Fokker D.VIII Fighter: The Deadly Flying Razor

In the summer of 1918, a new fighter ascended in the German Air Combat Forces, or Luftstreitkräfte, boasting a level of performance that would outpace any of Anthony Fokkers’ famous designs. The Fokker E.V parasol monoplane, eventually known as the Fokker D.VIII, demonstrated tremendous combat...

By Tom Laemlein

Operation Anthropoid: Killing the Butcher of Prague

Who was the most horrible person in all of human history? Some might claim their mother-in-law. I’m personally crazy about mine. However, I’d like to dig a bit deeper than that today. Tragically, the competition for that particularly dark superlative is fierce. I would say that human beings a...

By Will Dabbs, MD

Karl-Gerät Mortar: Germany’s Tracked Giant

In the mid-1930s, Adolph Hitler cast his eye towards France and dreamed of revenge for the outcome of World War One. Standing in his way was the French Maginot Line, a collection of massive concrete strongpoints, casemates, armored turrets, and observation posts. Among the barbed wire, mine field...

By Tom Laemlein

Battle of Britain: Myth vs. Reality

The idealized concept immediately took root and blossomed: the Royal Air Force saved Britain from invasion in 1940. The conventional wisdom holds that Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s legendary “few” handed Nazi Germany its first defeat in World War II and paved the road to eventual victo...

By Barrett Tillman

How a Mercenary Movie Invented a New Type of Weapon

It is hard to overestimate just how much movies shape modern gun culture. Like many, I attribute my fascination with firearms to Hollywood movies. But I am only aware of one instance when a movie gun accidentally created a new type of armament.

By Vladimir Onokoy

M1 Abrams — Best Job I Ever Had

The M1 Abrams was conceived with a singular, unyielding purpose: the total destruction of enemy armored formations. Over the last four decades, it has become the absolute pinnacle of tank warfare made manifest. Its sheer battlefield dominance has not only won conflicts, but forced militaries acro...

By Mason Berryman

Mikoyan MiG-29: The Reactive Fulcrum?

Military aircraft design of the Cold War era could be described as akin to physics, or, more specifically, to Newton’s Third Law of motion, which states, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” From lessons learned in the Vietnam War, the United States Air Force determi...

By Peter Suciu

Curtiss P-36 Hawk: Hero Plane of Pearl Harbor?

At the National Museum of the United States Air Force, many visitors will see an unfamiliar aircraft at the entrance to the WWII gallery. The museum’s display of the gleaming silver fighter coded “86” on the fuselage, features a pilot boarding the plane in his pajamas, with an M1911 pistol ...

By Tom Laemlein
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