August 2020

Volume 19, No. 5

Cover: GIs from the Third Armored Division ride on top of a Sherman tank as it approaches Stolberg, Germany in October, 1944.
Photo: National Archive

WWII History

From D-Day to VE-Day in a C-47

By Kevin Hymel

High over Normandy, France, eight paratroopers of the 82nd Airborne Division charged out the rear door of their C-47 Skytrain aircraft. Read more

WWII History

Into The Bitter Forest

By David H. Lippman

“In the early hours of 8 February 1945, I climbed into my command post, which consisted of a small platform halfway up a tree,” Lt. Read more

WWII History

Savage Fight for Hill 700 on Bougainville

By Nathan N. Prefer

The campaign to reduce the importance of the major Japanese base at Rabaul on the island of New Britain—begun more than a year earlier at Guadalcanal and Buna, New Guinea—was finally in its last stages by November 1943, as U.S. Read more

WWII History

Manstein’s Victorious Panzers

By William E. Welsh

Deep snow blanketed the steppes surrounding the northeastern Ukrainian city of Kharkov on February 6, 1943. The soldiers of Major Kurt Meyer’s reconnaissance battalion of SS Panzer Division Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler shivered from the cold. Read more

WWII History

An Ace in a day: Ted Crosby’s Air War in the Pacific

By Eric Niderost

Lieutenant (j.g.) John “Ted” Crosby banked his Grumman F6F-5 Hellcat around, observing the life-and-death drama that was unfolding below him. Read more

WWII History, Editorial

USS West Virginia survived Pearl Harbor to reach Tokyo Bay.

Her wounds had been grievous that morning in 1941, when Japanese torpedo bombers swept low over the shallow waters of Pearl Harbor and unleashed their deadly cargoes at the easy targets moored along Battleship Row. Read more

WWII History, Profile

American Tank Ace Lafayette Pool

By Christopher Miskimon

A column of American M-4 Sherman medium tanks moved through Dison, Belgium, in late summer 1944, near the city of Liege. Read more

Aircraft manufactured in the U.S. await their new owners, the Soviet Red Air Force, at an airfield in Iran. The U.S. supplied several types of aircraft to the Soviet Union through Lend-Lease, including the A-20, P-39, P-40, B-25, and AT-6.

WWII History, Ordnance

Douglas A-20 Havoc Bomber: The Scourge of Axis Shipping

By Robert F. McEniry

Following the apocalyptic initial phase of Operation Barbarossa starting on June 22, 1941, the Germans inflicted crippling losses on the Red Army Air Forces (VVS) and the Soviet Naval Air Forces (VVS-VMF). Read more

WWII History, Insight

The Japanese Surrender at Tokyo Bay

By Michael D. Hull

After six years of global destruction, suffering, and death, World War II was almost over in the Spring of 1945. Read more

WWII History, Books

Witness to Okinawa

By Christopher Miskimon

On April 1, 1945, Major Arthur Shaw leaned against the railing of an attack transport ship and stared into the distance at the island of Okinawa. Read more

WWII History, Simulation Gaming

August Military Games

By Joseph Luster

We’ve previously covered the original Panzer Corps, which is a fantastic and, at this point, classic entry in the realm of PC strategy games. Read more

August 2020

From Around the Network

Robert Forsyth’s ‘To Save an Army’

WW2 Leaders: Carl von Mannerheim, Finland’s “Founding Father”

The Battle of Narvik: Crippling the Kriegsmarine

King Henry VIII of England and the Siege of Boulogne: His Last War