U.S. troops hit the beach in North Africa on November 8, 1942. Operation Torch was the first major offensive action by American troops during the war against Nazi Germany.

British Royal Navy

Operation Torch and The Assassination of Admiral Jean Darlan

By Peter Kross

Less than a year after the sudden and devastating Japanese attack against the United States at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, the American military was about to embark on a large-scale offensive operation against German and Italian forces in North Africa. Read more

British Royal Navy

Battle of the Thames

By Christopher Miskimon

A British squadron lay wrecked on the waters of Lake Erie. Six vessels of war floated in ruins and 135 English sailors lay dead or wounded. Read more

‘Old Ironsides’ fires off a signal gun during the War of 1812. She never lost an engage- ment during her long ser- vice to the United States.

British Royal Navy

The USS Constitution

By John D. Gresham

Today restored to museum quality and lovingly cared for by a U.S. Navy crew, the USS Constitution, “Old Ironsides,” is the living symbol of America’s first generation of warships, built in response to external threats that a young United States would have preferred to ignore. Read more

By 1940, cruisers built under the post-World War I naval treaties were feeling their age. Anove, a captured Japanese photo- graph shows the HMS Cornwall succumbing to an air attack.

British Royal Navy

HMS Cornwall: a Symbol of British Naval Power

By William R. Hawkins

Following the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 (and roughly four years prior to the construction of the HMS Cornwall), cruisers became a focus of the interwar naval arms race, no less keenly felt by the British, whose survival depended on the sea-lane. Read more

British Royal Navy

Cape Matapan Triumph

By David H. Lippman

It was called “rodding,” and it was a complex manual procedure used by British cryptographers at Hut Eight in the Government Code and Cipher School at Bletchley Park to decipher Italian Naval Enigma coded messages. Read more

Wellington’s artillery commander at Waterloo said that without Henry Shrapnel’s devastating new shell, Allied forces could not have taken a key position on the battlefield.

British Royal Navy

Henry Shrapnel & The Battle of Waterloo

by Robert Whiter

“And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air …”

That, as most people know, is a line from the American national anthem, words by Francis Scott Key, to the tune of Anacreon in Heaven by John Stafford Smith. Read more

In a painting by Richard Eurich, British commandos drop from the night sky and scramble onto the beach during the daring raid on the Bruneval radio location station in coastal France, February 27-28, 1942.

British Royal Navy

Operation Biting: the Bruneval Raid to Capture German Radar

By Robert Barr Smith

Through the long, lovely days of the summer of 1940, almost two years before Operation Biting or the “Bruneval Raid,” Royal Air Force Spitfire and Hurricane fighter planes turned back the might of the Luftwaffe over southern and southeastern Britain. Read more

German cruiser SMS Konigsberg, displacing 3,400 tons, sailed from Germany for Africa in April 1914, just before the outbreak of World War I.

British Royal Navy

The German Cruiser Konigsberg

By Michael Vogel

The field telephone rang on the bridge of the trapped German cruiser SMS Konigsberg. On the other end of the line, the coast watcher spoke the words that had been dreaded for almost eight months—the British were coming. Read more

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