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Admittedly, the 1968 film The Green Berets is not John Wayne's best acting or even his best war movie. The 'Duke' was too old and fat to be traipsing around [...]

ONE WOULD EXPECT AN AIRPLANE SLATED FOR A RECORD FLIGHT ATTEMPT TO BE PREPPED AND FLAWLESS DOWN TO THE LAST RIVET, BUT BEFORE IT EVER LEFT THE DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT PLANT [...]

INCREDIBLY, IN MAY 1938, EVEN AS WAR LOOMED IN EUROPE, THE U.S. NAVY HAD NO ATLANTIC FLEET TO DEFEND THE EAST COAST. The fledgling U.S. Army Air Corps boasted that [...]

In February 1968 the headlines out of Southeast Asia were all bad: North Vietnam's Tet Offensive, the battles of Hue and Quang Tri, the siege of Khe Sanh. In one [...]

ENGINES WARNING ON THE RAMP, BOMBED UP. GUNS AND ROCKETS LOADED, THE CUBAN LIBERRTION AIR FORCE WAS RARING TO FLY TOP COVER OVER THE BAY OF PIGS ON APRIL 16, [...]

To ignore Murphy's Law-'anything that can go wrong will go wrong'--while conducting flight operations on an aircraft carrier is a capital offense. As 30-ton jets hurtle off the bow, controlled-crash [...]

IN JUNE 1928 AVIATION CADET ALBERT PAUL MANTZ HAD THE WORLD BY ITS TAIL FEATHERS. The 24-year-old, high on the honors list at the U.S. Army flight school at March [...]

Squadron Leader Ron Chadwick acquired them on ground-control radar, but could only send two fighters intercept them. 'We are expecting our foreign visitors in 10 minutes, Spitfire red leader,' he [...]

IN MAY 1944, NOT LONG AFTER THEIR ARRIVAL IN ENGLAND, B-24 LIBERATOR PILOT CAPTAIN GEORGE JOHNSON AND CREWS OF THE 788TH BOMBARDMENT SQUADRON (HEAVY) WERE TOLD THEY COULD FORGET THEIR [...]

In war some cities fall in battle, others by starvation. But in early August 1964 Stanleyville--present-day Kisangani, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo--fell to black magic. From the windows [...]

A month before the fall of Nazi Germany, Maj. Robin Olds of the 479th Fighter Group, U.S. Army Air Forces, scored his final aerial victory of World War II, chasing [...]

MONDAY EVENINGS IN LATE 1922, THE CAFE NEUMAYR IN MUNICH PLAYED HOST TO A COLLECTION OF UNSAVORY, LOWER-MIDDLE-CLASS WAR VETERANS, RABBLE-ROUSERS, MALCONTENTS AND WOULD-BE REVOLUTIONNARIES, GRUMBLING OVER GERMNNYS ANARCHIC POSTWAR [...]

When Private First Class Francis S. 'Frank' Currey arrived in Malmedy six days before Christmas 1944, the Belgian town wasn't yet notorious for a massacre. Eighty-four dead American POWs still [...]

The mission went wrong almost from the start. Two U.S. Air Force F-4C Phantoms of the 558th Tactical Fighter Squadron, call sign 'Boxer,' found their primary target weathered over. They [...]

As night fell on the first millennium after the birth of Christ, an army of Irish kings sent nearly 7,000 Vikings to Valhalla. On Dec. 30, 999, at Gleann Mama [...]

Little more than a month after Pearl Harbor, when the United States was belatedly gearing up for war, Germany was already testing jet fighters. In January 1942, Heinkel company test [...]

In 1618, on the cusp of the scientific revolution in Europe, both astronomy and astrology were respected scholarly pursuits, and the stars foretold war. That spring Johannes Kepler, astronomer and [...]

THE ROCKET-POWERED ME-163 KOMET INTERCEPTOR OUTPERFORMED EVERY OTHER WORLD WAR II COMBAT AIRCRAFT... IF ITS PILOTS LIVED TO FIGHT IN LATE JULY 1944. P-51 MUSTANG PILOTS WHO THOUGHT THEY FLEW [...]

In early September 1965, Squadron Leader Muhammad Alam of the Pakistan Air Force dived his North American F-86F Sabre after seven Indian Air Force Hawker F.56 Hunter fighter-bombers raiding Sargodha, [...]

OF ALL THE AMERICAN PILOTS WHO FLEW AND FOUGHT IN WORLD WAR II, ONLY A HANDFUL MANAGED TO SHOOT DOWN AIRCRAFT FROM ALL THREE AXIS COUNTRIES. And just one, Louis [...]

IT WAS A NEW KIND OF WAR. In less than a decade the United States had sided with former enemies, retired its most famous general and settled with bitter foes--ex-allies--for [...]

BY 1917, WITH THE GERMAN HIGH SEAS FLEET BLOCKADED IN PORT, THE BRITISH ROYAL NAVY'S CHIEF CONCERN WAS NOT ENEMY BATTLESHIPS, BUT AIRSHIPS. That April the zeppelin L23 managed to [...]

After the mid-1944 Battle of the Philippine Sea--the 'Great Marianas Turkey Shoot'--the U.S. military considered Japanese naval aviation finished as an effective fighting force, but four Mitsubishi G4M2 'Betty' pilots [...]

For most of the Vietnam War, U.S. planes failed to destroy a key bridge at Thanh Hoa. Then came the smart bomb. Operation Rolling Thunder. Its very name evoked, no [...]

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] On February 9, 1944, four Focke Wulf Fw-190As jumped his flight of four Spitfires off occupied Nice, France--a fair fight, except for a Spit lugging a drop tank. [...]

Arriving at Ardmore Studios, Dublin, Ireland, in 1965 to begin work on a new 20th Century Fox World War I dogfight movie, stunt pilot Derek Piggott learned he was in [...]

In the early morning hours of the first day of 1945, Allied pilots in northwest Europe might have expected to see pink elephants before they saw Nazi aircraft. Since the [...]

By October 1951, the seesaw ground war in Korea had stalemated across the 38th Parallel, but in the air the kill ratio of F-86 Sabres over MiG-15s--famously claimed as 10-to-1 [...]

It was one of the biggest air raids in the entire campaign for the Solomon Islands. More than a year after U.S. Marines landed on Guadalcanal, Navy TBF Avengers and [...]

It didn't take long for Ensign Max Immelmann of the Imperial German Flying Corps, piloting unarmed two-seater reconnaissance planes over the Western Front, to learn that the enemy was shooting [...]

That Saturday afternoon the 'Opium Den'--the smoky, sweltering, ramshackle command bunker at Henderson Field, on Guadalcanal--was packed with Navy and Marine brass hats. Lowly flyboys Captain Thomas Lanphier Jr. and [...]

The Cold War flared hot on August 23, 1958, when Communist China bombarded Matsu and Quemoy, islands of the Nationalist Republic of China (Taiwan). As Red Chinese and American warships [...]

To French infantrymen in Verdun's trenches early in 1916, cowering under German artillery, machine guns, flamethrowers and gas attacks, the appearance of a bright red airplane overhead symbolized salvation rather [...]

Bailing out of a stricken fighter over open water is no picnic in the best of circumstances. Over the English Channel in late October 1940, it was bloody dangerous. Twenty-two-year-old [...]

Until very recently the remote forward airstrip had been deep inside Soviet Russia, but now it was Nazi territory. Lieutenant Hans-Ulrich Rudel and the rest of his dive bomber wing [...]

The article reports that in an interview with aviation historian Bill Wasserzieher for a Douglas employee oral history project, flight test engineer Richard H. Edwards recalled that "The night before, at Long Beach, somebody had dinged the slats and they didn't work." Topics include examines that during the preflight check wards damaged the trailing-edge flaps, banging one on a flight crew workstand inadvertently left under it. INSET: THE FOURTH SST.

Facing a critical shortage of C-Stoff fuel for JG.400, Colonel Wolfgang Spate was informed by General of Fighters Adolf Galland that 'because of a special SS initiative, a defensive surface-to-air [...]

The article reports on aerial supply runs made to the French underground during World War II. It mentions the use of B-24 Liberator bombers and the modifications made to the planes, the low altitude flying to precisely drop the supply containers, and the number and secrecy requirements of the flights.

A personal narrative is presented which explores the author's experience of participating in the 1940 Battle of Britain.

The article offers information on Francis S. “Frank” Currey, the U.S. Army technical sergeant who arrived in Malmedy, Belgium before Christmas 1944. It mentions that one of Skorzeny’s tank commanders, Captain Walter Scherf, mentions that Malmedy should be enemy-free. It mentions that Company B commander, Captain Murray S. Pulver was the in charge of the American roadblock.