WWII Archives

WWII

The USS Utah: The Memorial & The Pearl Harbor Paradox

By Richard Klobuchar

Very few among the throngs of visitors to Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu are aware of an anomaly, but it definitely exists in the case of the USS Utah. Read more

Not yet a second lieutenant or a pilot, student flier Grant Stout poses with the Stearman PT-17 Kaydet primary trainer that was the initial aerial classroom for so many.

WWII

What happened to fighter pilot Grant Stout?

By Robert F. Dorr

It was loud. It was violent. Gunfire ripped into 1st Lt. Grant G. Stout’s Republic P-47D Thunderbolt fighter high over Dortmund, Germany, near midday on March 19, 1945, and the aircraft trembled and shook. Read more

A group of Greek partisans searches for remiaining Nazis in a Greek town.

WWII

The Greek Civil War: World War II’s Epilogue in the Mediterranean

By Jon Latimer

As 1944 drew to a close, the British in Greece found themselves in a parlous situation. They had agreed to support the restoration of Greek civil authority while overseeing the distribution of aid and the re-creation of armed forces to ensure internal security, all while commitments elsewhere were straining them almost to the breaking point. Read more

WWII

The British Prosper Spy Network: Destroyed to Protect D-Day?

By Peter Kross

On June 6, 1944, hundreds of thousands of Allied troops, planes, and ships departed from their bases in England bound for the shores of France in what was to be the greatest invasion of all time. Read more

VMF-113 Corsairs escort a B-25 assault on the Japanese coastal defense gun atop Jokaj Rock at Ponepeh. The Corsair, which the Japanese nicknamed “Whistling Death,” was easily distinguished from other aircraft due to its full wing configuration. (Jack Fellows Aviation Art, www.jackfellows.com. Opposite: Amber Books)

WWII

Splashing a Dinah

By Robert F. Dorr

When the Marines put Willis “Bud” Dworzak into the cockpit of a Vought F4U-1C Corsair fighter aircraft, they expected him to provide close air support to fellow leathernecks who were slugging it out on Okinawa. Read more

Photographed after its capture by Allied troops, this modified He-111 bomber was one of those intended for use as a flying bomb carrier during the implementation of the Reichenberg Project.

WWII

Hanna Reitsch, the Reichenberg Project & Germany’s Kamikazes

By David Alan Johnson

By early 1944, the Luftwaffe was only a shadow of what it had been at the beginning of the war. Read more

WWII

Guadalcanal: Bloody Encounter at Hell’s Point

By Al Hemingway

On the humid morning of August 19, 1942, infantrymen from Company A, 1st Battalion, 1st Marines carefully eyed the landscape for any signs of Japanese soldiers as they slowly made their way through the thick jungle on the island of Guadalcanal, located in the Solomon Islands. Read more

Colonel David Stirling, founder of the SAS, poses with several of his men prior to their departure for a raid. The heavily armed Jeeps usually mounted twin Vickers machine guns and carried provisions for extended forays into the desert.

WWII

Commando Paddy Mayne: Ireland’s Wolf of the Desert

By Kelly Bell

The night of December 14, 1941, was bitterly cold in the North African desert. Midway between El Agheila and Tripoli, Libya, was the German and Italian air base outside the town of Tamet. Read more

A million people lined the 25-mile parade route leading to the Hatch Memorial Shell in Boston, where General Patton delivered a war bonds speech.

WWII

The Real Story of General George Patton, Jr’s Death & Final Days

By Major General Michael Reynolds

The commander of the U.S. Third Army, General George Patton, Jr., took no great pleasure in the end of the war in Europe; he already knew that despite his lobbying of many influential figures in Washington, D.C., Read more

WWII

The WWII Sniper: Caught in the Crosshairs of Famous Sharpshooters

By Jon Latimer

The art of sniping developed from the sharpshooting practiced during earlier conflicts. During the 19th century, the steadily improving technology of the rifle led to the use of sharpshooters during the American Civil War and the Boer War. Read more

Artist John G. Hanlen depicted the rather austere conditions that prevailed at the headquarters of an Allied army in China. John Birch, whose name has become synonymous with an anti-Communist organization in the United States, would have been familiar with such surroundings. (U.S. Army Art Collection)

WWII

For God and Country: The Story of John Birch

By Sam McGowan

In the 1960s the John Birch Society was well known to most Americans as a right-wing political organization noted for its anti-communism and conspiracy theories. Read more

Racing through shellfire on the Eastern Front in 1944, a German courier on horseback attempts to deliver a message.

WWII

Warhorses—collateral casualties of WWII

By G. Paul Garson

By 1939 the German Reich possessed 3,800,000 horses while 885,000 were initially called to the Wehrmacht as saddle, draft, and pack animals. Read more

A Junkers Ju-52 returns from Crete, bringing home wounded parachutists and Alpine patrol soldiers.

WWII

Fliegen und Siegen: Photographs from the Luftwaffe

By A. Burke

Sixty-five years ago, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s Luftwaffe showcased its aerial triumphs in a 1942 commemorative book of photographs entitled Fliegen und Siegen (“Flying and Victory”). Read more

German paratroopers advance across a dangerously open field as their comrades drop from Junkers Ju-52s in the sky above Crete during the opening of Operation Mercury. A German veteran painted the scene from memory.

WWII

The Invasion of Crete: Descent Into The Inferno

By William E. Welsh

By May 1941, the German Luftwaffe’s fortunes had risen to great heights and plummeted to equally startling depths in the course of a single year of blitzkrieg warfare in Western Europe. Read more

War artist Gary Sheenhan captured the prisoners’ misery, fear, and deprivation at Buchenwald in 1945. The revolts in Sobibor and Treblinka were the last chance for the inmates to survive as the Nazis began to cover up their heinous deeds.

WWII

Revolts in the Death Camps

By Jonathan F. Keiler

By the spring of 1943, the Nazi deaths camps in eastern Poland—Sobibor, Belzac, and Treblinka—were running out of victims. Read more

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

WWII

The Mysterious Disappearance of the Bizarre Surcouf

By William H. Langenberg

The legendary Flying Dutchman of maritime lore was a spectral ship of disastrous portent that haunted the high seas and endangered anyone who came into contact with it. Read more

In a photo taken from another B-29 in formation, this heavy bomber disgorges incendiary bombs from the skies above Formosa. The largest B-29 raid of the war to date took place on October 14, 1944. The target was the repair and supply facilities at Okayama on the island.

WWII

B-29 Superfortress: The Plane That Bombed Japan Into Submission

By Sam McGowan

As the Japanese delegation stood on the deck of the battleship USS Missouri on September 2, 1945, preparing to sign the documents that ended World War II, a large formation of Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bombers swooped low over Tokyo Bay as a reminder of the terrible destruction that had befallen their nation and turned Japan’s cities into ruins. Read more

British commandos march through the ruins of the French town of Caen. An objective of the Allied D-Day landings that was supposed to have been captured on June 6, stiff German resistance prevented the city from being liberated until a month later.

WWII

Fleming, Ian Fleming

By Hervie Haufler

Some accounts of Ian Fleming’s life make it seem that only at the age of 44, as an antidote to the shock of finally agreeing to get married, did he suddenly commit himself to the unplanned task of creating his James Bond novels. Read more

Having been issued ammunition, Abyssinian troops known as Shifta advance on the run to take up positions against the advancing enemy.

WWII

South Africans in the Breech: Expelling Mussolini From Ethiopia

By Jon Latimer

Boarding a train at the famous station built by the French as a terminus on the line from Djibouti, the Conquering Lion of the Tribe of Judah, Elect of God, Ras Tafari, Emperor Haile Selassie of Abyssinia left his capital Addis Ababa on May 2, 1936. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

A Deplorable Affair

Military Weapons: NATO’s FN FAL Rifle

Sir George Pomeroy Colley’s Failed Boer Wars Campaign

William Welsh’s Best World War II Books List