WWII Archives

WWII

First Casualties at Iwo Jima

By Christopher Marks

Lieutenant Harold Gilson Payne, Jr., was one of the first Americans to die at Iwo Jima. He did not fall in the carnage of the Marine invasion that began on February 19, 1945. Read more

WWII

April 1, 1945, was Easter Sunday and April Fool’s Day. It was also the day the U.S. Army and Marine Corps launched Operation Iceberg, their massive amphibious assault on the Japanese island of Okinawa. Read more

WWII

The 90th Division Comes of Age

By Kevin M. Hymel

Lieutenant General Omar Bradley, commander of the U.S. First Army, considered his 90th Infantry Division a problem unit. Read more

WWII

WWII Weapons: The Hetzer Tank Destroyer

By Robert Cashner

By 1943 it was obvious to the Germans that their tank production could not keep pace with battlefield losses. Read more

WWII

American Tank Destroyers at El Guettar

By Christopher Miskimon

In the early morning hours of March 23, 1943, the U.S. 1st Infantry Division was preparing to attack. Read more

WWII

From the Jaws of Death: MacArthur’s Escape from the Philippines

By Eric Niderost

Lieutenant John Bulkeley knew something was in the wind when General Douglas MacArthur invited him for an informal lunch at his headquarters on Topside, the highest elevation on the island fortress of Corregidor. Read more

WWII

Death of the Fighting Lady: Frank Heineman’s Story

By Joan Hunt

The 13,000 ton Independence-class aircraft carrier USS Princeton, which was commissioned on February 25, 1943, quickly became known as the “Fighting Lady.” Read more

WWII

Conspicuous Gallantry at Tarawa: Alexander “Sandy” Bonnyman’s Medal of Honor

By Joseph M. Horodysk

Four Medals of Honor were awarded for acts of conspicuous gallantry during the invasion of Tarawa atoll in the Pacific during World War II. Read more

WWII

M4 Sherman: “Blunder” or “Wonder” Weapon?

By Blaine Taylor

For the Allied tankers and infantrymen of the American, British, Canadian, and Free French armies battling German Panther and Tiger tanks in Normandy in the summer of 1944, the Sherman tank’s failures were glaringly evident as their own shells bounced off the hulls of the Nazi armor and they were themselves destroyed at a far greater range by the powerful German tanks. Read more

WWII

The Bid to Break Turkish Neutrality in WWII

By Greg Wagman

Maybe the Turks were just bad at picking the winning side. In World War I the Central Powers were defeated by the Allies, so in October 1939 they switched to ally with Britain and France. Read more

WWII

Taking Out the Tirpitz

By Richard Rule

By mid-1942, the towering German battleship Tirpitz stood alone as the largest, most powerful warship in the world. Read more

Three days after Pearl Harbor, the loss of the battleship Prince of Wales and the battlecruiser Repulse crippled the British defense of the Far East.

WWII

Royal Navy Ravaged

By Michael D. Hull

History was made in the Mediterranean Sea on the night of Monday, November 11, 1940, when the Italian Navy’s battle fleet was devastated at Taranto, off the Ionian coast of southern Italy. Read more

HMS 'Cossack' and the store ship 'Altmark', 16 February 1940 ? National Maritime Museum, London / The Image Works NOTE: The copyright notice must include "The Image Works" DO NOT SHORTEN THE NAME OF THE COMPANY

WWII

Seizing the Altmark

By Joseph M. Horodyski

On Sunday, September 3, 1939, the day that Great Britain and France formally declared war on Germany after the Nazis’ invasion of Poland, the German supply ship Altmark concluded her stay at the refinery center of Port Arthur, Texas, where she had taken on a full cargo of diesel oil, and returned to sea. Read more

WWII

Dorie Miller: A Black Sailor’s Heroism at Pearl Harbor

By Michael D. Hull

His name was Doris, but he was a powerfully built football fullback, a heavyweight boxer, and the first black American hero of World War II. Read more

The German liner Brmen, which ran a British blockade, ended her career in a scrap yard.

WWII

The S.S. Bremen: Last Voyage of a Luxury Liner

By David Luhrssen

After docking in New York on August 28, 1939, only four days before the outbreak of World War II, Captain Adolf Ahrens of Germany’s North German Lloyd shipping line was faced with a decision. Read more

British Prime Minister Winston Churchill inspects Polish troops at Tentsmuir, Scotland, in October 1940. To Churchill’s right is Polish leader in exile Wladyslaw Sikorski.

WWII

Stanislaw Sosabowski: Poland’s Premier Paratrooper

By Tom Aiello, Ph.D

Stanislaw Sosabowski started his military career in the anti-Hapsburg Polish underground movement in 1907, served in the Austrian Army in World War I, and rose to the command of the Polish Parachute Brigade in World War II. Read more

WWII

Frank Messervy: Britain’s Frontline General

By Jon Diamond

The style of leadership practiced in Britain’s Eighth Army during the early years of the Desert War left much to be desired. Read more

In this graphic painting by war artist Ivor Hele, Australian troops storm an Italian position during the attack on Bardia on January 3, 1941. Commonwealth forces thoroughly routed the Italian Tenth Army during Operation Compass, which was intended as a five-day raid but lasted several weeks.

WWII

Operation Compass: Masterstroke in the Desert

By John Diamond

Established in the summer of 1939, Field Marshal Sir Archibald Wavell’s Middle East Command encompassed nine countries and parts of two continents, an area of 1,700 miles by 2,000 miles. Read more