U.S. Marines unload a wounded fellow Marine from an Army UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter at Al Qaim, Iraq, in 2005.

American Medics and Military Doctors

By Richard A. Gabriel

The American military has been engaged almost continually in combat operations for the last 22 years. During this period, the United States has conducted combat operations in Iraq (1990-1991), Somalia (1992-1993), Iraq (2003-2012), and Afghanistan (2001-2021). Read more

Hammer of the Normans

By William E. Welsh

Bright sunshine flooded the sedge-covered, damp ground in Sussex on the morning of October 14, 1066. Having attended mass at sunrise, Duke William of Normandy shouted commands to his senior officers outlining their positions for the coming battle with English King Harold II Godwinson’s army. Read more

Aircraft Carrier Survival

By Joseph Luster

We’ve taken off from and landed atop our fair share of aircraft carriers in the past few decades spent with war-inspired video games, but how many of us have actually had to carefully manage said vessels? Read more

Achtung! Panzers in Normandy

By Michael E. Haskew

The ongoing debate between German Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt over how best to use the German Army’s elite panzer divisions against the coming Allied invasion ultimately reached no clear conclusion. Read more

Hitler’s Winter of ‘44

By Christopher Miskimon

Few festivities occurred on Christmas Eve, 1944, in the Ardennes Forest. Thousands of soldiers struggled to attack or defend positions, or to simply survive. Read more

The Frigate USS Confederacy

By William B. Allmon

The British frigates HMS Orpheus and Roebuck, on April 20, 1781, escorted their prize—the Continental Navy frigate USS Confederacy—with the Union Jack flying above the Stars and Stripes, to New York harbor, thus ending Confederacy’s two-year service to the American rebels. Read more

Adolf Hitler gives a stiff Nazi salute to seven men killed in an assassination attempt in Munich during the 1939 anniversary observances of the failed Munich Beer Hall Putsch of 1923.

A Sting In Venlo

By David H. Lippman

Sir Alexander Cadogan did not believe it.

He had been given a report from Admiral Sir Archibald “Quex” Sinclair, head of MI6, on October 6, 1939, that German generals were reaching out to the British Embassy in The Hague in neutral Holland, to orchestrate a coup against Adolf Hitler that would replace the Nazi regime with a military junta, which would then make peace. Read more