In 1981, Weather and Reporters Stymied a Complicated Air Ambush in Sudan
In reaction to Libya claiming all of the Gulf of Syrte as its territorial waters, in January 1981 U.S. president Ronald Reagan ordered the U.S. Navy to conduct a “freedom of navigation exercise” in that part of the Mediterranean Sea. During the exercise, there were dozens of tense encounters... Read more
The Union Cavalry Raid That Inspired James Mattis
On April 17, 1863, a former music teacher with a fear of horses — he was kicked in the head by one as a child — set off with 1,700 Union soldiers, the scouts in Confederate uniforms, on a raid deep into Mississippi. The raid by Col. Benjamin Grierson... Read more
Remembering the Vietnam War’s Bloody Urban Battle of Hue
Mark Bowden’s new history Hue 1968: A Turning Point of the American War in Vietnam pulls off a rare feat — it takes a conflict of terrible scale and consequence, and allows us to see it unfold at the street level, through the eyes of Vietnamese and American soldiers engaged in... Read more
The U.S. Army’s Failed Quest to Create Floating Tank Divisions
This story originally appeared on Feb. 1, 2016. Amphibious assaults are the domain of the U.S. Marines, not the Army. But there was a period in history when the Army tried to out-do the Marines in hitting the beach — including planning how to deploy entire divisions of amphibious... Read more
The Battlecarrier Was Part Battleship, Part Aircraft Carrier
This story originally appeared on Dec. 6, 2013. In the early 1980s, four Iowa-class fast battleships originally built during World War II—Iowa, Missouri, New Jersey and Wisconsin—were taken out of mothballs and returned to active duty. Nearly 900 feet long and displacing close to 60,000 tons, the battlewagons could... Read more
A Nazi War Train Hauled the Biggest Gun Ever Made
This story originally appeared on July 31, 2015. War trains dominated combat for more than 100 years. Massive railborne artillery shelled the enemy while trains unloaded troops and supplies. For a brief moment, the terrifying machines were the most powerful weapon on the battlefield. But technology advanced. Improvements to... Read more
The Soviet Cruiser ‘Kaganovich’ Navigated Political Purges
In 1938, the Soviet Navy laid down the Kaganovich, the fifth of six Kirov-class cruisers. Survivors of World War II, the Kirovs were responsible for mine-laying operations in the Baltic Sea and escorting troop ships reinforcing the besieged Black Sea port city of Sevastopol. The cruisers represented the Soviet... Read more
The Canine Heroes of the Imperial Japanese Army
This story originally appeared on Feb. 6, 2014. In the corner of the Enmei Buddhist Temple grounds in the coastal city of Zushi in Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture, stands a stone cenotaph that reads “Monument to the Protection of Animals.” The inscription dates back to 1958, but before that time... Read more
The XM174 Grenade-Launcher Was Too Fragile for Vietnam
In the early 1960s, American advisers in Vietnam asked the U.S. Army to supply them an automatic grenade launcher. In September 1963, the Army asked industry to submit designs for a low-velocity 40-millimeter automatic grenade launcher. The new launcher had to weight less than 12 pounds — half the... Read more
The Pentagon Dropped Billions of Leaflets … That No One Read
This story originally appeared on March 20, 2015. The United States and its allies dropped some 2.5 billion propaganda leaflets during the Korean War. But after the 1953 armistice which halted the fighting, the Pentagon discovered that few enemy troops ever read the messages, let alone understood them. One reason was that pilots rarely... Read more