The Helldiver was the last biplane dive-bomber flown by the Navy. Ironically, it began its life as a monoplane fighter.

In 1932 the Navy desired a new monoplane fighter, and Curtiss responded by producing the XF12C1, a barrel-chested aircraft sporting a parasol wing. When its inadequacy in this role became apparent, the Navy ordered it reconfigured as a two-seat scout/dive-bomber, but when the prototype crashed, Curtiss yanked the design for a complete overhaul. The final form emerged in 1936 as the XSBC2, a standard all-metal biplane with retractable landing gear. The crew of two sat in tandem under a long canopy, which was faired directly into the aft fuselage. Its performance was impressive for the day, so the Navy ordered 83 machines. In 1937 the machines entered into service as the SBC3 Helldiver, the second Curtiss design to bear that name.

In 1938 an improved version, the SBC4, was ...

Jim Caiella

Slow but reliable, the Seagull actually replaced the aircraft designed to succeed it. It enjoyed a lengthy career and served onboard virtually every capital ship in the fleet.

By 1933 the Navy was seeking a replacement for its Vought O3U Corsairs to serve as a standard observation craft. The new design was therefore obliged to be a floatplane and capable of being catapulted off cruisers and battleships. Furthermore, it had to be readily convertible into a land plane through use of detachable floats. Curtiss, Douglas, and Vought all entered the competition, with the Curtiss model being declared the winner in 1934. The XSOC1 was of standard biplane configuration and built of welded steel tubing with a covering of light alloy and fabric. The wings could be folded for shipboard storage; the crew of two was seated in tandem underneath a spacious greenhouse canopy. The prototype had been designed ...

Combined U.S. Army–U.S. Navy forces operating chiefly in the Mekong Delta during the Vietnam War. The mission of river assault groups was to patrol and control the primary communications routes in the Mekong Delta area and to prevent the resupply and movement of Viet Cong (VC) forces in the area.

Riverine warfare was certainly not a new concept for the U.S. military. Indeed, American military forces had conducted operations on inland waterways as early as the Revolutionary War and used river warfare frequently over the ensuing decades. Operations by the Union Army and the Union Navy on the great western rivers during the American Civil War had been particularly successful, and during the Philippine-American War U.S. forces successfully employed riverine warfare to subdue rebel forces.

In Vietnam, the French had used combined mobile river warfare forces in the Indochina War (1946–1954) in the Mekong ...

Japan's Unit 731 is one of the best kept and most horrifying secrets of World War II. Unit 731 experimented on Japanese and Chinese civilians as well as Russian and American POWs during the Second Sino-Japanese War in the 1930s and throughout World War II. Led by the enigmatic Dr. Shiro Ishii, Unit 731 committed thousands of macabre experiments and infected hundreds of thousands with the plague in China. Most of the scientists involved with Unit 731 escaped trial and entered mainstream society at the end of the war due to an agreement with Allied commanders, but a few are speaking of the horrors they committed in their old age.

The Japanese military actively sought biological and chemical weapons to use against China during the Second Second Sino-Japanese War, and later during World War II. Under General Shiro Ishii, a physician and officer in the Kwantung Army, Unit 731 ...

The first elements of the 3rd Armored in France saw combat on 29 June, with the division as a whole beginning combat operations on 9 July 1944. During this time, it was under the command of VII Corps and XVIII Airborne Corps for some time, and assigned to the First Army and the 12th Army Group for the duration of its career.

The division "spearheaded" the US First Army through Normandy, taking part in a number of engagements, notably including the Battle of Saint Lô, where it suffered significant casualties. After facing heavy fighting in the hedgerows, and developing methods to overcome the vast thickets of brush and earth that constrained its mobility, the unit broke out at Marigny, alongside the 1st Infantry Division, and swung south to Mayenne.

Ordered to help close the Falaise Gap and Argentan pocket which contained the German Seventh Army, the division finished the job ...

Emperor Hirohito and General MacArthur, at their first meeting, at the U.S. Embassy, Tokyo, 27 September, 1945.

Following the surrender, President Harry S. Truman (1884–1972; served 1945–53; see entry) appointed MacArthur the occupation commander of Japan. MacArthur would prove a very positive influence on the successful rebuilding of Japan’s economy and society, and in containing the expansion of communism in the region. MacArthur brought major change in dismantling the Japanese military and war industry, and introducing democratic reforms. A new constitution was written under MacArthur’s direct leadership, which guaranteed certain human rights, such as freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and greater rights for women. MacArthur also introduced a new educational system and sweeping economic reforms.

MacArthur was responsible as well for establishing a prowestern government in South Korea. Korea had been divided into Soviet and U.S. occupation zones at the conclusion of ...

THE DIVISION OF EUROPE AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

It took time before the western zones of Germany were amalgamated and gained autonomy, and the communists were defeated in the Greek Civil War. The Sovietization of eastern Europe was a steady process, completed with the Czech coup of 1948, and only effectively resisted by Tito, another communist. Austria did not join the ranks of the neutrals until the country was reunited in a 1955 treaty and promised not to confederate with either West or East Germany.

1. from Germany to Poland 1945

2. from Germany to USSR 1945

3. returned to Czechoslovakia from Hungary 1945

4.  returned to Romania from Hungary 1945

5. from Hungary to USSR 1945

6. from Romania to USSR 1945

7. to USSR 1940, lost 1941, retaken 1944

8. to USSR 1940, lost 1941-44,

9. returned 1947 o to USSR 1947

10. Federal Republic of Germany ...

Stalin’s 1949 cancellation of the Berlin blockade did not repair the damage it had done. Stalin’s move had been astoundingly counterproductive. In March 1948, before the Berlin blockade, Britain and France had signed a mutual defense pact with Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg. The Berlin blockade then led to its expansion into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), signed 4 April 1949, uniting the United States, Canada, and Iceland with nine western European countries. NATO pledged its members to treat an attack on any one as an attack on all. In addition, Stalin had succeeded, only three years after the end of World War II, in making Germans into victims. This removed remaining obstacles to the formal unification of the three western zones into the Federal Republic of Germany, or West Germany, in May 1949. Stalin responded by turning his occupation zone into the German Democratic Republic, or ...

The size and weight of early intercept radar sets meant that only larger, twin-engine aircraft could be equipped for night fighting. For this reason, the initial Marine night fighter squadron, VMF(N)-531, operated the Lockheed PV-1 Ventura. In September 1943, the squadron moved to the South Pacific where it was plagued with a perpetual shortage of spare parts and systems that refused to function properly. “Chloe,” one of the squadron’s Harpoons based on Barakoma, also carried a small bomb for night bombing missions. A few PV-1 patrol planes had been modified with British AI Mk IV air-search radar for interim use as night fighters. Ironically, it's chief problem in the role being its inability to slow down quickly enough once a target had been acquired.

Some PV-1s were deployed to the Solomon Islands as night fighters with VMF(N)-531, a Marine Corps fighter squadron. Marine Night ...

THE TIME: Still reeling from the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, Americans in early spring 1942 were seeing Japanese forces rolling through the Pacific, taking thousands of prisoners in April 1942 for the beginning of the infamous Bataan death march. “Japan and Germany are winning the world war pretty handily,” explains historian Hugh Ambrose. “America has suffered a number of defeats in the Pacific Rim in rather startling fashion. There is a great deal of fear on the part of the American public.”

THE PLAN: Commanded by Lt. Col. James H. “Jimmy” Doolittle, 16 land-based B-25 bombers with crews of five men each launch from an aircraft carrier. Modified to maximize fuel capacity, the planes would drop their payloads on a variety of strategic targets on Japan’s mainland, then head to friendly air bases in China. But they were spotted and launched earlier and farther ...