The Pilot Who Fired a Pistol Mid-Air at a Japanese Fighter
The sky over Burma was a hellscape of smoke and fire.
Second Lieutenant Owen Baggett, copilot of a B-24 bomber, had just bailed out of his crippled aircraft, his parachute deploying as the jungle can…
They Flew Into the Fire and Walked Out Alive: 10 Impossible Survival Stories
The desert sun burned white against the sky as the Messerschmitt closed in for the kill.
Wing Commander James Francis Edwards, a skinny farm boy from Saskatchewan, had only seconds to act.
His P-40 …
The Enemy’s Fighter: How Nazi-Designed Bf 109s Saved Israel
In the chaotic hours following Israel’s declaration of independence, four powerful Arab armies launched a coordinated attack, determined to crush the newborn state.
Israel, outnumbered and outgunned,…
The Day Australian Soldiers Took Justice Into Their Own Hands
The smell hit them first.
Corporal Edward ‘Ted’ Williams from Queensland stopped walking when the wind changed direction.
He had been a soldier for five years, had seen dead men before, had buried f…
The Miracle Drug in Every Soldier’s Pocket
In the winter of 1935, a six-year-old girl named Hildigard Domag lay dying in a modest house in Wuppertal, Germany.
A simple prick from an unsterilized needle had turned into a lethal streptococcal i…
The Witch of Wall Street: How Hetty Green Became History’s Greatest Miser
In the glittering age of American excess, when tycoons built marble mansions and draped their wives in diamonds, one woman amassed a fortune that rivaled the greatest industrialists of her time—yet sh…
The Day Death Rained from the Sky: Kamikaze Attacks in World War II
The Pacific sun blazed down on the USS St.
Lo, a speck of steel in the vast blue expanse.
Sailors went about their routines, the hum of the carrier’s engines a constant companion.
Then, without war…
The Rifle That Made Germans Think They Faced Machine Guns
In the frozen forests of the Ardennes, German soldiers heard a sound that defied belief.
From American positions came a volume of fire so relentless, so continuous, that they were certain they had st…
The Nazi Who Worked for Mossad: Otto Skorzeny’s Family Vanished Without a Trace
August 1975, Madrid.
Dozens of German veterans raise their arms in Nazi salutes over Otto Skorzeny’s coffin.
Hitler’s favorite commando, the man who rescued Mussolini from an Italian mountaintop, is…
The 20-Minute Mission That Killed Japan’s Greatest Admiral
Dawn had not yet broken over Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, April 18, 1943.
The air hung thick with humidity and the acrid bite of aviation fuel.
Eighteen young American pilots stood in the pre-daw…