artillery
For much of its history, artillery has been a weapon of mass destruction and attrition, a force designed to cause casualties, destroy fortifications, and wear an enemy down with its noise, explosions, and shrapnel. Read more
artillery
By summer’s end 1944 Adolf Hitler, along with much of his staff, began to realize that Germany was in serious danger of losing the war. Read more
artillery
World War I’s stalemate on the Western Front ushered up varied solutions. The Allies developed tanks for traversing no man’s land to get at the enemy. Read more
artillery
Fifty years have gone by since the inception of the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor at Fort Knox, Ky., Read more
artillery
“Where is Steiner?” Adolf Hitler demanded as his Thousand Year Reich crumbled around him in April 1945. “Is he attacking yet?” Read more
artillery
Martha Custis Washington, wife of General George Washington, came to the winter quarters of her husband’s army each winter of the Revolutionary War. Read more
artillery
Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more
artillery
It was nearly 11 on the morning of September 20, 1863, and the woods around slow-moving Chickamauga Creek in northwest Georgia were ominously quiet. Read more
artillery
For some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more
artillery
In early 1942 things could have hardly looked bleaker for the Allies. In Europe, Hitler’s war machine had steamrolled across the entire continent and was now battling before the gates of Moscow. Read more
artillery
The captured German pilot was cocky and boastful. He had just parachuted into the American airfield, now lit up by the fires of burning Republic P-47 Thunderbolts, a sprinkling of bright torches amid the gray January gloom and the dirty white snow. Read more
artillery
The “Mark IV” tank of World War I was rhomboidal in shape and came in two basic versions: male and female. Read more
artillery
by Ludwig Heinrich Dyck
Ever since Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453 they became the relentless terror of Christendom. Read more
artillery
In May 1945—70 years ago—the Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF) sent out a terse, unemotional, 15-word communiqué: “The mission of this Allied force was fulfilled at 0241 local time, May 7, 1945.” Read more
artillery
By Bill Warnock
…He pulled a rusty American helmet from the ground. It had been an easy target for his metal detector, and as WWII relics went, this one proved something special. Read more
artillery
The harvest of death in the farm fields of western Maryland was a heavy one on September 17, 1862. Read more
artillery
The gray and blue soldiers were encamped south of Nashville, Tennessee, at the rail depot of Murfreesboro. Read more
artillery
In the early morning of December 16, 1944, 80-man German shock companies from the 5th Panzer Army slipped toward the American lines in the Ardennes region under the cover of heavy fog. Read more
artillery
On February 7, 1943, while on patrol in the Southwest Pacific Ocean, U.S. Navy Commander Howard W. Gilmore, commander of the USS Growler (SS-215), and his crew carved out a place for themselves in Navy legend and set a standard of duty that is remembered in the submarine service today. Read more
artillery
War spared no one. As modern armies clashed in France’s Normandy countryside, French civilians found themselves in the crossfire or on the receiving end of bombs and heavy weapons. Read more
