WWII Archives

B-24 Liberators of the U.S. Fifteenth Air Force, one with an engine on fire, streak away from the Ploesti refineries they have just bombed in a painting by Robert Taylor.

WWII

Operation Tidal Wave Takes Aim at Ploesti

By Sam McGowan

If there was a name of a prospective target that caused Allied airmen in the European Theater of Operations to blanch in the fall of 1943 and the spring of 1944, it was Ploesti. Read more

WWII

From Doughboy to GI Helmet

By Earl Rickard

When the United States Army mobilized for defense in the fall of 1940, the peacetime draftees, National Guardsmen, reservists, and regulars carried Model 1903 Springfield rifles; the Guardsmen wore puttees; and all the soldiers covered their heads with the doughboy helmet—head-to-foot relics of World War I. Read more

WWII

Roads to Bastogne

By Edward P. Beck

The Ardennes Forest in eastern Belgium seemed almost surreal in the last days of autumn 1944, a quiet backwater in a raging storm. Read more

This aerial photo of the Altmark hiding in Norway’s Jossing Fjord led to the raid by Captain Philip Vian and the destroyer HMS Cossack.

WWII

Locating the Altmark: An RAF Rescue Mission Beyond Compare

By Eric Niderost

On the morning of February 16, 1940, two Royal Air Force Lockheed Hudson aircraft lifted off from Thornaby Airfield in northern England. Read more

Japanese troops advance through the rubble of a destroyed building in Shanghai on October 29, 1937. Young Marine Captain Evans Carlson witnessed the onslaught.

WWII

Creating the OSS: FDR’s Network of Personal Spies

By Peter Kross

One of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s longtime interests was the hidden world of espionage. In the months before the United States entered World War II, the commander-in-chief was dabbling in the covert world of intelligence-gathering, using a number of trusted personal friends as his own private eyes and ears around the globe. Read more

WWII

An Army Combat Engineer’s Story of the D-Day Invasion

By Rob Morris

Nineteen-year-old army combat engineer Jay Rencher blinked the salt spray from his eyes, filled his lungs, and again plunged beneath the cold, roiling waves. Read more

WWII

Battle of the Philippine Sea & The ‘Great Marianas Turkey Shoot’

By John Wukovits

Lieutenant Tom Bronn glanced anxiously at the fuel gauge on his Grumman TBF Avenger torpedo bomber. He had been aloft for almost four hours, engaged in a hectic combination of trying to locate Japanese ships he knew to be in the Philippine Sea, diving down to unleash his four bombs at a carrier as dusk enveloped his aircraft, and then embarking on a desperate search for his own carrier, the USS Lexington, in the darkness. Read more

Early in the war, German troops advance in the company of a Czech-made tank and under cover of a smoke bomb they have ignited. The German occupation of Czechoslovakia provided the Wehrmacht with a windfall of military hardware.

WWII

WWII Vehicles: The Czech Panzer 38(t)

by Arnold Blumberg

Poland, the Netherlands, France, the Balkans, and Russia were subjected to Germany’s blitzkrieg between 1939 and 1941. At the forefront of those assaults were tanks of Czechoslovakian design. Read more

A platoon of the green U.S. 106th Infantry Division trudges through a Belgian woodland. Although they were told that they would occupy a quiet sector of the Western Front in December 1944, the Golden Lions were soon in the teeth of the Battle of the Bulge.

WWII

Tough Stand of the Golden Lions

By Nathan N. Prefer

When the men of the newly arrived 106th Infantry “Golden Lions” Division arrived on the front lines near St. Read more

WWII

Japan in World War II: Dealing With Known Unknowns

by Lt. Col. John W. Whitman, U.S. Army (ret.)

Planning a war requires assumptions. However, there should be as few assumptions as possible, otherwise one can assume away all one’s problems. Read more

A German soldier surveys an antiaircraft defense gun on the bank of the Rhine near the Ludendorff Bridge, January 1945.

WWII

A “Bright Opportunity” At Remagen

By Flint Whitlock

It was March 7, 1945––a gray, overcast day with a nasty chill in the air, the kind of day in which a soldier at the front wished he could relax in front of a toasty fire with a canteen cup full of hot coffee and think about home. Read more

WWII

Battle Beyond The Horizon in the Coral Sea

By Wil Deac

In March and early April 1942, American and British codebreakers uncovered indications of a Japanese offensive being prepared in the Pacific against Australia. Read more

A squad of French Resistance fighters, some sighting automatic weapons, anticipates action against the Nazis, August 1944.

WWII

The OSS: Assisting French Resistance in the Haute Savoie Region

By Al Hemingway

On a moonless night in January 1944, in the Haute Savoie region of southeast France, the drone from the engine of a RAF bomber could be heard in the distance. Read more

Americans try out a German antitank weapon in Ceppagna, Italy, in January 1944.

WWII

Captured Weapons of the Reich: A Photo Essay

By Kevin M. Hymel Read more

U.S. troops hit the beach in North Africa on November 8, 1942. Operation Torch was the first major offensive action by American troops during the war against Nazi Germany.

WWII

Operation Torch and The Assassination of Admiral Jean Darlan

By Peter Kross

Less than a year after the sudden and devastating Japanese attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the American military was about to embark on a large-scale offensive operation against German and Italian forces in North Africa. Read more

A Finnish pilot at the controls of his Avro Anson FAF LeLv46 AN101 reconnaissance aircraft based at Tikkakoski, March 7, 1940, shortly before the Winter War ended in a truce. The Finns successfully blunted the Soviet invasion, thanks in large part to their air force.

WWII

David vs Goliath

By Glenn Barnett

When Stalin and Hitler signed a non-aggression pact in August 1939, they secretly created spheres of influence. Besides dividing up Poland, they agreed to allow each other free reign over nations and territories they deemed important. Read more

The B-17 bomber flown by Captain Colin P. Kelly, Jr., is shadowed by a Zero piloted by famed Japanese ace Saburo Sakai, who shot Kelly down on December 10, 1941.

WWII

The Mitsubishi Zero Gave ‘Made in Japan’ New Respect

By Joseph M. Horodyski

The psychological and military shock that the Allies experienced when they first encountered Mitsubishi’s legendary A6M2 Zero fighter plane at the beginning of the Pacific War may be difficult to understand today. Read more

WWII

William “Wild Bill” Donovan: America’s Spymaster in WWII

By Peter Kross

On July 14, 1940, William Donovan stood on the pier fronting New York harbor and waited to board the Pan Am flying boat named the Lisbon Clipper for a flight that would take him to Portugal and then to London, his ultimate destination. Read more

WWII

Vierville-sur-Mer: Cracking a Critical Draw at Omaha Beach

By Kevin M. Hymell

Shortly after 8 am on June 6, 1944, a German officer overlooking the Vierville-sur-Mer Draw on Omaha Beach reported that the soldiers defending the beach were repelling the Americans: “The enemy is in search of cover behind the coastal zone obstacles. Read more

The super battleship Yamato is shaken by explosions as the Vought F4U Corsair flown by Lt. Hal Jackson speeds away from its target. Jackson and other pilots from the USS Intrepid were among the many American pilots who took part in sinking the giant Japanese vessel.

WWII

Japanese Battleship Yamato Makes Its Final Stand

Dy Gerald Astor

In the late afternoon of April 6, 1945, five days after American GIs and leathernecks scrambled onto an Okinawa beach a scant 500 miles from Japan, two U.S. Read more

WWII

From Around the Network

Protestant Heroes of 1622

Alvin Landis: Prosecutor at Nuremberg

Panzer Lehr Division’s Assault on Bastogne

Alvan Gillem’s Invasion of Germany