The U.S. Army's Separate Tank Battalions in World War II
Tanks, amphibian tanks, and amphibian tractors in action in all theaters, from Africa and Europe to the Pacific How the battalions fought the war, often in the tankers' own words Crystal-clear maps The U.S. Army's separate armored battalions fought in obscurity by comparison with the flashy armored divisions, but they carried the heavier burden ......
How Low-Level Attacks Changed World War II in the Air
- Details on planes like the German Stuka, the American Dauntless, the Japanese Aichi D3A1 "Val," the Soviet PE-2, and numerous others - Riveting accounts of aerial combat - Includes maps, diagrams, tables, and photos For many, it is a dive bomber that conjures the most dramatic, quintessential image of World War II: a screaming German Stuka ......
A Marine Fighter Pilot's Epic Battle at the Beginning of World War II
When the Japanese attacked Wake Island in December 1941--the same day as Pearl Harbor--Marine pilot Henry Elrod took to the skies in his F4F Wildcat fighter to defend the American military base on the tiny Pacific atoll, battling swarms of enemy planes and ships with rare courage and skill for the next two weeks. Captain Elrod, who had attended ......
How an Unlikely Team of Scientists, Ex-Cons, Women, and Native Americans
In the weeks after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military-gunners on naval ships and in antiaircraft units-realized it had a problem: "We couldn't hit the broad side of a barn." It urgently needed a gunsight that was easy to use and quick to aim. Enter Edwin Land, founder of Polaroid and self-taught expert in polarizing technology, who very swiftly came ......
The Top-Secret OSS Operation That Sent Polish Spies behind Enemy Lines i
After the Battle of the Bulge-which had begun with a German attack that American intelligence failed to anticipate-the Office of Strategic Service (OSS), forerunner of the CIA, revamped its intelligence operations in Europe. Confronted with staff shortages and needing native language speakers, the OSS decided to enlist the cooperation of ......
How Hitler's Chief of Intelligence Betrayed the Nazis
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris, Adolf Hitler's chief of military intelligence, accomplished something that neither President Franklin D. Roosevelt nor Prime Minister Winston Churchill could ever achieve - he saved the lives of hundreds Jewish refugees and other racial and political undesirables by rescuing them from Nazi Germany and other Nazi-occupied ......
How the Allies Won the Battle of the Atlantic from the Air
The Battle of the Atlantic was the longest campaign of World War II, lasting the entirety of the war in Europe from September 1939 to May 1945. It was also one of the war's most complex campaigns, involving strategy, operations, tactics, logistics, politics, diplomacy, and alliances. During the war's first two years, the United States was drawn ......
The 80th Anniversary of D-Day falls on June 6, 2024 In the early hours of that morning, three divisions of paratrooper and glider forces descended on Normandy. Already assembling offshore was the largest seaborne invasion fleet in the history of the world, ready to unleash over 130,000 troops against Hitler's Atlantic Wall. More than 7,000 ......
Nazi Gold and the Murder of an Entire French Town by SS Division Das Rei
The massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane on June 10, 1944, is recognized yearly throughout France with the same profundity as the attacks on Pearl Harbor and the Twin Towers in the United States. The Oradour Massacre is taught in school in France and the anniversary is commemorated every year. Today, Oradour is a destination for people interested in one ......