Allies

Taking Tinian: Crucial Airfield in the Marianas

By Nathan N. Prefer

The Marines were tired, eager for a rest the opportunity to get themselves and their equipment back into battle condition. Read more

Allies

WWII Aircraft: The Douglas C-54 Skymaster

By Sam McGowan

At the beginning of World War II, the globe seemed huge—covered by thousands of miles of ocean and uninhabited land mass, but by the time it ended everything had been brought closer together, thanks largely to the four-engine transports of the United States Army Air Transport Command, particularly the Douglas C-54 Skymaster. Read more

Allies

The Falaise Pocket Scourge: The RAF’s Hawker Typhoon

By Michael D. Hull

From the Supermarine Spitfire to the North American P-51 Mustang, and from the Soviet Yak series to the Vought F4U Corsair, the Allies were able to field a formidable array of fighter planes against the Axis powers in World War II. Read more

Allies

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

Allies

Divine Wind Over Okinawa

By Kelly Bell

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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

Allies

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