Ryuji Nagatsuka did not know, when he made an application to become a pilot in October 1943, that by the following autumn Japan's situation in the war would be so critical that the role for which he was destined would be part of the most incomprehensible phenomenon of the hostilities - that of a suicide pilot, known to the world as a kamikaze.
The Avro Lancaster took the RAF's bombing campaign right to the heart of Nazi Germany, night after night, despite sometimes suffering appalling losses.
Shortly before the First World War, Belfast was one of the most prosperous and vibrant cities in the world, boasting an impressive new City Hall and some of the largest industrial concerns of their kind.
On 21 August 1944 German Army Group B was destroyed in Normandy and Allied troops began pressing east from the beachhead they had occupied since the D-Day landings.
The Writers' War is a collection of excerpts from outstanding accounts of the First World War, a terrifying conflict that would otherwise be beyond our ability to imagine.
Volume 4 of We Were Eagles reaches the climax of the daylight bomber war which saw the Eighth Air Force B-17s and B-24s push back the boundaries and huge fleets of bombers penetrate further into the diminishing Reich.
Volume 3 of We Were Eagles covers the turning of the tide, when the air war was redirected to bombing communications targets in northern France in support of the 6 June D-Day invasion and the eventual breakout by Allied forces from the beachheads.
An original study of the lives and times of a group of inspirational Worcestershire people who would otherwise be forgotten, A Worcestershire Parish at War is a unique and intimate portrait of ordinary people Ellen and Walter Gibbs, along with their family, friends, and local community.
At the onset of the Second World War, Frank Pleszak's father MikoAaj, aged nineteen, was forcibly removed from his family in Poland by the Russian secret police and exiled to the harshest of the Siberian labour camps, the dreaded Soviet gulags of Kolyma.
The wartime airfi eld at Rivenhall is typical of the many airbases that were hastily built in Britain following the entry of the US into the Second World War.
Huddersfield at War takes us through the years between the announcement on 3 September 1939 that England was at War with Germany, to the VE celebrations on 8 May 1945.
This is the story of Detling airfield, from its earliest days through its role in the Second World War - when several dramatic and tragic events occurred - and finally to more peaceful times, when the airfield became a popular base for recreational gliding.
Once described as the 'worst tank that ever won the war', the Sherman tank was never going to be the equal of the German heavies in a direct tank-on-tank confrontation.
The personal story of a British tank sergeant's war, from the fall of France in 1940, through the bloody campaigns against Rommel's forces in North Africa, the hard-fought drive up Italy, D-Day and the battles for France and the low countries, and the invasion of the German heartland itself.
The final year of the Second World War was very quiet in terms of naval operations, as European leaders turned their minds towards peace with the promise of unconditional German surrender.
