The North Africa campaign during World War II included major operations from early 1940 through the spring of 1943 as Allied forces fought Axis armies of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. For the Allies, victory in North Africa was critical for control of the Mediterranean Sea and future offensive operations in Italy. Axis forces hoped to dominate the Mediterranean and seize British-held Egypt, the Suez Canal, and potentially the oil fields of the Middle East. The Allies were victorious in North Africa campaign, and the defeat of Axis forces at the Battle of El Alamein was a turning point during World War II.
North Africa
Today’s Navy SEALs (for Sea, Air, and Land special warfare experts) have a history shrouded in secrecy. Commissioned in 1962, they are the most elite shore-area Special Forces in the world, concentrating on very select and often-clandestine intelligence gathering and precision strike missions. Read more
North Africa
John Hurst Edmondson, known to his friends as Jack, died April 14, 1941, lying on the concrete floor of a sand-swept fighting outpost in the perimeter around Tobruk, Libya. Read more
North Africa
On the evening of June 16, 1940, Marshal Henri Philippe Pétain was appointed Prime Minister of France. It was a critical time. Read more
North Africa
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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A regiment of Bavarian infantry advanced quietly in the dark, rising from its own trenches and moving toward the French lines across the desolate no-man’s-land in between. Read more
North Africa
Since the end of World War II, the aviation press has made the North American P-51 Mustang into the superstar Allied fighter of the war. Read more
North Africa
For centuries wounded soldiers of every nation were responsible for much of their own care. Medical attention was primitive and often not a high priority for military planners beyond the officer corps. Read more
North Africa
One day shortly after the Battle of El Guettar in central Tunisia in March 1943, Colonel William O. Read more
North Africa
He came highly recommended, praised by General George C. Marshall as “one of the best.” But ultimately from these high hopes and expectations would come disastrous failure. Read more
North Africa
The Carthaginian hero Hannibal Barca has long been considered to have possessed one of history’s greatest military minds. Read more
North Africa
In 1989, this writer had occasion to interview four-star General William Childs Westmoreland, now 86, formerly U.S. military commander in South Vietnam and at the time of the interview a retired Chief of Staff of the Army. Read more
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Superficially, Phil Cochran personified the WWII fighter pilot, a combat daredevil, nonchalant about the niceties of rank and zealous in pursuit of what he called “chicks.” Read more
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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
North Africa
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
North Africa
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
North Africa
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
North Africa
Steaming through the summer Mediterranean night, the world having gone sour in two awful months, British Vice Admiral Sir James Somerville read the message just sent to him from London: “You are charged with one of the most disagreeable and difficult tasks that a British Admiral has ever been faced with, but we have complete confidence in you and rely on you to carry it out relentlessly.” Read more
North Africa
Byzantium, the successor state to ancient Rome, lasted over a thousand years. But it all could have been different because its first major enemy—Persia—was a fierce and determined competitor bent on the Empire’s demise. Read more
North Africa
General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” Read more
North Africa
Rain battered the shore and the seas were rough on the night of October 21, 1942. Under the surface of the water, a submarine carried the Allies’ best hope for turning the tide of war in 1942. Read more
