WWII
The flimsy canvas flapped loudly as it buckled in the wind. More bothersome for the nine German commandos crammed inside the narrow fuselage was the constant motion—sinking, then sharply rising, as the DFS-230 glider ploughed and pitched through the towing aircraft’s turbulent wake. Read more
WWII
First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound stopped tapping his pencil on the oaken desk and slowly leaned backward in the oversized leather chair. Read more
WWII
With the defeat of the German Seventh Army and the closing of the Falaise Gap in the summer of 1944, the Allies pursued the retreating enemy across France. Read more
WWII
Averell Harriman, the ambassador to the Soviet Union, visited the American battlefront lines near the German border in the fall of 1944. Read more
WWII
Say the words “pocket battleship” and up pops the name Admiral Graf Spee. Her two sister ships, the Deutschland/Lutzow and the Admiral Scheer are virtually unknown to Americans. Read more
WWII
Following the apocalyptic initial phase of Operation Barbarossa starting on June 22, 1941, the Germans inflicted crippling losses on the Red Army Air Forces (VVS) and the Soviet Naval Air Forces (VVS-VMF). Read more
WWII
Hundreds of American professional baseball players gave pause to their promising careers to step up to the plate for their country during World War II. Read more
WWII
Captain Lawrence Rulison, the commander of K Company, 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines, listened as his battalion commander, Lt. Read more
WWII
A single prisoner was bound and blindfolded in the courtyard of a French country house near the village of Ste-Marie-aux-Mines at 10:04 a.m. Read more
WWII
When little John Shirley Wood was delivered on January 11, 1888, in Monticello, Arkansas, one of the Free World’s greatest defenders greeted his first dawn as eagerly as everything else he confronted and overcame in a lifetime of soldiering. Read more
WWII
Tanks—seven divisions of them concentrated at one point, the weakest position in the Western defenses—that was what did it.” Read more
WWII
For the duration of World War II, from the evening of Sunday, September 3, 1939, to the evening of Monday, May 7, 1945, the Battle of the Atlantic never ceased. Read more
WWII
On April 21, 1942, in action over Malta, Flight Lieutenant Denis Barnham of No. 601 Squadron was given credit for downing a German Junkers Ju-88 bomber and a Messerschmitt Bf-109 fighter. Read more
WWII
WWII
The iconic photograph the Blinded Soldier, New Guinea taken on Christmas Day 1942, reveals a wounded and barefoot Australian soldier, Private George “Dick” Whittington of the 2/10th Battalion, being led down a path through a surrounding field of tall kunai grass to an Allied field hospital at Dobodura in Papua, the eastern third of the world’s second largest island, New Guinea. Read more
WWII
Following service as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army Air Defense Artillery during the early 1970s, Ward Carr decided to remain in Germany, residing in Frankfurt. Read more
WWII
Winston Churchill called it, “An immense laborious task, unlikely to be completed until the need for it has passed.” Read more
WWII
Far down on the list of important inventions essential to victory in World War II is a modest gadget built of stamped metal called the GI Pocket Can Opener—commonly known as the P-38 can opener—which was used by American troops in the field to sever the lids off combat rations. Read more
WWII
Private Bruce Fenchel was writing a letter home when his first sergeant burst into the barracks room. “Pack your duffel bags and get ready to roll,” the NCO said ominously. Read more
WWII
It was called the Maeda Escarpment, after the nearest native village. An escarpment, according to the dictionary, is “a steep slope in front of a fortification” or “a long cliff.” Read more
