WWII History May 2005 Archives

Marines land on “Orange One” beach at Peleliu. Minutes later, the relative calm would be broken and the Marines would meet fanatical Japanese resistance.

WWII History May 2005

The Battle of Peleliu: Shocked Beyond Imagination

By Al Hemingway

As he watched the preliminary bombardment from the railing of his ship, Colonel Lewis B. “Chesty” Puller had deep reservations. Read more

WWII History May 2005

V-E Day: Victory at Last for World War II’s Allies

By Flint Whitlock

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

In this romanticized painting by a German war artist, a German E-boat cuts through the waters of the English Channel on patrol against coastal raids launched from Britain.

WWII History May 2005

The Mystery of Slapton Sands: Operation Tiger

By Charles Whiting

In the early 1970s, a former British Royal Air Force policeman–turned-hairdresser, Ken Small, visited South Devon on England’s Channel coast. Read more

Explosions rock Malta during an enemy air raid. Due to Malta’s location along German and Italian supply routes, its airfields and dockyards were subject to many bombing runs.

WWII History May 2005

The Siege of Malta in WWII: Holding on to the Island Fortress

By John Brown

When World War II began in September 1939, just nine months before the Siege of Malta, its three small islands in the central Mediterranean were still considered part of the British Commonwealth. Read more

British soldiers put their backs into moving pieces of a Bailey Bridge built on pontoons over the Weser River in Germany, 1945.

WWII History May 2005

The British Bailey Bridge

By Mike McLaughlin

I was always fascinated by the mastery of water,” Sir Donald Coleman Bailey reflected, long after the end of World War II. Read more

Smoke billows from the German freighter Drachenfels after sustaining damage during a raid by the British.

WWII History May 2005

The Daring Calcutta Light Horse Raid

By Robert Barr Smith

Freighter Ehrenfels’ siren shrieked through the muggy night across the harbor. As the captain pulled down hard on the alarm cord, the alarm howled out over the steaming darkness, screaming that British raiders were in the harbor, alerting Ehrenfels’ crew and calling for help from ashore. Read more

WWII History May 2005

Cauldron of Death: the Demyansk Salient and the Eastern Front

by Pat McTaggart

On the vast Eastern Front, the Demyansk salient represented little more than a smudge on the battle map. Read more

WWII History May 2005

Russo-Japanese Clash at the Battle of Nomonhan

By Glenn Barnett

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

From Around the Network

The Fight of USS California

WWII Ordnance: The Boys Anti-tank Rifle

What To See at Battlefield O’ahu & the USS Arizona Memorial

The First and Last Flight of the Spruce Goose