By Michael Pryce THE mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing is rightly famous for cracking codes to help break the Nazi war machine. You can imagine my surprise when I discovered that…
The Hunt for Tomcat AB221 — Inside the U.S. Navy’s Race to Find a Crashed F-14 Jet Before the Soviets
Fifty years ago, the crash of the U.S. Navy’s most advanced fighter in British waters led to a desperate scramble to recover the wreck and safeguard its classified technology from the Russians…
Arras 1940 — Inside the doomed British tank attack that saved the Allied cause
“Tactically, the British had been defeated. Strategically, however, the story was very different.” By Hamish de Bretton-Gordon IN WAR, there are battles that are remembered because they were victories, and there are…
‘A Most Hateful Decision’ — Inside Britain’s Destruction of the French Fleet at Mers el-Kébir
“In total, 1,297 French sailors were killed in the attacks – men who, only days earlier, had stood as Britain’s allies.” By Edward Abel Smith THE amber dawn broke fiercely over the…
Operation Sea Lion — Inside the German Invasion Plan for Great Britain
“The goal was to land nearly a quarter of a million German soldiers along the British coast within the first two weeks of the assault.” By Robert Schreiner MOST students of Second…
Corsair Kings — Inside the 300-Year War Against the Barbary Pirates
“Between the years 1500 and 1800, the Barbary pirates are estimated to have enslaved as many as one million people.” By John Danielski WILLIAM Harris was roused from his sleep in the…
Fightin’ Irish – How America’s Fenian Brotherhood Waged War on the British Empire
“To the Fenian Brotherhood, the campaign to seize Canada seemed entirely plausible. Unfortunately for them, things just didn’t work out that way.” IN 1866, one of the strangest armies in American history marched…
Operation Unthinkable — Inside Churchill’s Proposed 1945 Surprise Attack on the Soviets
“It is to an early and speedy showdown and settlement with Russia that we must now turn our hopes.” WHILE THE WORLD celebrated the defeat of Nazism in May of 1945, one of…