Military History

In December of 1941, the United States was thrust into the fighting of World War II by way of the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, and by the summer of 1942, the U.S. Army Air Force (the Air Force wouldn’t be established for another five years) set about hopping a variety of aircraft from […]

Many have siphoned their wartime experiences into their literature later on in life, even in fiction. Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Walt Whitman, J.D. Salinger, T.S. Eliot — be it on the civilian side or the military, it has been a creative outlet for many who wish to express those feelings in a manner more […]

You see them pop up from time to time: images of civilian vehicles modified for use in combat, adorned in patinated metal armor with beefy tires crammed into stock wheel wells and soldiers, rebels, or some other kind of combatant standing proudly alongside the vehicle like a shot from behind the scenes in a new […]

“Rabble we may be, but we are now a rabble in arms…” (The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress) This is part two, read part one here. In 1965 Singapore was tossed out into the cold by Malaysia. Few countries get their independence in such a fashion. They were on their own in a very bad […]

The Berlin Airlift stemmed from the Berlin Blockade which occurred in June 1948. It was the world’s first major situation with regards to the Cold War that involved a plethora of nations. The Soviet Union enacted the blockade after the Deutsche mark was introduced to areas of Germany controlled by the Western Allies. The soviets […]

In 2008, the Pentagon sent the first operational stealth combat jet, the F-117A Nighthawk, out to pasture — or at least, sort of. The F-117 flew as an entirely classified program for years before ever being acknowledged by the U.S. Air Force as an operational program in the 1980s, allowing a generation of young Americans […]

By the time you’re 25 years old, roughly one-third of the people who were alive when you were born are dead. By the time you’re 50, about two-thirds of everyone on the planet who were alive when you were born are dead. The earth’s turn-over rate is quite something. Things have always happened fast — […]

One hundred and forty-one years after the Corps of Cadets got its first black graduate and 86 years since it had its first graduate in the 20th century, West Point, the United States Military Academy (USMA), is finally receiving its first African-American Commandant of Cadets. To say that seeing that was a surprise is an […]

The United States Marine Corps War Memorial is an iconic piece of American history. It is a tangible representation of fundamental American values — courage, perseverance, patriotism and honoring the “man in the arena” who has secured our nation’s freedom, often at a terrible price. But who was behind the monument that is ingrained in […]

On or around June 14, 1947, something fell from the skies above New Mexico, strewing wreckage and debris across land belonging to a foreman named William Brazel. He gathered up the strange metallic materials (just what exactly he gathered varies depending on who you believe) and eventually made his way to a nearby town some […]

June 27, 1950 — Only two days before, thousands of North Korean soldiers had crossed into the South Korea, under the cover of artillery barrages over the 38th parallel. They were already on their way to Seoul by the 27th, and the world was watching closely. On this day in history, U.S. President Harry Truman […]

Iraq’s Ministry of Defense has announced that the remains of 128 Iraqi military men have been repatriated from Iran, the soldiers were killed during the 1980s Iran-Iraq war. The Ministry of Defense utilized DNA testing on the remains to accurately identify each soldier by name of record. It has announced to the public that relatives […]