Osprey

Although not as well-known as the V-1 buzz bomb and the V-2 missile, the first German missiles to see combat were anti-ship missiles, the Henschel Hs.293 guided missile and the Fritz-X guided bomb. These began to see extensive combat in the Mediterranean in 1943. In their most famous use, the (...)

Intended as a progressive development of the twin-engined Bf 110 Zerstoerer ('destroyer' or heavy fighter), the Me 210 first took to the air in September 1939. However, due to a lack of sufficient flight-testing before being declared service-ready, the Me 210 suffered from a less than satisfactory (...)

Though the French and British colonies in North America began on a 'level playing field', French political conservatism and limited investment allowed the British colonies to forge ahead, pushing into territories that the French had explored deeply but failed to exploit. The subsequent survival of (...)

As 1794 opened, Revolutionary France stood on a knife's edge of failure. Its army and navy had been shaken by the revolution, with civil war and famine taking its toll on their resources. Seeking to bring a revitalizing supply of food from its Caribbean colonies and the United States, the French (...)

Hunt the Bismarck tells the story of Operation Rheinubung, the Atlantic sortie of the Nazi Germany's largest battleship in May 1941.Bismarck entered service in the summer of 1940. She was well-armed, with eight 15-inch guns as well as a powerful array of lighter weapons, while her armoured (...)

The army of the German Empire was born out of the once great Prussian army that Napoleon Bonaparte had humbled at the Battle of Jena-Auerstadt in 1806, during the Napoleonic Wars. The eventual defeat of Napoleon initiated a slow process of military reform that gained momentum during the pan-German (...)