WWII Archives

WWII

Japan’s Hellish Unit 731

By David D. Barrett

The final months of World War II saw the liberation of hundreds of ghastly concentration camps and the awful reality of Nazi racism. Read more

WWII

Hot Air “Fire Balloons”: Japan’s Project Fugo

By Darrell W. Coulter

It crossed silently on a chilly winter evening over the southern Oregon coast, descending slowly, its ballast spent. Read more

Follow-on troops of the Royal Marine Commandos, lugging their equipment, come ashore at Juno Beach, Normandy.

WWII

A “Light-Hearted War”

By Mark Simmons

Vice Admiral Norman Denning said of Ian Fleming, the “ideas man” who worked at British Naval Intelligence, that a lot of his proposals “were just plain crazy.” Read more

WWII

Wunderwaffen: Hermann Göring & the Messerschmitt Me-262

By Robert F. Dorr

A man who was close to Adolf Hitler and hardly impartial later saidthat the Führer had “a mood of merriment” for a brief period that day. Read more

WWII

Chuck Yeager: Fighter Pilot

By Eric Niderost

Major General Charles “Chuck” Yeager, United States Air force (Ret.), was one of a handful of people who could rightly claim the title “living legend.” Read more

French cruiser Gloire was photographed in 1943 with dazzle camouflage.

WWII

The Rise and Fall of Dazzle Camouflage

By Joseph Frantiska Jr.

What do Pablo Picasso, the U.S. Navy, the British Royal Navy, and the U.S. Army Air Forces (USAAF) have in common? Read more

The Indy’s Marine Guard under No. 1 turret, photographed shortly before the sinking.

WWII

Lieutenant Commander Mochitsura Hashimoto, Imperial Japanese Navy, stared intently through I-58’s periscope. Visibility was poor until the moon peeked through the clouds and he spotted a dark silhouette on the horizon. Read more

Two mother ships—the control aircraft—flank the drone after the pilot has bailed out. Note the bright wings of the drone, which were painted yellow to make the craft more visible to the mother ship.

WWII

Operation Aphrodite: Drones versus V2 Rockets

by William Scheck

In 1944, air traffic over southern Britain was almost at the New York City rush- hour level. On any given early morning, heavily laden B-17s and B-24s would be circling, laboriously assembling into formation for runs to targets in France and Germany. Read more

WWII

Veterans Remember the Disaster at Dunkirk

By Mason B. Webb

BACKSTORY: After Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Hitler’s regime. Read more

WWII

The Heinkel He-177 Greif Heavy Bomber

By Allyn Vannoy

The Heinkel He-177 Greif (Griffin) was to become the only long-range heavy bomber operated by the Luftwaffe during World War II. Read more

WWII

Saint Sever Tank Duel: M4 Sherman vs. Mark V German Panther

By George J. Winter, Sr.

The Normandy landings, the fighting at St. Lô and Caen, Operations Goodwood and Cobra, and the subsequent Argentan-Falaise Pocket have always drawn major attention from historians, with respect to the early struggle for supremacy in France. Read more

Explosions raise billowing clouds of smoke and flame as Malta endures one of many air raids conducted by German and Italian bombers.

WWII

Fighting with Sword and Prayer

By Jon Diamond

The British Army has had its share of religious zealots Serving in the upper echelons of command. These typically independent-minded soldiers, motivated largely by their spiritual belief, were in sharp contrast to those, as characterized by J.F.C. Read more

Weary of fighting, a Japanese soldier raises his hands in surrender at Roi-Namur as a companion begins climbing out of a hole near the center of this photograph. These are two of only a handful of Japanese troops that survived the fighting on Roi-Namur, choosing surrender rather than suicide. A wary Marine covers the prisoner with his rifle, taking no chances.

WWII

4th Marine Division in the Marshall Islands: First Time Under Fire

By Cleve C. Barkley

As 1943 drew to a close, Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Central Pacific campaign was gaining momentum. His forces had taken the Gilbert Islands that November and now targeted the Marshall Islands as the next step on the long road to Tokyo. Read more

A Douglas C-47 Skytrain transport plane emblazoned with U.S. markings flies over the Pyramids at Giza, Egypt, in 1943.

WWII

The Workhorse Gooney Bird

Of all the workhorse weapons in the Allies’ World War II arsenal, from the American M-4 Sherman medium tank and jeep to the British Handley Page Halifax bomber and 25-pounder field gun, none was more widely and effectively deployed than the Douglas C-47 transport plane. Read more

A Chinese soldier sheds some light on the German transmitter Farrell accidentally discovered in Canton. The discovery led him on a two-year investigation and the arrest of 21 German spies.

WWII

OSS Captain Frank Farrell Prosecuted Nazi Spy Ring In Postwar China

By Colonel Richard D. Camp, Jr. USMC (Ret) and Ms. Suzanne Pool

Marine Captain Frank Farrell stood in the open door of the Army Air Corps C-47 waiting for the “green light,” the signal to leap into space, on a mission that could mean life or death for hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people. Read more

Their noses packed with blazing .50-caliber machine guns and their bomb bay doors open, North American B-25 Mitchell medium bombers streak toward a Japanese target in the South Pacific in this painting by Jack Fellows. Aircraft of the 38th Bomb Group participated in numerous raids such as this, including an attack on Kavieng, New Ireland, on February 15, 1944.

WWII

Flight Out of Hell: The Harrowing Bombing Mission to Kavieng

By Steven D. Smith

In the predawn darkness of Dobodura, New Guinea, 2nd Lt. William J. Smith of the U.S. Army Air Corps was roughly awakened by a noncom announcing that it was time to get dressed and get to the mess tent for breakfast. Read more

A column of German PzKpfw. III tanks rolls along a dirt road in North Africa. When American troops of the II Corps came up against the German veterans, the initial results were disastrous. The American commander, Maj. Gen. Lloyd Fredendall, was also found unequal to the task of leading troops in combat.

WWII

The Battle of Kasserine Pass and the Failure of General Lloyd Fredendall

By Jerome Baldwin

He came highly recommended, praised by General George C. Marshall as “one of the best.” But ultimately from these high hopes and expectations would come disastrous failure. 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

Thick clouds of smoke billow from the West Loch of Pearl Harbor after a series of massive explosions on May 21, 1944, sank or damaged several vessels.

WWII

The Second Pearl Harbor

By Gene E. Salecker

The first explosion came as a complete surprise to everyone around Pearl Harbor. The Sunday had started out clear and bright, but the sky quickly darkened as great clouds of thick black smoke rose high above the burning ships. Read more

WWII

Malayan Melange

By John W. Osborn, Jr.

One of World War II’s longest, least known guerrilla resistance campaigns was fought in the depths of the jungle covering 80 percent of Malaya’s 50,850 square miles; in it the most unlikely of friendships would develop, leading to a remarkable meeting, then parting, a decade later. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

The Battle of Poltava and the Birth of Modern Russia

World War II: A Campaign Against Oil? A Look at Ploesti

The Berezina Bridges

Stalingrad: Apocalypse on the Volga