WWII

WWII

A living link to a horrific past.

Over the past few months, several stories with a World War II connection have slipped into the news. One of the most compelling was about a German TV documentary called A German Life. Read more

WWII

Rommel’s Failed Gamble: The “Six Days’ Race”

By Arnold Blumberg

An old cliché admonishes, “Bad things always come in threes.” Whether it was thought of as a law of nature or merely coincidence, a rapid succession of events in North Africa during the summer of 1942 seemed to confirm this widely held notion among the officers and men of the British Eighth Army. Read more

WWII

Aubrey Cosens of the Queen’s Own Rifles

by Angus Scully

Aubrey Cosens was the first soldier of the Third Canadian Division to earn the Victoria Cross in World War II—and this was a division that had landed on D-Day, taken 76 percent casualties in Normandy, and used its amphibious warfare experience to defeat the Germans in Holland. Read more

WWII

One of the last Arizona survivors passed away recently.

When Raymond Haerry passed away last September the quite exclusive club to which he belonged dwindled to five remaining members. Haerry was one of the few men who had served aboard the battleship USS Arizona in Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and survived the Japanese attack and subsequent explosion that devastated the warship and killed 1,177 U.S. Read more

Shooting up a German airfield with their eight .50-caliber wing-mounted machine guns, Republic P-47 Thunderbolt fighter planes of the 84th Squadron, 78th Fighter Group, Eighth Air Force roar past a flaming German fighter.

WWII

P-47 Thunderbolts at the Battle of the Bulge

By Robert F. Dorr & Thomas D. Jones

The captured German pilot was cocky and boastful. He had just parachuted into the American airfield, now lit up by the fires of burning Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, a sprinkling of bright torches amid the gray January gloom and the dirty white snow. Read more

WWII

All Alone: The HMS Glowworm

By Robert Barr Smith

The great waves were huge and black, greedy tentacles of the North Sea clawing and snatching at the battered ships struggling in the icy dark. Read more

WWII

First Strike Against Japanese Industry

By Phil Scearce

Consolidated B-24 Liberator bomber crews of the U.S. 11th Bombardment Group spent the first three months of 1943 organizing on Hawaiian airfields and flying practice and patrol missions around the islands. Read more