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This artist’s impression of the sinking of Indianapolis shows the warship engulfed in flames in the distance with Japanese submarine I-58 on the surface in the foreground. The cruiser sank within minutes of being struck by a torpedo.

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The Fateful War Patrols of I-58

By Mark Carlson

The night of July 29, 1945, was dark and clear over the Philippine Sea. A gibbous moon hung almost directly overhead, just a few days past full, casting its pale gray light over the dark waves. Read more

French Revolutionary troops campaigning in Italy benefitted from the high morale that comes from believing in a cause; however, they suffered greatly in the 1799 campaign from Napoleon Bonaparte's absence. Painting © 2022 Keith Rocco; www.keithrocco.com

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Death in the Italian Vineyards

By William E. Welsh

As the sun dipped low in the west on August 13, 1799, Russian Field Marshal Count Alexander Suvorov rode slowly south towards the heights on which was perched the walled town of Novi, in Italy’s Piedmont region. Read more

An M3 Grant tank leads a column of armored vehicles during maneuvers at Fort Knox, Kentucky, in June 1942. The Grant was a stopgap design with a sponson mounted 75mm gun.

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M3 Grant/Lee Tank: The Armored Stopgap

By David H. Lippman

Standing 10 feet tall, equipped with both a 75mm and 37mm, an impressive mass of steel and rivets, the Grant and Lee M3 tank seemed like the definitive answer to Hitler’s raging panzer tanks. Read more

Images from the 1800 edition of Baron von Steuben’s “Blue Book” illustrate part of the Manual of Arms as practiced by the Continental Army at Valley Forge in 1778.

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Collecting Field Manuals

By Peter Suciu

It has long been said that there is a right way to do things, a wrong way to do things—and the military way to do things. Read more

Confederate General Richard Taylor’s Louisiana “Tiger” Brigade attacks the guns of of Battery E, 4th U.S. Artillery in the Coaling during the Battle of Port Republic in Virginia’s Shenandoah Valley on June 9, 1862.

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Rebel Fury at Port Republic

By Robert L. Durham

Confederate infantry on the northeastern outskirts of Port Republic in the Shenandoah Valley charged up the slopes of a ravine on June 9, 1862, against Union artillery that had been ravaging their ranks all morning. Read more

Under heavy fire from Japanese defenders, Marines move quickly through the rubble of Garapan, principal city on the island of Saipan. The battle for Garapan in July 1944 was the first experience of street fighting for American Marines in the Pacific.

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To Die in the Marianas

By Robert A. Rosenthal

The tranquility of early dawn on June 15, 1944, was interrupted by the sounds of powerful naval guns and the roar of amtraks churning the water. Read more

Justin of Nassau hands the keys to the city of Breda to Ambrogio Spinola in 1625 following his successful siege of a city that was considered impregnable at the time.

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Ambrogio di Spinola

By William E. Welsh

The crown of Spain and the wealthy banking families of Genoa had a symbiotic relationship during the Renaissance. Read more

SS General and Police Chief Kurt Daluege reviews troops in Luxembourg, 1940.

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Third Reich Police Helmets

By Brian Bell

A challenging but rewarding pursuit for collectors of World War II headgear is the acquisition of authentic helmets worn by military and civilian organizations of the Third Reich. Read more

A British airborne soldier, identifiable by his sleeve patch showing Bellerophon riding the flying horse Pegasus, poses for a publicity photo with his Sten gun. To assault the Merville Battery, airborne troops landed both by glider and parachute, but the attack began unraveling from the beginning.

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D-Day Disaster at the Merville Battery

By Flint Whitlock

The small French village of Merville (1940 population: 470), located just south of the coastal town of Franceville-Plage, had as its neighbor on its southern fringe an unwelcome German battery consisting of four concrete bunkers housing artillery pieces that pointed northwest toward Ouistreham and the mouth of the Orne River. Read more

Union troops assail the Confederate center at Champion’s Hill midway between the state capitol of Jackson, Mississippi, and the stronghold of Vicksburg. The action at Champion’s Hill proved to be the decisive action of the Vicksburg campaign.

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Savage Encounter at Champion’s Hill

By Robert L. Durham

The barren summit of Champion’s Hill presented an ideal site for Lt. Gen. John C. Pemberton’s Confederate army to deploy artillery batteries on the morning of May 16, 1863. Read more

In a painting by John Hamilton, the battle cruiser HMS Hood (left) explodes and breaks up as the battleship HMS Prince of Wales moves out of range of the assailant, the Bismarck, in the Denmark Strait, May 24, 1940. Over 1,400 British sailors went down with Hood in one of history's last clashes between capital ships.

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Three Minutes of Fury

by Mark Carlson

The era of the battleship reached its apogee at Tsushima Strait in May 1905, when Admiral Heihachiro Togo’s powerful Japanese battleships annihilated the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War. Read more

British soldiers hoist a lightweight, inflatable dummy Sherman tank. Soldiers in the U.S. Army’s top-secret “23rd Headquarters Special Troops” unit, also known as the “Ghost Army,” were detailed to deceive the Germans about Allied troop build-ups and positioning and draw the enemy away from the actual Allied intentions.

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Deception in WWII

by Mason B. Webb

For Operation Neptune/Overlord, the Allies had 6,939 naval vessels, 11,590 aircraft, and 156,000 infantrymen and airborne soldiers (both parachute and glider) ready to participate in the D-Day invasion of northern France on June 6, 1944. Read more

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Gas Masks of the Great War

By Peter Suciu

With World War I in a seeming stalemate, German forces in late April 1915 introduced a horrific new weapon to the fighting. Read more

Ground crewmen check the B-17 Flying Fortress Yankee Doodle of the 97th Bomb Group, which participated in the first bombing raid of U.S. Eighth Air Force planes in World War II, targeting the railroad marshaling yards at Sotteville, near Rouen in northern France, on August 17, 1942. Eaker was aboard as an observer.

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Eaker and the Mighty Eighth

By Michael D. Hull

Forty-eight Wright Cyclone aero engines coughed into life on the hardstands at windswept Polebrook Airfield in Northamptonshire, England, early on the afternoon of Monday, August 17, 1942. Read more