By Patrick J. Chaisson
It was an amphibious commander’s worst nightmare—swarms of enemy tanks, spitting death with every cannon shell and machine-gun burst, smashing through the American beachhead. Stunned GIs were crushed in their foxholes by the unstoppable leviathans, or bayoneted by accompanying infantry. The few Allied fighting vehicles then on   More »

By Christopher J. Chlon
According to contemporary Soviet news sources, fighter Ace Alexander Pokryshkin was the most famous pilot in the Red Air Force during World War II. He was the first member of the Soviet armed forces to be awarded the title Hero of The Soviet Union three times.
This hero criticized   More »

By Michael D. Hull
One night in mid-October 1941, a British Army intelligence officer disguised as a Senussi Arab was dropped by parachute behind the German lines in the Italian colony of Libya.
He was Captain John E. “Jock” Haselden of the famed Long-Range Desert Group (LRDG), a specialized British force led   More »

By Pat McTaggart
It was called Nordlicht, or Northern Lights. With Hitler’s drive toward Stalingrad in full swing, the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (OKW—German Armed Forces High Command) was also planning to end the almost year-long siege of Leningrad in a two-pronged attack to capture the city.
Failing to take Leningrad in 1941,   More »

By Maureen Holtz
During World War II, American women flocked to be a part of the war effort. They served as factory workers, government agency clerks, WAVES or WAACS, and artists copying propaganda posters. Many young women found that the American Red Cross offered non-nurses a unique opportunity. Jill Pitts Knappenberger   More »

By Steve Ossad

Afew months after the Normandy campaign and with other fronts competing for the American public’s attention, Lt. Col. S.L.A. “Slam” Marshall, a hard-living Chicago newspaperman, World War I veteran, and deputy historian in the European Theater, hand carried the first of the War Departmemt campaign publications, Omaha Beachhead,to   More »

By Kevin M. Hymel
“Bombs away!”called out the bombardier of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress bomber Great Speckled Bird, signaling the release of a full bombload over an enemy target. He was wrong. Two stubborn bombs refused to fall, remaining in their bomb bay racks.
The bomber’s radioman, Technical Sergeant Thomas Fitzpatrick,   More »

By Michael E. Haskew
In October 1942, at an obscure railroad whistlestop in the wastes ofthe Egyptian desert, the tide of World War II turned. True enough, Nazi spearheads had failed to take Moscow, capital of the Soviet Union, before the grueling winter of 1941 set in. However, the Germans had   More »

By John J. Domagalski
General Alexander Patch had been thinking about moving some troops to the southwestern part of Guadalcanal since taking command of all American ground forces on the embattled island on December 9, 1942. Little more than a month later his soldiers were cautiously pushing the remaining Japanese troops   More »