WWII

Tanks of the U.S. 6th Armored Division leave their telltale tracks in the snow as they advance toward the town of Bastogne, recently relieved after days under siege by German forces during the Battle of the Bulge.

WWII

Prisoner in the Bulge

By David H. Lippman

Nobody knew it in the 6th Armored Division’s 9th Armored Infantry Battalion, but the tide of the Battle of the Bulge had turned by the time the outfit moved into snow-covered fields and forests near Bastogne. Read more

Members of the U.S. 1st Infantry Division march ashore at Gela, Sicily, while an LST burns off shore on the first day of Operation Husky in this 1943 painting by Navy war artist Mitchell Jamieson. Soldiers injured during the fighting can be seen being evacuated to hospital ships. Sicily became the stepping stone for the invasion of the Italian mainland.

WWII

Sicilian Slugfest

By Flint Whitlock

The island of Sicily, lying in the Mediterranean Sea between Tunisia and the toe of the Italian peninsula, is no stranger to war and conquest. Read more

WWII

Bloody Aachen

By Richard Rule

By the time of the waning of the summer of 1944 in western Europe, General Dwight D. Eisenhower’s victorious Allied armies had forged a battle line from the Dutch province of Maastricht in the north to Belfort near the Swiss border in the south. Read more

WWII

The Heroic Voyages of the USS Gwin

By Michael Fellows

Lieutenant Commander John Benjamin Fellows, the skipper of the American Gleaves-class destroyer USS Gwin (DD-433), stood on the bridge trying to see into the predawn blackness. 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

The Republic P-47 Thunderbolt was a heavy aircraft powered by a large radial engine. It was capable of absorbing severe punishment and bringing its pilot home.

WWII

The Famed Jug

By Michael D. Hull

Losses were high and morale low when the U.S. Eighth Air Force intensified its heavy bomber missions over Nazi-occupied Europe in late 1942. Read more

Paratroopers of the 101st Airborne Division march into Bastogne, Belgium, on December 19, 1944. Combat veteran Private Brad Freeman, a mortarman with the division’s East Company, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, passed through the town, thinking to himself, “Here we go again.”

WWII

Easy Company Mortarman in Bastogne

By Kevin Hymel

When word reached 21-year-old Private Bradford “Brad” Freeman in Mourmelon-le-Grand, France, that the entire 101st Airborne Division was being put on 24-hour alert for movement to the front, he was neither surprised nor shocked. Read more

Fey von Hassell smiles faintly for the camera at her estate, Brazza, in the summer of 1944. Fey is accompanied by a pair of German officers, who were apparently assisting with the children in preparation for relocation.

WWII

Incredible Wartime Odyssey

By Kelly Bell

By the spring of 1943 the situation for Nazi Germany was becoming grave as military reverses in Russia and Africa sent the formerly unstoppable Wehrmacht reeling. Read more

A Curtiss SOC-3 Seagull careens from the catapult aboard the heavy cruiser USS New Orleans in 1943. The Seagull was replaced by the Vought OS2U Kingfisher as the war progressed.

WWII

Heroic Sacrifice Over Sicily

By Patrick J. Chaisson

A thousand questions flashed through Lieutenant Cy Lewis’s mind as he spotted the pair of German Messerschmitt Me-109 fighters banking in to attack him. Read more

Weary GIs move inland after landing in Sicily in July 1943 in this contemporary painting, Red Beach at Gela, 1700, by Mitchell Jamieson.

WWII

The Big Red One in World War II

By Steven Weingartner

The outbreak of World War II on September 1, 1939, found the United States in an isolationist mood that precluded, for the time being, any direct involvement in the conflict. Read more

Consolidated B-24 Liberator bombers run the gauntlet of enemy antiaircraft fire and fighters to bomb the oil refineries and other facilities at Ploesti, Romania, on August 1, 1943.

WWII

The Return of Hadley’s Harem

By Duane Schultz

First Lieutenant Gilbert B. Hadley—he liked to be called “Gib”—was buried back home in Kansas in 1997, some 54 years after he was killed in action on August 1, 1943. Read more

Using black ink and crayon, Eigener drew German tanks advancing across a stark landscape during a Wehrmacht advance. He titled this sketch “Panzer Angriff,” or “Tank Attack.”

WWII

German Soldier’s Sketchbook

By Flint Whitlock

It’s called Mein Skizzenbuch (My Sketchbook)—a 72-page booklet of pencil drawings and watercolors by noted German war artist Ernst Eigener, a soldier with Propaganda Co. Read more

Early in World War II, Edward tours the front line in France with Lord Gort, commander of the British Expeditionary Force. With the fall of France in June 1940, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor were sought by the Nazis.

WWII

King Turned Pawn

By Eric Niderost

It was around noon, June 19, 1940, when a small caravan of cars set out from Antibes in southern France en route to the Spanish border. Read more

WWII

Suppressing the E-boats

By Phil Zimmer

A wily British scientist, a secret weapon, and a daring daytime Bombing raid helped break the back of the deadly German E-boat attacks on the Allied ships that supported the early D-Day landings at Normandy. Read more

Japanese tanks advance across a bridge toward the town of Johor Bahru during their lightning conquest of the Malay Peninsula. This photo was taken in late January 1942, and within weeks the British bastion of Singapore had fallen to the invaders.

WWII

Yamashita’s Bluff Takes Singapore

By Jon Diamond

Admiral Isoruku Yamamoto was not the only gambler in Imperial Japan’s military hierarchy. Lt. Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita, appointed commander of the Imperial Japanese Army’s (IJA) 25th Army on November 2, 1941, to lead the invasion of Malaya and Singapore, also took risks to capture the prized British territory in less than 100 days after his invasion commenced on December 8. Read more

An artist’s depiction of the USS Indianapolis disaster. The cruiser, with nearly 1,200 men aboard, sank within 12 minutes of being torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 on July 30, 1945; only 316 men survived after several days in the shark-infested waters. (Painting by maritime artist Chris Mayger)

WWII

A Survivor’s Tale

By Flint Whitlock

The mission was top secret. The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) had just delivered the last parts of the atomic bomb from California to the island of Tinian and was heading, unescorted, to Guam when it was intercepted by a Japanese submarine, the I-58, and torpedoed on July 30, 1945. Read more