In this issue

JAPAN’S ROAD TO WAR
Already embroiled in the conquest of mainland China, war with the Allies was a huge challenge for Japan’s military.

THE INVASION OF JAPAN
With little hope of an end to the fighting, the Allies planned an audacious invasion of the Japanese mainland.

JAPAN'S ROAD TO WAR

Less than a century after emerging from cultural and economic isolation, Imperial Japan’s expansion led to a confrontation with the nation that had first disturbed its solitude

3 mins

FROM PEARL HARBOR TO GUADALCANAL

After the disaster in Hawaii, the US employed an island-hopping strategy in the Pacific, carefully choosing where to strike in order to suffocate Japan’s sprawling occupation of the theatre

3 mins

TURNING THE TIDE - Q&A WITH HISTORIAN JOHN WUKOVITS

Though Imperial Japan began on the front foot in 1941, several critical battles sealed victory for the Allies in 1945

3 mins

DOWNFALL - THE INVASION OF JAPAN

Without a swift end to the war in sight, the Allies planned a gruelling campaign on the Japanese home islands – a potentially costly operation avoided only by the use of nuclear weapons and Japan’s surrender

3 mins

HITLER'S TIGER ACE

Michael Wittmann, aka the Black Baron, was a hugely successful panzer commander and propaganda icon for the Nazis. His role in the Waffen-SS left a dark legacy

10+ mins

THE DEMISE OF BRAVO TWO ZERO

During the 1991 Gulf War, an SAS operation in the Iraqi desert went terribly wrong

10 mins

AMERICA'S FIRST COMMANDER IN CHIEF

A Founding Father, military hero of the revolution and the nation’s first president – but how much of his story is fact, and how much fiction?

10+ mins

JAMES ALLEN WARD

In July 1941, 13,000ft above the Dutch coastline in a severely damaged Wellington bomber, this New Zealand airman clambered onto his aircraft’s wing to put out a fire and save his comrades

6 mins

PLATAEA

2,500 years ago an alliance of a few Greek city-states defeated the invading army of the mighty Persian empire, saving Greece and securing the future of European civilisation

10+ mins

MUSEUMS & EVENTS

Discover the Imperial War Museum’s new all-day festival, renovations happening to the Scapa Flow Museum, and Chatham Historic Dockyard’s exhibition about the wreck of HMS Invincible

4 mins

Read all stories from History of War

History of War Magazine Description:

Discover the politics, mechanics, strategies and machines of war.

From the conquering legions of Ancient Rome to the thunderous tank battles of World War II and beyond, History of War takes you deeper inside the minds of history’s fighting men, further under the bonnets of some of the world’s most devastating war machines, and higher above the battlefield to see the broad sweep of conflict as it happened.