WWII Archives

A camouflaged half-track playing the role of a tank destroyer pauses in the blistering desert heat of the American West during maneuvers. Desert training in the United States was intended to prepare American soldiers for the hardships of combat in North Africa.

WWII

Company B’s Tunisian Adventure

By Christopher Miskimon

For the United States Army, the long road to Germany began in the mountainous deserts of Tunisia in mid-November 1942. Read more

When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the cruiser USS Pensacola was caught up in the confusion of the early days of American involvement in World War II while escorting troops and materiel to the Philippines. In this photo a convoy of ships assembles for a hazardous wartime voyage.

WWII

Alone at Sea

By Glenn Barnett

The American military presence in China, which stretched back to the 1850s, came to an abrupt end in November 1941. Read more

WWII

By the winter of 1776, the struggle for American independence had reached its lowest point. In June of that year General George Washington’s Continental Army had stood at nearly 20,000 strong. Read more

WWII

The Norden Bombsight: Was it Truly Accurate Beyond Belief?

By Roaul Drapeau

In a 1921 bombing test, U.S. Army Air Corps General Billy Mitchell’s airmen sank the former German battleship Ostfriesland. Read more

After German forces overran their country in September 1939, tenacious Poles, such as these shown in Hungary, escaped the continent to reconstitute their forces in Britain and prepare for the day they could strike back at the Nazis.

WWII

Polish Army’s Heroic Stand at Falaise

By Alan Davidge

Poland does not always get the recognition it deserves for helping to defeat Nazi Germany and end the war in Europe. Read more

Lieutenant Commander Eddie C. Outlaw and his wingman, Lieutenant (j.g.) Donald ‘Dagwood’ Reeves, wing over Truk Lagoon during their destructive April 1944 fighter sweep. A Japanese fighter, shot down in flames, has just hit the water and exploded on impact. The pilots took their Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters into action without dropping their auxiliary fuel tanks, which are prominently visible in this painting by artist Jack Fellows.

WWII

Ten Minutes Over Truk

By Chris Marks

Lieutenant Hollis Hills had every reason to be puzzled. His guns had just raked the Japanese fighter ahead of him, the rounds striking home along the enemy’s fuselage and wing roots. Read more

Allied forces on the beach in Normandy in June 1944. Double agent Juan Pujol Garcia led the Germans to believe that the Normandy landings were a diversion and the main landing would be at the Pas de Calais.

WWII

How Juan Pujol Garcia (a.k.a. “Garbo”) Made The D-Day Invasion Happen

By Peter Kross

In the predawn hours of June 6, 1944, the largest armada ever sent into war assaulted the coast of France at Normandy. Read more

Working quickly, a duo of sniper-wary German combat engineers lay communications wire at the front.

WWII

Narva: The Battle of Nations

By Pat McTaggart

In the latter half of 1943, the German Wehrmacht had seen disaster follow disaster on the Eastern Front. Read more

WWII

The MG-42 Light Machine Gun

By Arnold Blumberg

Whether fighting in the mountains of the Italian peninsula, assaulting Nazi defensive positions along the vast Russo-German Eastern Front, or clashing with German Army opponents from Normandy to the Elbe River, from 1942 to 1945, Allied soldiers in World War II faced a determined enemy armed with the most effective machine gun produced during that struggle: the Maschinengewehr 42, or the MG 42 for short. Read more

A twin-boomed P-38 Lightning flies over snow-capped mountain peaks. With its tremendous range and firepower, the P-38 saw service in every major theater of World War II.

WWII

What Made the Lockheed P-38 Lightning So Special?

By Sam McGowan

Due largely to their use in the postwar U.S. Army Air Forces and present proliferation among the air show community, the North American P-51 Mustang is thought of by many as the most important American fighter of World War II. Read more

WWII

Commander Quentin Walsh Earns the Navy Cross

By Kevin Seabrooke

The gray, churning waters of the English Channel slammed against the steel ramp of the landing craft on June 10, 1944. Read more

Soldiers of the U.S. 75th Infantry Division tramp through the snow in the Colmar Pocket sector in the Alsace region. The pocket, which consisted of 850 square miles on the west side of the Rhine River, was the last piece of German-held territory on French soil.

WWII

Destruction Of The Colmar Pocket

By Christopher Miskimon

On January 25, 1945, every officer in Company B of the 15th Infantry Regiment of the American 3rd Infantry Division became a casualty in the fight for the “Colmar Pocket” except Lieutenant Audie Murphy. Read more

F6F Hellcats, F4U Corsairs, SB2C Helldivers, and TBF Avenger torpedo bombers from carriers of Task Force 58 swarm the Yamato as it steams on its forlorn mission to assist Japanese ground forces on Okinawa. With no air cover, the Yamato and its escort ships were at the mercy of nearly 400 attack aircraft.

WWII

The Superbattleship Yamato in Operation Ten-ichi-go

By John E. Spindler

Allied victory in both the European and Pacific theaters seemed inevitable by spring 1945. The German Army was fighting on its own soil, and Japanese forces were defending Okinawa, the principal island of the Ryukyu archipelago. Read more

Germans became interested in rocketry because rockets were not denied them by the Versailles Treaty. Through the 1930s they got a huge head start over the democracies in the use of rockets as weapons of war.

WWII

Germany’s Deadly V-2 Rockets

By David Alan Johnson

Sixty-four-year-old Robert Stubbs slowly walked across the playing field of the Staveley Road School in the West London suburb of Chiswick. Read more

A procession of fatigued soldiers, refugees, trucks, and ambulances snakes its way along a muddy war-torn Italian hillside in this painting by Harry Davis.

WWII

My Battle Up the Boot: Paul McNelis in the Italian Campaign

By Richard A. Beranty

The U.S. 85th Infantry Division was one of the Allied workhorses in Italy during World War II. Read more

In artist Jack Fellows’ painting, “Sakai-7 August 1942,” Japanese fighter ace Saburo Sakai flies toward the scene of aerial combat in the skies above Guadalcanal in the Solomons Islands.

WWII

Zero Ace Over Guadalcanal

By Allyn Vannoy

Flight Petty Officer Saburo Sakai was anxious to engage the American carrier pilots for the first time, testing his skills against what he had been told were the best opponents he would come up against. Read more

WWII

Cracking the Enigma Codes at Bletchley Park

By William F. Floyd Jr.

The small craft from the British destroyer HMS Bulldog launched into the choppy, frigid waters of the North Atlantic. Read more

WWII

Achtung! Panzers in Normandy

By Michael E. Haskew

The ongoing debate between German Field Marshals Erwin Rommel and Gerd von Rundstedt over how best to use the German Army’s elite panzer divisions against the coming Allied invasion ultimately reached no clear conclusion. Read more

WWII

Cleveland-class Workhorses

By Nathan N. Prefer

During World War II, the U.s. “Arsenal of Democracy” produced thousands of ships of all shapes and sizes for the war effort. Read more

WWII

The Last Days Of General Patton

By Michael D. Hull

Fearless, demanding, and inspirational, General George Smith Patton, JR., was generally recognized as the U.S. Army’s outstanding field commander by the end of World War II. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

Pancho Villa: Rise of a Revolutionary

Civil War Generals: William Rosecrans

Vanguard of Elephants on the Hydaspes River

The Redoubts At Yorktown