WWII

WWII

Australian Raiders & The Assault On Singapore Harbor

Hours after Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese troops landed in northern Malaya and began moving south toward Singapore. Read more

WWII

Benito Mussolini & The Fascist March on Rome

On March 23, 1919, but four months after the armistice that ended the Great War—100 young toughs, ex-Italian Army war veterans, former socialist politicians, and newspapermen met in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolchro in industrial northern Italy to form a new political party. Read more

WWII

Portugal during WW2: Covering the Azores Gap

The year 1944 dawned with America already at war for over two years. In an event not marked by history books, the 96th Navy Construction Battalion, Seabees, crossed the Atlantic from Davisville, Rhode Island, on the Abraham Lincoln, a converted banana boat escorted by two destroyers, the USS Ellis and USS Biddle. Read more

WWII

The Battle of Britain: Leadership and Logistics in Britain’s Skies

It was a battle fought without armies. No rifles, no tanks, no barbed wire. In the summer of 1940, the skies above Britain served as the battlefield for the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe. Read more

WWII

The Lee-Enfield Rifle and its Effectiveness in World War II

By 1901, the Small Arms Committee—the body within the War Office tasked with arming the British Army with weapons—sought to replace their then-standard issue rifle: the Magazine Lee-Metford Rifle Mark II. Read more

WWII

Preview – Attentat 1942

Many of us have friends and family members who served in the military during World War II, but how intimately do we know their story? Read more

WWII

Review – Wolfenstein II: the New Colossus

When last we saw the mighty Captain William J. Blazkowicz, well, he wasn’t looking quite so mighty. Sure, he managed to score a major victory in the battle against the postwar alt-history Nazi regime, but he was left more or less on death’s fickle doorstep. Read more

WWII

Hitler’s blunder resulted in a devastating defeat for the German Army on the Eastern Front.

When Adolf Hitler launched Operation Barbarossa, the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, on June 22, 1941, he expected yet another in a string of spectacular victories. Read more

WWII

Operation Frantic On Eastern Front: Preview Of the Cold War

Early on the overcast afternoon of June 2, 1944, three white-starred Boeing B-17 Flying Fortresses in V-formation roared over the Soviet air base at Poltava. Read more

WWII

The Port Chicago Disaster: The Largest Mutiny Trial in U.S. History

After sundown on July 17, something happened at a small port town 40 miles northeast of San Francisco that has never been fully explained…

The 7,500-ton Liberty ship SS E.A. Read more

WWII

Lost, Now Found

A few weeks ago, a surprising story was announced: the wreckage of the heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, which was torpedoed and sunk by the Japanese submarine I-58 on July 30, 1945, had been located. Read more

WWII

The Killing of Il Duce

At 3 am on Sunday, April 29, 1945, a yellow furniture truck stopped at the Piazzale Loreto, a vast, open traffic roundabout where five roads intersected in the northern Italian city of Milan. Read more

WWII

Prelude to Iwo Jima: The Japanese Assault On B-29 Base On Marianas

From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more

WWII

The Virginia Military Institute (VMI) Graduates Who Shaped WWII

Watching his forces prepare to attack the Union Army at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863, Confederate General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson commented to an aide, “The Institute will be heard from today.” Read more

WWII

Comparing Admiral Chester Nimitz and Isoroku Yamamoto

“Japan cannot defeat America; therefore, Japan should not go to war with America.” Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, Commander-in-Chief of the Combined Fleet of the Imperial Japanese Navy, spoke those words to a group of school children as his government contemplated just that. Read more

WWII

The Legend of Lightning Joe Farinholt, the Four-Time Silver Star Recipient

Not all of the 68 infantry divisions available to the U.S. Army during World War II were made up of draftees and enlistees. Read more

WWII

Rommel’s Ghost Division

The appointment of Erwin Rommel as commander of the 7th Panzer Division (nicknamed the “Ghost Division”) in February 1940 seems, in the light of his many triumphs in France and North Africa, an unremarkable and perfectly natural choice. Read more

WWII

Hard-Won Combat Laurels

Iron Bottom Sound was full of transport ships unloading supplies in the early afternoon sun on November 12, 1942. Read more

WWII

Taking Down a German Fighter By Hand at the Battle of the Bulge

Private Harry Cruse and the men of the 83th Armored Field Artillery Battalion were waiting for a march order in the snow-swept town of Langlire when they heard an approaching German fighter plane. Read more

WWII

George Preddy, Jr.: The USAAF’s Greatest P-51 Ace

Darwin, Australia, was hot even though it was mid-winter. On the afternoon of July 12, 1942, four newly deployed pilots of the U.S. Read more