WWII
Polish Major General Stanislaw Macze, commander of the 1st Polish Armoured Division stood tall and watched as General Guy Simonds, II Canadian Corps, delivered very harsh news to the half dozen German generals and admirals of the 1st Parachute Army, General Erich Straub commanding. Read more
WWII
The surrender did not begin well. As First Lieutenant Virgil Lary stood in the road next to a snow-covered field just south of Malmédy, Belgium with his hands raised, one of the German tankers poked his head out of the hatch and fired twice at him with his pistol. Read more
WWII
By the summer of 1943, American forces felt that they had proven that they were as good as anything the enemy could throw at them. Read more
WWII
Even as they were being integrated into the European Allied air campaign, the use and operation of American B-26 Marauders, and other medium bombers, was still being worked out—with sometimes, as at IJmuiden, Holland, disastrous results. Read more
WWII
For a week before November 20, 1943, U.S. Navy and Seventh Air Force planes did their best to destroy the Japanese defenses on the tiny Pacific atoll of Tarawa. Read more
WWII
Swirls of black smoke billowed high above the steeples and splintered roofs as Lieutenant Ronald Speirs surveyed the stucco exteriors of storefronts and dwellings pocked by the scars of urban battle. Read more
WWII
The Battle of Leyte Gulf, from October 23-26, 1944, was the largest air and sea battle of World War II. An important part of the battle took place off Samar Island on October 25, 1944. Read more
WWII
Private Joe Johnson wakes on the floor of the Pasay schoolhouse, a few miles south of downtown Manila, capital of the Philippines. Read more
WWII
Most historical accounts of World War II aviation relate the experiences of commissioned officers, men who obtained their wings through completion of a military pilot training program. Read more
WWII
Fresh off a tense telephone conversation with Maj. Gen. Lucian Truscott, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., climbed into a jeep and rumbled over to Truscott’s 3rd Infantry Division headquarters east of Terranova, on Sicily’s northeastern coast. Read more
WWII
On a dark night in September 1941, moving at periscope depth, an Italian submarine edged into Gibraltar Bay near the British harbor. Read more
WWII
The tranquility of early dawn on June 15, 1944, was interrupted by the sounds of powerful naval guns and the roar of amtraks churning the water. Read more
WWII
German engineer Hellmuth Walter stretched his shoulders, rubbed his face, and eased his hat back on his head as he walked down the wooden dock toward a covered deck. Read more
WWII
The night of June 5/6, 1944, was pretty much like every other night since the Germans had occupied Normandy and the Cotentin Peninsula in the summer of 1940: dark, quiet, chilly, and mostly boring. Read more
WWII
To the crews of the Royal Air Force Bomber Stream Droning Toward Germany in the early morning hours of December 3, 1942, this mission seemed indistinguishable from the countless others that had preceded it. Read more
WWII
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
Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, showed the world the extent of Nazi brutality. Read more
WWII
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
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
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
