Battle of Britain: Myth vs. Reality

The idealized concept immediately took root and blossomed: the Royal Air Force saved Britain from invasion in 1940. The conventional wisdom holds that Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s legendary “few” handed Nazi Germany its first defeat in World War II and paved the road to eventual victo...

By Barrett Tillman

USS Saratoga: WWII Carrier Sunk by an Atom Bomb

The USS Saratoga (CV-3) was one of just three United States Navy aircraft carriers—along with USS Ranger (CV-4) and USS Enterprise (CV-6)—to survive the entirety of the Second World War. Although outdated by 1943, as the newer and more capable Essex-cla...

By Peter Suciu

America’s Flaming Bayonet in World War I

In early 1918, as the American Expeditionary Force prepared to face battle-hardened German troops in France, the bayonet was a vital component of the Doughboys’ combat equipment. It is difficult for many people today to understand the importance the U.S. military placed on “cold steel” duri...

By Tom Laemlein

Fate of the “Unsinkable” Japanese Battleship Yamato

During the Second World War, the Imperial Japanese Navy’s Yamato was feared due to its immense size and power. She was the most heavily armed battleship ever built, with nine 18.1-inch (460mm) main guns, the largest ever mounted on a warship. Each shell weighed nearly 1.5 tons and had a range i...

By Peter Suciu

Paradox of the German Tiger II Tank

The Tiger II tank, officially designated as Panzerkampfwagen Tiger Ausf. B and introduced in 1944, was Germany’s most advanced heavy tank of World War II. Known as the Königstiger (King Tiger) by the Germans and often referred to as the Royal Tiger by Allied forces, it was designed to dominate...

By Eugene Nielsen

Canadian Modular Assault Rifle - Canada Selects New Rifle

The Canadian Armed Forces are set to adopt variants of Colt Canada’s MRR as the Canadian Modular Assault Rifle (CMAR). The announcement  stated that more than 65,000 rifles will be procured over the next 5 years to replace the Colt Canada C7 rifles and C8 carbines currently in Canadian...

By Matthew Moss

The Soviet PSS Pistol and the Rise of Captive-Piston Ammunition Guns

The captive-piston (integrally silenced) ammunition concept is often assumed to be a Soviet invention; in fact, it dates back to 1902 in the United States (US Patent No. 692,819). Fast-forward to the Cold War, when the KGB carried out extensive clandestine espionage and counter-espionage worldwid...

By Lynndon Schooler

American Bombers in World War II

American bombers in World War II represented the most significant leap in strategic air power the world had ever seen. Between 1941 and 1945, the United States Army Air Force (U.S.A.A.F.) deployed an unprecedented array of bombing aircraft across both European and Pacific theaters. From light att...

By Richard Johnson
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