Allies

The Fall of Malaya: Japanese Blitzkrieg on Singapore

The moon like a tray was sinking in the western sea and the deep red sun showed its face to the east. Read more

Allies

From 747 to B-17: An Interview With Airline Pilot Robert Trammell

Delta Air Lines and former Northwest pilot Robert Trammell, 45, has made numerous 747 flights on Asian routes across the Pacific. Read more

Allies

With the “Ragtag Circus” Across Europe: The Story of Frank Fauver

The 83rd U.S. Infantry Division had been mobilized for World War I in September 1917. Its unit patch was a downward-pointing black triangle with the letters O-H-I-O stitched as an abstract gold monogram in the center. Read more

Allies

“I Survived the USS Franklin Inferno”

On March 19, 1945, the Essex-class carrier USS Franklin (CV-13), dubbed “Big Ben,” lay 50 miles off Honshu, one of Japan’s Home Islands. Read more

Allies

SCR-300 WW2 Radio Backpack: The “Walkie Talkie” That Shaped the War

Early in 1945, in the Northern Appenine mountains of Italy, T/5 Harvey, a radioman with the 10th Mountain Division, is carrying his WW2 radio backpack, the ever-handy SCR-300, into combat for the first time. Read more

Allies

Bridge House Hotel: Crimes of the Kempeitai in Shanghai

By the 1930s, Shanghai was already a legend in its own time––the most modern, populous, and decadent city in China. Read more

Allies

The Kempeitai: Japan’s Dreaded “Gestapo”

In Western countries, “military police” are associated in the public mind with keeping order among off-duty personnel, such as arresting drunken servicemen. Read more

Allies

Night of the Bloody Tiger: German Raid on a D-Day Exercise

Operation Bolero, the marshaling of Allied forces for the planned 1944 invasion of Normandy, was in full swing by late 1943, and much of England had been turned into a great armed camp. Read more

Allies

Amazing Photography of Normandy: D-Day Plus 1 Year

On June 6, 1945, two Stars & Stripes newspaper reporters traveled to Normandy with a mission: to photograph the effects of the year-old D-Day landings on the beaches, towns, and fields. Read more

Allies

D-Day: Over Normandy: A New Drone’s Eye View of the Iconic Beachhead

New technology has shaped the way we view our past. Breakthroughs in Computer Graphics, editing, and videography have allowed documentary filmmakers to present stories from different angles in order to enhance the viewer’s appreciation and understanding of a topic. Read more

Allies

WW2 Stories: 5 Compelling First-Hand Accounts from D-Day

The invasion of Normandy was one of the most audacious military campaigns in history. Nearly three million Allied personnel would participate in or support the Normandy operations. Read more

Allies

D-Day Casualties: Operation Overlord by the Numbers

The largest amphibious invasion in history began on the night of June 5-6, with the roar of C-47 engines preparing to take off , and climaxed on the beaches of Normandy. Read more

Allies

The WW2 Paratrooper: First-Hand Accounts of the D-Day Invasion

What was it like to be a WW2 paratrooper, parachuting into Normandy in the opening minutes of June 6, 1944—D-Day? Read more

Allies

B-29 Production

When Maj. Gen. Curtis Lemay, the hard-driving commander of the Twentieth U.S. Air Force based in Guam, decided to change tactics in early 1945 to boost the effectiveness of the B-29 Superfortress, it was the Bell Aircraft plant in Marietta, Georgia, that ultimately provided him with the stripped-down bombers that played such a key role in ending the war in the Pacific. Read more

Allies

Hideki Tojo vs Isoroku Yamamoto: Conflict in the Military Ranks

Three generations of Americans wrongly believe that General Hideki Tojo and Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto were equally culpable in starting the Pacific War. Read more

Allies

Rationing on the U.S. Home Front

In 1941-1942, British journalist Alistair Cooke traveled through the United States. In his description of his trip, American Home Front 1941-1942, he reported stopping for breakfast at a restaurant in West Virginia where, “the sugar was rationed at breakfast, and there was a note on the menu requesting that … in the interests of ‘national defense,’ keep to one cup of coffee.” Read more

Allies

Japanese Internment: Behind the Barbed Wire in America

“We were stunned when we entered the camp,” Yoshio “Yosh” Nakamura said, remembering the day when he and his family, from El Monte, California, were herded through the main gate at the Gila River Relocation Center—a Japanese American internment camp 30 miles southeast of Phoenix, Arizona—carrying only suitcases into which their worldly possessions had been crammed. Read more

Allies

Four Marines on the “Green Hell” of Guadalcanal

On August 6, 1942, the men of Maj. Gen. Alexander Vandegrift’s U.S. 1st Marine Division watched from the railings as their troopship, the USS George F. Read more

Allies

Women of the Air Force

In 1941 two events took place on opposite sides of the world that forever impacted the history of women in aviation. Read more

Allies

WWII Diary of a Boy Soldier: A Story of Youth and Resistance

Julian Kulski was only ten years old when he was introduced to war. As he hunted for mushrooms near Warsaw, Poland, he was struck by the unmistakable buzz of the German blitzkrieg:

“… we heard the sound of engines. Read more