WWII

WWII

Trade of 50 American Destroyers for British Bases in World War II

In early September 1940, the world was in turmoil. The battle of Britain was nearing its climax, and elsewhere global tensions ran high. Read more

WWII

The Mysterious Death of Major William Holohan

In the latter part of 1944, the OSS, the Office of Strategic Services, mounted a plan called Operation Chrysler in Italy to “act as a liaison with partisan commanders, attempt to guide and control developments in northern Italy, and create a unified partisan command under the direction of the supreme allied commander.” Read more

WWII

The Battle of Saipan

Peering through his binoculars, Vice Adm. Chuichi Nagumo was in awe of the nearly 800 ships from Vice Adm. Read more

WWII

World War II’s Deadly Rapido River Crossing

The attempted crossing of the Rapido River in Italy by two infantry regiments of the U.S. 36th Division in January 1944 was one of the costliest failed attacks made by American forces during World War II. Read more

WWII

Operation Tidal Wave Takes Aim at Ploesti

If there was a name of a prospective target that caused Allied airmen in the European Theater of Operations to blanch in the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1944, it was Ploesti. Read more

WWII

U.S. Marine legend Lewis ‘Chesty’ Puller

Crouched in their foxholes along Edson’s Ridge on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, the Marines formed a critical but thin defense line between strategic Henderson Field and seasoned Japanese infantry lurking in the jungle. Read more

WWII

Ferdinand Porsche’s ‘Elefant’ Tank Destroyer Could Have Excelled

World War II tanks usually had aggressive- or ferocious-sounding names, such as Hellcat, Panther, or Tiger. Yet the tendency was not universal, as with British Cruisers or the American M-3 Honey. Read more

WWII

Attack on The Merville gun battery during D-Day

Just boys facing danger, please God make them men; If they live through the danger, make them boys once again.      —Sergeant Ginger Woodcock, June 5, 1944

On the morning of June 6, 1944, the greatest amphibious fleet in history bore in toward the coast of Normandy. Read more

WWII

Erwin Rommel’s Victory at Gazala: Becoming the ‘Desert Fox’

On April 15, 1942, Generaloberst (Colonel General) Erwin Rommel summoned his subordinate commanders of the Panzerarmee Afrika to a conference to outline his plans for the coming offensive against the British Eighth Army. Read more

WWII

Armor vs. Armor in the Desert

The North African campaign has been aptly described as a “tactician’s paradise and quartermaster’s hell.” The contested area was large, stretching some 1,400 miles from Tripoli in the west to Alexandria in the east, a vast expanse of waterless desert wastes. Read more

WWII

The Assassination Of Reinhard Heydrich, The Butcher Of Prague

The morning sun caressed the hills of the Czech capital of Prague, coaxing a slight haze from the ancient city. Read more

WWII

Orde Wingate And His Chindits Pioneered Guerrilla Warfare

Short, wiry, and with baleful blue eyes and an Old Testament beard, Maj. Gen. Orde Charles Wingate was unorthodox in thought and action. Read more

WWII

The OSS: Assisting French Resistance in the Haute Savoie Region

On a moonless night in January 1944, in the Haute Savoie region of southeast France, the drone from the engine of a RAF bomber could be heard in the distance. Read more

WWII

Sterling Hayden, From Dr. Strangelove To The Godfather

He stood six foot five in his leather jumping boots and weighed close to two hundred and thirty pounds,” wrote the actor Sterling Hayden in his 1963 autobiography Wanderer. Read more

WWII

The HMS Illustrious & Other Armored British Carriers Left Their Mark

When one thinks of carrier warfare in World War II, the Japanese and U.S. navies usually come to mind. Read more

WWII

The Eastern Front: Germany’s Futile Battle For Crimea

On July 4, 1942, the men of newly promoted Field Marshal Erich von Manstein’s Eleventh Army celebrated the capture of the last Soviet bastion in the Crimea. Read more

WWII

The Battle Of Buna: Costly For Both Allies and Japanese

In March 1942, General Douglas MacArthur was ordered out of the doomed Philippines by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to organize the defense of Australia. Read more

WWII

Winston Churchill And Franklin Roosevelt’s Arcadia Conference

Still stunned by the sneak Japanese onslaught on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, American families tried to summon up their Christmas spirit in December 1941. Read more

WWII

George Kenney’s Air Force During The Pacific War

Although the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor was the event that served to galvanize America to fight World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt and his military advisers had pervasively decided that defeating the Japanese would be secondary to destroying the Nazi war machine in Europe. Read more

WWII

Modified B-25 Bombers Pioneered The Skip-Bombing Tactic

One of the successful strategies used by airmen in the Southwest Pacific Area of Operations was skip- bombing, a method of aerial attack in which a bomber approached an enemy ship at wave-top height, then released a bomb with a delayed-action fuse from some distance away. Read more