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British Disaster at Saratoga
By David A. NorrisFour months earlier Major General John Burgoyne had left Canada with a large army. He intended to deliver a fatal blow to the colonial revolt that had begun on April 19, 1775. Read more
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“Do You Recognize My Voice?”: The Question That Ended Operation Valkyrie
By Blaine TaylorAt 12:40 PM on a hot, sultry July 20, 1944, German Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, 55, was seated on a wicker stool in a conference hut at his principal Eastern Front headquarters at Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, for the mid-day wartime map meeting. Read more
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Emelian Pugachev: Master Imposter of a Russian Czar
By Blaine TaylorOn August 12, 1772, a wandering Don Cossack named Emelian Pugachev crossed the Polish frontier into Imperial Russia on an official passport that entitled him, after spending six weeks in quarantine, to resettle as a free citizen on the Irgiz River in southeast Russia. Read more
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Last Man In Hell: A Navy Beachmaster on Omaha Beach
By Kevin M. HymelThe Landing Craft Mechanized (LCM) carrying Army engineers and Navy beachmasters hit a mine on its way into Omaha Beach. Read more
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Glory Enough for One Day: Phil Sheridan’s Victory at Cedar Creek
By Roy Morris Jr.Phil Sheridan had a bad feeling. The bantam-sized Union general always trusted his instincts, and now, in mid-October 1864, those instincts were telling him that trouble was brewing back at the front, where his Army of the Shenandoah was encamped near Cedar Creek, Virginia, resting and relaxing after a busy few weeks burning civilian farms and slaughtering thousands of head of livestock from Staunton north to Woodstock. Read more
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Eyewitness at the Battle of Savo Island
By Captain Eugene H. SimpsonThe Battle of Savo Island, August 8-9, 1942, was the first major naval engagement of the Guadalcanal Campaign. Read more
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Famous Military Weapons: Mortars
By William McPeakThe mortar is perhaps the oldest surviving ordnance piece developed during the Middle Ages. The earliest known forerunner to the mortar, introduced by Spanish Muslims about ad 1250, was essentially an iron-reinforced bucket that hurled stones with gunpowder. Read more
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WWII Spies: Morris “Moe” Berg
By Eric NiderostMorris “Moe” Berg was a man of many talents: linguist, lawyer, baseball player, spy. Although this Renaissance man gained a modicum of celebrity on the baseball diamond, Berg is best remembered as an operative for the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), a World War II forerunner of the U.S. Read more
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Nuclear Submarine Disaster
By Mark CarlsonEven in the age of ultra-sophisticated nuclear submarines, with their advanced computers, sonar, navigation, and communication systems, the hard truth is inescapable: the sea is the most hostile environment on Earth. Read more
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The Death of a Legend: The Battle of Yellow Tavern
By Arnold Blumberg“We have been badly used up,” a sergeant in the 5th New York Volunteer Cavalry Regiment complained in a letter to his wife on May 8, 1864, four days before J.E.B. Read more
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The German SS at Rzhev: Loyal to Their Deaths
By Ludwig Heinrich DyckEarly in December 1941, Operation Typhoon, the German drive on Moscow, withered in the face of tenacious Soviet resistance and one of the worst Russian winters in living memory. Read more
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A Hobbit on the Somme
By O’Brien BrowneSmoke and ash drifted across the shattered ground. Dead faces peered up with lidless eyes from pools of stagnant water. Read more
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B-17s at Pearl Harbor
By Mark CarlsonLieutenant Commander Shigeru Itaya, sitting in his gray Mitsubishi A6M2 Zero, led two other fighters on another strafing run on the parking ramps and hangars of Hickam Army Air Base on Oahu. Read more
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Mobile Models
By Peter SuciuAlmost as long as there have been history buffs there have been scale models. Toy soldiers have been popular among children for hundreds of years, but it was the introduction of specialized military vehicles that really gave birth to scale models after World War I. Read more
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The American Air Museum in Duxford
By Roy StevensonIn the lush, green rural community of Duxford, a 20-minute bus ride from the university town of Cambridge, the American Air Museum in Britain houses the finest collection of historic American combat aircraft outside the United States. Read more
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A Rifleman at the Battle of the Bulge
By Robert F. DorrTo American infantryman Rocky Moretto, war on the European continent in the winter of 1944-1945 was mostly about never getting enough sleep, warmth, respite, or relief. Read more
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Warsaw Witness
By Peter ZablockiThe large lamp shone down at him from the top of the ladder, the only light in the room of this bombed-out building. Read more
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The Guadalcanal Mafia
By Alan RemsUndertaken in haste and with slim resources, the Guadalcanal Campaign (Operation Watchtower) was America’s first offensive of World War II and it presented a unique set of challenges. Read more
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The Hanging of Werner Drechsler
By Colonel Samuel J. Rob (Ret.)German U-boat crewman Werner Drechsler arrived at POW Camp Papago Park north of Tempe, Arizona, on March 12, 1944. Read more
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Ground of Aces
By Joseph LusterThe Swiss-Polish indie devs behind World War II base-building strategy game Ground of Aces recently gave players even more to play around with in the first major update. Read more
