WWII

Covered with oil and soaking wet, these men head for shore. The Coolidge can be seen in the background (left).

WWII

The Coolidge Goes Down

By Kevin Hymel

It was supposed to be a routine delivery of soldiers to the battlefields of Guadalcanal—but nothing in war is ever routine. Read more

In this painting by artist Nicholas Trudgian, on New Year’s Day 1945, a pair of FW-190s swoop low over an Allied airfield in France as part of a late-war assault plan to cripple Allied air power and help turn the tide of the war in Germany’s favor.

WWII

Death Ride of the Luftwaffe

By David H. Lippman

They were all annoyed. The directive from Jagdkorps (JK) 2 made no sense, but it was clear: all New Year’s Eve parties were cancelled. Read more

WWII

The Battle of Trenton

By Vince Hawkins

By the winter of 1776, the struggle for American independence had reached its lowest point. In June of that year General George Washington’s Continental Army had stood at nearly 20,000 strong. Read more

WWII

V-E Day: Victory at Last for World War II’s Allies

By Flint Whitlock

Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more

British soldiers put their backs into moving pieces of a Bailey Bridge built on pontoons over the Weser River in Germany, 1945.

WWII

The British Bailey Bridge

By Mike McLaughlin

I was always fascinated by the mastery of water,” Sir Donald Coleman Bailey reflected, long after the end of World War II. Read more

Smoke billows from the German freighter Drachenfels after sustaining damage during a raid by the British.

WWII

The Daring Calcutta Light Horse Raid

By Robert Barr Smith

Freighter Ehrenfels’ siren shrieked through the muggy night across the harbor. As the captain pulled down hard on the alarm cord, the alarm howled out over the steaming darkness, screaming that British raiders were in the harbor, alerting Ehrenfels’ crew and calling for help from ashore. Read more

A pall of black smoke hangs over the shore installations at Rabaul as a B-25 medium bomber streaks above a Japanese merchant ship riding at anchor.

WWII

The Bombing of Rabaul in November 1943

By Sam McGowan

In some historical circles, a mistaken impression has developed that the U.S. Navy’s Task Force 38 launched the aerial offensive on the Japanese stronghold at Rabaul, New Britain, that ultimately rendered the base useless. Read more

A squadron of B-25 “Mitchell” medium bombers fly in formation over the Italian countryside. Lieutenant Ben Ernst (inset) of Nashville, Tennessee, joined the Army Air Force for the “glamour,” but was shot down off the coast of Palermo, Sicily, in 1943 and spent 23 months as a prisoner of the Germans.

WWII

Bomber Pilot to Prisoner of War

By Amy Wannemacher

The second World War seems like a long time ago for most of the world, with the harsh realities of blitzkrieg warfare and the Holocaust primarily learned through books and films, possibly a museum. Read more

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