WWII
Ensign Doran S. Weinstein, a U.S. Navy communications officer, stationed himself outside the bridge of a troop transport named SS President Coolidge as it approached the South Pacific island of Espiritu Santo on Monday morning, October 26, 1942. Read more
WWII
On March 2, 1933, only a few weeks after the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt as President of the United States, the most spectacular event in the entertainment world premiered in New York. Read more
WWII
It was a bold prediction. “Rough but fast … We’ll be through in three days. It might only take two.” Read more
WWII
At dawn on November 20, 1943, U.S. Marines unleashed their first amphibious attack in the Central Pacific Theater. Read more
WWII
Winston Churchill described the U.S. Army during the war years as a “prodigy of organization … an achievement which soldiers of every other country will always study with admiration and envy.” Read more
WWII
Generaloberst Erwin Rommel, commander of the Panzerarmee Afrika, was in his element, riding in an armored car at top speed through the desiccated plains of the Libyan desert. Read more
WWII
As Jim Swett guided his Grumman F4F Wildcat fighter to a landing at Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, he looked forward to getting some rest. Read more
WWII
For many Americans in late 1941 and early 1942, he was the most hated—and feared—man in the world. Read more
WWII
The Germans called it the “Komet” and the “Devil’s Broomstick,” for the incredible speed with which it reached its altitude of 30,000 feet, achieving 0.84 Mach while doing so. Read more
WWII
When a friend from Wolsey, South Dakota, asked Alven Baker why he was joining the army in 1941 and not another branch of the service, he replied, “To capture Adolf Hitler.” Read more
WWII
Staff Sergeant Darrell Bush had just carried a wounded soldier on his back to the rear when five enemy bullets seemed to hit him simultaneously. Read more
WWII
Eighty years ago this month, the U.S. Navy inflicted the decisive defeat of World War II in the Pacific against the marauding Japanese. Read more
WWII
Within days of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, and the British declaration of war two days later, the vanguard of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) arrived on the continent of Europe. Read more
WWII
The United States Navy entered World War II well before Pearl Harbor and long before the rest of the nation. Read more
WWII
They had no armor, no air support, and little hope, but the American and Filipino troops on Luzon and the Bataan peninsula waged a fighting retreat that was the longest and most gallant in U.S. Read more
WWII
Second Lieutenant David A. Sterling of the Scots Guards was serving with Lt. Col. Robert E. “Lucky” Laycock’s No. Read more
WWII
One ominous day in mid-May 1942, Lt. Gen. William J. Slim stood on the Imphal Plain, high in the Assam hills of northeastern India, and watched columns of tattered, malaria-ridden British, Indian, and Burmese soldiers straggle across the frontier from Burma. Read more
WWII
Corporal Thomas B. Tucker stood shivering in the bitterly cold night air as he looked down on a ribbon of water that separated his unit from the enemy’s front-line positions. Read more
WWII
Adolf Hitler and his military commanders were feeling a new and unsettling emotion early in 1943—desperation. A year earlier, they had seemed on top of the world as their forces ruled a region that surpassed Rome at its greatest. Read more
WWII
Lieutenant Wessling did not believe that his two 75mm assault guns could effectively deal with the German panzers. Read more
