By Gene E. Salecker
The first explosion came as a complete surprise to everyone around Pearl Harbor. The Sunday had started out clear and bright, but the sky quickly darkened as great clouds of thick black smoke rose high above the burning ships.
Fuel oil spilled atop the water and caught fire,   More »

By Alex Zakrzewski

In late 1917, the most successful cavalry charge of World War I took place not on the muddy killing fields of the Western Front, but at the foot of the Judean Hills in southern Palestine. The sun had just begun to set over the desert town of Beersheba   More »

By Michael D. Hull
Of all the workhorse weapons in the Allies’ World War II arsenal, from the American M-4 Sherman medium tank and jeep to the British Handley Page Halifax bomber and 25-pounder field gun, none was more widely and effectively deployed than the Douglas C-47 transport plane.
Dubbed the Skytrain by   More »

By Sam McGowan
 Undoubtedly, the World War II aircraft type that attracts the most attention is the fighter plane. Yet, before the war, the U.S. Army Air Corps paid little attention to fighter development and tactics because its senior officers, with certain exceptions, would later lead the Army Air Forces with   More »

By Christopher Miskimon
Six battalions of Russian infantry, 30 cannons, and a cavalry force deployed in the North Valley east of Sevastopol near the town of Balaclava. They occupied three sides of the valley, looking down on it. The other end was in the hands of the British Army. Spread across   More »

By Mark Carlson
Lieutenant Dan Daspit, captain of the U.S. submarine Tinosa could notbelieve his luck. Framed neatly in the periscope eyepiece was a sitting duck. The 19,250-ton Japanese tanker Tonan Maru No. 3 was all alone, dead in the water. Tinosa was on her second war patrol, having left Midway atoll on   More »

By Scott A. Bryan

Late in the evening on D-Day two German soldiers patrolled the outskirts of Colleville-sur-Mer, about one mile from Omaha Beach, and spotted Company C, 26th Infantry Regiment, 1st Division resting in a hedgerow field. Standing on opposite corners, the enemy unleashed machine-gun fire and killed seven Americans.   More »

With weapons at the ready, the American squad advanced cautiously on both sides of the tree-lined boulevard toward the German strongpoint in Aachen. Buildings pummeled by Allied shells had toppled to the ground, sending concrete and bricks spilling into the street. Hardly a structure remained intact as a result of   More »

By Eric Niderost

July 3, 1863, dawned clear and bright, the warm sun promising even greater heat to come. By noon, temperatures were already in the low 90s, a typically hot and humid summer day in southern Pennsylvania. The action on the ground would soon get even hotter. Five days earlier,   More »

Following his campaign in Western Europe, George S. Patton had difficulty adjusting to peacetime and was fatally injured in an automobile accident.   More »