WWII

WWII

The M29 Weasel: The WWII Track Vehicle Never Used as Intended

The M29 Weasel was a machine conceived by a bizarre British chemist obsessed with ice for a unit that did not exist and a mission that never occurred. Read more

WWII

Easy Company Mortarman

The green light lit up the inside of the Douglas C-47 Skytrain’s fuselage, and 20 paratroopers from Easy Company’s Stick 70, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division charged out the door. Read more

WWII

Ordnance: The Piper L-4 “Eyes in the Sky”

Despite being caught up in the tide of isolationism prevalent duringthe interval between the world wars, the United States Army was lucky enough to have Congressional funding for the further development and expansion of its fledgling air arm, known initially in 1926 as the Army Air Corps and in 1941 renamed the Army Air Forces. Read more

WWII

Adolf Hitler’s Last Birthday.

On April 20, 1945, Adolf Hitler observed his 56th, and last, birthday. There was little to celebrate. The so-called “Thousand Year Reich” was in its death throes after only 12. Read more

WWII

Italian War Criminal Rodolfo Graziani

The town of Affile in Italy’s Lazio region erected a mausoleum to Italian Army Marshal Rodolfo Graziani in August 2012. Read more

WWII

U.S. Paratrooper Left for Dead at Nijmegen

As Gene Metcalfe floated down toward the earth in his parachute, the first thing he saw below him was a German soldier walking down a path with girl on his arm. Read more

WWII

Great Raid on Cabanatuan

On January 30, 1945, a group of U.S. Army Rangers, Alamo Scouts, and Filipino guerrillas set out on a daring nighttime raid on Cabanatuan POW camp in the Philippines.   Read more

WWII

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest: A Tactical Nightmare for Allied Forces

Gray skies hung low and a steady drizzle dripped through the tall, dense fir trees near the German-Belgian border on the morning of Thursday, November 16, 1944, during the Battle of Hürtgen Forest. Read more

WWII

D-Day Landing at Omaha Beach

As their landing craft plunged through heavy surf on the morning of June 6, 1944, it was obvious to the men of Company A, 116th Infantry Regiment, U.S. Read more

WWII

Was Justice Served After the Malmedy Massacre?

It was a dismal day, Sunday, December 17, 1944, just hours after the Germans had broken through the thinly held American lines in the Ardennes Forest along rugged terrain of the Western Front. Read more

WWII

Heroic Warsaw Airlift

Warsaw was burning. Captain Jack Van Eyssen first saw it as a dull glow on the night horizon, 35 miles distant. Read more

WWII

Junkers Ju-87 Stuka: What Made the Luftwaffe Vulture so Fearsome

One of the deadliest and most effective airplanes of the Axis powers, the Junkers Ju-87 Stuka, owed its origin to a fearless World War I ace and, ironically, to innovative American aviation visionaries in the peaceful early 1930s. Read more

WWII

Battle of Berlin Prelude: Küstrin, and Death on the Oder

 “We felt that we were already dead men,” wrote former Captain Albrecht Wüstenhagen in a May 1988 letter to the author of his time in the fortress garrison of Küstrin. Read more

WWII

The T-34 Tank: The Story of Soviet Russia’s Rugged Armored Vehicle

December 1941 was a dark month and the end of a dark year for the Soviets as the Germans pressed ever onward toward Moscow, the lair where Joseph Stalin and his minions plotted what to do next against the Nazi juggernaut that had, in a few short months, rolled over everything before them. Read more

WWII

A Tale of Two German Snipers on WWII’s Eastern Front

The three Soviet T-34 tanks edged forward slowly as the drivers scanned for the concealed Germans that lay ahead. Read more

WWII

The Battle of Carentan: “You’re Gonna Die Here!”

“Move out!” shouted Lieutenant Richard “Dick” Winters to the men of Easy Company. It was 6 o’clock on the morning of June 12, 1944, and Easy Company’s paratroopers braced themselves to attack the southern section of Carentan. Read more

WWII

The Soviet Invasion of Manchuria led to Japan’s Greatest Defeat

By Nathan N. Prefer

To the Soviet military, it is known as the Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation. Although it had no official name to the Japanese, it has become known in the West as Operation August Storm.  Read more

WWII

Pearl Harbor Attack Cover-up

BACKSTORY: Although for the past 75 years history has had little to say about “Bally’s Project,” an effort to falsify State Department records to remove evidence of gross miscalculations prior to the attack on Pearl Harbor—the author recently discovered a small file of documents in the Frank A. Read more

WWII

The U.S. Navy’s Seabees: Bulldozing a Road to Victory

By Glenn Barnett

As war clouds gathered over the vast Pacific Ocean in the late 1930s, the United States belatedly began to think of protecting the nation’s possessions of far-flung islands and atolls. Read more

WWII

Fighting Across Europe with the 101st Airborne

“Oui.” It was one of the few words 101st Airborne paratrooper Norwood Thomas knew in French, and it served him well on the morning of June 6, 1944. Read more