luftwaffe

Silent Blitzkrieg: the Battle of Fort Eben Emael

Belgian Fort Eben Emael was as close to impregnable as modern defense works could be—or so it seemed. Read more

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“Do You Recognize My Voice?”: The Question That Ended Operation Valkyrie

At 12:40 PM on a hot, sultry July 20, 1944, German Führer and Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, 55, was seated on a wicker stool in a conference hut at his principal Eastern Front headquarters at Wolf’s Lair, Rastenburg, East Prussia, for the mid-day wartime map meeting. Read more

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Boeing Wonderland: The Fake Cities on America’s West Coast

When I was a young boy in Seattle, my father told me about a fake town that had been built on top of Boeing’s Plant 2 during the war. Read more

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Convoy PQ 17: A Story of Unprecedented Arctic Disaster

First Sea Lord Admiral Sir Dudley Pound stopped tapping his pencil on the oaken desk and slowly leaned backward in the oversized leather chair. Read more

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A Pyrrhic Parachute Victory in Crete

In May 1941, General Kurt Student’s elite paratrooper forces descended like an anvil on the British garrison defending Crete. Read more

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The Second Great War (and the Weather that Defined it)

Weather has long played a vital role in human history. Kublai Khan’s attempted conquest of Japan was foiled when his invasion fleet was destroyed by a typhoon. Read more

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Iron Annie: The Junkers Ju-52

Shortly before dawn on May 20, 1941, a flight of 500 transport planes took off from seven airstrips on mainland Greece. Read more

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Secret Agent Man: The Story of Eddie Chapman

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

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The Soviet Dunkirk: The Tallinn Offensive

Early in World War II, a bitter joke circulated within the Soviet military. It ran, “What is the first thing Russia does when war is declared? Read more

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The Largest Plot to Kill Hitler? – Operation Valkyrie

For Nazi Party Führer (Leader) and German Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler, July 20th, 1944 dawned as a routine working day at his principal wartime military headquarters, the Wolfsschanze (Fort Wolf) in the East Prussian forest of Rastenburg, some three hundred air miles from Berlin, in what is today Poland. Read more

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Dueling Aces in Sevastopol

In June 1942, the Black Sea port of Sevastopol on the Crimea was the scene of some of the fiercest fighting of World War II. Read more

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Linchpin of the Mediterranean

It was the humid season on Malta that September of 1943. The hot Sirocco winds from North Africa blow from August to October across the cool sea, raising humidity. Read more

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The Red Baron

Manfred Albrecht Freiherr von Richthofen was born May 2, 1892, as the second of four children to Baron Albrecht and Kunigunde von Richthofen. Read more

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Chuck Yeager: Fighter Pilot

Major General Charles “Chuck” Yeager, United States Air force (Ret.), was one of a handful of people who could rightly claim the title “living legend.” Read more

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Operation Aphrodite: Drones versus V2 Rockets

In 1944, air traffic over southern Britain was almost at the New York City rush- hour level. On any given early morning, heavily laden B-17s and B-24s would be circling, laboriously assembling into formation for runs to targets in France and Germany. Read more

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British Paratrooper at Arnhem: An Interview With James Sims

Q: Could you give us a little personal background before we talk about your war experiences?

SIMS: I was born on April 29, 1925, at Sheffield in Yorkshire. Read more

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Victory Delayed: The Battle for Air Supremacy in World War II

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

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The Strange Death Of Air Marshal Italo Balbo

On May 26, 1940, as the armies of Nazi Germany roared across prostrate France and the British Expeditionary Force was in the midst of its evacuation by sea from the European continent, Italian Army Marshal Pietro Badoglio, 69, was in the waiting room of the Palazzo Venezia in Rome. Read more

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Operation Crusader at Sidi Rezegh—Siege of Tobruk

By the end of the second day visibility was reduced to almost zero. Burning hulks of everything from ME-109s to M3 “Honey” tanks, Panzer IIIHs, and trucks of all descriptions littered the battleground that was once an airfield. Read more

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Germany’s Deadly V-2 Rockets

Sixty-four-year-old Robert Stubbs slowly walked across the playing field of the Staveley Road School in the West London suburb of Chiswick. Read more