WWII Archives

The damaged HMS Hotspur collides with the HMS Hunter on April 10, 1940, during the destroyer battle in the Narvik Fjord. Both the British and German naval commanders died in the heavy fighting at sea that day.

WWII

Hell in a Norwegian Fjord

By Phil Zimmer

Captain Odd Isaachsen Willoch knew what had to be done. The 55-year-old career Norwegian officer, commander of an aging coastal defense ship, was looking down the five-inch gun barrels and 21-inch torpedo tubes of the Wilhelm Heidkamp, a state-of-the-art German destroyer. Read more

WWII

Bill Mauldin’s Willie and Joe

Roy Morris Jr.

Among the thousands of American soldiers slogging through the miserable winter of 1944 in southern Italy after the Allied landing at Anzio were two GIs who existed only on paper, but who became as real to their readers as the mud-covered, K-ration-eating guys sitting next to them in their foxholes. Read more

WWII

Above & Beyond

By Mason B. Webb

The U.S. 3rd Infantry Division has one of the longest legacies in the United States Army. Originally formed in November 1917 at Camp Greene, North Carolina, it gained a reputation for toughness. Read more

WWII

Operation Strangle: The First Great Air Interdiction Campaign

By Jeff Patton

Following the spectacular success of the Allied air campaign against Iraq during Operation Desert Storm in 1991 and against the Serb forces in Kosovo in 1999, the value and efficiency of utilizing air power to shape or forgo the need for a ground battle has been taken for granted by military planners. Read more

Racing through shellfire on the Eastern Front in 1944, a German courier on horseback attempts to deliver a message.

WWII

Warhorses—collateral casualties of WWII

By G. Paul Garson

By 1939 the German Reich possessed 3,800,000 horses while 885,000 were initially called to the Wehrmacht as saddle, draft, and pack animals. Read more

American tanks and armored gun carriers drive over snow-covered terrain to Samree during the Battle of the Bulge. Capture of the city opened the way to Houffallize, heart of the Bulge.

WWII

The End of the Battle of the Bulge

By Arnold Blumberg

Wednesday, December 27, 1944, found the military situation in the Ardennes Forest of Belgium stalemated. After 12 days of unrelenting struggle, the American and German forces on this part of the Western Front found themselves locked in brutal combat, unable to drive each other back. 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

Advancing across the Italian countryside in the summer of 1944, a Churchill tank of B Squadron, 51st Royal Tank Regiment crashes through brush and undergrowth. The Churchill became the basis for a number of innovative armor designs with specialized functions.

WWII

Ordnance: The British Churchill Tank

By Christopher Miskimon

The German town of Goch lay east of the Reichswald forest, a scene of heavy fighting for the British Army as it ground its way steadily into the heart of Germany. Read more

WWII

The Essex Regiment’s Frontal Assault on Monte Cassino

By Alan Davidge

It was March 14, 1944, and Private Albert “Albie” Duddy of D Company, 1st/4th Battalion Essex Regiment, was staring up at the monastery on top of the hill at Monte Cassino from a location north of the town of Cassino, Italy. Read more

WWII

Sub Hunters Over the Bay of Biscay

By Patrick J. Chaisson

“Am over enemy submarine in position …”

Cut off in mid-transmission, this contact report came from a U.S. Read more

Adolf Hitler flanked by two of his top lieutenants, Reich Minister of Armaments Albert Speer to his left, and Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, chief of the Luftwaffe on his right. Göring was sometimes vexed by the activities of his “good” brother, Albert.

WWII

The ‘Good’ Göring

By Eric Niderost

On March 12, 1938, German troops entered Austria, part of Adolf Hitler’s plan to incorporate that hapless country into the Third Reich. 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

An artist's depiction of the German battleships Bismarck and Prinz Eugen firing on battlecruiser HMS Hood and battleship Prince of Wales during the Battle of Denmark Strait, May 23, 1941. Both British ships were hit and Hood was sunk but Prince of Wales, although damaged, survived for a few more months.

WWII

To this day, the cause of the sinking of the HMS Hood during the hunt for the Bismarck is still disputed.

By Mark Simmons

The British Admiralty Board of Enquiry into the loss of the battlecruiser HMS Hood, presided over by Vice Admiral Sir Geoffrey Blake, concluded, “The sinking of Hood was due to a hit from Bismarck’s 15-inch shell in or adjacent to Hood’s 4-inch or 15-inch magazines, causing them to explode and wreck the after part of the ship.” Read more

WWII

Home Front USA: Rationing

By Herb Kugel

In 1941-1942, British journalist Alistair Cooke traveled through the United States. In his description of his trip, American Home Front 1941-1942, he reported stopping for breakfast at a restaurant in West Virginia where, “the sugar was rationed at breakfast, and there was a note on the menu requesting that … in the interests of ‘national defense,’ keep to one cup of coffee.” Read more

WWII

The Story of Bill Millin, Lord Lovat’s Mad Piper of Sword Beach

By Michael D. Hull

It was the evening of Monday, June 5, 1944, and an armada of almost 5,000 ships stood off the southern coast of England, primed and ready for the greatest amphibious invasion in history. Read more

WWII

Tactical Thunder: The Ninth Air Force

By Sam McGowan

As the landing craft carrying the invading Allied ground forces of Operation Overlord motored toward the Normandy beaches on June 6, 1944, they were protected and supported by the largest aerial armada the world has ever seen. Read more

Corporal Alvin York of the U.S. 82nd Division received the Medal of Honor for cutting down a large group of Germans at close-quarters with his Colt M1911 during the Meuse-Argonne Offensive.

WWII

The Colt 1911

By Christopher Miskimon

Petty Officer R. J. Thomas, a U.S. Navy SEAL, wound up in deep trouble one day in 1969. Read more

WWII

Any Bonds Today?

By Herb Kugel

One of the most unusual baseball games ever played was a three- way game in New York City between the New York Yankees, the New York Giants, and the Brooklyn Dodgers. Read more

Trailing a tank destroyer down a road, an American soldier raises his M-1 rifle to fire at a German sniper. These soldiers are en route to the Seine River bridge north of Fontainebleau.

WWII

Breakout Across the Seine

By Arnold Blumberg

On August 14, 1944, Lt. Gen. George S. Patton, Jr., paused after his daily staff conference to offer a short speech about the accomplishments of his Third Army. Read more