Tanks
When little John Shirley Wood was delivered on January 11, 1888, in Monticello, Arkansas, one of the Free World’s greatest defenders greeted his first dawn as eagerly as everything else he confronted and overcame in a lifetime of soldiering. Read more
Tanks
In 1942, careworn Nazi Führer Adolf Hitler lamented to his military intimates at his Wolf’s Lair headquarters near Rastenburg in East Prussia, “If I had known that there were so many of them, I would have had second thoughts about invading!” Read more
Tanks
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
Tanks
Fifty years have gone by since the inception of the Patton Museum of Cavalry and Armor at Fort Knox, Ky., Read more
Tanks
“Where is Steiner?” Adolf Hitler demanded as his Thousand Year Reich crumbled around him in April 1945. “Is he attacking yet?” Read more
Tanks
Mariya Oktyabrskaya was a Soviet Ukrainian tank driver and mechanic who fought on the Eastern Front against Nazi Germany during World War II. Read more
Tanks
In 1941, the year of the Battle of the Bloody Triangle, the northwestern corner of the Ukraine was not what one would call tank country. Read more
Tanks
On May 10, 1940, a daring group of German parachutists descended on the mighty Belgian fortress of Eben Emael, compelled its surrender, and opened the way for the German Army’s drive into Belgium. Read more
Tanks
Within his reinforced concrete bunker, 50 feet below the garden of the New Reichs Chancellery on Berlin’s Wilhelmstrasse, German dictator Adolf Hitler, his soon-to-be bride Eva Braun, and several hundred friends, SS guards, and staff members could feel the concussion and hear the unending drumroll of thousands of Soviet artillery shells reducing the already-battered capital city of the Third Reich to unrecognizable rubble. Read more
Tanks
I was always fascinated by the mastery of water,” Sir Donald Coleman Bailey reflected, long after the end of World War II. Read more
Tanks
In May 1939, Mongolian herdsmen and part-time militia cavalry crossed the Khalkhin Gol, or Halha, River near the village of Nomonhan in Manchurian-claimed territory. Read more
Tanks
To their Russian enemies they were the “Spanish mercenaries of Hitler’s Fascist lackey, Franco.” To Hitler himself, “One can’t imagine more fearless fellows. Read more
Tanks
Spanish Legionaries charged into battle crying, “Long Live Death.” They sang of being “the Bridegrooms of Death” and proved they meant it with over 10,000 killed and 35,000 wounded. Read more
Tanks
It became glaringly apparent to the German Wehrmacht in 1943 that it needed a solution to the threat of heavily armored British and Russian tanks whose armor proved too thick for German towed anti-tank guns. Read more
Tanks
In late 1979, the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan was torn apart by a civil war pitting the weak Communist government of Hafizullah Amin against several moderate and fundamentalist Muslim rebel armies. Read more
Tanks
The German panzers approached the Russian artillery column as it moved to a new position. As the troops trudged toward their new firing point, six panzers appeared, rampaging into the Russian rear area, no doubt searching for vulnerable targets to destroy. Read more
Tanks
By the time of the Crusader battles in late 1941, the German panzer forces in North Africa had developed a sophisticated combined-arms doctrine. Read more
Tanks
On December 16, 1944, Hitler launched Operation Wacht am Rhein, or Watch on the Rhine. Popularly known as the Battle of the Bulge, the ensuing offensive was a desperate effort to win a major victory in the West. Read more
Tanks
On the afternoon of November 23, known as Totensonntag to the Germans, General Ludwig Crüwell, commander of the Afrika Korps, decided to launch both of his armored divisions at the box being defended by the 2nd South African Brigade which had laagered just south of the contested airfield at Sidi Rezegh. Read more
Tanks
Advances in military technology, including tanks, jets, and rockets, are among the popular images of Nazi Germany during World War II. Read more
