In the predawn darkness of Dobodura, New Guinea, 2nd Lt. William J. Smith of the U.S. Army Air Corps was roughly awakened by a noncom announcing that it was time to get dressed and get to the mess tent for breakfast. Read more
He came highly recommended, praised by General George C. Marshall as “one of the best.” But ultimately from these high hopes and expectations would come disastrous failure. Read more
They had spent a cold, wet, miserable evening in October 1918 in a drainage ditch along the Varennes-Fleville road. Read more
Following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (and roughly four years prior to the construction of the HMS Cornwall), cruisers became a focus of the interwar naval arms race, no less keenly felt by the British, whose survival depended on the sea-lane. Read more
The first explosion came as a complete surprise to everyone around Pearl Harbor. The Sunday had started out clear and bright, but the sky quickly darkened as great clouds of thick black smoke rose high above the burning ships. Read more
One of World War II’s longest, least known guerrilla resistance campaigns was fought in the depths of the jungle covering 80 percent of Malaya’s 50,850 square miles; in it the most unlikely of friendships would develop, leading to a remarkable meeting, then parting, a decade later. Read more
It was May 1, 1592, mere weeks before the start of the Imjin War. Admiral Yi Sun Shin summoned a conference of high-ranking military officers and civil magistrates to his headquarters at Yosu, a port on the southern coast of Korea. Read more
Looking at a 1917 newspaper photo of Frederick Funston, barely 5 feet 4 inches tall and weighing just a biscuit over a hundred pounds, today’s reader would wonder whatever made U.S. Read more
The smell of victory was in the air as the forces of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center continued to drive deep into the Ukraine during the final week of June 1941. Read more
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was a game changer. First rolling off the assembly line as a production aircraft in July 1943, the Superfortress was the answer to America’s need for a high-level long-range strategic bomber. Read more
Adolf Hitler served in a Bavarian regiment on the Western Front during nearly all of World War I. Read more
Lieutenant Commander Ernest E. Evans arrived at his new command, USS Johnston (DD-557) at the Seattle-Tacoma shipyard. The ship had yet to be completed; workers were still welding and riveting. Read more
The Polaroid Optical Ring Sight greatly increased the accuracy of gunners. It is little known that the creation of this sighting system was the result of a combined effort of a disparate group of Americans, including optics experts, miners, moonshiners, Soldiers, Marines, and even an artist. Read more
The Marine Corps fielded 484,000 troops in the Pacific during the war; the US Army contributed 1.77 million. Read more
On the morning of December 19, 1944, artillery began to fall on the men of the 482nd Anti-Aircraft Artillery Battalion. Read more
On September 19, 1944, Walter Stitt, serving as a loader in an M4 Sherman, lost his first tank. Read more
From the time the invasion fleet arrived off the Normandy coast and the first pathfinders parachuted out of their aircraft inland, the press was formulating a narrative of the event which would inform the American view of the event up to the current day. Read more
As the nine C-47s flew closer to the drop zone, the lead plane descended to an altitude of four hundred feet. Read more
In the 1950s a small group of French artists in Paris took toy soldiers and began converting them into what we now know as military miniatures. Read more
The Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter plane dove out of the sky with machine guns firing. The pilot’s target—a pontoon bridge being stretched across Germany’s Werra River by American engineers. Read more
