Osprey

In August 1940, the Luftwaffe began an operation to destroy or neutralize RAF Fighter Command, and enable Hitler to invade Britain that autumn. It was a new type of air warfare: the first ever offensive counter-air campaign against an integrated air defence system. Powerful, combat-proven and (...)

One of the prime objectives for the Allies following the D-Day landings was the capture of sufficient ports to supply their armies. The original Overlord plans assumed that ports along the Breton coast would be essential to expansion of the Normandy beach-head. This included the major ports at (...)

Over the last 30 years, the technical' or armed pick-up truck has become arguably the most ubiquitous military land vehicle of modern warfare.Harking back to the armed Jeeps and Chevrolet trucks of the SAS and Long Range Desert Group in North Africa in World War II, the world's first insurgent (...)

The emergence of the tank in World War I led to the development of the first infantry weapons to defend against tanks. Anti-tank rifles became commonplace in the inter-war years and in the early campaigns of World War II in Poland and the Battle of France, which saw renewed use in the form of the (...)

In June 1944 the Allies opened the long-awaited second front against Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, and this was to be the start of a long struggle throughout Western Europe for the Allied forces in the face of stiff German resistance.The European Theater was where the bulk of the Allied (...)

In 1519, the Conquistador Hernán Cortés landed on the mainland of the Americas. His quest to serve God, win gold, and achieve glory drove him into the heartland of what is now Mexico, where no European had ever set foot before. He marched towards to the majestic city of Tenochtitlan, floating like (...)

Although the F-4 Phantom II was the most important fighter-bomber to see action with all three American services during the Vietnam War, it was essentially a US Navy design, and the carrier-borne squadron crews were its main operators in combat.The aircraft pioneered the use of long-range, (...)

Due to Poland's partitions and dissolution in the late eighteenth century, hundreds of thousands of Polish soldiers enlisted in distinct units in the armies of many countries--primarily those of the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires, but also those of the German Reich and the French Republic.All (...)