WWII Archives

Lieutenant Commander Eddie C. Outlaw and his wingman, Lieutenant (j.g.) Donald ‘Dagwood’ Reeves, wing over Truk Lagoon during their destructive April 1944 fighter sweep. A Japanese fighter, shot down in flames, has just hit the water and exploded on impact. The pilots took their Grumman F6F Hellcat fighters into action without dropping their auxiliary fuel tanks, which are prominently visible in this painting by artist Jack Fellows.

WWII

Ten Minutes Over Truk

By Chris Marks

Lieutenant Hollis Hills had every reason to be puzzled. His guns had just raked the Japanese fighter ahead of him, the rounds striking home along the enemy’s fuselage and wing roots. Read more

WWII

Tracings Of Barbarossa

By Kevin M. Hymel

Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, showed the world the extent of Nazi brutality. Read more

Hauptmann Gordon Gollob poses with his Messerschmitt Bf110 fighter. He made recommendations for technical improvements to the heavy fighter and traveled to a Luftwaffe test facility to consult with aircraft engineers on his ideas.

WWII

German Fighter Ace Gordon Gollob

By William E. Welsh

German Luftwaffe pilot First Lieutenant Gordon Gollob moved in for the kill at midafternoon on December 18, 1939, with his Messerschmitt Bf 110 against a formation of seven British Vickers Wellington medium bombers heading home from their bomb run against German battle cruisers in Wilhelmshaven harbor. Read more

WWII

Manstein’s Victorious Panzers

By William E. Welsh

Deep snow blanketed the steppes surrounding the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov on February 6, 1943. The soldiers of Major Kurt Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion of SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler shivered from the cold. Read more

WWII

Rivals of the River Plate

By David H. Lippman

The four ships that raced into battle on December 13, 1939, off the mouth of the River Plate were, as historian and novelist Len Deighton tartly observed, “three different answers to the question that had plagued the world’s navies for half a century: what should a cruiser be?” Read more

A PzKpfw. V Panther medium tank smolders after being hit by the American infantryman at lower left firing his bazooka. Other GIs rush toward the tank to take out any crewmen who may have survived the blast. At Mairy, France, the soldiers of the 90th Infantry Division utterly defeated a spoiling attack by the German Panzer Brigade 106.

WWII

The “Tough ‘Ombres” of 90th ID Stand Tall at Mairy

By Christopher Miskimon

As summer neared its end in early September 1944, the U.S. Army raced across northern France toward the German border. Read more

WWII

Wreaking Havoc

By Sam McGowan

Few airplanes can claim the honor of being credited with changing the course of World War II, but the Douglas A-20 Havoc twin-engine light bomber is one that can. Read more

WWII

Combat Photographers: Shooting the War

By Susan Zimmerman

Much of what we know today about World War II are the visual images—both still and moving—that combat photographers took to document all phases of this costly human tragedy. Read more

This painting by Jack Fellows depicts Flying Tiger pilot R.T. Smith’s Curtiss P-40 #77. The P-40 B and C variants made tough, reliable fighter planes. The engine was underpowered at high altitudes, lacking a supercharger, but at lower altitudes the P-40 was a fine pursuit plane.

WWII

The Flying Tiger and the Demon

by Bob Bergin

Erik Shilling, a pilot of the American Volunteer Group (AVG) Flying Tigers, faced the angry mob. There were about 30 of them, all in loincloths and leather vests with no buttons. Read more

Australian troops on a narrow mountain road west of Jezzine, Lebanon, come under fire from Vichy French artillery and mortars. The Aussies fought the German-aligned Vichy forces for possession of the town over the course of several weeks, finally capturing it on June 28, 1941.

WWII

Fighting The War in the Middle East

By William Stroock

For more than a century the Middle East was the British Empire’s vital link between the Mediterranean and India. 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

Too Many Close Calls

By Flint Whitlock

Clarence M. “Monty” Rincker was born in Cheyenne, Wyoming, on September 8, 1922. When he was a year old, his parents bought a farm in eastern Wyoming and the family moved there. Read more

The guns of the German battleship Bismarck and the cruiser Prinz Eugen fire at the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales and battlecruiser HMS Hood in the Denmark Strait on May 23, 1941.

WWII

The Hood Has Blown Up!

By Mark Carlson

In one of the most gripping scenes of the 1960 motion picture Sink the Bismarck! the viewer is witness to the climactic moment of the Battle of the Denmark Strait on May 24, 1941. Read more

WWII

Ten Days at Aschaffenburg

By Christopher Miskimon

As the winter of 1944-1945 slowly gave way to spring, the combined Allied armies ground their way into Germany. Read more

In this painting by artist Jack Fellows, U.S. Navy Lieutenant “Syd” Bottomley pilots his Douglas SBD-3 Dauntless dive bomber in a steep descent, dive brakes extended on the trailing edges of the plane’s wings, during a bombing run against the Japanese aircraft carrier Kaga, the largest of four carriers the Imperial Japanese Navy deployed during the Battle of Midway. Bottomley scored a direct hit during the pivotal action of June 4, 1942, but found his own carrier, USS Yorktown, damaged upon his return.

WWII

Epic Stand at Midway

By Michael E. Haskew

On May 2, 1942, the eve of the Battle of the Coral Sea, a Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina flying boat skimmed the water’s surface and touched down in the lagoon of Midway Atoll, 1,137 miles west of Oahu. Read more

WWII

Forest of Death

By Nathan N. Prefer

“Passchendaele with tree bursts” was how war correspondent Ernest Hemingway described it. The three-month slugfest that became known as the Battle the Hürtgen Forest was that and much more. Read more

WWII

The Turkey Shoot

By David H. Lippman

At 12:30 PM, June 19, 1944, two vast fleets hundreds of miles apart faced off amid cobalt skies and burning seas. Read more

WWII

The Power of Cloth

By G. Paul Garson

The evolution of the Nazi-era military wardrobe followed from a long history of European uniforms in general and Imperial German uniforms in particular. Read more

WWII

Consolidated B-24 Liberator: The Loyal “Lumbering Lib”

By Michael D. Hull

A host of famous fighters and bombers in the Allied arsenal spearheaded the aerial offensives that helped secure victory against the Axis powers in World War II. Read more

German soldiers storm ashore in Norway during a combined operations invasion of the Scandinavian country. The heavy cruiser Blücher was sunk by Norwegian shore batteries during the assault.

WWII

Kriegsmarine Blooded

By Bob Cashner

Norway had been able to avoid the massive bloodletting of World War I entirely and fervently hoped to steer clear of World War II as well through a policy of strict neutrality. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

The Largest Plot to Kill Hitler? – Operation Valkyrie

Frederick Townsend Ward and the Ever— Victorious Army

Joachim Peiper’s Escape from the Battle Of the Bulge

Nicholas Oresko Left a Brave Legacy.