Ravensbrück was a notorious women's concentration camp during in World War II, located in northern Germany, 90 km north of Berlin at a site near the village of Ravensbrück (part of Fürstenberg/Havel). Construction of the camp began in November 1938 by SS leader Heinrich Himmler and was unusual in that it was a camp primarily for women. The camp opened in May 1939. In the spring of 1941, the SS ...
The Schweinfurt-Regensburg mission was an air combat battle in World War II. A strategic bombing attack flown by B-17 Flying Fortresses of the U.S. Army Air Forces on August 17, 1943, it was conceived as an ambitious plan to cripple the German aircraft industry. The mission was also known as the "double-strike mission" because it entailed two large forces of bombers attacking separate...
Treblinka II was a German extermination camp in occupied Poland during World War II. Around 750,000[1] Jews and other victims of the Holocaust were murdered there, along with 2,000 Roma, between July 1942 and October 1943.
Unlike many other Nazi concentration and extermination camps, Majdanek is not hidden away in some remote forest or obscured from view by natural barriers, nor was it surrounded by a "security zone." It was established in October 1941, at Heinrich Himmler's orders, following his visit to Lublin in July 1941. Majdanek was an SS-run prisoner of war camp, under the command of Karl Otto Ko...
The Chełmno extermination camp (German name Kulmhof) was an extermination camp of Nazi Germany that was situated 70 kilometres (43 mi) from Łódź, near a small village called Chełmno nad Nerem (Kulmhof an der Nehr, in German). This was in a part of Poland annexed by Germany as Reichsgau Wartheland in 1939. It was the first extermination camp, opened in 1941 to kill the Jews o...
Sobibór was a German extermination camp that was part of Operation Reinhard, the official German name was SS-Sonderkommando Sobibor. It is also the name of the village outside which the camp was built, which is now part of Lublin Voivodship in Poland.
The Jews, including Jewish Soviet POWs, and possibly Gypsies were transported to Sobibór by rail, and suffocated in gas chambers t...
Buchenwald concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany, in July 1937, and one of the largest such camps on German soil. Camp prisoners worked primarily as slave labour in local armament factories. Inmates were Jews, political prisoners, religious prisoners, and prisoners of war. Up to 1942 the majority of the po...
Bełżec (approximate Polish pronunciation belw-zets) was the first of the Nazi German extermination camps created for implementing Operation Reinhard during the Holocaust. Operating in 1942, the camp was situated in occupied Poland about half a mile south of the local railroad station Belzec in the Lublin district of the General Government.
Dachau was a Nazi German concentration camp located on the grounds of an abandoned munitions factory near the medieval town of Dachau, about 16 km (10 miles) northwest of Munich in southern Germany. Opened on 22 March 1933, the Dachau concentration camp was the first regular concentration camp established by the National Socialist (Nazi) government. Heinrich Himmler, in his capacity as police p...
Stutthof (Sztutowo) was the first concentration camp built by the Nazi Germany regime outside of Germany. Built on September 2, 1939, it was located in a secluded, wet, and wooded area west of the small town of Stutthof (Sztutowo). The town was located in territory of the Free City of Danzig, 34 km east of the city of Danzig (Gdańsk). It was also the last camp liberated by the Allies, on M...
Babi Yar (Ukrainian: Бабин яр, Babyn yar; Russian: Бабий яр, Babiy yar) is a ravine in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine.
In the course of two days, September 29—30, 1941, German Nazis and their collaborators murdered 33,771 Jewish civilians there. The Babi Yar massacre is considered to be "the la...
Construction on Auschwitz II (Birkenau) began in October 1941 to ease congestion at the main camp. It was designed to hold several categories of prisoners, and to function as an extermination camp in the context of Himmler's preparations for the Final Solution of the Jewish Question.
Many people know the Birkenau camp simply as "Auschwitz"; it was larger than Auschwitz ...
Mission 354 of the 303rd Bomb Group on 07.04.1945. Target was the marshalling yard near Hitzacker. 366 500-lb. G.P. bombs and 10 units of leaflets were dropped. 39 crews were dispatched. Minor flak fire recognized.
The formation was attacked by the Luftwaffe Sonderkommando Elbe, a special unit of young fighter pilots formed to ram bombers. This attack is the only known attack of ...
STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): 650+ fighter escorted B-17s and B-24s bomb oil refineries at Blechhammer, Germany and Vienna/Floridsdorf, Austria; motor works, locomotive shops, and marshalling yard at Vienna and Graz, Austria; Banhida, Szekesfehervar and Papa, Hungary; and Hranice and Mezirici, Czechoslovakia; some of the escorting fighters strafe ra...
STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): 345 B-17s and B-24s attack marshalling yards at Debreczen and Bekescsaba, Hungary, the railroad at Brod, Yugoslavia and in Hungary, highway bridges at Baja, in the Kiskore area, and at Tiszafured, plus the Novi Sad, Yugoslavia railroad bridge; 42 P-38s dive-bomb the Osijek, Yugoslavia marshalling yard; other fighters ...
Fearing a German armoured offensive southwest of Caen, the British high command decided to bomb the important crossroads at Aunay-sur-Odon, in order to bar the Panzers’ route.
In the early hours of June 12th, two waves of aircraft raked the high street and totally destroyed the centre of the village, killing around a hundred inhabitants.
STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): The Allied Expeditionary Air Force (AEAF) directs air attacks against congested points to delay movement of more enemy forces into the assault area. In the first mission (Mission 397) in the morning, 182 B-17s and 291 B-24s, including 20 PFFs, are dispatched; of the B-17s, 58 hit Conde sur Noireau, 60 hit Flers, and 54 hit Falaise; of the B-24s, 66 hit A...
12 Bostons bombed railway yards at Hazebrouck without loss. 1 of the Bostons was manned by Captain Kegelman and his all-American crew, the first Americans of the Eighth Air Force to take part in a bomber operation. Their hosts were 226 Squadron at Swanton Morley.
Wangerooge: 482 aircraft - 308 Halifaxes, 158 Lancasters, 16 Mosquitos - of Nos 4, 6 and 8 Groups. 5 Halifaxes and 2 Lancasters lost. The raid was intended to knock out the coastal batteries on this Frisian island which controlled the approaches to the ports of Bremen and Wilhelmshaven. No doubt the experience of Antwerp, when guns on the approaches had prevented the port being used for several...
Aerial photo shows the results of the first bombing raids.
La Coupole ("The Cupola") is the name of a Second World War V-2 rocket base constructed by Nazi Germany at Wizernes, south west of the French town of Saint-Omer, between Lille and Calais.
Set in a former limestone quarry close to the villages of Helfaut and Wizernes, the complex was intended to ...
At 08:06 a bomb from a Hiryū Kate hit between and to starboard of Turrets #1 & 2. The subsequent explosion which destroyed the forward part of Arizona was due to the detonation of the ammunition magazine, located in an armoured section under the deck. Most experts seem to agree that the bomb could hardly have pierced the armour. Instead, it seems widely accepted that the black powder m...
A 1942 aerial view of Bellows Field, showing its early-WW2 single-airfield configuration.
Bellows Air Force Station is a United States military reservation located in Waimanalo, Hawaii. Once an important air field during World War II, the reservation now serves as a military training area and recreation area for active and retired military and civilian employees of the Departmen...
On December 7, 1941, Japanese forces attacked the American Fleet at Pearl Harbor and surrounding military bases. The USS Arizona was a berth F7 alongside Ford Island in Pearl Harbor. The USS Vestal was tided outboard of the USS Arizona. The Japanese attack began at approximately 7:55am and the USS Arizona along with the other battleships on Battleship Row became the main targets. The men of the...
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