In the mid-1930s, Adolph Hitler cast his eye towards France and dreamed of revenge for the outcome of World War One. Standing in his way was the French Maginot Line, a collection of massive concrete strongpoints, casemates, armored turrets, and observation posts. Among the barbed wire, mine field...
It’s one of the most memorable monikers for a fighting force around, and its legend stems from a brutal battle fought more than a century ago. The term was reportedly adapted from the German Teufel Hunden, and applied to American Marines following the Battle of Belleau Wood during World Wa...
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...
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 Although outdated by 1943, as the newer and more capable Essex-cla...
Editor’s Note: Especially adapted for The Armory Life from The Matchless Enfield .303 No. 4 Mk I (T) Sniper and Britain’s Elite Scout/Snipers Who Dominated WWII Battlefields Book No. 2 Mk II revised and expanded by Jeff John. Available at Amazon.com. I’ve long believed the En...
The M1 Abrams was conceived with a singular, unyielding purpose: the total destruction of enemy armored formations. Over the last four decades, it has become the absolute pinnacle of tank warfare made manifest. Its sheer battlefield dominance has not only won conflicts, but forced militaries acro...
Military aircraft design of the Cold War era could be described as akin to physics, or, more specifically, to Newton’s Third Law of motion, which states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” From lessons learned in the Vietnam War, the United States Air Force determi...
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...
Welcome to today’s Photo of the Day! Here we have a Richard William Davis manufactured Browning 1919A6 belt-fed machine gun built from a new-made sideplate and military surplus components. The A6 variant was developed during WWII in response to Germany’s MG34 and MG42, giving American t...
Despite around-the-clock bombing by British and American heavy bombers, the Germans during World War II produced an ever-increasing volume of advanced military materiel right up until the end of the war. Even though they had terribly limited resources and were being squeezed on all sides, they st...