Category: Military History

Although it was introduced way back in 1966, and retired from service a whopping eighteen years ago, the SR-71 Blackbird remains among the most popular military aircraft of all time – and with good reason.  Despite its relative old age when compared to modern feats of aviation ingenuity like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter or […]

The slick OH-58 Kiowa will soon be buzzing the Aegean skies. But how can the bankrupt Greek economy afford the purchase, I can hear you asking.  Well, have you ever wondered what happens to old US military equipment? Once retired, US military hardware is often given to friendly countries.  All an interested government has to […]

On this day in July 1863, William Carney a sergeant from the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry would perform actions that would earn him the Medal of Honor. The action took place at Fort Wagner on Morris Island, outside of Charleston, SC. Carney was the first African-American to be awarded the Medal of Honor in the […]

The year was 1945 and 21 year old Army Air Forces 1st Lt. William Gray was on a combat mission over Germany in a single-seat P-47D Thunderbolt aircraft when disaster struck. His airplane came in contact with a tree and he crashed. The Defense POW/MIA said investigators recovered Gray’s remains last year. Two people who saw […]

In a testy Twitter exchange this week, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said that Russia is currently dealing with “Nazi remnants” in Europe after NATO created an official video glorifying the actions of anti-Soviet partisans in the Baltics. NATO published a video about the ‘Forest Brothers’ killing our soldiers. This confirms that we are […]

The photograph that served as the flagship piece of evidence for a recent History Channel documentary, “Amelia Earhart: The Lost Evidence,” and its theory on the fate of the famed pilot, has been discredited by a Japanese blogger. The highly circulated image purported to show what could be Earhart and her navigator, Fred Noonan, sitting […]

Though it sounds like the plot of a movie the reality is that select Army engineers, Special Forces, Navy SEALs, and select Marines were once trained to employ backpack nukes. The scientists of Los Almos Scientific Laboratory created the W54 atomic warhead in the late ‘50s.  It was one of the smallest nuclear warheads ever […]

The story of Virginia Hall reads like the script of a Hollywood spy film, except that her exploits were true. She was an operative for the British Special Operations Executive (SOE), later the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and finally the CIA. Despite the loss of her lower leg in a hunting accident, Hall […]

On this date, July 12, 2011, SFC Leroy Petry was awarded the Medal of Honor by President Obama in a White House ceremony attended by his family and those of his fellow soldiers. Petry was assigned to the 2nd Bn. 75th Ranger Regiment based in Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. Petry’s actions took place on […]

As a former Special Forces soldier, sometimes you never see the final results of the hard work and sacrifice that you put into a mission. For Phil Melcher, a former medic in the 7th Special Forces Group, he met the results of a life-saving operation face-to-face. Melcher had served all over Latin America but found himself […]

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Unofficially, in the jungles of Laos in 1970, hundreds of North Vietnamese troops closed in on a small team of United States Army commandos. Unofficially, as men were shot down, a medic sprinted through a hail of bullets to help, hefting a man over his shoulder as he fired back with one […]

With today being World Chocolate Day, it is important to remember the role that chocolate and Hershey Chocolate Corporation played in keeping US troops fighting in WWII. Not only did it boost morale but it also provided much-needed calories. The Hershey chocolate ration bars were the precursor to the candy and desserts found in the […]