Battle of Britain
Bombed almost daily for several months and in fear of an imminent German invasion, the British were hanging on by their fingernails when September 1940 came. Read more
Battle of Britain
On March 5, 1936, the new Supermarine Type 300 took off from Southampton, England. The plane would soon be called the Spitfire, and along with the Hawker Hurricane it would become Great Britain’s first line of defense. Read more
Battle of Britain
The first of the three Eagle Squadrons was formed at Church Fenton, Yorkshire, in September 1940. The idea of forming an all-American squadron in the RAF was not a wildly popular one— with either the British or the Americans. Read more
Battle of Britain
In April 1941, things were going quite well for the German armed forces. In a series of earlier campaigns, they had conquered Poland, the Low Countries, Norway, and France. Read more
Battle of Britain
German defenders hunkered in their concrete and steel bunkers along the Normandy coast were in for two major shocks on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more
Battle of Britain
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
Battle of Britain
It was around noon, June 19, 1940, when a small caravan of cars set out from Antibes in southern France en route to the Spanish border. Read more
Battle of Britain
“What General Weygand has called the Battle of France is over,” intoned British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. “The Battle of Britain is about to begin.” Read more
Battle of Britain
In May 1941, General Kurt Student’s elite paratrooper forces descended like an anvil on the British garrison defending Crete. Read more
Battle of Britain
On a bright spring day in 1944, a Luftwaffe Focke-Wulf 190 fighter encountered a formation of U.S. Read more
Battle of Britain
On the evening of August 7, 1937, two neophyte radio broadcasters went to dinner together at the luxurious Adlon Hotel in Berlin, Germany. Read more
Battle of Britain
In the annals of World War II, one of the most famous airplanes is the British-developed Supermarine Spitfire, an agile, elliptical-wing fighter that has become synonymous with the Royal Air Force victory in the Battle of Britain. Read more
Battle of Britain
First, there was a faint drone, with black specks visible in the sunny sky. Then the drone grew into a thunder, and hundreds of bombers appeared over London. Read more
Battle of Britain
On May 9, 1936, four days after Italian troops entered Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa, Mussolini appeared on a balcony of Rome’s Palazzo Venezia to proclaim Victor Emmanuel emperor of the newly created Italian East Africa. Read more
Battle of Britain
Within hours of the entry of Great Britain and France into World War II on September 3, 1939, the British liner SS Athenia was sunk by a German U-boat off the northwestern coast of Ireland, with the loss of 112 dead, including 28 American citizens. Read more
Battle of Britain
On June 6, 1944, as the massive Allied naval armada made its way from ports in England across the English Channel to launch the projected D-day invasion at Normandy, a German fleet sortie swept down from its home ports on the North Sea and from occupied Norway. Read more
Battle of Britain
The popular conception of the struggle in the air over northern Europe during World War II is of squadrons of sleek fighters racing over the German heartland to protect contrailed streams of lumbering bombers stretching beyond sight. Read more
Battle of Britain
By the summer of 1940, Hitler’s Nazi war machine had advanced from victory to victory, crushing Poland, overrunning France and the Low Countries, and ejecting Allied forces from the continent of Europe at Dunkirk. Read more
Battle of Britain
In early September 1940, the world was in turmoil. The battle of Britain was nearing its climax, and elsewhere global tensions ran high. Read more
Battle of Britain
Still stunned by the sneak Japanese onslaught on the Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, American families tried to summon up their Christmas spirit in December 1941. Read more
