WWII Archives

WWII

Felice Benuzzi’s Extraordinary Climb of Mount Kenya

By Chuck Lyons

Felice Benuzzi’s part in the war may have been a small one, but his story is one of the oddest to come out of World War II. Read more

WWII

Allies’ Failure To Assist Jews During Holocaust Continues To Stir Debate

By Peter Kross

One of the most enduring questions emerging from World War II is the reaction of the West, and particularly the United States, to the plight of the Jews as they faced Hitler’s “Final Solution.” Read more

WWII

Sculpin and Squalus: Fated Sister Subs During The Pacific War

By Eric Niderost

On September 14, 1938, fleet submarine USS Squalus (SS-192) was launched at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard in Kittery, Maine. Read more

The Sculpin and Squalus Sargo-class submarines knocked battleships off their long-held perch as ultimate warriors of the sea.

WWII

Sculpin and Squalus: Instrumental In Changing Face Of Naval Warfare

by Eric Niderost

Early Navy submarines, notably the S-class models, were so dangerous and cramped they were derisively labeled “pig boats.” Read more

At Rangsdorf Airfield near Hitler’s headquarters at Rastenburg, East Prussia, the Führer and Romanian Marshal Ion Antonescu walk away from a Focke Wulf Condor piloted by Baur.

WWII

Hans Baur: Hitler’s Pilot Flew Führer Across Europe and History

By Blaine Taylor

Adolf Hitler’s wartime Armaments Minister Albert Speer was right when he termed the Führer’s pilot from 1932 to 1945, Lt. Read more

In the wake of the Pearl Harbor aftermath, the Navy's gallant salvage effort became an epic of skill, bravery, and ingenuity.

WWII

Pearl Harbor Aftermath: the Salvage Effort to Keep the Navy Fighting

By Mike McLaughlin

The Pearl Harbor aftermath presented the U.S. Navy with a sobering question: how to recover? More than 2,000 men had died. Read more

Selfless acts of bravery saved lives aboard the USS Oklahoma during the attack on Pearl Harbor.

WWII

The USS Oklahoma Rescue Mission After Attack On Pearl Harbor

by Mike McLaughlin

During the Pearl Harbor attack, both Utah and Oklahoma capsized after suffering multiple torpedo hits. Utah had been converted to a training ship, and to the Japanese pilots, her modified deck resembled that of an aircraft carrier. Read more

The super battleship Yamato is shaken by explosions as the Vought F4U Corsair flown by Lt. Hal Jackson speeds away from its target. Jackson and other pilots from the USS Intrepid were among the many American pilots who took part in sinking the giant Japanese vessel.

WWII

Japanese Battleship Yamato Makes Its Final Stand

Dy Gerald Astor

In the late afternoon of April 6, 1945, five days after American GIs and leathernecks scrambled onto an Okinawa beach a scant 500 miles from Japan, two U.S. Read more

Rioting broke out in the streets of Belgrade when the announcement was made that Yugoslavia had joined the Axis on March 25, 1941.

WWII

Prince Paul Karađorđević of Yugoslavia

By Blaine Taylor

On June 2, 1939, the last great prewar military parade of the Third Reich came rolling past the reviewing stand under Nazi eagles with swastikas in their taloned grip in front of the Berlin Technical High School. Read more

Carlson’s Marine Raiders participate in rigorous training with rubber boats along a Hawaiian beach. A month later, the Raiders were in action on the Japaese-held island of Makin.

WWII

Evans Carlson Forms Carlson’s Raiders

By Michael D. Hull

One of America’s earliest heroes in World War II was the tall, soft-spoken son of a Connecticut Congregational minister who distinguished himself in some of the fiercest fighting in the South Pacific. 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

Operation Archery: The British Commando Raid

By Robert Barr Smith

They came out of the sea, out of the darkness, and they brought death, terror, and destruction with them. Read more

WWII

Ernest Hemingway’s War

By Roy Morris, Jr.

When the United States entered World War II in December 1941, the nation’s most famous writer, a man who had built his reputation on gritty and intense novels about wars, soldiers, and “grace under pressure,” was nowhere to be seen—at least not on the home front. Read more

The damaged HMS Hotspur collides with the HMS Hunter on April 10, 1940, during the destroyer battle in the Narvik Fjord. Both the British and German naval commanders died in the heavy fighting at sea that day.

WWII

Hell in a Norwegian Fjord

By Phil Zimmer

Captain Odd Isaachsen Willoch knew what had to be done. The 55-year-old career Norwegian officer, commander of an aging coastal defense ship, was looking down the five-inch gun barrels and 21-inch torpedo tubes of the Wilhelm Heidkamp, a state-of-the-art German destroyer. Read more

When the ATC required a long range transport, it turned to the Consolidated B-24 Liberator and pressed her into service as a transport plane.

WWII

Consolidated B-24 Liberator: Bomber Turned Transport

by Sam McGowan

Although the Douglas C-47 is usually thought of as the most important transport of the war, in reality it was the transport conversions of the Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber that opened up the world to the Air Transport Command. Read more

WWII

More on Paul Allen’s Discovery of the Musashi

By Michael E. Haskew

Paul Allen is one of the wealthiest men in the world. In fact, Forbes magazine ranks him 51st with a net worth of approximately $17.5 billion. Read more

WWII

The Battle of France: Furor Teutonicus & Gallic Débâcle

By Blaine Taylor

The year 1939 was one of massive military parades across Europe. On April 20, the largest ever was held in Berlin to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, complete with the paratroopers, wheeled artillery, tanks, half-tracks for motorized infantry, and overhead Luftwaffe fly-bys that would mark the coming campaigns and revolutionize warfare forever. Read more

In the early years of World War II, Allied leadership was in a desperate struggle to match Nazi Germany's political and military command.

WWII

May 1940: Allied Leadership Was On the Brink

By Blaine Taylor

In May and June of 1940 the attacking Germans had a supreme authority, Hitler, and an army that—if skeptical, even in places traitorous—was subdued and followed orders with astonishing competence. Read more

Cadets of the Virginia Military Institute urge their horses across a wintry stream.

WWII

The U.S. Cavalry: Boots, Saddles & Tanks

By Ted Pulliam

On June 15, 1930, a poised cadet from the Virginia Military Institute proudly drove his dilapidated old Ford through the gates of Fort Myer, Va., Read more

Colonel Hans-Ulrich Rudel became a legend flying the tank-busting Stuka.

WWII

Stuka Legend Hans-Ulrich Rudel

By Michael E. Haskew

The Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber proved itself an effective weapon of terror during the Spanish Civil War as part of Hitler’s Condor Legion. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

Stalin’s Contributions to Victory

The meatgrinder of the Hürtgen Forest bedeviled American forces in the autumn of 1944.

Mishap at Maleme

Army of Two: The 40th Day