Just after its seventieth anniversary, the Battle of the Bulge has lost none of its impact. The largest battle fought by US troops on the continent of Europe started in a surprise attack on December 16, 1944, by four German armies, spearheaded by the...

While the 6th Airborne Division had landed in France on D-Day and covered itself in glory, its counterpart, the 1st Airborne Division, had last seen action during an amphibious assault at Taranto on September 9, 1943, as part of the invasion of Italy...

The denouement of the battle of Normandy, the fighting around Falaise and Chambois in August 1944 and the pursuit of the retreating German armies to the Seine provided the Allies with an immense victory. After ten weeks of hard attritional fighting,...

The Normandy Battlefields: D-Day & the Bridgehead ended as the Allies fought to expand their D-Day foothold. In Bocage and Breakout, Leo Marriott and Simon Forty take the story forward as the success of the invasion continued into the Cotentin, with...

Operation Tonga began at 22:56 on the night of 5 June, when six Halifax heavy bombers took off from Tarrant Rushton towing six Horsas carrying a coup-de-main force consisting of D Coy, Ox and Bucks LI reinforced with two extra platoons from B Coy and...

Of the five beaches attacked on 6 June, Omaha saw the sternest fighting. Well-placed defenders on the high ground and extensive beach defenses did their job. On top of this, so much had gone wrong with the first wave: many of the amphibious DD Sherma...

After its operations in the Cotentin and around Carentan, the 101st was withdrawn from the lines in late June and sailed back to England on LSTs in July. After several false alerts, they invaded by air again into the Netherlands on September 17, 1944...

Bastogne will live forever in the annals of American military history. From the resounding "Nuts", in response to the German demand for surrender, to the breaking of the siege by Patton's Third Army – brilliantly disengaged from its positions on the...

The speed of the German Blitzkrieg in 1940 and the relative ease with which they brushed aside Allied defenses meant four years of occupation. But in June 1944 – this time with American forces – the Allies finally returned for a rematch. The destruct...