Category: Military History

Seventy-five years ago, 16 B-25 land-based bombers took off from the US CV-6, the aircraft carrier Hornet and bombed Tokyo and other major Japanese cities. They did little material damage but the repercussions felt from their tiny pinprick against the Japanese homeland would have a far lasting impact later. Shortly after the debacle at Pearl […]

“It was silk everywhere and it was just marvelous to see,” Sergeant Paul Redgate said, describing 4th Ranger Company’s combat jump at Musan-Ni. In was March of 1951, the coldest winter that anyone could remember in Korea. Some American units were decimated by the freezing temperatures alone. Exiting the C-119 airplane, Redgate parachuted to the […]

Editor’s note: this is a guest post by a good friend of mine and pilot, call-sign Rebel.  He neglected to give me permission to share any job specifics in his bio when sharing Major Fisher’s story, and even suggested that I take the credit for writing this piece if I didn’t want to just say that he was […]

Three weeks ago, I wrote an article about the brave last stand of a unit of Polish soldiers near the town of Wizna in the opening days of World War II. The story you are about to read is another little known testimony to the toughness and resolve of that country’s fighting men, perhaps the […]

It was a little more than six months after the 9/11 attacks when Dr. James E. Mitchell received a phone call from the chief of department that housed the CIA’s operational psychologists. The request to come to the CIA headquarters in Langley wasn’t seemingly out of place, Dr. Mitchell was already an established consultant with […]

The harshness that became the four battles of Cassino occurring in Italy from January through May 1944 represented the difficulty facing the Allies trying to take what had been described as the “soft underbelly of Europe.” They had witnessed the successes at the fall of the island of Sicily and Salerno beachhead on the mainland, […]

Near the end of September, the brass asked Schaff if he’d mind becoming the One-One, or assistant team leader. The brass wanted to put an overweight Special Forces sergeant from Germany who had a previous tour of duty with a Green Beret A-Team, but no experience in Laos, in the One-Zero slot simply because he […]

Reach into your pocket and withdraw a five-dollar bill. Or, if you’re broke like me, just imagine one. That guy on the front of that bill was a pretty wise dude, right? And one of the really wise choices he made during his presidency was to give the designer of the Spencer Repeating Rifle—a design […]

Seventy-five years ago, this week, the forerunner for Special Forces was born. During the dark days of World War II in April 1942, the OSS’ first operational detachment, 101 was activated. Detachment 101 was the first unit in U.S. military history created specifically for the purpose of conducting unconventional warfare operations behind enemy lines. It […]

Tanks are among the more expensive pieces of ground equipment a national military has to spring for.  That, combined with the general novelty of seeing these massive, rumbling war machines in person or on film ensures that they maintain some level of value even well after their usefulness in battle has evaporated. Companies all over […]

Officials in the Trump administration on Sunday demanded that Russia stop supporting the Syrian government or face a further deterioration in its relations with the United States. Signaling the focus of talks that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is set to have in Moscow this week, officials said that Russia, in propping up Syrian President […]

Back in the 1980’s Northrop privately funded the building of the F-20 Tigershark. A variant of the F-5 it was initially designated the F-5G. The Tigershark first flew in 1982 and only three aircraft were ever built. Watch the F-20 Tigershark in action The F-20 had a single General Electric F404-GE-100 turbofan engine with 17,000 pounds of […]