WWII

WWII

The RAF’s Dambusting Lancaster Bomber

In the summer of 2018 a British father and son who were catching crabs along Reculver Beach in Kent stumbled upon a historical item of intense value. Read more

WWII

Sinking Japanese Submarine I-1

Gordon Bridson was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1909, but shortly thereafter his family moved to Auckland, where he attended Auckland Grammar School. Read more

WWII

The Fight for Bougainville

The bloody fight for Guadalcanal, where the string of Japanese conquests in the Pacific had finally run its course, was a turning point of World War II. Read more

WWII

D-Day Assault on Juno Beach

Most students of World War II know that there were five invasion beaches included in Operation Overlord, the invasion of northwestern Europe, on June 6, 1944. Read more

WWII

Jimmy Doolittle: The Warrior from Shangri-La

Shortly after the Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt remarked that he would like to bomb the enemy homeland in revenge as soon as possible. Read more

WWII

What the Devil’s Brigade Did in World War II

When General George C. Marshall visited London in April 1942, the new chief of the British Combined Operations Command, Lord Louis Mountbatten, introduced him to a “very odd-looking individual … [who] talks well and may have an important contribution to make.” Read more

WWII

Clash of Heavy Tanks at Cologne

Sergeant Nicholas Mashlonik watched closely as the Panzerkampfwagen (PzKpfw) VI Tiger heavy tank rampaged through the village of Elsdorf in the Rhineland-Westphalia region of Germany on February 27, 1945. Read more

WWII

Remembering D-Day

Few events in human history have been so fraught with drama as the Allied invasion of Normandy on June 6, 1944. Read more

WWII

USS West Virginia survived Pearl Harbor to reach Tokyo Bay.

Her wounds had been grievous that morning in 1941, when Japanese torpedo bombers swept low over the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor and unleashed their deadly cargoes at the easy targets moored along Battleship Row. Read more

WWII

German Bombing of Bath

On Monday evening, April 27, 1942, Kathleen Stainer and her family readied themselves for sleep in the English countryside. Read more

WWII

Recording the Pearl Harbor Attack

Fort MacArthur in San Pedro, California was established by the U.S. Army in 1914 as a Coast Artillery installation to defend the harbors of Long Beach and Los Angeles. Read more

WWII

Lucian K. Truscott: The Soldier’s General

In his Maxims of War, Napoleon Bonaparte wrote, “It is exceptional and difficult to find in one man all the qualities necessary for a great general. Read more

WWII

German Spymaster Reinhard Gehlen

When Colonel-General Heinz Guderian, chief of the German General Staff, presented German leader Adolf Hitler with estimates of Russian strength for Operation Barbarossa, Hitler declared that the numbers were “completely idiotic” and “pure bluff.” Read more

WWII

Marine Fight for Tinian

The island of Tinian is located in the Northern Marianas, three miles southwest of Saipan, 100 miles north of Guam, and 1,500 miles from mainland Japan. Read more

WWII

Allied Storm in Southern France

U.S. Army Sergeant Vere Williams listened to his instincts as his landing craft approached the beach. It was August 15, 1944, and his unit, the 157th Infantry Regiment of the 45th Division was part of the invasion force for Operation Dragoon, the landings along France’s Mediterranean coast. Read more

WWII

Battle for Monte Cassino: Hell on a Mountaintop

By the evening of January 22, 1944, it was increasingly apparent that a drastic shift in strategy was needed to break the bloody debacle that had developed in central Italy. Read more

WWII

The Elefant Tank Destroyer

It is dusk on July 17, 1943. The Red Army has not only withstood Hitler’s Operation Citadel to eliminate the Kursk salient, but it has launched its own offensive. Read more

WWII

Veterans Remember the Disaster at Dunkirk

BACKSTORY: After Nazi Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, Britain and France declared war on Hitler’s regime. Read more

WWII

Ploesti Raid: A Tragic Tidal Wave

History is almost never “chiseled into stone.” The fog of time can be blown away when new information emerges. Read more

WWII

British Submarine Operations in the Pacific

By Arnold Blumberg

After the Royal Navy’s traumatic departure from the Pacific Ocean in early 1942, the 4th Submarine Flotilla and its depot ship, the HMS Adamant, operated with the Eastern Fleet based at Trincomalee––a large, natural harbor located on the coast of Sri Lanka in the heart of the Indian Ocean. Read more