british military history

Reginald Earnshaw: The Youngest British Casualty

By Michael E. Haskew

Duty in the British Merchant Navy was hazardous during World War II. Braving the stormy Atlantic, the expanse of the Pacific, and the daily rigors of life aboard ship were challenging enough during peacetime; however, during the dark days of the war a determined enemy, bent on bringing the island nation and its far-flung empire to their knees, unleashed a vicious campaign against Britain’s merchant lifeline. Read more

The island of Guernsey is oddly patrolled by two British bobbies and a German sentry. The Channel Islands were the only British territory to endure occupation by the Nazis during World War II.

british military history

Secret Agent Man: The Story of Eddie Chapman

By Peter Kross

Nations have often pressed unsavory characters and criminals into service during wartime, rationalizing that such action is in the best interest of the country during extraordinary times. Read more

british military history

Mission Critical Overlord Weather

By Gene J. Pfeffer

Operation Overlord, the cross-Channel attack that hit the Nazi-occupied beaches of Normandy in 1944, was the culmination of a grand strategy adopted early in the war, followed sporadically during the years of conflict, and aimed at defeating Hitler’s Reich by striking directly at Germany by invasion. Read more

british military history

Red Sea Naval War

By Vincent P. O’Hara & Enrico Cernuschi

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

british military history

Tale of the Biscuit Bomber: The C-47 in WWII

By Sam McGowan

Even though, technically at least, it was not a combat airplane, the performance of the Douglas C-47 transport led General of the Army Dwight Eisenhower to label it as one of the most important weapons of World War II. Read more

british military history

Barrier at Monte Cassino

By John Brown

The Gustav Line, stretching across Italy at its narrowest part between Gaeta and Ortona, was a formidable system of defenses, some of it in coastal marshes but mainly in mountainous country through which ran fast-flowing rivers. Read more

british military history

Italy’s North African Misadventure

By Walter S. Zapotoczny

When most people think of the Italian Army in North Africa during World War II, they tend to believe that the average Italian soldier offered little resistance to the Allies before surrendering. Read more

british military history

King as Pawn

By Eric Niderost

On May 6, 1939, King George VI of Great Britain and his wife Queen Elizabeth arrived in Portsmouth to board the liner Empress of Australia, which was to take them to Canada and subsequently to the United States. Read more

british military history

The St. Nazaire Raid

By Flint Whitlock

Britain badly needed a victory. As if to underline Britain’s difficult fortunes, on May 21, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck and heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen dealt the island kingdom a serious blow by sinking the battlecruiser HMS Hood and severely damaging the new battleship HMS Prince of Wales during a furious engagement in the Denmark Strait.  Read more

british military history

Twisting the Lion’s Tail: Dutch Raid up the Medway River

By Eric Niderost

Lieutenant-Admiral Michiel de Ruyter was a man of action, but he could be formidable even in repose On June 7, 1667, de Ruyter was sitting in the great cabin of the Dutch flagship Harderwijk listening stolidly while Cornelius de Witt finally revealed his plans for a raid on England to a group of assembled naval officers. Read more

british military history

The Relief of Ladysmith

By John Brown

In the early hours of October 12, 1899, Commandant-General Piet Joubert and 15,000 Boers crossed the border between Transvaal and Natal near Laing’s Nek in southern Africa. Read more

A company of exhausted and wounded members of the English Coldstream Guards and 20th East Devonshire Regiment stagger down from the heights of Inkerman in this 1877 painting, The Return From Inkerman, by Lady Elizabeth Thompson Butler.

british military history

Inkerman: The Soldiers’ Battle

By Victor Kamenir

When armed hostilities flared up between the Russian and Ottoman Empires in 1853 over control of holy places in Turkish-ruled Jerusalem, Great Britain was quick to throw its weight behind the Ottomans. Read more

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  • A litany of defeats followed the Italian military victories in Ethiopia and Albania, precipitating the rapid fall from power of Benito Mussolini.

    WWII

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  • Australian, New Zealand, Dutch, and British prisoners of war lay track on the Burma-Thailand “Death Railway” near Ronsi, Burma, 1943. More than 12,000 Allied POWs and tens of thousands of Asian civilian workers died while working on the line. The Japanese needed the railway to supply Japanese forces in occupied Burma and exploit that country’s natural resources.

    WWII

    Building Burma’s Notorious “Death Railway”
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