The Story of Ruby Boye, Australia’s Only Female Coastwatcher

For Australian coastwatcher Ruby Boye, an Allied agent stationed on the South Pacific island of Vanikoro, it started much like any other morning. Read more

What Made the German Luger the Most Famous Pistol in Modern Warfare

The German Luger is, most likely, the most famous pistol in modern warfare. Almost every World War II movie ever made featuring German armed forces seems to show it as an integral part of its action sequences.  Read more

The Buchenwald Concentration Camp: Patton’s Bastardly Discovery

The blue arrows on Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.’s Third Army situation maps in his mobile headquarters trailer all pointed eastward. Read more

Lemberg, France: A Bloody Lesson, and a Success at Unsustainable Cost

By Thomas Harper Kelly

On the third anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, men of the Powder Horn Regiment—the 100th Infantry Division’s 399th Infantry Regiment—were poised on the outskirts of the small Alsatian town of Lemberg, France in the northeast. Read more

Roza Shanina and the Soviet Women Snipers of WWII

Roza Shanina was cute as a kitten, yet as dangerous as a Siberian tiger. The 20-year-old drew many an eye behind Soviet lines in World War II with her striking blue eyes, fair skin, and strawberry blonde hair, but she earned her reputation out front in no-man’s-land. Read more

George S. Patton Jr.’s Upbringing: The Making of the Legend

George Patton knew exactly what he wanted to be from childhood on. “When I was a little boy at home, I used to wear a wooden sword and say to myself, ‘George S. Read more

The Shot That Killed British General James Wolfe

Before the Battle of Quebec, which would ensure him immortality in British military annals, one of General James Wolfe’s captains said of him, “No man can display greater activity than he does.” Read more

The Makin Island Raid: What Really Happened to the Marines?

In August 1942, the 2nd Marine Raider Battalion conducted the Makin Island raid in the Central Pacific. The purpose of the raid was to destroy Japanese installations on the island, gather intelligence, and to test the raiding tactics of the U.S. Read more

Uniform: Knight Templar 1240

The Poor Knights of Christ and the Temple of Solomon, also known as the Order of the Temple, was the first religious military order of the Latin Church. Read more

Churchill and Stalin’s Uneasy Alliance

In the Grand Alliance volume of Winston S. Churchill’s memoirs of World War II, the British prime minister lambasted Soviet Premier Josef Stalin and his inept government for failing to anticipate Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, which began on June 22, 1941. Read more

British Invasion of Madagascar

“The first I saw of Madagascar and the last after adventurous months ashore was the eerie color of the soil,” a British novelist turned security sergeant would write a decade later.  Read more

Last Chance for Victory at Gujrat

As 18 elephant-drawn heavy guns of the British East India Company’s Bengal Artillery opened fire, Major John Fordyce’s troop of the Bengal Horse Artillery rushed their 9-pounders ahead of the infantry. Read more

German Admiral Raeder’s Navy Raiders

On the nights of August 21 and 24, 1939, two dark ships slipped out of the German naval base at Wilhelmshaven and turned west toward the English Channel. Read more

Change WWII History With a Toy-Soldier Style Battle for the Ages, and Take the Fight to the Tabletop

For a World War II simulator with a surprisingly colorful twist, developer Noobz from Poland recently came through with the aptly titled Total Tank Simulator. Read more

Naval Showdown in the Solomons

The First Naval Battle of Guadalcanal began with a delay. Shortly before 1:30 am on November 13, 1942, the American cruiser USS Helena spotted a Japanese task force: “Radar contact. Read more

Prussian Blunder at Hochkirch

Cannons roared and muskets crackled in the darkness below the hill of Rodewitz, but King Frederick the Great of Prussia was in no hurry to move. Read more

Swift Invasion of Denmark

On the night of April 8, 1940, almost four million people went to bed at peace in the midst of a world war. Read more

The Great Viking Siege of Paris

Well before the great Viking siege of Paris, more than 300 islands dotted the length of the Seine River, reduced over the centuries by human impact and natural changes to slightly more than 100. Read more

Daring British Attack on Meiktila

While the soldiers and officers of the Japanese 15th Army fought fiercely to defend Mandalay in central Burma, they were alarmed to discover that British and Indian troops were dangerously close to attacking their supply depot at Meiktila, 90 miles to their rear. Read more

Nazi Stuka Ace Hans Rudel

In the village of Seiferdau, Southern Prussia, an eight-year-old boy with an umbrella jumped out of a second-story window. Read more