WWII
Saipan’s Maritime Heritage Trail
By Jennifer F. McKinnon & Della A. Scott-BretonSaipan’s shallow, tropical lagoons are a veritable waterpark for World War II enthusiasts who do not mind getting wet. Read more
WWII
WWII
A Good Samaritan
By Jon DiamondThe iconic photograph the Blinded Soldier, New Guinea taken on Christmas Day 1942, reveals a wounded and barefoot Australian soldier, Private George “Dick” Whittington of the 2/10th Battalion, being led down a path through a surrounding field of tall kunai grass to an Allied field hospital at Dobodura in Papua, the eastern third of the world’s second largest island, New Guinea. Read more
WWII
The Graf Spee & Britain’s First Naval Victory of World War II
By David LippmanAs soon as the British radio operator started batting out the distress signal on December 2, 1939, the German pocket battleship opened up with a 37mm gun. Read more
WWII
Adolf Hitler Sends Joachim Peiper to the Bulge
By Josh QuackenbushDuring the Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle America has ever fought, Hitler chose the Sixth Panzer Army for the German juggernaut’s most important role. Read more
WWII
Japanese Suicide Attacks at Pearl Harbor and Beyond
by David Alan JohnsonThe deliberate crashing into enemy targets by Japanese aviators did not begin at the Battle of Santa Cruz Islands. Read more
WWII
A Soldier Remembers the Pearl Harbor Attack
By John Sanford BairdAt about 8 am on the morning of December 7, 1941, I stood on the third-floor deck of a red brick barracks that looked across the Schofield Barracks golf course toward the infantry barracks that housed much of the U.S. Read more
WWII
Incident on the Yangtze
By Michael D. HullWhile America and Europe struggled through economic depression and nervously watched the spread of fascism in the second half of the 1930s, the situation was far more ominous in the Far East. Read more
WWII
Against the Odds: Jeanette Rankin
By Martin K.A. MorganAn Associated Press report described “a chorus of hisses and boos” that echoed through the chamber when the Congresswoman from Montana cast her vote. Read more
WWII
Sen Toku: Japan’s Underwater Aircraft Carriers
By Steven D. LutzAs soon as Colonel James Doolittle’s B-25 raid struck Japan in April 1942, Japan sought to wreak revenge on the United States, but by 1944 devastating aerial bombings on Japan by the Americans had become all too regular. Read more
WWII
Beyond All Praise: British Defense of Crete
By Jon DiamondBrigadier Eric Dorman-Smith, serving as a liaison to Lt. Gen. Richard O’Connor during Operation Compass, the Western Desert campaign, traveled to General Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command headquarters in Cairo on February 12, 1941, to seek permission to advance British XIII Corps farther west to Tripoli after the total victory over the Italian Xth Army at Beda Fomm, which gave Britain and her Commonwealth Allies control of the Cyrenaican half of Libya. Read more
WWII
Operation Aphrodite
By Mason B. WebbWhen it came to advanced military technology in World War II, arguably no one was better at it than Nazi Germany, whose scientists Adolf Hitler keep busy trying to invent the ultimate “super weapon” capable of defeating his enemies. Read more
WWII
Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon
By Glenn Barnette and André BernoleEarly in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
WWII
Could an M4 Sherman Tank Even Survive Against a German Panther?
By Kevin HymelThe German Panzer-kampf-wagen V (Panther) tank was superior to the American M4 Sherman in almost every respect, but it could not guarantee victory at every encounter. Read more
WWII
Tragic Surrender
By Mark SimmonsOn Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more
WWII
The Trampled Swastika
By Eric NiderostOn April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler, Reich Chancellor and Führer of Germany, emerged from his underground bunker in the center of Berlin. Read more
WWII
Smashing Hitler’s Atlantic Wall
By Flint WhitlockAfter overrunning France and other Western European countries in 1940, Adolf Hitler was certain that the Allies would one day attempt to invade the European continent and attack through the occupied countries to destroy his regime. Read more
WWII
Attack on the USS Panay
By Chuck LyonsFor some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more
WWII
Bloody Brawl on Guadalcanal
By Mike PhiferThe column of sweaty, exhausted Japanese soldiers trudged single file through the thick, dark jungle. For days they had been pushing inland from the western end of Guadalcanal. Read more
WWII
Waves of Murderous Assault: The Battle of Britain
By Phil ZimmerGerald “Zulu” Lewis peered from his Hurricane and spotted 20 German Bf-110s circling with a heavy escort of fast and deadly Bf-109 fighters over Redhill, south of London. Read more
WWII
Paratrooper Brawl at Carentan
By William F. Floyd, Jr.The two exits from the American landing zones at Utah Beach were entrusted to the 502nd Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division. Read more
