Free Republic

World War II Navy veteran Ira “Ike” Schab, one of the dwindling number of survivors of the 1941 Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 105. Daughter Kimberlee Heinrichs told The Associated Press that Schab died at home early Saturday in the presence of her and her husband. With his passing, there remain only about a dozen survivors of the surprise attack, which killed just over 2,400 troops and propelled the United States into the war. Schab was a sailor of just 21 at the time of the attack, and for decades he rarely spoke about the experience....

MANNHEIM, Germany – Eighty years after his death, the legacy of Gen. George S. Patton Jr. endures, yet his life was cut short not by a final, glorious battle, but by a mundane traffic accident on a wintry German road. Patton, the celebrated and feared commander of the U.S. Third Army, succumbed to a blood clot while paralyzed, passing away in his sleep at the age of 60 in Heidelberg, Germany, on Dec. 21, 1945. The paralysis and subsequent complications were the result of a car accident 12 days prior. On Dec. 9th, for the first time, at the intersection...

The United States, according to the New York Times, has a Maginot Line problem. In the first in a series of articles castigating the 21st century U.S. military for allegedly failing to adapt to modern military technology, the editorial board raises the specter of Monsieur Maginot’s infamous namesake fortification. “It is an ancient and familiar pattern,” the editorial board laments. The French in 1940, ensconced safely—so they thought—behind their elaborate frontier wall, utterly failed, unlike the Germans, to pay attention to the new verities of armored warfare and airpower and paid the penalty in a catastrophic six-week defeat. The image...

The Kyūjō incident (宮城事件, Kyūjō Jiken) was an attempted military coup d'état in the Empire of Japan at the end of the Second World War. It happened on the night of 14–15 August 1945, just before the announcement of Japan's surrender to the Allies. The coup was attempted by the Staff Office of the Ministry of War of Japan and many from the Imperial Guard to stop the move to surrender.

Not a fan of fdr, but a historic speech. See both audio & video at link. More info in Comment #1 (text of speech and history of revisions). Remember...

On Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941, powerful antennas on the Mare Island shipyard picked up an urgent radio-telegram meant for U.S. Navy ships operating 3,600 miles away near Hawaii – “AIR RAID ON PEARL HARBOR – THIS IS NO DRILL.” That was the first stateside word about the devastating surprise attack by Japanese warplanes. The strafing and bombing started just before 8 a.m. Hawaii time, or 10:30 a.m. PST on Mare Island under the time zone system used in 1941. The radio message went out immediately from Pearl Harbor, and was relayed to top Navy brass in San Francisco by...

Today on December 7, 1941 Pear Harbor was attacked. Please pray for everyone who lost their lives.

In February 1944, the U.S. Navy launched one of the most devastating strikes of the Pacific War — Operation Hailstone. Over the skies and seas of Truk Lagoon, the Japanese stronghold once called the “Gibraltar of the Pacific” was shattered in a two-day assault that rewrote naval warfare. This video tells the forgotten story of how the USS Iowa, USS New Jersey, and America’s radar-guided firepower changed history. Discover how advanced analog computers, precision gunnery, and overwhelming air superiority combined to destroy Japan’s once-invincible fleet. From massive 16-inch naval guns thundering across the ocean to the smoldering wrecks beneath Truk’s...

World War II is laden with unsung heroes, and Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz certainly falls into that category. While the remarkable deeds of people like Oskar Schindler are well known, Duckwitz’s role in saving 7,000 Jews in Denmark is less so. He was one of those brave Germans that looked to damage the Nazi Party’s plans from within and risked his own life out of a desire to do the right thing.

Everything appeared to be in slow motion - except the torpedo spearing through the water towards them at 30 knots. Only five minutes earlier, the USS Tang had been in the middle of a feeding frenzy that would secure its position as the most successful American submarine in the Pacific Ocean. But its last torpedo had turned sharply left - and was now coming straight back at the Tang. Of the 87 men on board that early morning in October 1944, as many as 50 were killed instantly when the torpedo hit. Of the survivors, most were injured. One of...

Thousands of people were evacuated from their homes in Hong Kong overnight so experts could defuse a large US-made bomb left over from World War II that was discovered at a construction site. Police said the bomb was nearly 5 feet in length and weighed about 1,000 pounds. It was discovered by construction workers in Quarry Bay, a bustling residential and business district on the west side of Hong Kong island. “We have confirmed this object to be a bomb dating back to World War II,” said Andy Chan Tin-Chu, a police official, speaking to reporters ahead of the operation....

The living memory of World War II is passing away. In April, the oldest known survivor of Pearl Harbor died at 106 years old. A few weeks ago, a 102-year old veteran who stormed the beaches of Normandy on D-Day (June 6, 1944) entered his eternal reward. Sadly, less than one percent of the war’s veterans are still alive. However, more troubling and dark, the increasing deaths of witnesses — those who endured the conflict and its horrors — has been coupled with the rise of revisionist ahistorical conspiracies about the Second World War. Worse, this is increasingly a right-wing...

The United States has always been particularly formal about how it accepts the surrender of defeated enemies. Each time it happens, the event is charged with deliberate—and sometimes inadvertent—symbolism. Such was the case on October 19, 1781, when General George Washington and his colleague, French General Jean-Baptiste Donatien de Vimeur, comte de Rochambeau, accepted the surrender of British General Charles Cornwallis’s British forces at Yorktown. The whole event was highly ritualized—although Cornwallis refused to appear, sending his subordinate Charles O’Hara out instead—with Rochambeau and Washington sternly directing O’Hara to tender his sword to American General Benjamin Lincoln, who had the...

We were told America was a mongrel nation, weak, divided, controlled by Jews, incapable of military prowess. Every day I am here, I see the opposite. This is the most organized, unified, and powerful nation on earth. We were told fairy tales by criminals.

Discover the untold story of how 371,683 German POWs experienced a psychological transformation that shattered N@zi ideology through witnessing America's overwhelming industrial might during World War II. When Afrika Korps veterans arrived in the United States in 1943, expecting to find a weak, divided nation, they instead encountered an industrial colossus producing a B-24 bomber every 63 minutes, farms larger than German provinces, and ordinary workers living better than German aristocracy. This meticulously researched documentary reveals how German prisoners of war, housed in over 500 camps across America from 1943-1946, went from hardened N@zi soldiers to advocates for democracy -...

A wildfire that broke out at Britain’s North York Moors National Park has burned for weeks, reaching a ground layer containing unexploded ordnance from World War II. The Langdale Moor fire started on Aug. 11, the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service said. Crews from the North Yorkshire service and other local firefighting departments were still fighting the blaze Thursday.The fire is affecting an area of almost 10 square miles according to the BBC, and is fueled by wind, vegetation and now peat. The peat layer also contains decades-old unexploded bombs and other ordnance from World War II.“As the peat...

n his book Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Doolittle Raid pilot Ted Lawson recalls the moment his B-25 bomber reached the coast of Japan – the first land he had seen, he tells us, after being at sea on the USS Hornet for nearly three weeks. "It looked very pretty," he writes:"Everything seemed as well kept as a big rock garden. The little farms were fitted in with almost mathematical precision. The fresh spring grass was brilliantly green. There were fruit trees in bloom, and farmers working in their fields waved to us as we pounded just over their heads. A...

Donald McPherson, believed to be America’s last surviving “ace” from World War II, passed away on August 14, 2025. He was 103 years old. McPherson earned the Congressional Gold Medal and three Distinguished Flying Crosses during his service as a US Navy pilot aboard the aircraft carrier USS Essex in the final battles of World War II. McPherson enlisted on January 5, 1943, after the Navy waived a two-year college requirement for its aviation cadet training program. He earned his commission and wings at Corpus Christi, Texas, on August 12, 1944. He was assigned to fly a Grumman F6F Hellcat...

The submarine that sank a train: the U.S.S. Barb | 8:28 The History Guy: History Deserves to Be Remembered | 1.57M subscribers | 663,144 views | May 18, 2017

The U-Boat campaign off the United States' coast is pretty well known. Complacency on the American side, and daring on the German side. Combining in a perfect storm that saw many, many losses in the early days after the United States joined the war. That said, not all those losses were American. Some U-Boats were lost too, including one particularly noteworthy one. U-166. A submarine sunk close off the Gulf Coast. This sinking became something of a controversy, in how the captain responsible was treated by the Navy. But the boat, herself, is interesting all her own. After all, this...