Shortly after his rescue by elite German troops, Mussolini prepares to board a Fieseler Storch for a flight to safety.

Erwin Rommel

The Fieseler Storch Fi 156

by Blaine Taylor

On March 12, 1939, Heroes’ Memorial Day (or Veterans Day) in the Nazi Third Reich, the thousands of onlookers at the giant annual parade in Berlin were treated to an unusual sight as a small monoplane landed on the Unter den Linden between Hermann Göring’s State Opera House and the Neue Wache (New Guardshouse). Read more

Paratroopers and their supplies descend into danger during a daylight airborne operation in The Drop by Albert Richards.

Erwin Rommel

Attack on The Merville gun battery during D-Day

By Robert Barr Smith

Just boys facing danger, please God make them men; If they live through the danger, make them boys once again.      —Sergeant Ginger Woodcock, June 5, 1944

On the morning of June 6, 1944, the greatest amphibious fleet in history bore in toward the coast of Normandy. Read more

Erwin Rommel

The Battle of France: Furor Teutonicus & Gallic Débâcle

By Blaine Taylor

The year 1939 was one of massive military parades across Europe. On April 20, the largest ever was held in Berlin to celebrate Adolf Hitler’s birthday, complete with the paratroopers, wheeled artillery, tanks, half-tracks for motorized infantry, and overhead Luftwaffe fly-bys that would mark the coming campaigns and revolutionize warfare forever. Read more

Erwin Rommel

From Sahara’s Heart: Unearthing A Curtiss P-40 Kittyhawk

By Michael Haskew

The ghosts of World War II continue to surface in remote corners of the globe.

Decades after the war in North Africa ended, another reminder of the early and uncertain days in that theater came to the attention of the media and excited historians with a snapshot of a pilot’s ordeal in the unforgiving Egyptian desert where he was forced to land a crippled fighter plane. Read more