Editorial

The Legend of the Black Sheep

In the 1970s, actor Robert Conrad starred in Baa Baa Black Sheep, leading a band of brawling, hard-drinking U.S. Marine fighter pilots flying their Vought F4U Corsairs against the best Japanese fighter jockeys in the Solomon Islands, and the show became a staple of weeknight television viewing. Read more

Editorial

More World War II in the News

Hardly a month goes by that there isn’t something related to World War II in the news. Here’s a sampling of some recent news items—all from February 2019:

Identification Sought

On January 3, 1944, the destroyer USS Turner (DD-648) exploded under still mysterious circumstances near the entrance to New York Harbor. Read more

Editorial

Russia’s Time of Troubles

The Varangians founded a number of fortified towns in Slavic Russia in the 9th century that would become seats of Eastern Christian principalities. Read more

Editorial

The Scholarly Spies

By Tim Miller

Early in June 1940, refugees from northern France and the low Countries who had flooded Paris in May fled with the residents of the city as the German advance neared. Read more

Editorial

Sinking the USS Reuben James

By Joseph Connor, Jr.

When the destroyer USS Reuben James (DD-245) was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic in the autumn of 1941, its crew had a sense of foreboding and feared the worst. Read more

Editorial

Desmond Doss

By Mike Haskew

On April 1, 1945, the American X Army landed at Okinawa, just 340 miles from the home islands of Japan. Read more

Editorial

The Last Doolittle Raider: 75 Years After the Daring Mission

By Michael E. Haskew

Lieutenant Colonel Dick Cole is 101 years old. In April he attended observances of the 75th anniversary of the famed Doolittle Raid on Tokyo that marked the first effort by American bombers to inflict damage on the Japanese home islands during World War II. Read more

Editorial

Weighing the Odds of Crusader Success

The christian crusaders that marched south into Ottoman Rumelia in 1444 bet heavily that the combined power of Poland, Hungary, and Wallachia would prove sufficient to break the iron grip the Ottoman Porte had on the southern Balkans. Read more

The flat terrain of the Anzio battlefield provided no cover and little concealment. Here GIs burrow into their water-filled foxholes and wait for the next German assault.

Editorial

Rangers ravaged at Cisterna 75 years ago.

To this day, controversy continues to swirl around Operation Shingle and its agonizing aftermath. The Allied landings at Anzio, intended to outflank the German Gustav Line in Italy, occurred in January 1944. Read more

Editorial

March to Destruction: Nicopolis 1396

A delegation from the Kingdom of Hungary seeking military aid to fight the Ottomans undertook a diplomatic mission in the spring of 1395 to a number of great cities in France and Burgundy. Read more

Romans under Prefect Lucius Eggius storm a German rampart consisting of a waist-high palisade of stakes interlaced with twigs and branches that ran along the top of an embankment.

Editorial

How Arminius Deceived the Holy Roman Empire

By William E. Welsh

With their proclivity for feats of engineering, the Romans methodically advanced their frontiers. The glory-seeking Roman generals saw a wide river, mountain chain, or expansive swath of desert as a challenge. Read more