WWII Archives

WWII

Ninth Air Force Captured In Brushstrokes

By Kevin M. Hymel

The Ninth Air Force officially arrived in England when General Lewis H. Brereton set up his headquarters in Sunninghill Park, Berkshire, on October 16, 1943. Read more

WWII

The Battle of Iwo Jima: Red Sun, Black Sand

By John Walker

No foreign army in the 5,000-year history of Japan had ever successfully conquered Japanese territory. In late 1944, American war planners were about to challenge that statistic on the tiny Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Read more

A German tank commander peers from the turret of a formidable PzKpfw. I Tiger tank somewhere in Russia. The great tank battle at Kursk was a significant defeat for the German Army on the Eastern Front, and one of Hitler's favorite commanders, General Walter Model, failed him at a critical time during the action.

WWII

Model’s Failure in Command

By Pat McTaggart

Colonel General Walter Model was a rising star in the German ArFmy in early 1943. The son of a music teacher, Model was born on January 24, 1891, in Genthin, Saxony-Anhalt. Read more

With its right wing on fire and breaking apart, a B-17 from the 483rd Bomb Group flying over rail yards is about to crash in the Yuogoslav city of Nis, April 25, 1944.

WWII

Target: Das Reich

By Mark Carlson

Aboard each of the hundreds of Liberators and Flying Fortresses that daily left the soil of England bound for targets in Germany were ten young men. Read more

An abandoned German weapons carrier lies smashed along a roadside as soldiers of the British Eighth Army search for German snipers in Acquino on May 27, 1944.

WWII

Eternal City Liberated

By Michael E. Haskew

Italy was unforgiving. German resistance to Allied operations had been brutal since the Salerno landings in the autumn of 1943, and by the following spring frustration had mounted upon frustration. Read more

WWII

To attack targets from a steep angle, Curtiss developed the SB2C Helldiver—“The Beast.”

By Joseph Frantiska, Jr.

At the beginning of WWII, the U.S. Navy needed a combat aircraft that could meet several requirements: it had to serve as an attack fighter that could conduct precision dive-bombing and ground-support (strafing) operations yet still be small enough to be delivered to battle zones by aircraft carrier. Read more

WWII

A Photographer in the Ninth Air Force

By Audrey Lemick

When most people think of the U.S. Army Air Forces in World War II, the first image that usually comes to mind is that of the heavy bombers, the B-17s and B-24s, that ravaged targets in Europe and the B-29s that wreaked havoc on Japanese cities in the Pacific. Read more

Plane-handling crews aboard USS Enterprise (CV-6) work to prepare an F4F Wildcat for flight during the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, October 26, 1942. The “Big E” would survive the war. Although the battle was a short-term victory for the Japanese in terms of ships sunk and damaged, Japan’s loss of many irreplaceable aircrews—particularly flight leaders—proved to be a long-term strategic advantage for the Allies in the Pacific.

WWII

Violent Carrier Versus Carrier Clash

By Nathan N. Prefer

It had been a difficult year for the United States Navy.

Beginning with the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, defeat after defeat had plagued the efforts of the American Navy to recover its balance and strike back against the rampaging Japanese. Read more

Ogden Pleissner, an artist and war correspondent for LIFE magazine, captured American tanks advancing through the bombed-out city of St. Lô as German prisoners are marched to the rear.

WWII

Deadly Cobra Strike

By Michael E. Haskew

The Allied planning for Operation Overlord had been ongoing for more than two years. Vast quantities of supplies and hundreds of thousands of fighting men and their machinery of war had crowded southern England. Read more

In this painting by artist John Hamilton, the Japanese cruisers Mogami and Mikuma writhe under heavy American air attack on the last day of the Battle of Midway. Mikuma was sunk, but the seriously damaged Mogami managed to limp away to safety.

WWII

Mogami: Japan’s Luckless Cruiser

By David H. Lippman

She was the lead ship of her class, built under the 1930 London Naval Treaty, which imposed limits on cruiser, destroyer, and submarine tonnage for the United States, Great Britain, and Japan. Read more

WWII

Meat Grinder at Yelnya

By Pat McTaggart

The smell of victory was in the air as the forces of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock’s Army Group Center continued to drive deep into the Ukraine during the final week of June 1941. Read more

This Seversky P-35 fighter plane has nosed over during a landing at Clark Field in the Philippines. Like other types flown by the 27th Bomb Group, the P-35 was obsolete during World War II and outclassed by Japanese fighter types.

WWII

Hostage to Misfortune

By Sam McGowan

In May 1942, the 27th Bombardment Group transferred from Batchelor, Australia, to Hunter Field outside Savannah, Georgia. It was a transfer without men or equipment to the same base from which the group had departed in October 1941 for the Philippine island of Manila. Read more

The American soldier at right covers two Germans captured north of Lorient France in August 1944 with his M-3 submachine gun.

WWII

The M-3 “Grease-Gun” showcases Yankee ingenuity at its ugly best.

By David J. Little

As America geared up for war, the economy of building a wartime army was overwhelming. Tanks, aircraft, soldiers and weapons—all would consume huge resources, and manufacturers were challenged to reduce costs wherever they could. Read more

Members of Ninth Carrier Command unload a Jeep from a C-47 on one of the emergency landing strips in France. Without the Troop Carrier Commands, the American war effort in the European Theater would have ground to a halt.

WWII

The Flying Pipeline

By Patricia Overman

“Flying supply missions with the 435th Troop Carrier Group, or any tactical group of IX Troop Carrier Command, is a combination of taking a physical beating and sweating out land and aerial war hazards”

—Michael Seaman, Warweek Staff Writer, Stars and Stripes, April 29, 1945

By April 1945 the Allied Armies were racing east as German resistance crumbled. Read more

Disabled automobiles lie abandoned in the street of a French village south of the major port city of Cherbourg. In this image soldiers of the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division move cautiously through the area.

WWII

Cherbourg’s Bloody Toll

By Pat McTaggart

It was June 1944. Two generals, one American and one German, faced each other with diametrically opposed missions. Read more

American soldiers splash ashore at Anzio, Italy, during an end run expected to compromise the German defenses of the Gustav Line. The landings failed to achieve the desired results and remain controversial to this day.

WWII

Prudence or Paralysis?

By Steve Ossad

Hitler called it an “abscess.” British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the chief sponsor and loudest cheerleader for the endeavor, grudgingly proclaimed it “a disaster.” Read more

WWII

Cape Matapan Triumph

By David H. Lippman

It was called “rodding,” and it was a complex manual procedure used by British cryptographers at Hut Eight in the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park to decipher Italian Naval Enigma coded messages. Read more

Australians expand and improve the Italian defenses at Tobruk in February 1941 in anticipation of an attack by Axis forces in a painting by Australian war artist Ivor Hele. Two months later, Generalleutnant Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps began probing the Allied defenses at the key Libyan port.

WWII

Rommel Repulsed

By Robert Heege

It was the first week of April 1941, and Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor could scarcely believe what was happening as his driver suddenly cocked the wheel and swerved hard left, flooring the gas pedal in a futile attempt to outrun the multiple bursts of machine-gun fire erupting all around them, lighting up the Saharan night as bullets chased after his wheels. Read more

Maltese civilians inspect the ruins of the opera house in Valletta after heavy Axis aerial blitz, April 7, 1942. The British called Malta “the most-bombed island in the world.”

WWII

Linchpin of the Mediterranean

By Mark Simmons

It was the humid season on Malta that September of 1943. The hot Sirocco winds from North Africa blow from August to October across the cool sea, raising humidity. Read more

The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion prepares to move out from the French port of Le Havre on January 22, 1945. The equipment consists of M20 command and reconnaissance cars belonging to the 809th’s A Company. The M20 was a variant of the M8 Greyhound, with the turret and 37mm cannon removed.

WWII

Tank Destroyers in Action! Photos of the 809th on the Front

By Neal Fausset

The 809th Tank Destroyer Battalion was an independently attached unit of the U.S. Army. The battalion was activated on March 18, 1942, at Camp Forrest, Tennessee, and remained in the United States through most of the war. Read more

WWII

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