An artist’s depiction of the USS Indianapolis disaster. The cruiser, with nearly 1,200 men aboard, sank within 12 minutes of being torpedoed by the Japanese submarine I-58 on July 30, 1945; only 316 men survived after several days in the shark-infested waters. (Painting by maritime artist Chris Mayger)

Spring 2022

Volume 13, No. 3

Cover: A German Fallschirmjäger, armed with a Fallschirmjägergewehr 42 (FG 42), takes cover in Normandy.
Photo: Bundesarchiv Bild 101I-738-0293-01, Photo: Arthur Grimm.

WWII Quarterly, Editorial

Throwing Heroes Under the Bus

Here at WWII Quarterly, and in all my book writing, I spend a lot of time advancing my deeply held belief that military heroes—men and women who, over the decades, have put their lives on the line (and sometimes gave their lives in the process) to serve their country for a higher ideal and the causes for which they fought—deserve our enduring praise. Read more

Constructed on the platform of the M4 Sherman tank, the M10 “Wolverine” tank destroyer sported a 76mm high-velocity gun that had better armor-piercing capability than the Sherman’s standard 75mm gun, but a fatal flaw was the slow, hand-cranked turret. Here an M10 crosses a stream somewhere on the Belgium-German border, March 1945.

WWII Quarterly, Ordnance

Sergeant Dean Kenney and the M10 Tank Destroyer

by Gen. Raymond E. Bell Jr.

The tank-destroyer branch of the U.S. Army was possibly the shortest-lived of all the Army’s branches in World War II. Read more

Weary of fighting, a Japanese soldier raises his hands in surrender at Roi-Namur as a companion begins climbing out of a hole near the center of this photograph. These are two of only a handful of Japanese troops that survived the fighting on Roi-Namur, choosing surrender rather than suicide. A wary Marine covers the prisoner with his rifle, taking no chances.

WWII Quarterly

4th Marine Division in the Marshall Islands: First Time Under Fire

By Cleve C. Barkley

As 1943 drew to a close, Admiral Chester Nimitz’s Central Pacific campaign was gaining momentum. His forces had taken the Gilbert Islands that November and now targeted the Marshall Islands as the next step on the long road to Tokyo. Read more

American paratroopers, with their weapons at the ready, advance cautiously through a field near Carentan littered with the bodies of their comrades, picked off by German sharpshooters, June 14, 1944.

WWII Quarterly

Bloody D-Day Clash for Carentan

By Mitch Yockelson

On Tuesday, June 6, 1944, at nearly three in the morning, Chicago-native Lieutenant John E. Peters safely landed Snooty, his Douglas C-47 Skytrain, on the massive 5,800-foot runway at Greenham Common airfield in southern England. Read more

WWII Quarterly

Chariot of Fire

By Alan Davidge

The year 1942 started disastrously for Britain, just as 1941 had ended badly for the United States. Japan’s entry into the war not only devastated the U.S. Read more

WWII Quarterly

Flak Gunner for the Luftwaffe

Interview by Allyn R. Vannoy

An estimated 1.2 million people were employed by the German ground-based air-defense system by the end of the war in Europe. Read more

WWII Quarterly

A Survivor’s Tale

By Flint Whitlock

The mission was top secret. The heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis (CA-35) had just delivered the last parts of the atomic bomb from California to the island of Tinian and was heading, unescorted, to Guam when it was intercepted by a Japanese submarine, the I-58, and torpedoed on July 30, 1945. Read more

WWII Quarterly

Flying “The Jug”

By Janis Allen

BACKSTORY: 2nd Lt. Edwin Cottrell served in the U.S. Army Air Forces from August 1942 through 1945, then enlisted in the Air Force Reserves in 1950 and completed 28 years in uniform, retiring as a colonel in the Air Force. Read more

With armor support, Red Army soldiers advance toward a burning farmhouse in the rugged Carpathian Mountain region. Hitler thought that the Soviet counteroffensive had run out of steam—but he was wrong.

WWII Quarterly

The Battle of Targul Frumos: A Defensive Stand on the Eastern Front

By Pat McTaggart

May 1, 1944. Marshal of the Soviet Union Ivan Stepanovich Konev had a right to be pleased with himself and his men as he gazed at the maps spread before him. Read more

Advancing past a knocked-out Mk IV panzer, an American infantry patrol picks its way through the rubble of a Normandy village, wrecked during the Operation Cobra bombings. Cobra was launched to break through the second line of German defenses and regain the momentum lost after the initial Operation Overlord landings.

WWII Quarterly

Normandy Breakout

By Brian Todd Carey

Concentrated against the beaches of Normandy on June 6, Operation Overlord landed 9 army divisions plus support troops on five beaches in anticipation of a breakout across France and toward Berlin. Read more

Spring 2022

From Around the Network

A Memorable Marine Mascot

The World War II Diary of Lieutenant General James. M. Gavin

Briton Warrior Queen Boudicca

Survival: The Story of the USS Franklin