WWII
By Richard Z. Freemann, Jr.
“War is mainly a catalogue of blunders.”
—Winston Churchill (1950)
On Sunday, June 22, 1941, as the sun slumbered, 3.6 million soldiers, 2,000 warplane pilots, and 3,350 tank commanders under skilled German command crouched at the border of Soviet-occupied Poland ready to invade the Communist nation Joseph Stalin had ruled with steel-fisted brutality for years. Read more
WWII
The American light tanks, bringing up much needed supplies, were in column as they began to take fire. Read more
WWII
Even after the Battle of Midway in June 1942, the Japanese were still in a commanding position in the western Pacific. Read more
WWII
By Arnold Blumberg
During World War II, 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
WWII
The Boeing B-29 Superfortress was a game changer. First rolling off the assembly line as a production aircraft in July 1943, the Superfortress was the answer to America’s need for a high-level long-range strategic bomber. Read more
WWII
The five Americans were trapped in a small, dark, empty wine cellar in an isolated French villa on the coast of Algiers. Read more
WWII
By April 1944, American and Australian troops were moving westward along the northern edge of New Guinea, reclaiming territory taken by the Japanese in early 1942. Read more
WWII
By Elmer Wisherd with Nan Wisherd
Elmer Wisherd was born on December 1, 1920, in North Dakota. Shortly thereafter, his family moved to a farm in Bruce, Wisconsin. Read more
WWII
By Kevin M. Hymel
It was December 19, 1944, one day before the Siege of Bastogne. Shortly after 10:30 am, 26-year-old Major William Desobry picked up his field telephone, called his combat commander, Colonel William Roberts, and asked if he could withdraw from the Belgian village of Noville. Read more
WWII
“Awe c’mon, Mom,” Cecil Petty told his emotional mother before leaving Homer, Illinois, in February 1941. “Who knows, I might be a hero.” Read more
WWII
By William F. Floyd, Jr.
Late in the day on October 24, 1944, all of the available 39 patrol torpedo (PT) boats of the U.S. Read more
WWII
While American troops slugged it out with the Japanese on the Philippine island of Leyte, one of the greatest battles in the history of naval warfare raged far and wide in the surrounding waters. Read more
WWII
The troops of Germany’s Army Group Center were more than a week into a fresh offensive to capture Moscow on July 14 when they approached the historic battlefield of Borodino where the Russians delayed Napoleon’s advance on Moscow in 1812. Read more
WWII
Along with three comrades, one of the Marine Corps heroes is still remembered in the small town of Centron in southeastern France. Read more
WWII
Unlike bomber crews that went home if they survived a designated number of missions, World War II fighter pilots like Lieutenant Jim Carl, 354th Fighter Group, United States Army Air Forces (USAAF), flew until the war ended, they got shot down over enemy territory and were captured, or they died. Read more
WWII
Lieutenant Colonel Ben Vandervoort’s 2nd Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment (2/505) was fighting its way through the Dutch town of Nijmegen on September 19, 1944. Read more
WWII
January 1945—with World War II in its sixth year—found the Allied armies going on the offensive after the Battle of the Bulge, but they were still west of the Rhine and six weeks behind schedule in their advance toward Germany. Read more
WWII
General Douglas MacArthur gripped the rail of the light cruiser USS Phoenix as the warship bombarded shore positions on the Japanese-held island of Los Negros. Read more
WWII
Nothing seemed to work. The Allied codebreakers tried every possible trick and combination, but these new ciphers defied all attempts at decryption. Read more
WWII
He led the American drive up the New Guinea coast, took his troops ashore on Leyte and Luzon in the Philippines, and was designated by the Allied supreme commander in the Pacific, General Douglas MacArthur, to lead the planned invasion of Japan itself. Read more
