Articles Archive

During the daring mission to evacuate General Douglas MacArthur from the Philippines, a PT boat slices through the Pacific Ocean at high speed.

Mission for MacArthur

By Captain Lee R. Mandel, Medical Corps, U.S. Navy

In modern naval history, there is perhaps no more colorful figure than the late Vice Admiral John Duncan Bulkeley. Read more

A squad of Red Army machine gunners leap from tanks in an effort to halt the German advance. Soviet losses were heavy but Hitler soon called a halt to the successful Operation South Wind to mount another—Operation Spring Awakening—an attempt to secure vital oil reserves in Hungary that proved to be a failure.

Operation South Wind’s Battle for the Gran Bridgehead

By Major General Michael Reynolds

By the end of 1944, the Soviet Red Army had surrounded the Hungarian capital of Budapest and established strong defensive positions running from Esztergom on the Danube to Lake Balaton. Read more

U.S. servicemen lower Roosevelt’s casket into the ground at Hyde Park, N.Y.

The death of President Franklin D. Roosevelt stunned the nation and the world in April 1945.

By Michael D. Hull

It was a sunny spring day atop Pine Mountain in Warm Springs, Ga. In his little white pine cottage, where he was resting from the strenuous Big Three conference at Yalta in the Crimea on February 4-11, 1945, President Franklin D. Read more

Marauding Wahoo

By Kelly Bell

On the night of September 14, 1942, the men aboard the U.S. Navy submarine Wahoo spotted smoke rising from the funnel of a vessel emerging from Truk’s north pass. Read more

Pacific Waters: Dark and Dangerous

The U.S. Navy’s Task Group 31.2, under the overall command of Commander Frederick Moosbrugger, had a mission to destroy enemy surface ships on the night of August 6, 1943. Read more

During the crucial Battle of Stalingrad, a German Sturmgeschutz III self-propelled assault gun rumbles across the snow covered landscape while Wehrmacht soldiers hitch a ride.

Stalingrad: Battle in the Cauldron

By David H. Lippman

The imperious ringing of a field telephone broke up the meeting that General Vasili Chuikov was holding with his exhausted 62nd Army staff in their dugouts in Stalingrad. Read more

B-25 Mitchell Medium Bomber: ‘Big Gun’ of the Mediterranean

By Mark Carlson

There is no disputing what the North American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber contributed to the Allied victory in World War II. Read more

Up through the Ranks

By Nathan N. Prefer

He was one of only two soldiers in the United States Army to rise from private to four-star general and to command one of the largest armies in America’s biggest conflict. Read more

The Kriegsmarine pocket battleship Admiral Scheer is photographed from the deck of the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen en route to Norway during Operation Cerberus—the “Channel Dash”—in February 1942. Aircraft recognition markings are visible on the deck of Prinz Eugen, as is a portable 20mm antiaircraft gun mounted further aft.

Operation Cerberus: The Kriegsmarine ‘Channel Dash’

By Patrick J. Chaisson

Battleships,” said Adolf Hitler, “have had their day.”

In a military conference held December 29, 1941, Hitler took time to remind those in attendance that not so many months ago the Bismarck went down with all but 115 of her 2,200 crewmen after a 100-hour sea battle. Read more

American sailors crowd the deck of the Japanese submarine I-14, tied up to the submarine tender USS Proteus. The object of their curiosity is the Japanese submarine I-400, which surrendered in Tokyo Bay in September 1945. Type B-1 submarines like the I-35 were the first Japanese cruisers with a surface range of 16,000 miles. The I-400 class, with a range of 43,123 miles, were the largest conventional submarines ever built. They were not eclipsed in size until the introduction of nuclear ballistic missile submarines in the 1960s.

The Sinking of I-35

By Peter McQuarrie

In the autumn of 1943, the U.S. Navy had regained strength after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and plans were made for a big offensive in the Pacific. Read more

Adolf Hitler flanked by two of his top lieutenants, Reich Minister of Armaments Albert Speer to his left, and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, chief of the Luftwaffe on his right. Göring was sometimes vexed by the activities of his “good” brother, Albert.

The ‘Good’ Göring

By Eric Niderost

On March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria, part of Adolf Hitler’s plan to incorporate that hapless country into the Third Reich. Read more

U.S. Marines make their way across a low stone wall as they seek out hidden Japanese positions on bloody Okinawa.

Sugar Loaf Hill Survival: U.S. Marines in the Okinawa Campaign

By John Wukovits

The grimy, weary Marines heard with little emotion the instructions shouted by their officer. He wanted them to mount yet another charge to the top of the nondescript hill blocking their way, another collection of rock housing an enemy that tried to halt their advance. Read more