Category: Military History

After the U.S. troops had been driven out of Burma by the Japanese in 1943 during World War II, the Americans decided that they needed a “Long Range Penetration” mission behind Japanese lines. The plan was to disrupt and destroy the enemy’s supply lines and communications while attacking the enemy behind their forces while also […]

Few U.S. Air Force aircraft are as popular among the ground troops of the military as the A-10 Thunderbolt, aka “The Warthog.” And it is as unpopular with our foes in Iraq, Syria, and Afghanistan as it is popular with our troops. The distinctive sound of the jet’s high-bypass turbofan engines is enough to make […]

On May 8, 1945, while Britan, the United States, and the rest of Europe were celebrating the end of World War II in Europe, the British military lost one of its icons, Lieutenant Colonel Frank Bourne. Bourne had been the last surviving British member of the Battle of Rorke’s Drift; he died just shy of […]

In the spring of 1942, things weren’t going well for the Allies, especially for the Americans in the Pacific. After the crippling sneak attack at Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Wake Island, the Philippines, Burma, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies, and had American and Filipino forces bottled up at Corregidor.  The Japanese were ready […]

In the spring of 1865, the American Civil War was reaching its conclusion. The blood continued to flow but the outcome was no longer in doubt. The Confederacy was crumbling, its army starving, and the Union troops far outnumbered them in the field. On April 11, General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Army of […]

I came across some information regarding a Special Forces unit that was part of the attempted hostage rescue of Americans during Eagle Claw in 1980. We now all know what transpired at Desert One — due in large part to the very successful new movie Argo — and the role that Delta was to play in […]

Major General John Frost is best remembered as the battalion commander of a British airborne infantry battalion during Operation Market Garden. Frost’s battalion was part of the famous “Bridge Too Far” operation. His unit was able to capture one side of the famous and final Arnhem bridge and hold it for several days before being […]

In April of 1775, the opening shots of the American Revolutionary War were fired at the village green of Lexington. Although the Declaration of Independence was still 15 months away, open conflict had started and it lit a powderkeg that would engulf all of the 13 colonies.  As a result of the incidents in the […]

One of the most controversial actions that took place during the American Civil War was the massacre of Union troops at Ft. Pillow, Tennessee. On April 12, 1864, Confederate troops under the command of General Nathan Bedford Forrest attacked an isolated Union base on the Mississippi River and killed scores of troops attempting to surrender […]

By mid-April 1865, the American Civil War, the bloodiest conflict in our nation’s history, was nearly over. Richmond, the Confederate capital had fallen. Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia, the bane of the Union Army for nearly four years, had surrendered the week before. President Abraham Lincoln had already visited the former […]

By early 1945, the Japanese Empire was shrinking daily and the war had reached its home shores. Less than three and half years after Pearl Harbor, American industrial might was on full display. And it was never more apparent than during the Battle of Okinawa.  The once-proud Japanese Imperial Navy that Americans feared would threaten […]

April 2, 1979 — Anthrax began to spread through the town of Sverdlovsk (now called Yekaterinburg) in the Ural Mountains, beginning an epidemic that some would call the “biological Chernobyl.” By April 4, one died from exposure to anthrax and it was initially claimed as pneumonia — in reality, spores were beginning to wreak havoc […]