Second World War Stories

Roger Freeman was a farmer’s son who lived close to Boxted airfield in Essex during the Second World War. His teenage enthusiasm for the Eighth Air Force developed into a life-long interest.

The American Air Museum commemorates the 30,000 American servicemen and women who died while flying from Britain. Their names appear on our Roll of Honour, which draws information from our archive onto the museum's walls.  

Hiroshima and Nagasaki were experiments in a new kind of warfare, whose full implications were not entirely understood at the time. The bombing of these cities in August 1945 brought an end to the Second World War, but at a terrible cost to the Japanese civilian population.

Japan attacked the U.S Pacific Fleet at its base at Pearl Harbor on the 7th of December 1941, but what led to that decision? Why did the Japanese attack the USA? - The answer is oil.

Duke was a paratrooper who completed four ‘combat jumps’ into action. He parachuted from a C-47 Skytrain on 6 June 1944 – his third combat jump.

Published in 1961 by American author Joseph Heller, Catch-22 is a satirical novel. Although Heller claimed it was a work of fiction, many of the characters and events in the book are parallel’s to Heller’s experience of the Second World War.

The arrival of American troops in Britain during the Second World War highlighted many differences between the two nations, including the institutionally-mandated racism that gave some American citizens fewer rights than others: segregation

During the Cold War, global super powers dealt with the prospect of devastating nuclear consequences by adopting a strategy of mutually assured destruction. Suggesting that you might be willing to ‘press the nuclear button’ had considerable global consequences

The film A Welcome to Britain presents a guide to British society, behaviour and wartime conditions and was made for American troops arriving in the UK prior to the Normandy Landings.