WWII History December 2009

Bastogne’s Bedsheets: The Story of Lieutenant Colonel John Hanlon

By Ken Parker

Many people who never knew John Hanlon personally may remember him as that paratrooper who took the sheets back to Bastogne. Read more

WWII History December 2009

Australian Raiders & The Assault On Singapore Harbor

By John Brown

Hours after Japanese planes bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese troops landed in northern Malaya and began moving south toward Singapore. Read more

WWII History December 2009

Benito Mussolini & The Fascist March on Rome

By Blaine Taylor

On March 23, 1919, but four months after the armistice that ended the Great War—100 young toughs, ex-Italian Army war veterans, former socialist politicians, and newspapermen met in Milan’s Piazza San Sepolchro in industrial northern Italy to form a new political party. Read more

WWII History December 2009

Portugal during WW2: Covering the Azores Gap

By Norman Herz

The year 1944 dawned with America already at war for over two years. In an event not marked by history books, the 96th Navy Construction Battalion, Seabees, crossed the Atlantic from Davisville, Rhode Island, on the Abraham Lincoln, a converted banana boat escorted by two destroyers, the USS Ellis and USS Biddle. Read more

WWII History December 2009

The Battle of Britain: Leadership and Logistics in Britain’s Skies

By Grant Matla

It was a battle fought without armies. No rifles, no tanks, no barbed wire. In the summer of 1940, the skies above Britain served as the battlefield for the British Royal Air Force and the German Luftwaffe. Read more

WWII History December 2009

Lt. Col. Joachim Peiper’s Grisly Death After the Battle of the Bulge

By Major General Michael Reynolds

One of the foremost German characters in the Battle of the Bulge was Obersturmbannführer (Lieutenant Colonel) Joachim Peiper, the notorious Waffen-SS commander of the strongest armored Kampfgruppe (KG) of the 1st SS Panzer Division, Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler (LSSAH). Read more

WWII History December 2009

Vladimir Peniakoff: Popski’s Private Army

By John Brown

In September 1942, two patrols of armed jeeps and trucks of the Long Range Desert Group (LRDG) raided the German airfield at Barce. Read more

WWII History December 2009

Leningrad & Operation Spark: Breaking the Nazi Stranglehold

By Ludwig Heinrich Dyck

With the German Sixth Army in its death throes at Stalingrad in January 1943, Stavka, the Soviet High Command, sought to capitalize on the disaster by unleashing massive offensives along the entire German-Soviet front. Read more

WWII History December 2009

The Chance-Vought F4U Corsair: Whistling Death in the South Pacific

by Sam McGowan

Thanks to the rather far-fetched mid-1970s TV series Black Sheep Squadron, the bent-wing image of the Chance-Vought F4U Corsair is no doubt one of the most vivid of the World War II fighters in the minds of most Americans. Read more