Galleries
The Pacific Fleet Strikes Back
After surviving the Pearl Harbor raid unscathed, US aircraft carriers lead the counterattack against the Japanese. Things went well. But not everything.
Welcome to the Service, son
New recuits got an occasional fatherly pat on the back, but being indoctrinated into the military was hardly a family picnic at the park. There was exercise and long marches and drilling. And more exercise.
Raid Liberates American POWs in the Philippines
US Army Rangers and Filipino guerrillas free hundreds of ill and starving Allied captives from the Japanese Cabanatuan prison camp on Luzon in early 1945.
Greyhound: On the Road through WWII and Beyond
There was no escaping the world war, and America's intercity bus company changed with it like everything else did--while peering through a rose-colored windshield at the promising postwar future on the horizon.
Disney to the front
Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, and an army of their kindred cartoons join the war effort at home and overseas
Stamps for the war effort
Like almost everything the governments printed for public consumption during the war, postage stamps, in all their variety, were designed to stoke patriotism.
Battle of the Bulge 2010
''GI" Joe Razes and more than 1,000 other reenactors march into Pennsylvania's Fort Indiantown Gap to re-create the winter of 1944-1945 fight in the Ardennes forest.
Heading Home at Last
Across Europe, Asia, and the Pacific, America’s victorious GIs pack up, tear down, and head home to restart their lives—and their country.
Victory Mania!
Americans cut loose around the world as they learn of Japan’s surrender and start the countdown to a new life and a brighter future.
America beats the Nazis
Join America’s fighting men on their long, dangerous journey across Europe to end the tyranny of the Third Reich.
George Patton and the camera
Hard-fighting General George S. Patton, Jr., wasn’t just a warrior, he was a showman—dramatic, flamboyant, and ready to mug for the camera.
Iwo Jima Snapshots
Clearing ash-coated Iwo Jima of its grim Japanese defenders was a grind unlike anything US Marines had ever experienced before.
Pulp fiction fantasy
Cheap, exciting, and fun to read, pulp fiction magazines were the ultimate escape from war’s hard times.
pulp fiction Goes to War
A sampler of World War II-era, military-themed pulp fiction magazine covers.
Icy Battle of the Bulge
Here’s what it looked like when GIs battled two enemies--the Germans and a savage winter--to recover Belgian ground lost to blitzkrieg.
Death of a carrier
The aircraft carrier USS Princeton was launching planes during the October 1944 Battle of Leyte Gulf when a bomb ended her career—and the lives of hundreds of men.
The Marianas Turkey Shoot
A loosely chronological photo gallery of June 19-20, 1944, in the Battle of the Philippine Sea
Americans on D-Day
Follow American fighting men as they prepare for and launch the great Normandy Invasion of June 6, 1944.
Ghost army shoulder patches
General George Patton fielded a historic-first phony army to fool the Germans in the 1944 Normandy Invasion. The deception was so elaborate it even included counterfeit insignia for the fake army units.
Under fire on Guam
A grunt's view
