Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Archive for the ‘World War II (1939-1945)’ Category

Usually, when I cover a topic, the search for related artwork or photos is relatively easy.  But when the subject is the USS Liscome Bay, such is not the case.  There are very few photos available.  And that’s because the life of Liscome Bay was short, and it was a life that ended quickly…and violently.
She [...]

Read Full Post »

“Fortress Stalingrad” had a grandiose sound to it, but the title was deceiving.  German General Friedrich Paulus knew that his 6th Army was in serious trouble.  What a difference 5 days made!  Back then he believed his Soviet enemies had their backs against the proverbial wall and that Stalingrad was nearly his.
But a massive Soviet counterattack [...]

Read Full Post »

Case Blue, launched in late June of 1942, got off to a smashing start for both the Soviets and the German aggressors…sort of.  The Red Army got smashed a lot, and the Wehrmacht did a lot of smashing.
By mid-August, the Germans were knocking on the doors of Stalingrad, having reached the Volga River north of [...]

Read Full Post »

Field Marshal Erwin Rommel knew what full-scale assaults looked like, and this didn’t look like one.  Having just returned to North Africa from Italy (where he had celebrated his 50th birthday), he was greeted with the news that a large contingent of tanks…British tanks…were gathering to the east.  But Rommel had plans, and he didn’t [...]

Read Full Post »

The Battle of Taranto is one of the Second World War’s more obscure engagements.  Maybe that’s because it happened at night, or because it lasted only a few hours.  But as we’ll soon see, it was very important for a couple of reasons.
Taranto itself might be familiar to readers of Today’s History Lesson, who may [...]

Read Full Post »

The mighty battleship HMS Hood was felled in 1941 in spectacular (and catastrophic) fashion.  Engaged in a fight with the Bismarck and Prinz Eugen, her aft ammunition magazine was pierced by gunfire from the Bismarck.  The Hood exploded in a conflagration that split her in two, sank her in minutes with nearly all hands, and [...]

Read Full Post »

For nearly a month, direct negotiations had persisted.  Back-and-forth communications?…more than 18 months.  The Soviet Union had, since April of 1938, been interested in territory that belonged to Finland, its neighbor to the west.  And Finland had (more or less) politely refused.
The Nazi-Soviet Pact came and went.  The combined German-Soviet removal of Poland from the map [...]

Read Full Post »

As General Mark Clark was preparing to depart from his secret rendevous in North Africa, Vichy commander General Charles Mast quietly said to him, “The French navy is not with us.  The army and the air force are.”  So in the early morning hours of November 8, 1942, as Allied forces made ready to disembark, there [...]

Read Full Post »

When Operation Citadel was abandoned by Adolf Hitler in July of 1943, it left in its wake the scattered bit of destroyed aircraft, the hulks of thousands of tanks, the burned out remains of more artillery pieces, and the still, quiet corpses of even more Russian and German soldiers.
While not marking the eastern-most advance of Germany’s territorial conquests (those [...]

Read Full Post »

The last two months had been particularly unkind to the Afrika Korps.  Field Marshal Erwin Rommel’s gamble at Alma el Halfa had not paid off, and early advances merely gave way to a retreat that, ten days later, found them back where they started…with a smaller force.  And that was the good news.  Two weeks [...]

Read Full Post »

We rarely visit the movie theater.  Occasionally, we’ll go and watch a movie, but even “occasionally” is too strong a word.  The last time I occupied a theater seat was in December of 2006, when I took my wife to a show as part of a Christmas present.  I don’t remember when I went before [...]

Read Full Post »

Italian dictator Benito Mussolini clearly had a flair for ineptitude.  He may have made the trains run on time in Rome and he may have made the grapes more delicious in Tuscany.  He might have even single-handedly kept Venice from sinking deeper into the Adriatic.
But on military matters…well…most people wanted him fighting for “the other [...]

Read Full Post »

For the Imperial Japanese Navy, the Battle of Santa Cruz was one of those battles that was looked back on with downcast eyes, heavy sighs, and lots of phrases that began with “If only we…” and “It almost…” and “We just about…”.  Fought to the northest of the Santa Cruz Islands (several hundred miles east [...]

Read Full Post »

The Battle of Leyte Gulf needs no serious introduction to regular readers of Today’s History Lesson, as we spent several days looking at it a year ago.  If you’d like a refresher, here are the three articles from last year, which should give you an above-and-below-water overview of what is considered to be the largest [...]

Read Full Post »

It was October 21, 1942.  In Virginia, the mid-afternoon sun shone down on an invasion fleet.  To date, it was largest of its kind ever assembled.  It’s destination?…the coasts of North Africa where Operation Torch would be unleashed.
An ocean away, off the coast of North Africa, it was also October 21, 1942.  But the sun [...]

Read Full Post »

Today, East Airfield is just a field.  Every year, a crop of sugar cane is grown there.  When the time is right (like it is at some point every year), the sugar cane is harvested and turned into whatever sweet things it becomes.  And it’s then, when the sugar cane is removed, that the field [...]

Read Full Post »

As October 13, 1939 ended, the HMS Royal Oak was sitting in the relative quiet of Scapa Flow.  Located within the Orkney Islands off the northern tip of Scotland, Scapa Flow was a natural harbor surrounded by islands (right about here).  Its beauty as a harbor had been recognized as far back as ships had been [...]

Read Full Post »

Vicissitudes.
I love that word.  The way it rolls off the tongue…it’s smooth.  Vicissitudes.  The first time I heard that word was, somewhat surprisingly, during an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.  Mike and the Bots were making fun of the short A Date with Your Family, which preceded the movie Invasion USA (which happens to be [...]

Read Full Post »

As I’ve been reading “To the Far Side of Hell“, I’m reminded again that history looks back on the Battle of Peleliu with an extremely critical eye.  The garrison there was strong and well-entrenched, but the island’s airfield was useless and its aircraft destroyed.  The general principle of “island-hopping” (bypassing Japanese strongholds and letting them [...]

Read Full Post »

The early days of Operation Barbarossa were heady ones for the German Wehrmacht, and hapless ones for their Red Army opponents.  The Soviet military had been caught in a pretty bad state of preparation by the well-oiled machine that was their enemy, and they could do little but fall back, die, or surrender.
The small city [...]

Read Full Post »

Older Posts »