Official blog
TWS Website
TWS Website
U

MENU

Great Military Stories

Iraq War – The Siege of Sadr City

Iraq War – The Siege of Sadr City

,

On Mar. 28, 2004, Paul Bremer, administrator of the American-led Coalition Provisional Authority of Iraq, ordered the closure of al-Hawza, an Arabic-language newspaper that was a sounding board for the Shia cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.  Bremer shut down the weekly paper because he believed it encouraged violence against U.S. troops in Iraq. It was only supposed to last 60 days, but the action would spark a series of events that led to a four-year siege and a series of battles between Coalition forces and al-Sadr's Mahdi Army. On April 3, 2004, Bremer ordered the arrest of Mustafa Yaqoubi, one of al-Sadr's senior advisors. An estimated 15,000 Iraqis took to the streets to demand his release. Demonstrators claimed that Spanish and El Salvadoran troops opened fire on them as they gathered, and the protest took a violent turn.  In response, al-Sadr ordered his Shia militia, the Mahdi Army, to take control of the Iraqi police stations in Najaf, Kufa, and Karbala but especially in...

read more
Capt Francis Gary Powers, U.S. Air Force (1950 – 1963)

Capt Francis Gary Powers, U.S. Air Force (1950 – 1963)

,

Soviet Air Force pilot Capt. Igor Mentyukov was sitting at a bus station in Perm when he was recalled to base and ordered to get into his Sukhoi Su-9 wearing whatever he had on. He was not wearing a flight suit or any other gear, and his fighter was currently unarmed. His orders from Moscow were to take off immediately and pursue an enemy aircraft flown by American CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers at high altitude - and ram it.  He headed toward his plane and took off, headed for certain death. Luckily for Mentyukov, he never made it that far. His onboard radar failed, and he couldn't see his target. He switched off his afterburner and flew home, low on fuel. Soviet's Rocket Attacks At The Spy Plane Flown by Francis Gary Powers The enemy plane flying above the Soviet Union that day was a U-2 reconnaissance aircraft, flown by American CIA pilot Francis Gary Powers. Mentyukov may have missed Powers, but the Soviets fired eight S-75 Dvina surface-to-air missiles at the spy plane. ...

read more
Famous Army Unit: 100th Infantry Battalion

Famous Army Unit: 100th Infantry Battalion

,

With much of the world already at war, December 7, 1941 proved not only a day that would live in infamy but for most Americans, an event that would redefine their world. This impact was no more significant or immediate than for US citizens of Japanese ancestry and in particular second-generation Americans, or Nisei.  Since 1937 the Japanese invasion of China and atrocities inflicted on civilian populations sickened most of the world, punctuated by the undeclared attack on Pearl Harbor.  Unfairly stricken with the effects of these acts the Nisei refused to be victims of these events, but instead, set a course to undeniably prove both their competence and loyalty.  Driven by this quest, the 100th Infantry Battalion performed with distinction and rose to become the most highly decorated unit for its size in US military history. Remember Pearl Harbor On December 7th, many Americans of Japanese Ancestry lived in Hawaii and served in the 298th and 299th Infantry Regiments.  Following the...

read more
Facts on the Spanish-American War (1898)

Facts on the Spanish-American War (1898)

,

On April 25, 1898, the United States declared war on Spain following the Battleship Maine's sinking in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. The war ended with the signing of the Treaty of Paris on December 10, 1898. As a result, Spain lost its control over the remains of its overseas empire - Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines Islands, Guam, and other islands. Background of the Spanish-American War Beginning in 1492, Spain was the first European nation to sail westward across the Atlantic Ocean, explore, and colonize the Amerindian nations of the Western Hemisphere. At its greatest extent, the empire that resulted from this exploration extended from Virginia on the eastern coast of the United States south to Tierra del Fuego at South America's tip, excluding Brazil and westward to California and Alaska. Across the Pacific, it included the Philippines and other island groups. By 1825 much of this empire had fallen into other hands. In that year, Spain acknowledged the independence...

read more
The Death of the Red Baron

The Death of the Red Baron

,

In 1915, von Richthofen transferred to the Imperial German Army Air Service (Luftstreitkrafte). He studied aerial tactics under the master German strategist, Hauptman Oswald Boelcke, flying his first combat mission after less than thirty hours of flight instruction. Despite an indifferent start as a fighter pilot, he nonetheless was invited to join Boelcke's Jagdstaffel 2 squadron and soon excelled in combat following the Boelcke Dicta, which included approaching his enemy from above with the sun behind him, firing only at close range, always keeping his eyes on his target, and attacking in a group of four to six planes. The History of The Red Baron At the beginning of 1917, he had 16 confirmed kills, had been awarded Germany's highest military decoration, Pour le Merite, and was commander of a squadron, Jasta 11, of elite fighter pilots.  In April 1917 alone, he downed 22 British planes. Flying a series of Albatros aircraft, his vanity led him to have each painted red. As the...

read more
Gunnery Sgt. John Lee Canley, U.S. Marine Corps (1953-1981)

Gunnery Sgt. John Lee Canley, U.S. Marine Corps (1953-1981)

,

As 1967 turned to 1968, American forces had officially been fighting in Vietnam for years, and many believed the Vietnamese Tet holiday would pass uneventfully, as it had in years past. They were wrong. On January 31, 1968, North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces launched an offensive across South Vietnam, targeting more than 100 towns and cities.  It was the largest operation from either side until that point in the war. Eighty thousand communist troops hoped to spark a mass uprising against American and South Vietnamese (ARVN) forces among the populace. The uprising never happened, and a U.S. and ARVN counterattack quickly took back what was lost in the surprise.  One notable exception was the city of Hue, Vietnam's ancient capital. After taking Hue, the communists would have to be forcibly pushed out of the city street by street and house by house. It took 17 battalions of the U.S. Army, U.S. Marine Corps, and ARVN troops to dislodge them.  Sgt. John Lee Canley Led...

read more
WW2 – The Battle of Iwo Jima

WW2 – The Battle of Iwo Jima

,

The Battle of Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between U.S. Marines and the Imperial Army of Japan in early 1945. Located 750 miles off the coast of Japan, the island of Iwo Jima had three airfields that could serve as a staging facility for a potential invasion of mainland Japan. American forces invaded the island on February 19, 1945, and the ensuing Battle of Iwo Jima lasted for five weeks.  In some of the bloodiest fighting of World War II, it's believed that all but 200 or so of the 21,000 Japanese forces on the island were killed, as were almost 7,000 Marines. But once the fighting was over, the strategic value of Iwo Jima was called into question.  According to postwar analyses, the Imperial Japanese Navy had been so crippled by earlier World War II clashes in the Pacific that it was already unable to defend the empire's island holdings, including the Marshall archipelago. In addition, Japan's air force had lost many of its warplanes, and those it had were unable to...

read more
Escape from Libby Prison: The Largest Successful Prison Break of the Civil War

Escape from Libby Prison: The Largest Successful Prison Break of the Civil War

,

On February 9, 1864, more than 100 Union prisoners tunneled their way to freedom in an audacious escape from Libby Prison in the Confederate capital of Richmond, Virginia. More than half of the prisoners made their way to Union lines while others were recaptured and returned to the confines of Libby. Libby Prison started as an old food warehouse on Tobacco Row along the James River. Captain Luther Libby, along with his son George W. Libby, leased the three-story brick building where they operated a ship chandlery and grocery business. In 1862, the Confederacy took over the building and turned it into a prison for Union officers. Colonel Thomas E. Rose, a Union officer from the 77th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, was captured during the Battle of Chickamauga and taken to Libby Prison. He found conditions appalling and immediately started plotting his escape. He devised an ambitious plan to dig a tunnel from the cellar of the prison to a tobacco shed that stood just outside the...

read more
The American Indian Wars – The Battle of Bear Valley

The American Indian Wars – The Battle of Bear Valley

When we think of the Indian Wars that pitted the American Indian tribes against the United States Army, we tend to think of U.S. Army Cavalry, wearing their trademark stetson hats, sabers gleaming, riding into battle. They're usually fighting Native tribesmen who are shooting rifles while riding bareback across the Great Plains. That may have been how some of those battles looked, but after the closing of the frontier in 1890, it looked a lot different. The last great battle (The Battle of Bear Valley) waged between the Indian tribes and the U.S. Army came in 1918 after the Army was shaped by its experience in World War I. Its opponent was the Yaqui tribe, who was looking to establish an independent state inside Mexico.  The Battle of Bear Valley Was the Last Official Battle of the American Indian Wars The Battle of Bear Valley looked a lot different than the battles of our popular imagination and was the last official battle of the American Indian Wars.  American Indian tribes...

read more
Where Are the Alien Bodies?

Where Are the Alien Bodies?

,

By now, we all know the gist of the story. An unidentified flying object crashed in the desert near Corona, New Mexico, in 1947. Military and government agents from nearby Roswell Army Air Field rushed to the site and found alien bodies hidden among the wreckage and debris. Then, they immediately covered it up and left the American public in the dark.  The Army didn't help matters any, releasing a report claiming to have captured some kind of "flying disc." It immediately retracted that claim, saying it was instead a kind of weather balloon, fuel for the conspiracy theory fire that would burn for the next 50 years.  The Government Hide the Alien Bodies Conspiracy theorists went wild in the years following the Roswell Incident. Self-proclaimed UFO-ologists claimed to have pieces of the alien wreck and claimed that at least three sets of extraterrestrial remains were found on the site. But where did the government hide the bodies? Theories pointed to one of two places. One is the...

read more
MajGen. Keith L. Ware, U.S. Army (1941–1968)

MajGen. Keith L. Ware, U.S. Army (1941–1968)

,

MajGen Keith Lincoln Ware was born in Denver on November 23, 1915. His military career began on July 9, 1941, when he undertook his basic training at Camp Roberts, California, following his induction into the Army under the Selective Service Act. He attended Officer Candidate School at Fort Benning, Georgia, and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant of Infantry on July 18, 1942. Keith Lincoln Ware Was Awarded the Medal of Honor Assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division, he sailed on October 22, 1942, from Hampton Roads, Virginia, and was part of the North African invasion force. He participated in the Algeria-French Morocco and Tunisian Campaigns. The next major operations he participated in were the invasion of Sicily, the Naples-Foggia battles of southern Italy, the landings at Anzio Beachhead, and then on the San Tropez beaches of southern France August of 1944. On June 18, 1945, he was awarded the Medal of Honor. An excerpt from the citation states, "On December 26, 1944, while...

read more
WW2 – The Battle of Saipan

WW2 – The Battle of Saipan

,

War inevitably equals mass casualties, whether numbering in the dozens or the hundreds, or the hundreds of thousands - this truth that has accompanied war for thousands of years. A generally accepted fact is that these casualties, whether civilian or military, are usually the direct result of enemy soldiers attacking, disease, and famine in the wake of an invasion. Sometimes, however, other means account for mass deaths in war. Such was the case of the Battle of Saipan in the Second World War when it became apparent that Americans would take the island. Around one thousand Japanese civilians - men, women, and children, old and young - tragically chose to take their own lives rather than surrender. The Beginning of The Battle of Saipan The Battle of Saipan began on June 15, 1944, when around 8,000 US Marines landed on Saipan's island on the first day of the invasion. Naval bombardment of the island had started two days earlier on the 13th and had some effect in weakening Japanese...

read more