The B-26 Marauder

Of all the better-known Allied aircraft of World War II, the most controversial was Martin’s B-26 Marauder, a twin-engine cigar-shaped medium bomber that was loved by some and hated by many. Read more

Famous Military Spies: Ralph Van Deman

In the long history of American military intelligence, the names that come to mind most often are those of Nathan Hale, Benedict Arnold, Herbert Yardley, and William Donovan. Read more

Silver Salvage in Caballo Bay: Japan’s Sabotaged Treasure Hunt

Early in the morning of July 8, 1942, in the calm waters of Caballo Bay south of Corregidor Island in the Philippines, a casco, a 12-foot by 60-foot flat-bottomed wooden diving barge, bobbed placidly in the open water 120 feet above the ocean floor. Read more

Bloodbath in Aachen

With weapons at the ready, the American squad advanced cautiously on both sides of the tree-lined boulevard toward the German strongpoint in Aachen. Read more

Stand-up Fight at Peachtree Creek

During the early afternoon of July 9, 1864, the 103rd Ohio Volunteer Infantry Regiment of Maj. Gen. John M. Read more

Famous Navy Ships: The USS Tang

During World War II, the United States employed 288 submarines, the vast majority of which raided Japanese shipping in the Pacific, thus preventing the enemy’s vital supplies and reinforcements from reaching the far-flung island battlefields. Read more

The M79 Grenade Launcher

I fired the M79 grenade launcher in advanced infantry training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, in 1965, and had one on the back seat of my machine-gun jeep during my tour of duty in South Vietnam in 1966-1967 as a member of the U.S. Read more

Grand Mufti al-Husseini: Britain’s Deadliest Enemy?

Like all Palestinians and most Arabs, Haj Amin al-Hussaini not only looked forward to an Axis Pact victory in World War II but also saw it as a means of defeating what he believed was a joint British-Jewish conspiracy to foist an Israelite homeland on the Middle East that would be to the detriment of his own people. Read more

The Pen & the Sword: A Brief History of War Correspondents

Men have been reporting their wars almost as long as they have fighting them. The first prehistoric cave drawings depicted hunters bringing down wild animals, and spoken accounts of battles, large and small, formed the starting point for the oral tradition of history. Read more

Armored Soldiers at the Battle of the Bulge

By mid-December 1944, the 3rd Battalion, 33rd Armored Regiment, Third Armored Division “Spearhead” had seen plenty of action. Read more

Edwin Stanton: From Secretary to First in Command

In the late hours of April 14, 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton sat at a small table in the Petersen House across the street from Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. Read more

Frontiersman Daniel Morgan

The lieutenant had reached the end of his tether. It was time to cut this impudent American wagoner down to size with the flat of his sword. Read more

Deal of the Devils: The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact

On August 23, 1939, Soviet Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, V.P. Potemkin, waited at the Moscow Airport for Joachim von Ribbentrop, Foreign Minister of Nazi Germany. Read more

The History of War Elephants: From Ancient India to Vietnam

Imagine a time when human knowledge of elephants was not widespread. Just think how threatening these large animals would be coming over a hillside or out of a mist during battle. Read more

“Keep to your Sabers, Men”: J.E.B. Stuart’s Charge at Gettysburg

An angry gloom hung like dust over the 6,000 Confederate cavalrymen trooping up the York Turnpike in the early dawn of July 3, 1863. Read more

Red Ball Express to the Rescue!

By Dante Brizill

In a message to the Red Ball Express in October of 1944, Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower wrote, “To it falls the tremendous task of getting vital supplies from ports and depots to combat troops, when and where such supplies are needed, material which without armies might fail. Read more

The Dragon and the Boar: The Battle of Bosworth Field

Like bees guarding their hive, the royal host of King Richard III swarmed atop 400-foot-high Ambion Hill near the Leicestershire village of Market Bosworth on the morning of August 22, 1485. Read more

Target: Das Reich

Aboard each of the hundreds of Liberators and Flying Fortresses that daily left the soil of England bound for targets in Germany were ten young men. Read more

The Holland Submarine

By the 1870s, the agitation for Irish independence, already centuries old, had spread to America. The revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Fenians, began organizing thousands of Irish immigrants trained on both sides during the recent Civil War into its own army. Read more

Hiroshima’s Ground Zero Museum

Although located 420 miles west of Tokyo, the city of Hiroshima is today a tourist mecca, drawing tens of thousands of visitors from around the world for one single reason: to stand at the epicenter of history’s first nuclear explosion used against an enemy population. Read more