memorial Museum

Raymond E. Bell, Jr.

Thirty miles east of Indio, California, is the General Patton Memorial Museum, a special museum dedicated to General George S. Read more

German Fallschirmjägers in 10 gliders crash-landed on a 6,990-foot plateau near the Hotel Campo Imperatore on Gran Sasso in the central Apennine Mountains on September 12, 1943. The mission objective of Operation Oak was to rescue deposed dictator Benito Mussolini from house arrest and bring him to Munich.

Rescuing ‘Il Duce’

By Colonel Bernd Horn, Canadian Army (ret.)

The flimsy canvas flapped loudly as it buckled in the wind. More bothersome for the nine German commandos crammed inside the narrow fuselage was the constant motion—sinking, then sharply rising, as the DFS-230 glider ploughed and pitched through the towing aircraft’s turbulent wake. Read more

Blood on the Fallow Fields

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

Everyone in Washington, D.C., knew the reason Maj. Gen. Ulysses Grant was in town. He had a hard time moving around without people applauding him everywhere he went. Read more

In this painting by Robert Bailey, Luftwaffe Junkers Ju-88 bombers press home their attacks against merchant vessels of Convoy PQ-17, destined for the Soviet port of Archangel in July 1942.

Convoy PQ 17: A Story of Unprecedented Arctic Disaster

By Keith Milton

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound stopped tapping his pencil on the oaken desk and slowly leaned backward in the oversized leather chair. Read more

Medal of Honor Recipient: Henry Lawton

By Chuck Lyons

On August 3, 1864, near Atlanta, Georgia, Captain Henry Lawton of Indiana led a group of Union skirmishers in a charge against Confederate rifle pits. Read more

Smoke billows from a generator employed at Ludwigshafen along the banks of the Rhine River. The ruins of the city of Mannheim, Germany, are visible in the background.

Smokescreens: Fighting for Metz

By Jon Latimer

With the defeat of the German Seventh Army and the closing of the Falaise Gap in the summer of 1944, the Allies pursued the retreating enemy across France. Read more

The Sam Browne Belt Assembly

By Robert H. Whiter

And here we have the Sam Browne belt assembly,” explained the sergeant who was showing us around the Police Academy. Read more

As the U.S. Third Army fights its way from the Saar River to the German border, Lt. Gen. George Patton takes ambassador to the Soviet Union Averell Harriman on a tour of the front in his personal modified M20 armored scout car. From left are British Lt. Col. James Gault (Eisenhower’s aide-de-camp), Harriman, and Patton.

Patton’s Diplomatic Tour of the Front

By Kevin M. Hymel

Averell Harriman, the ambassador to the Soviet Union, visited the American battlefront lines near the German border in the fall of 1944. Read more

“God Has Been Our Shield”

By Joshua Shepherd

The regiment of Yankees, which was largely composed of German immigrants, advanced through a field of clover in the Shenandoah Valley in search of the Rebel line to its front on June 8, 1862. Read more

Masses of SS, SA, and members of the German army crowd the docks at Wilhelmshaven during the launching ceremonies for the pocket battleship Admiral Scheer. The Scheer was arguably the most successful German surface raider of WWII.

Marauding Kriegsmarine Raider

By Ralph Segman

Say the words “pocket battleship” and up pops the name Admiral Graf Spee. Her two sister ships, the Deutschland/Lutzow and the Admiral Scheer are virtually unknown to Americans. Read more

Desperate Fight on the Plains

By Eric Niderost

In June 24, 1867, W.W. Wright’s survey expedition reached Fort Wallace, Kans., one of the string of military posts that guarded the Smoky Hill Trail to Denver and the beckoning goldfields of Colorado. Read more

Aircraft manufactured in the U.S. await their new owners, the Soviet Red Air Force, at an airfield in Iran. The U.S. supplied several types of aircraft to the Soviet Union through Lend-Lease, including the A-20, P-39, P-40, B-25, and AT-6.

Douglas A-20 Havoc Bomber: The Scourge of Axis Shipping

By Robert F. McEniry

Following the apocalyptic initial phase of Operation Barbarossa starting on June 22, 1941, the Germans inflicted crippling losses on the Red Army Air Forces (VVS) and the Soviet Naval Air Forces (VVS-VMF). Read more

Soldiers of the U.S. 36th Infantry Division riding an M4A3 (75) “Sherman” tank of the 3rd Armored Division on October 14, 1944, near the town of Stolberg, Germany, just three miles east of Aachen.

Slugger Turned Spearhead Tanker

By Darren Neely

Hundreds of American professional baseball players gave pause to their promising careers to step up to the plate for their country during World War II. Read more

From Around the Network

Guadalcanal: Ending with a Whimper

Triumph Off Flamborough Head

Richard Ewell’s Difficult Decision on July 1

“The War Between the Smiths”: High Command Feud at Saipan