MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History

When were rockets first used effectively as military weapons? Wallace KublerSummerville, South Carolina Feng Zhisheng created gunpowder from an alchemy experiment gone wrong sometime around 969. In 1000, Tang Fu presented the Song emperor with barbed

To Catalans, 9/11 has a long history as a day of reckoning. The Diada, or national day, commemorates the 1714 fall of Barcelona after a lengthy siege whose origins lie in the War of the Spanish Succession. In recent years the day has been linked to a

On July 17, 1944, the SS E. A. Bryan, a newly commissioned Liberty ship, was moored to a pier at the Port Chicago Naval Magazine in Port Chicago, California, to load ammunition, bombs, and artillery rounds for the upcoming invasion of Tinian, in the

During the fall of Antwerp, which started in the summer of 1584 and lasted until August the following year, Spanish army troops invading what was then the largest and richest city in the Netherlands built a bridge across the Scheldt River in hopes of

Roy H. Elrod was born in 1919 and grew up on a farm near Muleshoe, Texas, that his widowed mother operated. He managed to save enough money, even during the Great Depression, to attend Texas A&M, but in 1940 he dropped out of college to enlist in the

The Walther P-38 arguably supplants even the infamous Luger P.08 as the definitive German pistol of the 20th century. Its development began in the early 1930s, when a cash-strapped German army looked to replace the elegant but expensive Luger. The Ca

Wars, for better or for worse, make heroes, and often they make heroes of men whose flaws and failings run deep. Douglas MacArthur was one such hero. During World War I MacArthur variously served as chief of staff, brigade commander, and divisional c

For nearly a year, from spring 1943 to early 1944, General Douglas MacArthur, the supreme commander of Allied Forces in the Southwest Pacific Area, conducted a series of highly confidential meetings with his most trusted aides. This would have been u

The shifting sands and brackish tides surrounding the port of Dunkirk were no less treacherous or unpredictable than the murky political alliances on display there in June 1658. Two bristling armies, each commanded in whole or in part by a storied Fr

It was February 1862, and on the outskirts of Chicago, a small crowd gathered and watched anxiously as several thousand Confederate prisoners of war climbed out of a long string of boxcars. Under the guard of Union soldiers, augmented by local police

When the Pilgrims landed on Cape Cod Bay in wintry November 1620, they brought with them many essential items—food, guns, supplies to establish a new colony, members of both sexes—even the governing document that would become known as the Mayflower C

As a journalist, William G. Shepherd had a knack for being in—or getting to—the right place at the right time. On the afternoon of March 25, 1911, for example, he was walking through Washington Square in lower Manhattan when he noticed smoke pouring

Though his father and grandfather were officers in the U.S. Army, Alfred Reynolds was a navy man through and through. Reynolds entered the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis at age 16 and a year after his graduation in 1873 was commissioned an ensign. H

Amid the confusing chaos and searing carnage of war, twists of fate often seem to be the main determinant of who lives and who dies. For those who survive, luck may certainly play an outsize role. But wily resourcefulness can be equally crucial. In t

Herman Melville (1819–1891) turned to poetry only after his serious fiction played to the literary equivalent of an empty house. Even Moby-Dick, the magisterial whaling story that for more than 100 years has been considered his magnum opus, was trash

Though it has been parodied, lampooned, reenacted, copied, and criticized endlessly in recent times, for generations of Americans Washington Crossing the Delaware cemented the legacy of George Washington as the hero of the Revolution. And while the i

By Julian Jackson.928 pages.Harvard University Press, 2018. $39.95.Reviewed by Harold J. Goldberg When people in France were asked to rank the most significant figures in the history of their country, Charles de Gaulle finished in first place. That’s