Before dawn on June 22, 1941, German bombers began to rain destruction down on a swath of Soviet cities from Leningrad to Sevastopol. It was the beginning of Operation Barbarossa, the largest military operation in the history of the world. By the end of the day, three million German soldiers and their allies crossed the…
Category: Military History
On This Day in History: Remembering D-Day
Today take a moment to Remember the Military Men and Women who participated and gave their Lives in D-Day. And let General Patton’s words ring true: “It is foolish and wrong to mourn the men who died. Rather we should thank God that such men lived.” Seventy-two years ago, on June 6, 1944, Allied troops…
Obscure World War II History: The Failed Japanese Coup of 1945
A last-ditch attempt to overthrow the Japanese government at the end of World War II was a bloody embarrassment Open Road Media sponsored this post. By August 1945 more than two million Japanese soldiers, sailors and aviators had died in eight years of war stretching from China and Southeast Asia to halfway across the Pacific….
Military History: Israel’s Operation Opera, 1981
Thirty-five years after Operation Opera – the Israeli air attack that destroyed Saddam Hussein’s nuclear reactor at Osirak, retired IAF officers and Mossad agents revealed hitherto unknown details of the operation on Friday. n an expose aired on Channel 10, Col. (Ret.) Ze’ev Raz, who led the June 7, 1981 raid, said that Air Force…
Military History: The Four Worst War Crimes Imaginable
These horrific war crimes reveal a humanity that isn’t good or bad, but absolutely sadistic. Human nature is an amorphous thing: Optimists and pessimists can look at the same human history and present diametrically opposed assessments of the human spirit. The optimist will point to acts of selflessness and historical displays of a collective will…
Military Intelligence History: The Battle of Midway, The Complete Intelligence Story
The Battle of Midway in June of 1942 was one of the most important naval battles in world history and a turning point in the Second World War. Between June 4 and 7, aircraft from aircraft carriers Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet of the U.S. Navy’s Task Forces 16 and 17 ambushed and sank the Imperial…
Profiles in Courage: The Tank Killers of Roughneck 91
I highly recommend the book Roughneck 91: The Amazing True Story of a Special Forces A-Team at War. This happened early on in the War and did not get a lot of coverage, but next to the Marines at Fallujah, this is definitely one of the most amazing stories of the War. -SF When a group…
World War II History: One of The Most Devastating Bombing’s of WW2 You Most Likely Never Heard About
“It was a lovely winter morning with a clear sky overhead. At 11:10 a.m., the earth shuddered violently.” So reads an official’s account of an otherwise unremarkable day in 1944. But what was very remarkable was the source of the shuddering: an explosion so fierce it left a crater 80 feet deep and a…
Military Weapons From the Past: Steyr-Hahn Pistol Variations
The Steyr-Hahn is one of the less glamorized pistols used in WWI, despite being made in quite large numbers (250,000-313,000, depending on who you read). The gun is an interesting mix of features, including bits from the Roth-Steyr M1907 and the early Colt/Browning 1900/1902/1903 pistols. As the M1912, the gun was the standard pistol for…
Know Your Weapons: The Armalite AR-10
In 1955, the small Californian firearms company ArmaLite unveiled one of the most defining and influential rifles of the 20th century — the AR-10. The hard-hitting rifle would see extensive service in bitter colonial conflicts and provide the basis for the M-16, one of the most iconic rifles of all time. But despite its importance there has…