Royal Air Force
He was widely regarded as America’s best pilot, he was already a recipient of the Medal of Honor, he was commander of the Eighth Air Force caught up in 1,000-plane bombing missions deep into the Third Reich, and he was mad as hell. Read more
Royal Air Force
“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
Royal Air Force
Bradley could have been referring to German General Erwin Rommel. While Rommel was winning the war of desert armor tactics during 1941-1942 in the North African Campaign, he was losing the war of logistics. Read more
Royal Air Force
It was a letter in the London Times that caught the attention of British wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Read more
Royal Air Force
Shortly after 8 am on June 6, 1944, a German officer overlooking the Vierville-sur-Mer Draw on Omaha Beach reported that the soldiers defending the beach were repelling the Americans: “The enemy is in search of cover behind the coastal zone obstacles. Read more
Royal Air Force
In the summer of 1940, the vaunted Luftwaffe, fresh from its victories in the skies of France and the Low Countries, began its aerial assault in an attempt to either bring Britain to “peace” terms or destroy the Royal Air Force as a prelude to Operation Sea Lion, the invasion of southeastern England. Read more
Royal Air Force
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
Royal Air Force
During early World War II operations in the Pacific, Geoff Fisken would become one of the most outstanding pilots of the RNZAF—the Royal New Zealand Air Force. Read more
Royal Air Force
It was November 1, 1944. I, Feldwebel (Technical Sergeant) Gustav Jack Lothar Carl Herbert Julius Hans Jergen Hildebrandt von Lengerke (aka “Jack” Hildebrandt), had just completed a successful strafing run against British General Bernard “Monty” Montgomery’s advancing army along the southern end of the Dutch-Belgian border. Read more
Royal Air Force
It was a beautiful September day over Holland. Gradually, a faint rumble began to grow, and the sunny sky was darkened. Read more
Royal Air Force
In November 1861, word swept through London that an American warship, James Adger, in port at Southampton, was planning to put to sea and intercept a British ship bringing Confederate emissaries to Europe. Read more
Royal Air Force
The Eighth Air Force—the “Mighty Eighth”—became the stuff of U.S. Air Force legend when its fleets of unprotected Boeing B-17 “Flying Fortress” heavy bombers flew massive air raids against the heavily guarded German industrial heartland during the period between the end of January through the middle of October 1943. Read more
Royal Air Force
By the mid-1930s many people in Australia were concerned that if war came to Europe that Great Britain would not be able to come to their defense against a growing and aggressive Japanese Empire. Read more
Royal Air Force
Wing Commander Guy P. Gibson of Royal Air Force Bomber Command was handed the most challenging assignment of his six-year career in the spring of 1943. Read more
Royal Air Force
“Am over enemy submarine in position …”
Cut off in mid-transmission, this contact report came from a U.S. Read more
Royal Air Force
British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who rode in a cavalry charge in the Sudan in 1898, escaped from the Boers in 1899 and served for six months as a troop leader in the Western Front trenches in 1915-1916, remarked during World War II, “The only thing that ever really frightened me during the war was the U-boat peril.” Read more
Royal Air Force
All the pilots of No. 71 (Eagle) Squadron, Royal Air Force, had been ordered to report to the briefing room on the afternoon of August 18, 1942. Read more
Royal Air Force
Bombed almost daily for several months and in fear of an imminent German invasion, the British were hanging on by their fingernails when September 1940 came. Read more
Royal Air Force
World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Joseph Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more
Royal Air Force
For 33 months beginning in 1942, the U.S. Eighth Air Force and its precision daylight bombing strikes against German targets in Europe tried to pound the Third Reich into submission. Read more
