The I-15, I-16 and I-153 fighters were the world's first mass-produced fighters. Some 17,000 Polikarpovs had been manufactured by the time production ceased in 1941. They served with the Republicans in the Spain, the Chinese against Japan in...
The Polish army during the Blitzkrieg conjures up tragic images of infantry and dashing, but ineffective and ultimately doomed cavalry charges. In actuality the Poles, in the midst of a large-scale re-armament programme, had up to 600 armoured...
Two different wars were fought in Vietnam, the jungle-and-booby-trap one down south, and the WWII-like one up on the DMZ. “I was one of a handful whose Vietnam tour was evenly split between the First and Third Marine Divisions, and saw, firsthand,...
In Prescription for Survival, physician Bernard Lown tells the extraordinary story of how a group of Soviet and American doctors came together to stop nuclear proliferation and ended up winning the Nobel Peace Prize and influencing the course of...
Pusher fighters, designed with the engine at the rear and the machine gun at the front, may have looked ungainly, yet they were able to hold their own remarkably well against their German counterparts. This is the story of the unusual pusher and its...
SHROUDED IN SECRECY due to the covert nature of their work, the legendary Recces have fascinated South Africans for years. Now one of these elite soldiers has written a tell-all book about the extraordinary missions he embarked on and the...
In mid-December 1942, the Soviets had surrounded the German 6th Army in Stalingrad but the Wehrmacht was engaged in a desperate relief effort with Operation Winter Storm and an airlift. The Soviet Stavka moved to defeat both these German efforts in...
The Arctic convoys that sailed through the cold malevolent waters of the Barents Sea ran the gauntlet of German air and sea attacks as they struggled to transport vital supplies to Britain’s Russian allies. Convoy JW51B sailed in December...
The Korean conflict was a pivotal event in China's modern military history. The fighting in Korea constituted an important experience for the newly formed People's Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF), not only as a test case for this fledgling service...