Military History Archives

For what the U.S. Army called a “magnificent display of courage” while killing a dozen Vietnamese soldiers during a January, 1968, ambush in the Central Highlands of Vietnam, Johnson was recommended for, and received, the Congressional Medal of Honor the same year. He was the City of Detroit's only Vietnam War Medal of Honor winner and the first African American soldier from Michigan to recieve the nation's highest military honor.

Military History

Tank driver Dwight Johnson in Vietnam

By William E. Welsh

The U.S. military had 409,000 soldiers and Marines in South Vietnam organized into approximately 100 infantry and mechanized battalions at the start of 1968. Read more

Military History

The Roman Gladius

By Gabriele Esposito

Few weapons in world history have had such great tactical importance as the Roman gladius. To understand the importance this short sword had on the battlefields of antiquity, it is best to start with the Roman historian Livy. Read more

August Willich was one of the premier brigadier generals in the Union Army of the Cumberland. His performance leading the 32nd Indiana at Shiloh merited a promotion to brigade command.

Military History

Union General August Willich

By Frank Jastrzembski

“A soldier in every phrase of the term, able and skillful, on many a bloody field he demonstrated his ability and courage,” Brig. Read more

A crowned Duke William II of Normandy discovers the Saxon King Harold lying dead on the battlefield in this Victorian painting of the Battle of Hastings by Frank Wilkin. The actual encounter was some six miles from Hastings, at Senlac Hill, near the present-day town of Battle, East Sussex.

Military History

William, Duke of Normandy

By Mark Carlson

The final defeat of the Saxon King Harold at the Battle of Hastings on October 14, 1066, meant that England became forever Norman. Read more

Military History

Winston Churchill’s Escape During The Battle of Spion Kop

By Herman T. Voelkner

At the start of the Second Boer War in 1899, Winston Churchill sailed to Cape Town, South Africa, where he served as a journalist for the Morning Post. Read more

Military History

Rosebud Creek

By Eric Niderost

Around 8 o’clock on the morning of June 17, 1876, Brig. Gen. George Crook ordered his troops to halt along the banks of Rosebud Creek. Read more

Military History

The A-6 Intruder in Vietnam

By Christopher Miskimon

It was dark and difficult to see on the night of April 18, 1966, but the U.S. Navy was counting on that. Read more

Military History

Polish Prince Joseph Poniatowski

By Jeremy Green

Polish Prince Joseph Poniatowski, a great hero of Napoleonic legend, ultimately was a man without a country. Born on May 7, 1762, the prince at first enjoyed the luxurious life of a nobleman because of his ties to the ruling family of Poland. Read more

Military History

Mary, Queen of Scots and Cryptoanalysis

by David Allan Johnson

Mention Elizabethan England to most people, and they usually think of William Shakespeare, the Globe Theatre and Sir Francis Drake. Read more

Cortes and his Spanish conquistadors defeated a mighty Aztec army at Otumba in July 1520. The victory occurred one week after the Night of Sorrows, when the Spanish suffered heavy casualties while fleeing the Aztec capital.

Military History

Cortés Exacts His Revenge

By John Walker

As the year 1520 drew to a close, the half-starved inhabitants of Tenochtitlan, the magnificent capital city of the most powerful city-state in the Aztec Empire, found that they were threatened by a massive host of enemies, both foreign and indigenous, which was led by Spanish Captain-General Hernán Cortés and his small band of conquistadors. Read more

The A-10 Thunderbolt II’s seven-barrel, 30mm autocannon fires a round made of depleted uranium encased in an aluminum shell with a muzzle velocity of 3,500 feet per second.

Military History

Weapons: The A-10 Warthog Attack Aircraft

By Christopher Miskimon

Smoke and haze clouded the skies over Kuwait on February 25, 1991. It was the second day of Operation Desert Storm, the ground operation to eject the Iraqi military from its smaller neighbor. Read more

Pompey led troops to victory in a series of battles and actions that neutralized threats to Rome’s interests in Asia Minor.

Military History

Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

Gnaeus Pompey was one of the pivotal Roman leaders during the last decades of the Republic. He was born into an old and wealthy provincial family from Picenum on September 29, 106 BC. Read more

British forces land at Salonika, Greece, on April 25, 1915, in this engraving by Charles Dixon. The Brits called the Allied backwater “the birdcage.”

Military History

Gardening in Salonika: World War I in the Balkans

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

The Germans mocked it as their largest prisoner-of-war camp, and French Premier Georges Clemenceau was hardly less withering in his opinion of the Allied stronghold at Salonika, Greece. Read more

Military History

Battle of Camarón: Legendary Last Stand of the French Foreign Legion

By Robert Barr Smith

Near Marseilles, at Aubagne, stands the modern home of the French Foreign Legion. Its spotless grounds include a massive stone pile, the Monument aux Morts, which commemorates the Legion dead of the past 175 years. Read more

During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88) both nations attacked commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf to disrupt supply to their enemy. Under Operation Earnest Will, the U.S. began sending naval patrols into the Gulf to offer protection for Kuwaiti shipping while trying to stay out of the conflict—until a U.S. Navy vessel hit an Iranian mine.

Military History

High Stakes Showdown on the Persian Gulf

By John E. Spindler

Deep within the guided-missile cruiser U.S.S. Wainwright, Captain James Chandler scanned various screens in the dimly lit climate-controlled combat information center (CIC) absorbing details on the status of the ship’s weapons systems and the activity outside on the sweltering Persian Gulf. Read more

Battling fatigue and stifling heat, Joshua Chamberlain’s 20th Maine makes their valiant stand against the attacking Confederate forces of Brig. Gen. Evander M. Law at Little Round Top in this painting by modern artist Keith Rocco.

Military History

‘Hold That Ground at All Hazards’

By Al Hemingway

Brigadier General Gouverneur K. Warren peered down at the rugged terrain of southern Pennsylvania from his vantage point on Little Round Top, a small promontory about two miles south of Gettysburg. Read more

Military History

2nd Regiment, French Dragoons, 1870

The 2nd Dragoon Regiment traces its lineage to the 16th century as a cavalry regiment, fighting in various wars and engagements across western Europe. Read more

Military History

Costly British Victory at Ferozeshah

By John Brown

A little over five centuries ago, a guru named Nanak founded a new faith among the Hindu communities that farmed the rich agricultural areas of northern India known as the Punjab, the Land of the Five Rivers. Read more

A Turkish standard-bearer rides into battle. It was a sight all too familiar to Russian general Mikhail Kutusov, who lost an eye to a Turkish rifleman.

Military History

General Mikhail Kutuzov and the Battle of the Danube

By Victor Kamenir

On April 1, 1811, one-eyed General Mikhail Kutuzov arrived in the Romanian capital of Bucharest to take command of Russia’s Moldavian army. Read more

Buckskin-clad Texas troops overrun white-uniformed Mexican forces in this panoramic depiction of the Battle of San Jacinto. The Texans’ victory guaranteed their independence.

Military History

Texan Victory at San Jacinto: Eighteen Minutes to Freedom

By John Walker

As long afternoon shadows rolled across the prairie near the confluence of the Buffalo Bayou and the San Jacinto River in eastern Texas on April 21, 1836, two armed camps—one a small Texan force, the other a 1,400-man-strong Mexican army—lay within a scant 1,000 yards of each another. Read more

Military History

From Around the Network

George A. Custer’s “Last Stand” at the Battle of Little Bighorn

The B-17 Crewman who Survived Fifty Missions Over Germany

Jack Cheevers’s ‘Kennedy’s Coup’

Operation Aphrodite: Drones versus V2 Rockets