POW

The Fort Pillow Incident

By Roy Morris Jr.

When Confederate Maj. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest and his 3,000 battle-hardened troopers rode back into their homeland of West Tennessee in late March 1864, they were not in the best of moods. Read more

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The Frémont Emancipation Proclamation

By Lawrence Weber

As the early days of the Civil  War were unfolding and the destiny of the republic was beginning to be contested on the battlefield, Abraham Lincoln was engaged in a no less perilous type of battle. Read more

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Women of the Air Force

By Amy Goodpaster Strebe

In 1941 two events took place on opposite sides of the world that forever impacted the history of women in aviation. Read more

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The Imperial War Museum

By Roy Stevenson

Although Britain has a number of war museums, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) is acknowledged as the Holy Grail of them all—the one you must visit when in London. Read more

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The Graf Spee & Britain’s First Naval Victory of World War II

By David Lippman

As soon as the British radio operator started batting out the distress signal on December 2, 1939, the German pocket battleship opened up with a 37mm gun. Read more

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Operation Aphrodite

By Mason B. Webb

When it came to advanced military technology in World War II, arguably no one was better at it than Nazi Germany, whose scientists Adolf Hitler keep busy trying to invent the ultimate “super weapon” capable of defeating his enemies. Read more

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Rampage on the Riviera: Operation Dragoon

By Glenn Barnette and André Bernole

Early in 1944, German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel, the defeated hero of North Africa and now head of Army Group B in France, was tasked with strengthening the Atlantic Wall defenses against Allied invasion. Read more

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Tragic Surrender

By Mark Simmons

On Saturday, December 6, 1941, a Royal Australian Air Force Lockheed Hudson bomber on a reconnaissance mission from Khota Bahru on the west coast of Malaya was flying northwest over the China Sea toward the Gulf of Thailand. Read more

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Attack on the USS Panay

 By Chuck Lyons

For some Americans, World War II started early. In December 1937, four years before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor propelled the United States into the war, Japanese planes attacked an American gunboat, the USS Panay, on China’s Yangtze River, strafing and bombing the boat, sinking it, killing three American crew members, and the wounding 45 others. Read more

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Combat Soldier and Later, POW

By Ray Allen Miller

I was raised on a farm between Hickory and Conover, North Carolina, the oldest of nine children, and this is a brief accounting of my military, combat, and prisoner of war experience in World War II. Read more

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Bombs, Booze, and Broads

By Glenn Barnett

The date of November 10, 1942, is still vivid in the mind of Albert Wayne Boam. That was the day that he enlisted in the Army Air Corps, hoping to become a fighter pilot. Read more

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From Battlefield to Football

By Richard Statetzny with Ward Carr and Detlef Zer

BACKSTORY: Richard Statetzny was born on January 16, 1920, the youngest of five children, in Bieberswalde in the District of Osterode, East Prussia, Germany. Read more

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The Codebreakers’ War in the Atlantic

By Gene J. Pfeffer

The Battle of the Atlantic was a life-and-death struggle between the German Kriegsmarine and the Allied navies that was fought for control of Britain’s lifeline to its empire and to the United States. Read more

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Hiroshima’s Ground Zero Museum

By Flint Whitlock

Although located 420 miles west of Tokyo, the city of Hiroshima is today a tourist mecca, drawing tens of thousands of visitors from around the world for one single reason: to stand at the epicenter of history’s first nuclear explosion used against an enemy population. Read more

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Operation Chastise: Night of the Dambusters

By Mark Simmons

May 16, 1943, had been a sweltering spring day in England. At 9:39 pm, as the sun was dipping below the western horizon, leaving a rim of light and still good visibility, the first three of 19 Avro Lancaster bombers of No. Read more

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From Paratrooper to POW: Bob Nobles of the 82nd Airborne

By Kevin M. Hymel

“The lieutenant said for everyone to lay your arms down,” a fellow paratrooper told Pfc. Bob Nobles, who had been fighting for six grueling days in the hedgerows following his unit’s jump into Normandy. Read more

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The OSS and the Fourth Dimension of Warfare

By Bob Bergin

Major General John K. Singlaub was a young airborne lieutenant when he took up an offer from the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) to become engaged in “hazardous duty behind enemy lines.” Read more

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Japanese Attack on the Philippines: The “Other” Pearl Harbor

By Sam McGowan

While the surprise Japanese attacks against U.S. military bases in the Hawaiian Islands on December 7, 1941, are certainly the best-known aspect of the opening of hostilities between the two aLess well known today were the Japanese attacks on Clark Field and Iba Field on the opening day of hostilities in the Philippines. Read more

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Witnessing Patton’s Failure: A Prisoner’s View of the Task Force Baum Raid

By Eric Niderost

In December 1944 the vaunted Third Reich was in its death throes, crushed by Allied forces on all sides. Read more

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4 Unsolved Mysteries of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo

By Susan Zimmerman

April 18, 1942, will forever live in American military glory as the date of the Jimmy Doolittle Raid on Tokyo––a gutsy, never-before-attempted combat mission to fly North American B-25 Mitchell bombers off the deck of an aircraft carrier and attack an enemy capital. Read more