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The biggest World War Two bomb ever found in Poland exploded under water on Tuesday as navy divers tried to defuse it. More than 750 people had been evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal outside the town of Swinoujscie where the Tallboy bomb used by Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was found. It weighed nearly 5,400 kg, including 2,400 kg of explosive.

An excellent video covering the First Battle of Savo Island in the Guadalcanal Campaign. Not our Navy's finest hour, but we learned some hard lessons that would serve us well in the future.

Historian John Keegan words on World War II, was "the largest single event in human history," a conflict "fought across six of the world's seven continents and all its oceans. It killed 50 million human beings, left hundreds of millions of others wounded in mind or body and materially devastated much of the heartland of civilization." Much have been analyzed and explored from numerous angles in history books, films and art. Common figures and events are familiar to the average high school student who is buried in the history books. This era is filled with complex and endless fascinating stories...

In the murky waters of the Strait of Malacca, about 90 miles south of Phuket, Thailand, four divers discovered a World War II submarine that was scuttled 77 years ago, now teeming with marine life. The wreckage, believed to be the USS Grenadier, was located last October by divers Jean Luc Rivoire, Lance Horowitz, Benoit Laborie and Ben Reymenants, the team announced this month. Over the subsequent six months, the men — one of whom, Reymenants, assisted in the 2018 rescue of the boys’ soccer team that was trapped in a cave in northern Thailand — completed six carefully planned...

A German warship sunk by a torpedo during World War II has been found on the seabed off Norway, more than eight decades after it was attacked. Statnett, the Norwegian state-owned power grid operator, made the astounding discovery of the lost Karlsruhe cruiser around 1,600 feet below sea level. The vessel, which measures 571 feet long and still bears the Nazi swastika, led an assault on the southern Norwegian city of Kristiansand in the April 1940 invasion of the country. During the operation it came under fire from Norwegian artillery, was torpedoed by a British submarine and was finally submerged...

Today, September 2, 2020, marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II and the day Imperial Japan signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokyo Bay.

A municipality in Japan celebrated the 80th anniversary of the rescue of Jews by a local diplomat with a bake sale. The benefit, which began this week in Japan’s Gifu district, will continue until Sept. 10 and its proceeds will go toward commemorating Chiune Sugihara’s actions in Japan, Lithuania and beyond, Kyodo News reported Thursday. The district had planned to hold a benefit concert but had to switch to an online sale of cupcakes because of social distancing measures connected to the coronavirus. From July 18 to Aug. 28, 1940, Sugihara, an intelligence officer and consul serving in Lithuania, issued...

In its day, the Tower of London has seen off with many an illustrious head.* Its last use as an execution grounds occurred, all but invisibly, on this date in 1941, with the shooting of German spy Josef Jakobs. It’s safe to say that Jakobs won’t be competing with Anne Boleyn in the book sales department any time soon. He was, truth be told, barely a spy at all: parachuted into Huntingdonshire on January 31, 1941 with intent to reconnoiter, the guy was observed in his descent by (undoubtedly excited) local defense volunteers. They raced to the landing point but...

A hundred years ago this week, a series of biggest battles that Europe were to witness between the end of the First World War in 1918 and the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936 decided the fate of the continent as much as, if not more than, the Great War itself. In early August 1920, the newly resurrected, independent Poland saved the Eastern Europe, Germany and possibly the rest of the war-exhausted Europe from the triumphant Russian communism. As a result of a little known war in the distant corners of the continent, the status quo of the...

On August 6, 1945, 30-year-old U.S. Air Force pilot Col. Paul W. Tibbets Jr. took to the sky in the Enola Gay, his Boeing B-29 Superfortress heavy bomber. His destination, the Japanese city of Hiroshima, was not an especially notable target. His payload, however, a single bomb nicknamed “Little Boy,” would change the course of history. True watershed moments in history are rare — the agricultural revolution is one such example, as was the Battle of Salamis, the advent of Jesus Christ, and the fall of Western Rome. Yet in the last 1,500 years, no two distinct epochs of time...

On 6 June 1944, the Allies launched the greatest amphibious invasion in history. Codenamed “Overlord” but best known today as “D-Day”, the operation saw Allied forces landing on the beaches of Normandy in Nazi-occupied France in huge numbers. By the end of the day, the Allies had established a foothold on the French coastline. The statistics for the invasion force involved in the operation are staggering. By midnight on 6 June, 132,000 Allied forces had landed in France, while more than 2 million were eventually shipped there in total, comprising a total of 39 divisions. Thousands of vessels took part...

Seventy-five years ago today, on a rainy morning in the Jornada del Muerto desert of New Mexico, the United States ushered in the nuclear age with the detonation of the world’s first nuclear explosive device—an event code-named “Trinity.”  This remarkable feat of engineering and scientific ingenuity was the culmination of the Manhattan Project, which helped end World War II and launch an unprecedented era of global stability, scientific innovation, and economic prosperity.After Trinity, nuclear testing conducted by the United States laid the groundwork to maintain our stockpile and further our ability to understand and prevent nuclear threats around the...

In 1942, the Japanese were bearing down on the Philippines, where Gen. Douglas MacArthur was based. To help him escape, the Navy relief on a small but heavily armed class of ships: Video: https://youtu.be/0xm0CSY4WJ4

Emboldened by Hitler’s rise to power in Germany in 1933, and fueled by the Great Depression, anti-Semitism increased throughout the United States, and over 100 anti-Semitic organizations sprung up across the country. They had names like the Friends of the New Germany (Nazi Bund), the Silver Shirts, Defenders of the Christian Faith, the Christian Front, and the Knights of the White Camellia, among others. Protected by the constitution’s First Amendment, they held public rallies, paraded through the streets in their uniforms carrying Nazi flags, published scurrilous magazines, and openly flaunted their hatred for Jews. American Jews were intimidated and frightened....

On this day 75 years ago, one of the most intense conflicts of World War II—the Battle of Okinawa—concluded in a historic victory for the United States.  Today, we pause to remember the more than 12,000 American heroes who perished in that monumental struggle and pay tribute to thousands of service members who were instrumental in the forces of freedom emerging triumphant.The Battle of Okinawa was the last major battle of World War II.  Dubbed Operation Iceberg, a fleet of 1,300 American ships and 50 British ships descended on the island of Okinawa in April of 1945, with a...

June 6, 2020, is the 76th Anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy. The invasion that saved the world from Nazi tyranny. On June 6, 1944, more than 160,000 Allied troops landed along a 50-mile stretch of the heavily-fortified French coastline to fight Nazi Germany on the beaches of Normandy, France. Codenamed Operation Overlord, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower called the operation a crusade in which “we will accept nothing less than full victory.” The invasion was supposed to happen on the 5th, but the weather forced Eisenhower to delay: apt. James Martin Stagg was the chief meteorologist of...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway

FRESNO, Calif. — Two climbers on a Sierra Nevada (search) glacier discovered an ice-encased body believed to be that of an airman whose plane crashed in 1942. The man was wearing a World War II-era (search) U.S. Army Corps parachute when his frozen head, shoulder and arm were spotted on 13,710-foot Mount Mendel (search) in Kings Canyon National Park, park spokeswoman Alex Picavet said Wednesday. --snip-- "We're not going to go fast," she said. "We want to preserve him as much as possible. He's the serviceman may have been part of the crew of an AT-7 navigational training plane that...

KFSN-TV/DT abc30.com October 18, 2005 World War II Airman Found Frozen in Glacier October 18, 2005 - It was a plane crash back in 1942 that wasn't discovered until 1947. Now, hikers made a frozen discovery in connection with a World War II plane crash. Hikers found the frozen body of an airman while scaling Mount Mendel Glacier in the Sequoia National Park. Now, the military is working to find out who this airman is and whether he was ever reported missing. It's believed the airman has been frozen in the glacier for decades until a pair of climbers got...

Dubliner John Hemingway (100) fought in the Battle of Britain Irishman John Hemingway is now the last of the second World War “Few” who fought in the Battle of Britain still alive. It follows the death in a Yorkshire care home of Flight Lieutenant Terry Clark (101) on the eve of the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe (VE) Day on Thursday. The “Few” were so called by Britain’s wartime prime minister Winston Churchill in reference to the 3,000 men from the Royal Air Force (RAF) who repulsed the German Luftwaffe during the summer and autumn of 1940 and prevented...