By Jeffrey Cox It takes a special kind of person to serve in a submarine. Warships and support ships are cramped enough, isolated enough when in the middle of the ocean and no land in sight, but one can at least go on deck and see the ocean, the sky, the sun. Maybe other ships. Maybe planes flying around. There is still a visible connection to the world outside the ship. On a submarine, once that boat submerges, that’s it. Your world is limited to the submarine. The control room, the torpedo rooms, the engine room, the wardroom. That’s it. There is nothing outside that metal box. Nothing you can see, unless you’re one of the lucky few to have access to the periscope. But you know there’s a mysterious undersea world outside that metal box. You can’t see it, but the sound guy can hear it, and if those sounds are loud enough, you can, too. The eerie, mournful calls of various sea creatures outside the hull. Calls that can be unnerving, but represent almost no threat, unless a giant baleen whale tries to mate with the submarine or a great white shark tries to eat it.

A Review by Brian Williams Lost Honour, Betrayed Loyalty: The Memoir of a Waffen-SS Soldier on the Eastern Front is a memoir by Belgian Herbert Maeger who was blackmailed into joining the Waffen-SS in 1941. He trained with the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler and was a frontline driver in the Soviet Union and saw combat in Kharkov and Kursk. Later in the war he retrained as SS paramedic but was transferred to a SS penal division where he was forced to fight on the Oder Front.

By David W. Tschanz Fizzling fish, wrong tactics and incompetent commanders -- ingredients for disaster simmering below the waves aboard American submarines -- how many years did they add to World War II? A strong case has been made, by authors as varied as Jim Dunnigan, John Keegan and George Friedman, that the leading cause of the eventual defeat of the Japanese in World War II was the choke hold on its commercial shipping achieved by the Allies. Friedman, in his thought provoking if flawed The Coming War With Japan , argues that aerial strategic bombing had little effect on Japanese production capacity. But production capacity is useless without raw materials. US submarines, ranging on the north-south routes from the Indies and along the Japanese coast, systematically interdicted the flow of strategic materials.

by Walter Giersbach On Nov. 25. 1864, eight men walked the streets of Manhattan, New York. The group, calling themselves the Confederate Army of Manhattan, split up and approached a series of hotels on their lists and checked in. “At 17 minutes of nine the St. James Hotel was discovered to be on fire in one of the rooms,” The New York Times reported. Bedding and furniture had been saturated with an accelerant and set aflame. A few minutes later, Barnum’s Museum was ablaze. About the same time, four rooms of the St. Nicholas Hotel were ablaze. By 9:20 p.m. a room in the Lafarge House was ln flames. Then the Metropolitan House, Brandreth House, Frenche’s Hotel, the Belmont House, Wallack’s Theatre and several other buildings were on fire.

A Review by Brian Williams Claus Neuber's personal narrative is one of the most incredible stories of determination and survival that I've read in many years. His writings and daily journal is incredibly detailed and descriptive. The immense chaos and sheer terror of having the entire front collapse around you and not knowing exactly what the situation is, is completely conveyed in his recount of the events.

by Roger Craig and Michael Artis The Battle of Chickamauga is a historic battle fought near Chickamauga Creek in Chickamauga, Georgia, during the Civil War, in 1863. The recent Union Army victories took its toll on the Confederate forces both in physical ways and emotional ways. General Braxton Bragg and General William Rosecrans met on the battlefield before the Battle of Chickamauga. They met and fought at the Tullahoma Campaign. General Rosecrans emerged victorious in the Tullahoma Campaign. General Bragg and his troops suffered a loss, but the fight for this region was not over. The importance of the region demanded that each side put all they had into controlling that vital supply route. The Confederate Army won the battle. However, the Battle of Chickamauga was the Confederate victory that led to the defeat of the Confederate Army in the American Civil War.

By Rich Anderson The US Army of World War II was created from a tiny antebellum army in the space of just three years. On 30 June 1939 the Regular Army numbered 187,893 officers and enlisted men, including Philippine Scouts, and including 22,387 in the Army Air Corps. On the same date the National Guard totaled 199,491 men. The major combat units included nine infantry divisions, two cavalry divisions, and a mechanized cavalry (armored) brigade in the Regular Army and eighteen infantry divisions in the National Guard. Modern equipment was for the most part nonexistent and training in the National Guard units varied from fair to poor. The outbreak of war in Europe in September 1939 led to a gradual expansion of the Army. On 27 August 1940, Congress authorized the induction of the National Guard into Federal service.

By Bruce Oliver Newsome, Ph.D. Tiger 131 is the most famous tank in the world: the first of its type recovered to Britain; the most studied and photographed tank in Allied intelligence; and the only running Tiger in the world today. The British reports have always been puzzling: their numbering and dating suggest that some reports are missing or were never completed; some reports contradict others; some are not dated at all; beautiful drawings and paintings were created, but appear without captions. Now, after a survey of all surviving reports, from Britain to North America, their original condition can be revealed.[1] The implications for Allied intelligence are not pretty. The Tiger was the product of a long program by that name, with several projects. In fact, the program produced two different models of tank named “Tiger.”

By Walter F. Giersbach The war in Asia was far away when a family in Bly, Oregon, triggered a 15-kg anti-personnel bomb. Instantly killed on May 5, 1945, were Elsye Mitchell, a pregnant mother, and five teenaged children Elsye almost didn't want to go on the picnic that day, but she had baked a chocolate cake in anticipation of their outing. The 26-year-old was pregnant with her first child. On that morning she decided she felt decent enough to join her husband, Rev. Archie Mitchell, and a group of Sunday school children as they set out for nearby Gearhart Mountain in southern Oregon. While Archie parked their car, Elsye and the children stumbled upon a strange-looking object in the forest. The minister would later describe that moment to local newspapers: “I…hurriedly called a warning to them, but it was too late. Just then there was a big explosion. I ran up – and they were all lying there dead.” Lost in an instant were his wife and unborn child, alongside Eddie Engen, 13, Jay Gifford, 13, Sherman Shoemaker, 11, Dick Patzke, 14, and Joan “Sis” Patzke, 13.

By Edward Langer He came out of nowhere. He was yelling and charging straight for the American patrol. He stood a little over five and a half feet tall but to the soldiers he looked like a monster twelve feet tall. He brandished a long knife, which he wickedly held in his right hand. The patrol reacted immediately and several of the soldiers scored hits from their bolt action, Springfield rifles. But he wouldn't go down. He just kept coming at them. He was about ready to slash at the soldiers when a lucky shot to his head brought him down. After the fight the soldiers turned the dead warrior over. He had twelve neat little holes in him, but only the lucky shot had stopped him. Here was a new enemy – the Moro Juramentado. Armed with a sword known as the Kris or a hacking knife called the Barong, they were a formidable enemy. They were unlike any other enemy the Americans had encountered.

by Edward J. Langer The battlecruiser was thought of as the ship that could do everything. Scout, do battle with cruisers and destroyers, protect shipping lanes and lines of communication and join the battle line and slug it out with enemy battlecruisers and battleships. Great Brittan and Germany adopted this theory, the United States Navy long debated it, but eventually gave in only to see them scraped or converted into aircraft carriers. But did the US Navy actually have a battlecruiser and not acknowledge it? Two classes of heavy cruisers come close to fulfilling the roles of the battlecruiser. This would include the USS Alaska class and the USS Des Moines class.

By Anthony J. SobieskiThis is part II of a four-part chronology of those killed during the Korean War. When reading this article please keep in mind, as in Part I, that these numbers are only U.S. deaths during the war. UN and ROK deaths are not included as part of this series. There are two things that stand out for the year of 1951 in Korea. The vast majority of pilots and aircrew who were killed were ‘Remains Not Recovered', be it due to being shot down behind enemy lines, over water, receiving a direct hit or not coming out of a dive and crashing and burning. The second is that by the end of 1951 as combat operations slowed down to a minimal crawl, Died of Other Causes, or ‘DOC', became a significant factor in the tally of deaths, sometimes even accounting for more deaths in a day than combat operations. Vehicle roll-overs, accidents of various types, and hemorrhagic fever accounted for a large portion of these DOC deaths.

By Robert C. Daniels The 1712-1736 Fox Wars, like all Indian Wars – wars between the various Native-American tribes and the people of European decent, including the French, the English, the Spanish, and finally the Americans – was a tragedy for all who participated in it, but especially for the Indians. To fully understand the war, one must begin at, well, the beginning – who were the antagonists, and how did they get to the point to where war was the only option? So, let us first cover what led up to the wars. The Foxes, who called themselves Měshkwa`kihŭg' or Mesquakies , meaning ‘red-earth people,' from the soil they were believed to have been created from, were commonly referred to by the French as Renards, or Foxes, since, when the Red Fox clan of the Mesquakies was first encountered by the French and asked what tribe they were, they replied in the Algonquian language that they were of the Red Fox clan.

Island Hopping in World War II Trench Warfare at Sea by LtCol Richard Beil USMC(Ret.)



Those who study military history are familiar with how strict adherence to the detailed mobilization schedule of the Schlieffen Plan contributed to the beginning of World War I. Count Alfred von Schlieffen, Chief of the German General Staff from 1891 to 1906 was, like all German officers, schooled in Clausewitz's precept, “The heart of France lies between Belgium and Paris.“ [1] Since the Franco-Russian alliance of 1892, Germany considered itself surrounded. Should war be deemed necessary, von Schlieffen saw it as a two-front war. In such a war, he wrote, “the whole of Germany must throw itself upon one enemy, the strongest, most powerful, most dangerous enemy, and that can only be France.” [2] Schlieffen's plan for 1906, the year he retired, called for a 6 week campaign with seven-eighths of Germany's armed forces dedicated to the defeat of France while one-eighth held the eastern frontier against Russia. Following the defeat of France, the entire German army would then face the second enemy. Read Article »

Book Review: Voices from Stalingrad: First-hand Accounts from World War II's Cruellest Battle A Review by Brian Williams



The battle of Stalingrad has always been a fascinating battle for me to study. The German Army was still steam-rolling over the steppes of the Ukraine and seemingly unstoppable. But, unbeknownst to them, they had overstretched themselves to their ultimate breaking point. The rationale was if only they could take this last city on the western bank of the Volga, they could work on solidifying their front and move north and east. But, that determination cost the destruction of the German 6th Army, the surrounding Axis allied armies and resulted in the ultimate retreat of the entire German army. Jonathan Bastable has written a masterful book – which could possibly be one of my most favorite first-hand WWII account books in my library. It contains material that has never been published before and offers an incredible insight into the battle. It's a book that once you start reading, you won't be able to put down. Read Review »