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  • Battle at Arnhem

    With their troops on the borders of Germany and Holland by late summer, the Allies decided to attempt a breakthrough in southeastern Holland toward the Ruhr, Germany's industrial center. On Sept.17, a massive fleet of airplanes and gliders staged an aerial invasion behind German lines, with U.S.,

  • Battle of the Bulge

    On Dec. 16, 1944, the German army launched a large-scale surprise attack against a quiet and thinly-manned sector in the Ardennes Forest. Poor weather kept tactical air power grounded, and the situation became desperate. When the weather finally started improving on Dec. 23, however, 9th Air Force

  • Breakout and the Race Across France

    "They bomb and strafe every movement, even single vehicles and individuals ... [causing a] feeling of helplessness against enemy aircraft ... the effect on inexperienced troops is literally 'soul shattering.'"- Gen. Freiherr Heinrich von Luttwitz, 2nd Panzer Division commander, July 17, 1944, near

  • Brig. Gen. Clinton D. "Casey" Vincent

    Clinton D. Vincent was the second youngest general officer in Air Force history, earning his star at the age of 29. After only seven years of service in the armed forces, he rose to the temporary rank of brigadier general. Vincent spent the first year of World War II with the Karachi American Air

  • Burma Campaign

    As the Allies gradually received reinforcements, the RAF and the 10th Air Force were able to win air superiority over the Japanese in Burma, and medium bombers and fighter bombers undertook energetic campaigns against enemy river traffic, bridges and railroads. In March 1944 Allied transport

  • Back to the Philippines

    The Battle of the Coral Sea and the fight at Guadalcanal in 1942 ended the Japanese drive across the Southwest Pacific, but Japanese troops still controlled the northern half of New Guinea. Before Gen. Douglas MacArthur could begin his drive to liberate the Philippines, he had to defeat the enemy

  • Balloon Bombs: Japan's Answer to Doolittle

    One of the best kept secrets of the war involved the Japanese balloon bomb offensive. Prompted by the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in April 1942, the Japanese developed the balloon bombs as a means of direct reprisal against the U.S. mainland. The balloons, made of paper or rubberized silk, carried

  • Bataan Death March: Japanese Brutality

    The Bataan Death March began on April 10, 1942, when the Japanese gathered an estimated 78,000 prisoners (12,000 US and 66,000 Filipino) to march up the east coast of Bataan. The POWs were given no indication of how far or how long they would need to march through the intense tropical heat.  The

  • B-17 Upper Machine Gun Turret (Type A-1A)

    This turret was one of the first fully-powered machine gun turret designs used to equip American aircraft and was used initially on the B-17E Flying Fortress. It is operated by an electro-hydraulic system, which powers both elevation and traverse of the turret's two .50-cal. M2 Browning machine

  • Beech AT-11 Kansan

    The AT-11 was the standard U.S. Army Air Forces World War II bombing trainer; about 90 percent of the more than 45,000 USAAF bombardiers trained in AT-11s. Like the C-45 transport and the AT-7 navigation trainer, the Kansan was a military version of the Beechcraft Model 18 commercial transport.