Among the more than 260 American submarines that patrolled the Pacific during World War II, the USS Swordfish in 1941 was the first to sink a Japanese armed merchant ship, marking the beginning of the submarine's colorful history.
Hampered by lack of materials, shipyards and experienced shipbuilders, even so the South managed to construct 34 iron-armored warships during the Civil War, of which the Confederate Navy put 25 into service.
When the Americans invaded the Japanese-controlled islands of Saipan and Tinian in 1944, civilians and combatants committed mass suicide to avoid being captured.
After Operation Valkyrie--the failed July 20, 1944, plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler and seize control of the German government--both the Third Reich and Hitler came to a violent end.
Marie Marvingt (1875-1963) set the world's first women's aviation records, won the only gold medal for outstanding performance in all sports, invented the airplane ambulance, was the first female bomber pilot in history, fought in World War I disguised as a man, took part in the Resistance of World War II, was the first to survive crossing the English Channel in a balloon, worked all her life as a journalist, spent years in North Africa and invented metal skis.
Born into one of 19th century Europe's more powerful families, Archduchess Marie Valerie was the favorite daughter of Austria's Emperor Franz Joseph and Empress Elisabeth.
After the attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7), American sailors of the Asiatic Fleet (where it was December 8) were abandoned by Washington and left to conduct a war on their own, isolated from the rest of the U.
Mid-flight noncombat mishaps and blunders occur frequently in the USAF during training and utility flights--sometimes with the loss of life and regularly with the destruction of expensive aircraft.
In the five months after Pearl Harbor, the Imperial Japanese Navy won a string of victories in a campaign to consolidate control of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific.
This first ever biography of Antarctic explorer Sir Raymond Priestley (1886-1974) covers his full (at times life-threatening) involvement with Sir Ernest Shackleton's 1907-1909 Nimrod Expedition and Robert Scott's 1910-1913 Terra Nova Expedition.
Originally designed as a cargo and paratroop transport during World War II, the Fairchild C-82 Packet is today mainly remembered for its starring role in the Hollywood film The Flight of the Phoenix (1965).
In late January 1944 a force of New Zealand soldiers and Allied specialists undertook a daring behind the lines reconnaissance of the Japanese-held Green Islands of Papua New Guinea.
Through both World Wars, young African conscripts from Senegal, Algeria, Morocco, the Congo and elsewhere found themselves fighting for their colonial rulers, facing unknown enemies in unknown lands.
Originally constructed in the 18th century as a military barracks by Austrian Emperor Joseph II, Theresienstadt (now Terezin) was used as a ghetto and concentration camp by the Nazis early in World War II in their ruse of peaceful resettlement of the Jews of Europe.
Lieutenant John Huddleston Taber was a New Yorker assigned to the 168th "e;Third Iowa"e; Infantry Regiment of the American Expeditionary Force's 42nd "e;Rainbow"e; Division during World War I.
Creating a guerrilla movement to fight the Japanese occupation of the Philippines (1942-1945) presented Colonel Wendell Fertig with some formidable challenges.
The story of Hitler's Wehrmachtsgefolge (armed forces auxiliaries) is less well known than that of Germany's other armed forces in World War II, such as the panzer divisions, the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine.
World War II began for the United States with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor December 7, 1941, followed by the invasion of the Philippine Islands the next day.
