Mediterranean
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
Mediterranean
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
Mediterranean
Located 58 miles south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, the rocky, 122-square-mile island of Malta was the hinge upon which all Allied operations in the Middle East turned during the first half of World War II. Read more
Mediterranean
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
Mediterranean
In the 40 minutes between 7:50 and 8:30 am, on April 5, 1942, Royal Air force pilot Don McDonald experienced his air base being bombed in a Japanese surprise air raid that should never have been a surprise. Read more
Mediterranean
The first good news in the war for the United States had been the Doolittle Raid on April 18. Read more
Mediterranean
On February 15, 1942, the island fortress of Singapore surrendered with 130,000 men, thus ending the defense of Malaya as one of the largest military disasters in the history of British arms since Cornwallis’s capitulation to Franco-American forces at Yorktown in 1781 during America’s Revolutionary War. Read more
Mediterranean
Sergeant Charles Callistan looked through the sights of an antitank gun at an approaching enemy tank. His weapon, a six-pounder cannon, was in the perimeter of a surrounded British outpost named Snipe. Read more
Mediterranean
In the words of a veteran of the China-Burma-India Theater, retired Technical Sergeant Edward Rock Jr., [they] “served without a word of complaint or lack of courage. Read more
Mediterranean
Ernie Pyle did not want to go to Okinawa. He was too old, too tired, and—some said—too jaded for yet another American invasion of ferocious enemy territory. Read more
Mediterranean
The spring of 1941, particularly the month of May, was a troubled time for Great Britain. The German battleship Bismarck had sunk the huge British battlecruiser Hood in just six minutes and was making a getaway to the coast of German-occupied France. Read more
Mediterranean
Most Americans can recite the second line of the immortal “Marine Hymn” by memory, but few actually know what it means. Read more
Mediterranean
In the harbor of Tripoli, the 38-gun frigate USS Philadelphia, pride of the Mediterranean Squadron, lay at anchor. Read more
