M1 HELMET LINERS – All We Need To Know
Olivier Dorrell returns to guide us through an immensely important subject to collectors and re-enactors. The M1 helmet was a unique and practical solution, compared…
Camouflage Netting: ‘Making’ factories look like everyday towns
In February 1942 the United States Navy Monitors had been tracking a Japanese submarine lurking on the outskirts of San Francisco. Several nights after this,…
Amazing Pilot Saved His Wingman, Pushed His Damaged Phantom By Its Tail Hook Out Of Vietnam
Of the 132 missions Bob Pardo flew in Vietnam with the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, the most significant is that of March 10, 1967, when…
I hear you have captured the whole German army “No sir, only 132”
Sergeant Alvin York was seemingly born to a hardscrabble existence and anonymity in death, but World War One changed that forever. The story of York is…
Hiding Ships In Plain Sight: How Dazzle Camouflage Is Used To Confuse The Enemy
Dazzle camouflage was the brainchild of British artist Norman Wilkinson. It was put forward as a solution to the problem that ships could not be…
The MiG 23 that flew for 560 miles without the pilot then crashed in a farm killing a boy
The cold war is littered with near ‘nuclear apocalypse’ misses, technological and aviation advancement and a fair number of peculiar incidents. One such bizarre event…
“Mad Major” Carpenter Attached 6 Bazookas To His Artillery Spotter Plane And Went Tank Hunting
Even the German infantry troops would fire at Carpenter with rifles and pistols trying to down “The Mad Major”. Charles Carpenter enlisted in the US…
Lancaster Pilot Survived Free-falling When A Searchlight Helped Him Find His Parachute Which Wasn’t Strapped On
On February 19th, 1944 over the German town of Hannover, pilot Barry Douetil’s Lancaster was attacked by a Focke-Wulf 190 night fighter plane. The attack quickly set the…
The Fall of Berlin at the End of the Second World War
The capture of Berlin by the Red Army was not the final act of WWII, but in Europe, it was a dramatic symbol of the…
Operation Werewolf: The Nazi Resistance Force
In the Autumn of 1944, the Nazis instigated a plan to establish active forces behind enemy lines as the Allies pushed through Germany. It was called…
World War Two from Beginning to End
Not everyone was happy when the First World War ended, and it was not just the Germans, who were severely punished for their role in…
The Monk who Stopped Bullets with Silk: Inventing the Bulletproof Vest
This post is part of Culture.pl series and Stories From The Eastern West It’s 16th March 1897 in Chicago. Two men stand face-to-face in a…