WWII
For Operation Neptune/Overlord, the Allies had 6,939 naval vessels, 11,590 aircraft, and 156,000 infantrymen and airborne soldiers (both parachute and glider) ready to participate in the D-Day invasion of northern France on June 6, 1944. Read more
WWII
Operation Bolero, the marshaling of Allied forces for the planned 1944 invasion of Normandy, was in full swing by late 1943, and much of England had been turned into a great armed camp. Read more
WWII
Forty-eight Wright Cyclone aero engines coughed into life on the hardstands at windswept Polebrook Airfield in Northamptonshire, England, early on the afternoon of Monday, August 17, 1942. Read more
WWII
Anyone traveling to Washington, DC, should take the time to head west to Chantilly, Virginia (near Dulles International Airport), and visit the Steven F. Read more
WWII
During World War II, the United States fielded 16 armored divisions, and all contributed to the Allied victory. Read more
WWII
Steaming through the summer Mediterranean night, the world having gone sour in two awful months, British Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville read the message just sent to him from London: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.” Read more
WWII
Lieutenant Martin Andrews was not scheduled to fly that day. He and his Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew had survived 12 missions out of the required 25 and were due for a much needed week of rest and recuperation. Read more
WWII
The Allied landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944, produced a bitter struggle for control of the invasion beachhead. 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
By the spring of 1945, Hitler’s thousand year Reich had come crashing down in flames. The Allied armies that had landed at Normandy almost one year earlier had penetrated deep inside Germany. Read more
WWII
Ghosts of Sicily: The True Story of the Naval Intelligence Agents Who Courted the Mob to Fight Nazis in America and the Battlefields of Italy (Mark Harmon and Leon Carroll, Harper Select, New York, NY, 304 pp., Read more
WWII
The seaplane tender USS Tangier floated at its moorings that peaceful day at Pearl Harbor. Little disrupted the serenity of the beautiful Sunday morning. Read more
WWII
On the morning of October 3, 1944, an all-out assault was launched to drive the enemy from Cleurie Quarry in northeast France. Read more
WWII
Three German armies surprised the Allies by breaking across the Our River and storming into the Ardennes on December 16, 1944. Read more
WWII
When powerful German forces stormed through the Low Countries and France was about to fall in the late spring of 1940, Great Britain faced the darkest hour in its history. Read more
WWII
Analyzing war and its outcomes remains an important exercise—for tactical, political, humanitarian and a whole host of other reasons—though not all critics or analysts will agree on the ideas that emerge from such scholarship. Read more
WWII
By Patrick J. Chaisson
Seaman Franz Machon was enjoying a smoke on deck when lookouts sounded the alarm. “Enemy aircraft!” they shouted before dropping down inside their vessel, a German Type IXC submarine named U-512. Read more
WWII
The heavy staccato thumping of a Browning Automatic Rifle echoed throughout the small French village. “Who’s doing all that firing?” Read more
WWII
When Rashid Ali seized power in Baghdad in 1941, his coup provided Nazi Germany with a key piece of its world strategy for victory. Read more
WWII
By Nathan N. Prefer
Despite his nickname, General Henry Harley (“Hap”) Arnold was unhappy. In early 1945 he was having major problems with one of his own special projects, the development of the Boeing B-29 Superfortress strategic bomber, for which he had often risked his career. Read more
