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A soldier from the 172nd Stryker Brigade fires an illumination flare over Mosul, Iraq, from the vehicle’s 120mm mortar. Flares are used to spot terrorists emplacing roadside bombs.

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Famous Military Weapons: Mortars

By William McPeak

The 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

Taking shelter alongside an M4 Sherman medium tank, U.S. soldiers of the 60th Infantry Regiment advance into a Belgian town.

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Matt Urban: Infantry Legend

By Michael D. Hull

At a Washington, D.C., reunion of the 9th Infantry “Octofoil” Division, on Saturday, July 19, 1980, President Jimmy Carter presented the nation’s highest decoration for valor to Lt. Read more

Wary Roman forces enter the Apennine Mountain pass at Caudine Forks in 321 bc. Samnite forces under Gaius Pontius were waiting for them.

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Swords and Citizens: Romans & the Samnites

By Jeffrey A. Easton

Centuries before the Romans came to dominate the Mediterranean basin, they fought a series of wars against neighboring peoples to establish their hegemony over the Italian peninsula. Read more

American paratroopers come to earth as Douglas C-47 transport aircraft drone in the skies above. Cows are grazing peacefully in this photo, undisturbed by the early events of Operation Market-Garden.

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Tough Fight at Mook

By Patrick J. Chaisson

In the midst of the ambitious Operation Market-Garden, Brigadier General James M. Gavin, 82nd Airborne Division Commander, first heard about the crisis at Mook, along the Maas River, from his chief of staff, Lt. Read more

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Collecting Military Tobacco Cards

By Peter Suciu

Smoking may not be the same in-vogue habit it was during bygone days, when politicians, starlets, athletes, and even the average Joe could be seen lighting up on a regular basis. Read more

The submerged “Gavutu Wildcat,” a Grumman F4F fighter plane possibly flown by Lt. James E. Swett, a U.S. Marine Corps ace, during the aerial battles in the Solomon Islands during World War II.

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Searching for a Wildcat

By Bruce Petty

On November 3, 2011, at 0945, the hydrographic ship HMNZS Resolution discovered what appeared to be an aircraft in the waters near Gavutu Island in the Solomon Island group. Read more

Paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division ride aboard a transport aircraft en route to their drop zones near the Salerno beachhead during the Allied invasion of the Italian mainland September 13-14, 1943. Members of the 504th and 505th Parachute Infantry Battalions were dropped to support the push inland. Members of the509th were deployed behind enemy lines to break up German communications at Avellino.

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Desperate Venture at Avellino

By Nathan N. Prefer

The Fifth U.S. Army was in trouble and dropping 600 paratroops at Avellino to disrupt the communications of the 16th Panzer Division seemed like a sound solution. Read more

Five submarines built by the Holland Torpedo Boat Company ride at anchor at a New York dock in 1902. Plunger, center, was an improved version of Holland.

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The Holland Submarine

By Chuck Lyons

By the 1870s, the agitation for Irish independence, already centuries old, had spread to America. The revolutionary Irish Republican Brotherhood, known as the Fenians, began organizing thousands of Irish immigrants trained on both sides during the recent Civil War into its own army. Read more

In this painting by artist Larry Selman, PT-109 streaks across the waters adjacent to the island of Guadalcanal in the Solomons. PT-109 was cut in half during a collision with the Japanese destroyer Amagiri.

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John F. Kennedy and PT-109

By John J. Domagalski

The celebrated life of President John F. Kennedy has been recounted many times in the decades since he assumed the highest office in the land. Read more

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