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
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
WWII
How Many Japanese Planes Were Shot Down During Pearl Harbor?
By Tom YarboroughOn a serene Sunday morning the residents of Oahu enjoyed the dawning of another gorgeous day in paradise. Read more
WWII
Hiroshima’s Ground Zero Museum
By Flint WhitlockAlthough located 420 miles west of Tokyo, the city of Hiroshima is today a tourist mecca, drawing tens of thousands of visitors from around the world for one single reason: to stand at the epicenter of history’s first nuclear explosion used against an enemy population. Read more
WWII
Operation Chastise: Night of the Dambusters
By Mark SimmonsMay 16, 1943, had been a sweltering spring day in England. At 9:39 pm, as the sun was dipping below the western horizon, leaving a rim of light and still good visibility, the first three of 19 Avro Lancaster bombers of No. Read more
WWII
Fighting Back in Papua New Guinea
By Jon DiamondAfter the carrier attack by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941, Japanese forces conducted offensive operations across an incredibly broad front of 7,000 miles from Singapore to Midway Island. Read more
WWII
The U.S. Ninth Army’s Breakout: Crossing the Roer and the Rhine
By Michael D. HullAfter the Battle of the Bulge delayed their advance by six critical weeks, the British, U.S., and Canadian armies went on the offensive in mid-January 1945 and pushed toward the German frontier. Read more
WWII
The Guns of Finger Ridge: Airborne Artillery on the Defense in Market-Garden
By Joseph S. CovaisOn September 17, 1944, a massive but hastily planned airborne invasion of the Netherlands was launched. Codenamed Market-Garden, the operation called for three Allied airborne divisions (British 1st and American 82nd and 101st) to land along a narrow corridor reaching from advanced positions along the Dutch-Belgian border to a bridgehead on the northern bank of the Rhine River at Arnhem. Read more
WWII
Blitzkrieg 1940: From the Invasion of Holland to the Fall of France
By John BrownThe ancient Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu wrote, “Go forth to the enemy’s positions to which he must race. Read more
WWII
The Battle of Biak: “A Terrifying Glimpse Into the Soul of Mankind”
By David Alan Johnson“All I knew about Biak was that it was an island a degree south of the equator, one of the Schouten group lying north of Geelvink Bay toward the western end of New Guinea.” Read more
WWII
Operation Market Garden: the 82nd Airborne Division’s Pivotal Role
By Martin K.A. MorganBy mid-August 1944, roughly one month before the now-famous Operation Market Garden, the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division had been fighting off and on for over a year. Read more
WWII
The Bombing of Berlin by Doolittle’s Eighth Air Force
By Robert F. DorrHe was widely regarded as America’s best pilot, he was already a recipient of the Medal of Honor, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force caught up in 1,000-plane bombing missions deep into the Third Reich, and he was mad as hell. Read more
WWII
Death of the Super Battleship Yamato and Musashi
By Herb KugelSpecial Sea Attack Force (SSAF) was an ordinary-sounding name for the pitifully tiny remnant of what was once the mighty Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). Read more
WWII
A Company K in the Pacific: From Guadalcanal to Peleliu
By Jason AbadyIn April 1942, a group of young Marines, having recently graduated from Officers Candidate School, arrived at New River, North Carolina, a sprawling tent city that stretched over a vast area and would eventually become known as Camp Lejeune. Read more
WWII
The Children of WWII: Remembering the Conflict That Stole Their Childhoods
By Susan ZimmermanWorld War II affected nearly every area of the world. It was the deadliest conflict in all of human history. Read more
WWII
Final Battle for Burma, 1945
By William StroockBy the beginning of February 1945, the British 14th Army was on the banks of the Irrawaddy River and poised to strike into central Burma. Read more
