WWII Archives

On September 12, 1943, at Vella Lave, New Caledonia, Major John Burden and Nisei soldiers of the 25th Division Language Section, attached to G2 (Military Intelligence), interrogate a Japanese prisoner of war in a temporary stockade.

WWII

Speaking the Enemy’s Language

By Dr. Carl H. Marcoux

American soldiers of Japanese ancestry made remarkable contributions to the Allied victory during World War II. Read more

By 1940, cruisers built under the post-World War I naval treaties were feeling their age. Anove, a captured Japanese photo- graph shows the HMS Cornwall succumbing to an air attack.

WWII

HMS Cornwall: a Symbol of British Naval Power

By William R. Hawkins

Following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (and roughly four years prior to the construction of the HMS Cornwall), cruisers became a focus of the interwar naval arms race, no less keenly felt by the British, whose survival depended on the sea-lane. Read more

WWII

Jud Suss: The Film That Fueled the Holocaust

By Gary Kidney

On September 8, 1940, a new German movie, Jud Suss, premiered at the Venice Film Festival. It opened to rave reviews and received the Golden Lion award. Read more

WWII

To Conquer a Fortress

By Bastiaan Willems

The storming of Fortress Königsberg in April 1945 was the finale of a two-month Soviet siege. The city, one of the few triumphs of Hitler’s fortress strategy, had been encircled by late January and lay hundreds of kilometers behind the main front line by the time the Soviets launched their final assault toward the Nazi capital of Berlin. Read more

A Consolidated B-24 Liberator heavy bomber of the U.S. Army Air Forces disintegrates in a catastrophic explosion over Germany after a direct hit from flak batteries defending a target below. Senior American air commanders chose daylight bombing over the Royal Air Force’s preference for night raids, believing that accuracy would increase substantially. However, the tactic came at a tremendous cost.

WWII

An Airman’s Saga

By Allyn Vannoy

Howard Linn was a member of the 492nd Bombardment Group—the “Hard Luck” group of the Eighth Air Force. Read more

WWII

Saga of the Eggbeater

By Mark Albertson

On September 14, 1939, Igor Sikorsky attained stability and control with the initial flight of an open cockpit test bed known as the VS-300. Read more

WWII

U.S. Navy Captain Forrest Biard

By Hervie Haufler

“For several months after the outbreak of the war with Japan the very fate of our nation rested in the hands of a small group of very dedicated and highly devoted men working in the basement under the Administration Building in Pearl Harbor.” Read more

Brigadier General Ted Roosevelt reads mail while serving in Italy in January 1944. The son of President Theodore Roosevelt, he named his Jeep “Rough Rider” in honor of his late father and his exploits during the Spanish-American War.

WWII

Teddy Roosevelt, Jr. Led At Utah Beach

By Michael D. Hull

Famed war correspondent Ernie Pyle reported in August 1944, that one of his favorite U.S. Army officers was a regimental colonel who shared Lt. Read more

A U.S. Navy airship patrols the Atlantic Ocean above a convoy in June 1943. Airships were serving regularly in anti-submarine patrols during the Battle of the Atlantic.

WWII

U.S. Navy Airships vs. German U-boats in the Atlantic

By Eric Niderost

Kapitanleutnant Volker Simmermacher gazed intently through his attack periscope, sizing up the target that so far seemed oblivious to his presence. Read more

In this painting by Jack Fellows, P-39s flown by Major George Greene, Jr., (foreground) and “Buzz” Wagner take on Japanese Zeros over the Salamaua Peninsula.

WWII

WWII Planes: The Bell P-39 Airacobra “Peashooter”

by Sam McGowan

If there is an American combat airplane that has achieved an ill-deserved reputation, no doubt it would be the much-maligned Bell P-39 Airacobra, a tricycle landing gear single-engine fighter whose reputation was greatly overshadowed by the more famous, and of more recent design, Lockheed P-38 Lightning, Curtiss P-40 Tomahawk, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt, and North American P-51 Mustang. Read more

Marines watch as a flame-throwing amphibious tractor fires at caves in the mountainous areas used by the Japanese during the fight for the Pacific island of Peleliu. The lowlands and the airport were quickly captured, but the Umurbrogol massif—a series of limestone and choral ridges rising as high as 300 feet took much longer. A moonscape of sinkholes, canyons and cliffs further fortified by Japanese engineers, the “Umurbrogal Pocket,” and the island, was finally declared secure 73 days after the Marines had landed.

WWII

Savage Struggle for Peleliu

By Joshua Shepherd

Amphibious landing craft carrying U.S. Marines plunged through heavy surf toward the beaches of Peleliu Island, a formerly inconspicuous tropical paradise in the Palau Islands. Read more

Under the relentless onslaught of Japanese Mitsubishi A6 Zero fighter planes, the Douglas TBD Devastator torpedo bombers of the USS Hornet’s Torpedo Squadron 8 are massacred as they attempt to attack Japanese aircraft carriers during the Battle of Midway in this dramatic painting by artist John Hamilton titled “Destruction of a Torpedo Bomber.”

WWII

Remembering Torpedo 8 of Midway

By Mark Carlson

In 1982, Captain Bert Earnest and Commander Harry Ferrier were present at an event to commemorate the 40th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway. Read more

Accompanied by an Italian military vehicle, German mountain troops advance along a dirt road in Albania in 1943.

WWII

Nick “Cooky” Kukich: Covert Operative in Albania

By John Mancini

On the morning of April 7, 1939, Albania, the smallest of the Balkan countries, was invaded by Benito Mussolini’s Italian Fascist Army. Read more

WWII

Battle of the Bulge: Heroic Stand at Lausdell

By Bill Warnock

Three German soldiers crept through the snow. They had infiltrated the American front line during a counterattack. Major William F. Read more

A flight of Soviet IL-2 Stormoviks attack a German oil depot in the Crimea. Their mission: Protect the last Soviet stronghold at Sevastopol.

WWII

Dueling Aces in Sevastopol

By Christer Bergström and Andrey Mikhailov

In June 1942, the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on the Crimea was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Read more

King Boris of Bulgaria visits Adolf Hitler at Obersalzberg in Berchtesgaden on June 7, 1941. Boris would die on August 28, 1943, two weeks after a meeting with Hitler in Berlin and four days after a sudden illness.

WWII

Bulgaria Betwixt and Between

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

Though neutral for most of it, few countries had such a Passage through World War II as did Bulgaria. Read more

WWII

Airborne! Learning to Fly and Land—Hard

Photo Essay by Kevin M. Hymel

Every American soldier who jumped into North Africa, Europe, the Philippines and other combat zones around the globe during WWII had to first learn his trade at Fort Benning, Georgia. Read more

WWII

The Browning Automatic Rifle

By William F. Floyd Jr.

By dawn on June 9, 1944, the men of the Company C, 1st Battalion, 325th Glider Infantry Regiment, of the 82nd Airborne Division found themselves engaged in a fierce firefight with German troops at the village of Cauquigny just west of the Merderet River in Normandy’s Cotentin Peninsula. Read more

WWII

OSS Spymaster Allen Dulles

By Peter Kross

During World War II, Switzerland was one of the few neutral countries to survive unscathed amid the death and destruction that was being heaped upon the rest of Europe. Read more