WWII
On a Wing and Several Prayers: The Story of a B-17 Tailgunner
By Glenn BarnettOn August 25, 1944, Larry Stevens and the rest of his Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber crew completed their 35th mission over Nazi-occupied Europe. Read more
WWII
WWII
Fiery Fight for a Frozen Hell: Battle of the Bulge in Luxembourg
By James G. Bilder
Described in one U.S. Army report as “the quiet paradise for weary troops,” the tiny nation of Luxembourg was viewed by American commanders in late 1944 much like Belgium—liberated, safe, and an ideal location for combat-worn troops to rest and for untested replacements to get exposed to outdoor living and military routine before being exposed to combat. Read more
WWII
La Gleize Battle of the Bulge Museum
By Michel De TrezThere is no shortage of museums in the Belgian Ardennes to record the region’s dark winter of World War II. Read more
WWII
Remembering a Day of Remembrance
By Flint WhitlockThis year, as I have done almost every year for the past 30 years, I took part in the Memorial Day ceremony at the 10th Mountain Division War Memorial near the division’s former training area high up in the Colorado Rockies. Read more
WWII
75th Anniversary of the Battle of Midway
By Michael E. HaskewSeventy-five years ago this month, the pivotal battle of World War II in the Pacific occurred in the waters surrounding an otherwise obscure atoll, Midway, roughly 1,300 miles from Pearl Harbor, where American involvement in the conflict had begun so suddenly just six months earlier. Read more
WWII
Polish Cavalry Myth Debunked: CNBC vs the Polish Embassy
Jim Cramer, host of CNBC’s Mad Money show, made a mistake on May 11th when he jokingly parroted a common misconception about the German invasion of Poland. Read more
WWII
The Lions of Carentan Part III: Operation Cobra
By Volker GriesserBackground: In this, the third and final installment of a three-part series excerpted from The Lions of Carentan, the 2011 book by a respected German military historian, Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 (FJR 6) has been pushed out of Ste.-Mère-église, Read more
WWII
The Lions of Carentan Part II: Defending Carentan
By Volker GriesserBackground: Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6, under the command of Major Friedrich August Freiherr von der Heydte, had the fortune (or misfortune) to be stationed in Normandy at the time of the Allied invasion of France on June 6, 1944. Read more
WWII
The Lions of Carentan Part I: Paratrooper vs Paratrooper on D-Day
By Volker GriesserBackground: Fallschirmjäger Regiment 6 was organized in February 1943, under the command of Major Egon Liebach. It was part of the 2nd Fallschirmjäger Division and was stationed in France, where it trained in parachute and glider operations. Read more
WWII
Michael Wittmann: How the Legendary Panzer Ace Died in World War II
By Christopher MiskimonDuring the late morning of August 8, 1944, the day famed tank commander Michael Wittmann would meet his end in combat, German SS-Oberführer (Colonel) Kurt “Panzer” Meyer sat in his staff car as his driver made his way toward the town of Cintheaux, France, near the front lines. Read more
WWII
Teddy Roosevelt Jr.: Rare Photos from His Funeral in Normandy
This picture was taken by Army Pfc. Sidney Gutelewitz roughly a month after the D-Day Invasion, according to the Los Angeles Times. Read more
WWII
The Codebreakers’ War in the Atlantic
By Gene J. PfefferThe Battle of the Atlantic was a life-and-death struggle between the German Kriegsmarine and the Allied navies that was fought for control of Britain’s lifeline to its empire and to the United States. Read more
WWII
The Men Against the Bomb
By Andrew J. RotterThe men and women who imagined and then built the atomic bomb thought they were doing something different from what makers of “conventional” weapons did. Read more
WWII
LIFE Photographer Ralph Morse’s War
By Susan ZimmermanIn an age before television and instant communications, Americans wanted to see what was going on in the world’s “deadliest conflict in human history,” and LIFE magazine was making a name for itself as THE war magazine during World War II. Read more
WWII
Battle of Graignes: An HQ Company’s Heroic Last Stand in Normandy
By Martin K.A. MorganSome 16 million Americans served during World War II, and tens of thousands of sons of the State of Louisiana served in every branch of the U.S. Read more
WWII
The New Trailer For the Film Dunkirk Will Give You Chills
“When 400,000 men couldn’t get home, home came for them.” These words could not better describe the amazing effort that the British military and civilian volunteers put toward saving the British and French soldiers trapped at Dunkirk. Read more
WWII
Iwo Jima: Primary Objective of the South Pacific
By Mike HaskewIn early 1945, the island of Iwo Jima in the Volcanoes Group, only 660 miles from the Japanese capital of Tokyo, became the focus of the American drive across the Pacific Ocean during World War II. Read more
WWII
The Amazing Voyages of the USS O’Brien
By Eric NiderostAt exactly three o’clock in the afternoon on February 25, 1944, a crowd gathered at the Boston Navy Yard for the commissioning ceremony of the USS O’Brien (DD725), a destroyer of the Sumner class. Read more
WWII
Shootout in Kula Gulf
By John DamagalskiThe island of Guadalcanal loomed in the distance as the warships of Task Force 36.1 approached the waters of Iron Bottom Sound on July 5, 1943. Read more
WWII
The First and Last Flight of the Spruce Goose
By Allyn VannoyThe Time magazine article was titled “It Flies!” It was a note of triumph and vindication, but also an epitaph, of an aircraft that was five years in the making—the “Spruce Goose,” a plane that should not have existed. Read more
