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The January sky over eastern Belgium is the color of steel, low clouds pressing down on snow-covered fields. An American armored task force eases forward along a narrow road when the world ahead of it suddenly erupts. Antitank rounds smash into the frozen earth, machine guns rake the ditches, and rifle fire lashes out from a ridgeline roughly two hundred yards in front of the column. Inside one of the lead tank destr
In the Texas Revolution, a short, violent clash on the Gulf Coast plains decided the fate of a breakaway republic and, eventually, much of the American Southwest. On April 21st, 1836, General Sam Houston’s Texian army surprised the larger Mexican force of General Antonio López de Santa Anna near the San Jacinto River. Many of the Texian fighters were recent immigrants from the United States, bringing frontier militia
In the early Cold War, the United States sought more powerful nuclear weapons to stay ahead in the arms race. On March 1st, 1954, at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific, the United States conducted the Castle Bravo test, the first dry-fuel thermonuclear device in its series. The blast was far more powerful than designers anticipated, yielding many megatons of explosive force and producing a massive fireball and mushroom clou
As the Pacific war neared its climax, the Battle of Okinawa became one of the bloodiest and most complex operations ever undertaken by American forces. By late May of 1945, United States Army and Marine units had fought their way against layered Japanese defenses centered on the Shuri Line, a fortified belt anchored by Shuri Castle. On May 29th, 1945, Japanese commanders began abandoning this vital position under rel
Outside Charleston, South Carolina, a sand and earth fortification called Fort Wagner guarded the approaches to the harbor and symbolized Confederate defiance. On the evening of July 18th, 1863, the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, one of the first African American regiments raised in the Union Army, led a frontal assault across a narrow strip of beach under heavy artillery and rifle fire.
At Groton, Connecticut, the United States Navy stepped into a new era when USS Nautilus, the world’s first nuclear-powered submarine, was commissioned on September 30th, 1954.
At the shipyards in Groton, Connecticut, the United States Navy launched a vessel that would fundamentally change undersea warfare. On January 21st, 1954, USS Nautilus slid into the water as the world’s first operational nuclear-powered submarine. Unlike conventionally powered boats that had to surface or snorkel regularly for air and fuel, Nautilus could remain submerged for long periods, travel at higher sustained
In late May of 1754, a young Virginia officer named George Washington led colonial troops and Native allies through the forests of the Ohio Country. Near a small encampment of French soldiers at a place later called Jumonville Glen, his party launched a surprise attack that killed or captured most of the detachment, including its commander.
The September 1944 landing on Peleliu secured an airfield but opened a much longer struggle against a deeply fortified island. Marine and Army operations continued into November, making the battle more than the familiar story of its first beaches.