Hard-fighting veterans of Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s II Corps rush through the thick forest west of the Chancellorsville crossroads in the late afternoon of May 2, 1863, to fall on Maj. Gen. Oliver O. Howard’s unsuspecting XI Corps in Don Troiani’s painting.

“Like A Picture Of Hell”

By Chuck Lyons

The two Union generals faced each other on the afternoon of May 1, 1863, at the large house by the Orange Turnpike that had been chosen as the headquarters of the Army of the Potomac. Read more

On the trail of the Amber Room

Nearly 20 years ago, I met a fellow in Germany (we’ll call him “Hans”) who was on his life’s quest to find one of mankind’s greatest treasures and solve one of WWII’s greatest mysteries—the fabulous Amber Room. Read more

Soldiers of God

By John Walker

In November 1177, Saladin launched his first significant military campaign against a crusader state. With 26,000 men, siege engines, a huge baggage train, and his own personal force of elite Mamluk bodyguards, Saladin marched his Ayyubid army across the Sinai Desert from Egypt into southern Palestine. 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

Union soldiers of Colonel John Wilder’s Mounted Infantry Brigade armed with Spencer repeating rifles delay Confederate attempts to cross at Alexander’s Bridge over Chickamauga Creek at midday on September 18, 1863. The rebels suffered heavy casualties but eventually overpowered the defenders by sheer force of numbers.

“A Terrible Cyclone”

By Lawrence Weber

On Saturday, September 26, 1863, six days after the Battle of Chickamauga, Lt. Gen. James Longstreet wrote Confederate Secretary of War James A. Read more

Incomparable Bravery

By Alexander Zakrzewski

In the early evening of September 12, 1683, the citizens of Vienna watched from the ramparts of their beleaguered city as 3,500 winged horsemen poured down the slopes of the Kahlenberg Heights and into the heart of the besieging Turkish army. Read more

Liberating Paris

By Jean René Champion (with Marc and David Champion)

Jean René Champion (or René, as he preferred to be called) was born in 1921 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a commune on the west side of Paris. Read more

Naval artist John Hamilton depicted the night action on November 13, 1942, when eight U.S. destroyers and five cruisers engaged in an all-out slugfest against two Japanese battleships and 12 destroyers in “the Slot,” between Guadalcanal and Florida Island. The action lasted only 20 minutes but ended in a victory for the U.S. Navy. During the six-month-long campaign, the two combatants lost over 60 ships and more than 1,200 aircraft.

Guadalcanal: Ending with a Whimper

By John J. Domagalski

Admiral Ernest J. King wanted the battle for Guadalcanal to be over. There were additional objectives for the United States to pursue in the South Pacific and by the middle of January 1943 he was becoming impatient. Read more

A Finnish pilot at the controls of his Avro Anson FAF LeLv46 AN101 reconnaissance aircraft based at Tikkakoski, March 7, 1940, shortly before the Winter War ended in a truce. The Finns successfully blunted the Soviet invasion, thanks in large part to their air force.

David vs Goliath

By Glenn Barnett

When Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939, they secretly created spheres of influence. Besides dividing up Poland, they agreed to allow each other free reign over nations and territories they deemed important. Read more

A column of 45 Royal Marine Commando marches toward Port Stanley. The British did not have a particular advantage in numbers or firepower, but their training and discipline enabled them to triumph in the challenging environment.

Bloody Showdown at Stanley

By Christopher Miskimon

A rocky, jumbled mass of boulders known as Mount Harriet just west of the city of Stanley in the Falkland Islands had no claim to fame before the night of June 11-12, 1982, but it achieved renown after a harrowing engagement that occurred between British and Argentine forces that night. Read more

Spring 2014 Military Games

By Joseph Luster

Things have been moving along nicely for Wargaming.net’s hugely successful massively-multiplayer online game World of Tanks. It was already doing plenty well on PC, but its recent arrival on Xbox 360 finally brought it to a hungry console audience. Read more

General George Washington rallies his Continental Army during the Battle of Monmouth in June 1778 in a 19th-century painting by Emanuel Leutze. Maj. Gen. Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben’s relentless drilling of Washington’s soldiers at Valley Forge the previous winter enabled them to fight the British Army to a draw that day.

The Necessity of Drill

By Eric Niderost

In normal times 18th-century Cambridge, Massachusetts, was a small farming community of about 800 souls clustered around a common. 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

A long line of American soldiers are about about to begin their long journey into captivity. Most of the troops were moved by rail; Allied planes sometimes unknowingly attacked trains that carried American POWs.

Captured in the Bulge

By Flint Whitlock

It took the HMS Queen Elizabeth, the world’s largest passenger liner, only five days to transport 15,000 men of the 106th Infantry Division from New Jersey to Glasgow, Scotland, making port on November 17, 1944. Read more

Japanese American children at the Raphael Weill Public School in San Francisco recite the Pledge of Allegiance, April 1942. The two girls in the front row were both sent to internment camps along with their parents.

“Justice for All”

By Susan Zimmerman

In the fall of 1941, as relations worsened between the United States and Japan and war became imminent, the presence of 110,000 Japanese Americans living on the West Coast pushed the issue of internment to the forefront. Read more

Men of War: Assault Squad 2

By Joseph Luster

Men of War: Assault Squad first arrived in 2011 as an expansion to Men of War, which was itself a sequel to Faces of War, which had its roots in Soldiers: Heroes of World War II. Read more

Fighting men of the 92nd Infantry Division, the famed Buffalo Soldiers, march past the wreckage of a knocked out PzKpfw. VI Tiger tank in the vicinity of Ponsacco, Italy. The African-American soldiers of the 92nd Division fought racial injustice in their own army, as well as the Germans.

The Brave Buffalo Soldiers

By Michael D. Hull

Despite their gallant service in the Civil War, on the Western frontier, and in the Spanish-American War, black soldiers were used mostly for labor and given only a limited fighting role when the U.S. Read more

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