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The stripped body of King Manfred of Sicily, who fell during the final phase of the Battle of Benevento, was not discovered until three days after the fight. Knights weep in the foreground as the city, which was sacked by the French, burns in the background of Giuseppe Bezzuoli’s Neoclassic painting.

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For Gold And Blood

By William E. Welsh

The rain poured in sheets as the long column of French troops snaked its way through the Apennine Mountains of southern Italy along roads washed out by heavy rains. Read more

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The Crater: Explosion of Death

By John Walker

It was just after 3 am on Saturday, July 30, 1864. A month of relative quiet along a two-mile stretch of Union and Confederate trench lines immediately east of Petersburg, Virginia, was about to come to an explosive end. Read more

Furious counterattacks by Parliamentarian cavalry, including Oliver Cromwell’s “Ironside” troopers, prevented the Royalist horse from disrupting the advance of the Parliamentary army at Marston Moor.

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Shock Of The Charge

By Eric Niderost

Prince Rupert of the Rhine did not like to be kept waiting, especially when each passing minute seemed to lessen his chances of victory. Read more

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A Photographer in the Ninth Air Force

By Audrey Lemick

When most people think of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, the first image that usually comes to mind is that of the heavy bombers, the B-17s and B-24s, that ravaged targets in Europe and the B-29s that wreaked havoc on Japanese cities in the Pacific. Read more

The gallant men of the 1st Maryland (Confederate) Battalion charge the Union position atop Culp’s Hill on the morning of July 3 in a painting by Don Troiani. The attack, which was repulsed with heavy losses, sought to take advantage of the success of the previous day when the Confederates captured lower Culp’s Hill.

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“Many Gallant Men Were Lost”

By Kelly Bell

Rifle flashes erupted at intervals on the base of the slope. The flashes gave away the location of the confederate troops advancing in large numbers in the darkness of the night of July 2, 1863, on the eastern side of Culp’s Hill southeast of the town of Gettysburg. Read more

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Ambush at Morgarten

By Victor Kamenir

The logs and boulders came tumbling downhill, gaining speed before they reached the bottom of the hillsides in the mountain pass. Read more

Three crews were lost during tests of the Horace L. Hunley, shown in a painting by Conrad Wise Chapman.

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Evolution of the Submarine

By John Protasio

The concept of a ship that could submerge beneath the water and then resurface dates back as far as the late 1400s, when Italian Renaissance artist and inventor Leonardo da Vinci claimed to have found a method for a ship to remain submerged for a protracted period of time. Read more

Plane-handling crews aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) work to prepare an F4F Wildcat for flight during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942. The “Big E” would survive the war. Although the battle was a short-term victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk and damaged, Japan’s loss of many irreplaceable aircrews—particularly flight leaders—proved to be a long-term strategic advantage for the Allies in the Pacific.

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Violent Carrier Versus Carrier Clash

By Nathan N. Prefer

It had been a difficult year for the United States Navy.

Beginning with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, defeat after defeat had plagued the efforts of the American Navy to recover its balance and strike back against the rampaging Japanese. Read more

Ogden Pleissner, an artist and war correspondent for LIFE magazine, captured American tanks advancing through the bombed-out city of St. Lô as German prisoners are marched to the rear.

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Deadly Cobra Strike

By Michael E. Haskew

The Allied planning for Operation Overlord had been ongoing for more than two years. Vast quantities of supplies and hundreds of thousands of fighting men and their machinery of war had crowded southern England. Read more

World War I French soldiers make flower vases from shell casings.

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Trench Art

By Peter Suciu

Art is in the eye of the beholder, of course, but for those who collect militaria there is a special kind of art that requires a special kind of appreciation. Read more

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The Battle of Lechfeld 955 AD

By William E. Welsh

When summer arrived in Bavaria in late June ad 955, thousands of unwelcome barbarians from the Carpathian basin were gathering on its eastern fringe, poised to invade the southern part of the East Frankish kingdom once again. Read more

Union troops charge through D.R. Miller’s cornfield against the Confederate left flank at Antietam in a modern painting by Keith Rocco. The Union II Corps attack through William Roulette’s farm against the Confederate center held by Maj. Gen. Daniel Harvey Hill’s troops had the same intensity.

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Lee’s Hard Fighter

By William E. Welsh

Two men rode forward from Sharpsburg, Maryland, on the morning of September 17, 1862. The one in front was of slight build with a scraggly beard, scrawny neck, sunken cheeks, and a high forehead. Read more

This Seversky P-35 fighter plane has nosed over during a landing at Clark Field in the Philippines. Like other types flown by the 27th Bomb Group, the P-35 was obsolete during World War II and outclassed by Japanese fighter types.

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Hostage to Misfortune

By Sam McGowan

In May 1942, the 27th Bombardment Group transferred from Batchelor, Australia, to Hunter Field outside Savannah, Georgia. It was a transfer without men or equipment to the same base from which the group had departed in October 1941 for the Philippine island of Manila. Read more

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