Military History

Join the discussion at militaryhistory.com On capturing the British garrison, a French commander offered terms—but his Indian allies sought payback By Ron Soodalter IN THE ARCHIVES: Needing a soldier to fight Indians and rebuild the Army, George Wash

Your story on the history of “The Jeep” [by Jon Guttman, May 2020] got me looking for this picture of my dad, U.S. Army Pfc. Philip E. Kelly, who served in the 498th Medical Collecting Company in Europe during World War II, including during the Battl

The long-anticipated Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial in Washington, D.C., opens on May 8, 2020, the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe Day, when the Allies accepted Nazi Germany’s unconditional surrender in World War II. Authorized by Congress in 19

Amid efforts to modernize its fleet, the U.S. Air Force will retire nearly 300 fighters, as well as more than 100 other aircraft across its bomber, airlift, tanker and drone fleets. Its 2021 budget proposal calls for 48 new F-35A joint strike fighter

The National Warplane Museum in Geneseo, N.Y., has grounded the privately owned B-17 Flying Fortress Memphis Belle used in the 1990 film of the same name. The original Belle—the first U.S. Army Air Forces heavy bomber to complete 25 combat missions o

The National Museum of the Pacific War in Fredericksburg, Texas, has reopened its newly renovated Admiral Nimitz Gallery after a $4.5-million upgrade. The expanded gallery devotes half again as much space to relating Fleet Adm. Chester W. Nimitz’s st

British conservative politician David Campbell Bannerman has launched a fundraising campaign to repatriate the former HMS Hermes, the aircraft carrier that served as the British flagship during the 1982 Falklands War. Launched in 1953, the carrier se

An 800-pound bronze eagle recovered in 2006 from the stern of the German armored cruiser Admiral Graf Spee—scuttled off Montevideo, Uruguay, at the outset of World War II—is likely headed to auction, with a whopping presale estimate of $26 million. B

In Forty Autumns: A Family’s Story of Courage and Survival on Both Sides of the Berlin Wall author Willner introduces readers to her Germanborn parents and their families and relates the lives they led during World War II and over the following tumul

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Sr. Lt. Lydia Litvyak Soviet Air Forces Hero of the Soviet Union Eastern Front 1942–43 Soviet Air Forces Sr. Lt. Lydia Vladimirovna Litvyak, known as the “White Lily of Stalingrad” for her air support during that battle, was history’s first female fi

The 1325 War of the Bucket traces its origins to 1075, when a power struggle between the papacy and the Holy Roman empire degenerated into warfare. Although the initial war between the papal (Guelph) and imperial (Ghibelline) factions was settled in

Funded by public subscription in Essex County, Mass., laid down in Salem on April 13, 1799, launched on September 30 and commissioned on December 17, USS Essex was one of six frigates the perennially slowacting Congress had ordered five years earlier

Sprinting toward Belgrade amid the Third Reich’s April 1941 invasion of Yugoslavia, two distinct military formations sought to outrun each other. On one flank was the Heer, the traditional standing army of Germany; on the other the Waffen-SS, the arm

George Washington received word of the disaster one evening in early November 1791 while entertaining guests at the Executive Mansion on Market Street in Philadelphia. His secretary, Tobias Lear, discreetly whispered in the president’s ear as he sat

On July 16, 1945, the United States conducted history’s first test of a nuclear device (code-named Trinity) in the desert scrubland of south-central New Mexico. Weeks later, on August 6 and 9, it became the first—and thus far only—nation to use nucle

Eight nations—the United States, Russia, Britain, France, China, India, Pakistan and North Korea—are known to have nuclear weapons. Collectively they have tested more than 2,000 nuclear devices since the Americans conducted the very first test (code-

On the morning of Oct. 25, 1813, the inhabitants of Nuku Hiva—the largest of 15 islands comprising Polynesia’s remote Marquesas—awoke to the startling sight of a six-ship flotilla approaching from the east across the cobalt-blue South Pacific. While

This was it: D-Day, June 6, 1944. After long months of planning, preparation and perspiration the Allies were finally ready to breach the Atlantic Wall and push back the dreaded Nazi war machine as part of Operation Overlord, the invasion of Normandy

In August 1887 the French scientific journal La Nature noted favorably the role the velocipede, or bicycle, was beginning to play in European military maneuvers: For a few years past the Germans have been using the velocipede for the rapid carriage o

Audacious Missions of World War II: Daring Acts of Bravery Revealed Through Letters and Documents From the Time, Osprey Publishing, Oxford, U.K., 2020, $35 While war mostly entails long periods of waiting, there are those who prefer to take action re

In November 1778 a mixed force of 300 Iroquois, 150 Tories and 50 British soldiers raided the farming settlement of Cherry Valley on the New York frontier. They killed 30 civilians and 16 Patriot soldiers and took 70 captives (mostly women and childr

Can you match each of the following World War II German Waffen-SS divisions to the title it bore? ____ A. Frundsberg ____ B. Wiking ____ C. Götz von Berlichingen ____ D. Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler ____ E. Hohenstaufen ____ F. Das Reich ____ G. Hor