weapons
From an altitude of 30,000 feet, the swift Japanese reconnaissance aircraft flew high over Saipan and Tinian, photographing the brisk and extensive engineering effort under way on the American airfields far below. Read more
weapons
While all the combatant nations engaged in World War I fielded machine guns during the conflict, the British Army’s Vickers was arguably the best medium machine gun of the war, while their Lewis gun—an American design but perfected by the English—was the most effective light machine gun. Read more
weapons
When American soldiers landed in France in June 1944 as part of the great Allied crusade to liberate Europe, they were well trained, fully equipped, and brimming with confidence. Read more
weapons
The November 21, 1944, daylight flight of Teddy’s Rough Riders was anything but routine for American pilot Werner G. Read more
weapons
The origins of the Universal Bren Gun Carrier can be traced to the Ford T-powered Carden-Loyd machines developed in Great Britain in the mid-1920s, specifically the Mark VI model of 1927. Read more
weapons
One of the most frequently discussed arguments to come out of World War II is which was the “better” bomber, the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress or the Consolidated B-24 Liberator? Read more
weapons
It can indeed be rather difficult to understand the differences between Anglo-Saxon thegns and the Norse Viking warriors. Read more
weapons
In 1934 the British War office accepted a new aircraft design eventually designated the Hawker Hurricane Mark 1. Read more
weapons
When we think “catapult,” we imagine the types of weapons used for hurling rocks, dead plague victims, or unlucky cows against a castle. Read more
weapons
During World War II British and American aircraft carriers, serviced and ready for naval combat, averaged 20,000 to 30,000 tons. Read more
weapons
German defenders hunkered in their concrete and steel bunkers along the Normandy coast were in for two major shocks on Tuesday, June 6, 1944. Read more
weapons
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
weapons
The Somme offensive, which began on July 1, 1916, had by late that month deteriorated into a series of small, costly actions. Read more
weapons
The Germans knew the bombers were coming, and they prepared even as the U.S. 457th Bomber Group first assembled in the early morning sunlight over faraway London. Read more
weapons
The Hussites, all but forgotten today, were a 15th-century sect of religious reformers, forerunners of the Protestant Reformation that was to come a century later. Read more
weapons
In director Howard Hawks’s 1941 film classic, Sergeant York, then-Corporal Alvin York, portrayed by Gary Cooper, single-handedly knocks out more than 30 German machine-gun nests and, with little assistance, captures 132 enemy soldiers. Read more
weapons
During the Battle of the Bulge, Adolf Hitler launched his last great counteroffensive along the Western Front. From full armored divisions running on gasoline fumes to “American schools” teaching spies how to pose as Allied soldiers, Hitler used everything in his arsenal to try to turn the tide of the war. Read more
weapons
The kapu kulu, made up of the regularly paid troops, provided the backbone of the Ottoman Empire army. Read more
weapons
Early in World War II, German panzer forces trampled all foes. Confidence suffused the Germans, and their tank designs stagnated. Read more
weapons
On a dark night in September 1941, moving at periscope depth, an Italian submarine edged into Gibraltar Bay near the British harbor. Read more
