WWII Archives

WWII

First Raid For the Mighty Eighth

By Michael D. Hull

General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold, commander of the U.S. Army Air Forces, was a man both driven and under great pressure in the spring and early summer of 1942. Read more

WWII

USS Lexington: A Lady to the End

By Michael D. Hull

Responding to a November 27, 1941, war warning message from Admiral Harold R. “Betty” Stark, chief of naval operations, America’s prized handful of aircraft carriers were fortuitously absent from Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes savaged the Pacific Fleet on Sunday, December 7. Read more

WWII

The American Air Museum in Duxford

By Roy Stevenson

In the lush, green rural community of Duxford, a 20-minute bus ride from the university town of Cambridge, the American Air Museum in Britain houses the finest collection of historic American combat aircraft outside the United States. Read more

WWII

Crushing Counterattack at Salerno

By Arnold Blumberg

On the morning of September 13, 1943, Col. Gen. Heinrich G. von Vietinghoff, commander of the German Tenth Army, faced a difficult decision. Read more

WWII

The Focke-Wulf FW-190: Best Fighter Aircraft of WWII

By William F. Floyd, Jr.

On July 28, 1943, Luftwaffe Oberleutnant Erwin Clausen shot down another two B-17 Flying Fortresses to add to the two he had shot down the previous day. Read more

WWII

The Last Fighter Pilot: An Account of the Final Combat Mission of World War Two

Guest Post By History on the Net

The following is an account of Captain Jerry Yellin, who flew the last combat mission of WWII on the morning of August 15, 1945, out of Iwo Jima. Read more

The Soviet Air Force’s Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, or “Storm Bird,” took a heavy toll in German armor on the Eastern Front.

WWII

The Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik: The Soviet’s Deadly Tank Killer

By Phil Zimmer

Vasily Emelianenko led an Ilyushin Il-2 Sturmovik, or “Storm Bird,” flight in late June 1942 against a German-held airfield near Artemovsk in eastern Ukraine, flying low up a deep ravine to avoid detection. Read more

WWII

“Love” Company in the Vosges Mountains

By John M. Khoury

The author is a self-described “tough kid from Brooklyn” who enlisted in the U.S. Army’s Enlisted Reserve program in October 1942, hoping to complete his college education before being called up for active duty. Read more

WWII

Darrell “Shifty” Powers: Easy Company’s Sharpshooter

By Marcus Brotherton

Darrell “Shifty” Powers was a soft-spoken machinist who never aspired to greatness. He was born, grew up, got married, raised his family, worked, retired, and died in Clinchco, a remote mining town in southwest Virginia. Read more

WWII

Four Things Dunkirk Gets Right About the Iconic Evacuation

By Nicholas Varangis

Dunkirk, Christopher Nolan’s latest film, has wowed critics since it hit theaters in the U.S. last week, and for good reason. Read more

May 1944: Chinese troops advance through the streets of the ancient city of Tengchung, held by the Japanese for two years. The Japanese garrison at Tengchung was wiped out.

WWII

The Salween Offensive: Blundering to Success in Burma

By Marc D. Bernstein

After launching an invasion of Burma (today Myanmar) not long after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Army went on to overrun much of China by May 1942 and closed the Burma Road—the vital, 717-mile-long mountain highway built in 1937-1938 that ran from Kunming in southern China to the Burmese border. Read more

WWII

The Dunkirk (2004) Miniseries Comes to BritBox

By Nicholas Varangis

This week, two Dunkirks will make their debut. The first is the much-anticipated Christopher Nolan film, a two-hour long Hollywood blockbuster set to take theaters by storm as a new take on the war epic genre. Read more

WWII

The Real Story of “Mad Jack” Churchill—a Rare Breed of Warrior

By Robert Barr Smith

It was May 1940, and the German officer’s unit was attacking toward a village called l’Epinette, near Bethune, France. Read more

WWII

The Last Doolittle Raider: 75 Years After the Daring Mission

By Michael E. Haskew

Lieutenant Colonel Dick Cole is 101 years old. In April he attended observances of the 75th anniversary of the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo that marked the first effort by American bombers to inflict damage on the Japanese home islands during World War II. Read more

WWII

When Japan Invaded America

By Stephen D. Lutz

Alaska’s Aleutian Island chain consists of 69 measurable islands. Just as many more exist, too small to measure as an island. Read more

WWII

M26 Pershing: Why America’s Heavy Tank Arrived Too Late for WWII

By Arnold Blumberg

“We had been assured by our officers before we invaded France in 1944,” recorded Bill Harris, “that our Sherman tanks could take care of any Nazi armor we met there.” Read more

WWII

Patton’s Fight for Fort Koenigsmacker

By Brig. Gen. (U.S. Army Ret.) Raymond E. Bell JR.

In his autobiography, War As I Knew It, Lieutenant General Patton set the tone for what was to become one of his Third U.S. Read more

WWII

Operation Winter Storm: Manstein’s Attempted Relief of Stalingrad

By R. Jeff Chrisman

It was November 24, 1942. Speeding across the snow-covered landscape of eastern Ukraine, the personal command train of German Field Marshal Erich von Manstein was on its way to the southern Russian city of Novocherkassk, where he would take up his new assignment as commander of Army Group Don. Read more