At long last, in late 1943 the “Big Three”—Winston Churchill, Frankin D. Roosevelt and Joseph Stalin—would meet together to shape the world after the war.

U-Boat

Nazi U-Boats At America’s Doorsteps

After refueling in the mid-Atlantic and suffering bow damage from being rammed by a tanker, a 769-ton Nazi U-Boat reached its destination, the American East Coast, early on Monday, May 4, 1942. Read more

Soviet Premier Josef Stalin, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill met in the Iranian capital of Tehran in late 1943. Among the topics of discussion was the opening of a second front in Western Europe.

U-Boat

Big Three in Tehran

By Michael D. Hull

World War II made a disparate trio of allies —British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, Soviet Marshal Josef Stalin, and American President Franklin D. Read more

U-Boat

Sinking the USS Reuben James

By Joseph Connor, Jr.

When the destroyer USS Reuben James (DD-245) was assigned to convoy duty in the North Atlantic in the autumn of 1941, its crew had a sense of foreboding and feared the worst. Read more

U-Boat

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

U-Boat

The Lost Children of 1940

By Mark Carlson

In the summer of 1940, the world watched with rapt attention as the citizens, airmen, sailors, and soldiers of Great Britain steeled themselves for imminent invasion by the victorious German Army. Read more

U-Boat

Seek…Attack…Destroy

By Patrick. J. Chaisson

Admiral Soemu Toyoda needed answers. The newly appointed commander in chief of Japan’s Combined Fleet, Toyoda found himself facing several unpleasant facts. Read more

Britain appeared doomed until the German naval codes were cracked.

U-Boat

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

U-Boat

The First and Last Flight of the Spruce Goose

By Allyn Vannoy

The Time magazine article was titled “It Flies!” It was a note of triumph and vindication, but also an epitaph, of an aircraft that was five years in the making—the “Spruce Goose,” a plane that should not have existed. Read more

U-Boat

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

U-Boat

Target: America’s West Coast

By Steven D. Lutz

It seemed like just another ordinary day at sea. Early on December 7, 1941, a U.S. Army-chartered cargo vessel, the 250-foot SS Cynthia Olson, under the command of a civilian skipper, Berthel Carlsen, was plying the Pacific waters about 1,200 miles northeast of Diamond Head, Oahu, Hawaii, and over 1,000 miles west of the Tacoma, Washington, port from which she had sailed on December 1. Read more

Crewmen aboard the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Spencer watch the waters of the Atlantic Ocean brew up with the detonation of a depth charge. This photograph was taken while the Spencer was defending a trans-Atlantic convoy, visible in the background, against a German U-boat attack.

U-Boat

Max Horton: Leading the Charge Against the U-Boats

By Michael D. Hull

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

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  • WWII

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    Military History

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