Spring 2021

Volume 12, No. 3

Cover: German Junkers Ju 87 Stuka dive bomber aircraft hunt for targets over the Soviet Union.
Photo: Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-631-3749-35A; Photo: W. Wanderer.

WWII Quarterly, Editorial

In Case You Missed It—More WWII in the News

JFK’s “other” PT boat found—in New York!

With the contentious 2020 election finally behind us, it’s time to remember a war hero and previous president—John Fitzgerald Kennedy. Read more

WWII Quarterly, Vehicles

Hitler’s ‘Swimming Car’: The German Type 166 Schwimmwagen

By Blaine Taylor

In the spring of 1940, as the German armed forces were sweeping across Western Europe, famed automobile designer Dr. Read more

Arthur Beaumont’s depiction of the Japanese first wave attack that destroyed several VMF-211 aircraft and killed 23 Marines. A total of 52 U.S. military personnel died during the 16-day battle and over 400 were taken prisoner.

WWII Quarterly

Wake Island: Japan’s First Setback

By Nathan N. Prefer

It didn’t look like much—just a speck in the vast ocean. Most travelers spent only a night in the Pan American Hotel and never ventured far from the small adjoining airfield. Read more

Lying in the rubble of Weisweiler, a German town between Aachen and Jülich, an American rifleman from the 84th Infantry Division takes aim at an enemy position. A massive American-British-Canadian offensive in early 1945 was designed to quickly break through enemy lines and cross the Rhine, but a combination of winter weather, flooded fields, and determined German resistance made progress slower than the Allies had hoped for.

WWII Quarterly

Operation Grenade: Race to the Roer

By Allyn Vannoy

In early 1945, while the American First Army was focusing on the dams of the Roer River near the German-Belgium border and Patton’s Third Army was probing the Eifel and clearing the Saar-Moselle triangle, the First Canadian Army was about to open their offensive as part of Operation Veritable in a drive southeast up the left bank of the Rhine from the vicinity of Nijmegen. Read more

WWII Quarterly

Lucky All The Way!

By Susan Zimmerman

During World War II, many of England’s Royal Air Force (RAF) Class A airfields were made available to the U.S. Read more

Three French soldiers one of whom is armed with a French Chatellerault Model 1924/29 light machine gun, loosely based on the American Browning Automatic Rifle, stand guard at a log bunker in a forest on the border with Germany. Although French weapons were as good or better than German ones, Hitler’s troops possessed better leadership and tactical decision-making. After only one month and 15 days of intense fighting, the French government was forced to capitulate in order to spare the country from destruction.

WWII Quarterly

France Avenged!

By Alan Davidge

That France made an early exit from hostilities at the start of World War II is well known. Read more

In a painting by John Hamilton, the battle cruiser HMS Hood (left) explodes and breaks up as the battleship HMS Prince of Wales moves out of range of the assailant, the Bismarck, in the Denmark Strait, May 24, 1940. Over 1,400 British sailors went down with Hood in one of history's last clashes between capital ships.

WWII Quarterly

Three Minutes of Fury

by Mark Carlson

The era of the battleship reached its apogee at Tsushima Strait in May 1905, when Admiral Heihachiro Togo’s powerful Japanese battleships annihilated the Russian fleet in the Russo-Japanese War. Read more

A camouflaged half-track playing the role of a tank destroyer pauses in the blistering desert heat of the American West during maneuvers. Desert training in the United States was intended to prepare American soldiers for the hardships of combat in North Africa.

WWII Quarterly

Company B’s Tunisian Adventure

By Christopher Miskimon

For the United States Army, the long road to Germany began in the mountainous deserts of Tunisia in mid-November 1942. Read more

Early in the attempt to defeat the Soviet Union, German aircraft controlled the skies. Here three Junkers Ju-87 Stuka dive bombers fly high over their target city of Novgorod. The dive bombers proved effective as airborne artillery against ground targets, but the growing number of Soviet fighters soon took their toll of the Luftwaffe.

WWII Quarterly

Struggle for Stalin’s Skies

By Kelly Bell

On February 3, 1943, Lieutenant Herbert Kuntz of the 100th Bomber Group made the last flight by any German pilot over the Soviet city of Stalingrad. Read more

Spring 2021

From Around the Network

Rosie the Riveter: The Real Women Behind the Iconic Image

The French 75 Gun: The Secret Cannon Used for Over Half a Century

Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers

The ‘Grand Old Lady’ Packed a Wallop