In a forest near the German village of Speyerdorf, about 20 miles southwest of Ludwigshafen and about 350 miles east of Bassingbourn, a research team is carefully sweeping an area with metal detectors and sifting dirt through screens where some 75 years ago Strictly GI crashed.

But for more than a decade at the height of the Cold War, the Twin Cities were protected by a quartet of nuclear missile installations ringing the metro area.

About three years ago the Naval History and Heritage Command asked institute volunteers to conduct a search for lost aircraft in the bay near Patuxent River Naval Air Station. The Navy had begun a systematic search for such planes. One of them was Lt. j.g. David L. Mandt's Bearcat. It disappeared in 1945.

Five vintage World War II aircraft will fly into the MAPS (Military Aviation Preservation Society) Air Museum on Aug. 9 and will be available for tours through Aug. 11.

Seaman 1st Class James Cunningham was among the sailors killed aboard the patrol boat USS Eagle off the coast of Maine on April 23, 1945, when an explosion ripped its hull in half. On Saturday, the Navy awarded the Purple Heart medal to Cunningham’s 85-year-old sister.

More than 100 veterans gathered at the National Museum of American History on Friday to see the unveiling of a 48-star flag that flew on Landing Craft Control 60 during the 1944 D-Day assault on Utah Beach in Normandy.

U.S. Army Cpl. Charles Stanley Lawler’s burial will close an excruciating chapter for his family. His mother always held out hope that he had been captured and not killed or missing.

Around the clock for weeks after the battle of Gettysberg, medical personnel cared for the wounded, performing amputations, dealing with infections and, in many cases, providing comfort for the dying in their final minutes.

By the time Apollo 11 blasted off, many astronauts had come to develop an appreciation for lunar geology — and the new light it would shed on our own planet.

Fifty years ago Thursday, a car driven by U.S. Sen. Edward Kennedy plunged off the Dike Bridge on Chappaquiddick, killing Mary Jo Kopechne, 28, a former aide and campaign worker for his late brother Robert F. Kennedy, and derailing his aspirations to follow another brother, John F. Kennedy, to the White House.

During one of the last and bloodiest battles of World War II, the Battle of Okinawa, Anthony “Tony” Procassini was pinned down with fellow soldiers, praying the Japanese shelling would miss. It did, but not by much.

"Doc," one of the only two World War II Boeing B-29 Superfortress bombers still flying, was built in 1944 as one of 1,644 B-29 bombers manufactured in Boeing’s Wichita, Kan., plant and delivered to the U.S. Army Air Corps in March 1945 — too near the end of World War II to see combat.

Stephen Reagan isn't from Muskogee, but he wants Ernest Edwin Evans to be more than a distant memory to the people here.

Searching for his roots about 10 years ago, Pat Montoya, a retired U.S. Postal Service postmaster, discovered some fascinating details about his great-grandfather, Juan Domingo Montoya.

Gary George found the original videotapes capturing the Apollo 11 lunar landing at a government surplus auction while working at the NASA Johnson Space Center in 1973, according to Sotheby's. He paid $217.77 for the 1,150 reels of magnetic tape, which include Neil Armstrong's declaration, "That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

The three men who took the journey to the moon became the faces of the achievement. But it was the men and women who worked in factories and offices across the nation over the better part of a decade that took the moon landing from presidential challenge to tangible reality.

Remembering Ross Perot

A few weeks after Orson Swindle returned home from Hanoi after spending more than six years in North Vietnamese prisoner of war camps, he picked up his phone and heard Ross Perot's high-pitched twang. Perot was calling to invite Swindle and fellow former POWs of Son Tay POW Camp to San Francisco.

Veterans' Stories

Brig. Gen. Dennis Sullivan flew three CIA reconnaissance missions as a pilot of the A-12 OXCART in 1967 over North Vietnam and earned the CIA's Intelligence Star of Valor Award in 1968, one of the rarest valor awards awarded by the U.S. government. He was inducted into the Wisconsin Aviation Hall of Fame in 2011.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday honored the former Myrtle Beach Air Force Base as a shining example of how formerly federal land can be repurposed.

The amendment inserted into the National Defense Authorization Act calls on the Secretary of the U.S. Navy to publicly exonerate the "Port Chicago 50" – the group of African-American sailors who refused to go back to the Concord Naval Weapons Station to load and unload dangerous munitions without proper safety training.

GALLERY / VIDEO

103 veterans from the Chicago area came to Washington, D.C. Wednesday as part of Honor Flight Chicago, a non-profit that brings vets on a whirlwind one-day trip to the nation’s capital to visit the memorials that commemorate the wars they served in.

The Army and Navy are now the only branches of the military with any assets named after symbols of the Confederacy, according to a September 2017 Congressional Research Service report.

Some local funeral directors estimate that there are “hundreds” of veterans whose ashes are being stored – either in funeral homes or on the shelves of family members’ homes – until the new burial ground opens.

Rep. Matt Gaetz is working to get an honorary posthumous promotion for Lt. Col. Dick Cole, one of the 80 Army Air Force aviators who participated in daring bombing raid on Japan in the early months of World War II.

Veterans' Stories

Marine Corps Base Camp Pendleton has played a major role in military history over the past 77 years, and John Farritor is one of the rare men who has seen that history unfold from the start.

A 363-foot projection of a rocket will be flashed on one side of the Washington Monument next week to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo moon landing.

We are joined this week by former British colonel Tim Collins, who delivered one of the most famous speeches of the Iraq War. Collins — now involved with private military and security contracting firm New Century — shares his perspective on the operations gaps filled by contracting and how it’s shaping the modern battlefield.

A long line of nearly 100 vehicles stretched out along the White House Ellipse on the morning of July 7, 1919, replete with heavy troop carriers, light trucks, sidecar motorcycles, reconnaissance cars, field kitchens, blacksmith shops and one Renault light tank.

It's taken years for Judge George Greer to tell his story on his decision to remove Terri Schiavo's feeding tube. He recently wrote the first chapter in "Tough Cases," a book that features the reflections of judges who don't often get to speak openly about their decisions.

Tens of thousands of Uighurs live in Turkey, cut off from friends and family back home in China's Xinjiang region. Analysts say the Urumqi riots set in motion the harsh security measures now in place across Xinjiang, where about 1 million Uighurs, Kazakhs and other Muslims are estimated to be held in internment camps.

It has been 28 years since tanks last rolled through the streets of Washington, leaving heavy tread marks in the asphalt along the way. On Tuesday night, they came back.

Nearly 100 adults and kids of all ages gathered around the west runway of the airport in Eugene, Ore., on Saturday morning to watch a historic Consolidated PBY-5A Catalina fly in and end its long trip from where it was found in a Paris museum.

Airman 2nd Class Verne Budahn died when a C-124 Globemaster II went down in bad weather on Nov. 22, 1952.

A Navy reservist and military historian was among the few dozen people in a lakeside lodge at Richmond’s Camp Takodah, N.H. They'd gathered to remember 12 individuals who had attended Camp Takodah as boys and died in World War II as young men.

Dan Simmons' book “With His Hand” details Medal of Honor recipient John C. “Red” Morgan’s experiences during World War II, some of which were fictionalized and included in a novel and a subsequent movie called “12 O’Clock High”.

At some point over the past 76 years, the charm of the structure got lost in rotting wood and a pervasive musty stench. It's plagued with mold, water damage, buckling floorboards and peeling paint. It's boarded shut, and used only by termites, rodents and the occasional homeless person who slips into the crawlspace below the building.

A bill introduced Tuesday would rescind 20 Medals of Honor awarded to soldiers who received them for actions during the Wounded Knee Massacre in 1890, when hundreds of Native Americans were killed by U.S. cavalry soldiers.

The State Archives of North Carolina has honored Guy Cox by digitizing more than 400 photographs the lensman took from 1943-45.

On this warm, humid day, with dolphins in the water, divers dug through mud and oyster shells on the bottom of York River, searching for remnants of the battle that ensured American independence.

While recuperating from back surgery, Beth Rieman had time to think about family, ask questions about her grandmother's Uncle Jim, and eventually uncover an amazing find about the decorated veteran of two world wars.

Robert Friend, a decorated fighter pilot who flew 142 combat missions with the fabled Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, then became an expert on missile systems and directed the classified Air Force investigation into UFOs, died June 21 at age 99.

The third week in June, 1994 began as any other at Fairchild Air Force Base. It was warm and sunny, with the base preparing for an open house the following Sunday. It ended with the base hospital closed, walls scarred from bullets and floors stained with blood. The burnt wreckage of the base’s last B-52 was scattered near the runway.

Nearly eight years ago, a stealth American surveillance drone with a 66-foot wingspan went down over Iran. The United States insisted the RQ-170 Sentinel, which had taken off for a CIA mission from a base in Afghanistan, experienced a malfunction; Iran said they neutralized it in a cyberattack.

Over a century ago, employees of Westinghouse companies contributed to the most ambitious, high-tech projects of their day. On a Library of Congress website, their labor - and innovations that changed the way Americans worked and traveled - comes to flickering life.

When Soviet troops invaded the Kurile islands in 1945 after Japan announced its surrender in World War II, all of the 17,000 Japanese residents either fled or were forcibly evicted.

The bloody three-month siege of Kohima took place in the Himalayan foothills of Nagaland, in northeast India. Though the allied victory against the Japanese was a major turning point on par with the Battle of Stalingrad, we won't see world leaders travel to Kohima for its remembrance.

For decades, William “Hoover” Jones’s family wondered what happened to him. He left North Carolina as an 18-year-old boy from a small town in Nash County, off to Korea to fight as an infantryman in the U.S. Army. He has been missing-in-action since 1950. On Thursday, he came home.

For Navy veterans Maghan and Jamie Alberts, the GI Bill not only let them pursue a higher education after returning home from the service in 1997, it also gave them the opportunity to start a new life together.

He fought with distinction, historians say, in two of this country’s formative wars, but James Robinson, who was born into slavery in Maryland in the mid-18th century, was denied his liberty for most of his life and never got the military honors he’d earned. That is to change this weekend.

A new National Park Service grant will help preserve a part of the Spotsylvania Court House Battlefield that’s been called one of America’s most historic roads.

A glass of whisky in his hand, Norman Mailer cursed the roaring crowd in Greenwich Village and told them to shut up when they interrupted his speech, a rollicking cascade of F-bombs and insults from start to finish. "You're nothing but a bunch of spoiled pigs!" Mailer shouted on that May night in 1969.

Jeremy Lin has joined Wataru "Wat" Misaka in the history books. In 1947, Misaka was the first person of color to play professional basketball in what would become the NBA. With the Raptors' Game 6 win Thursday, Lin has become the first Asian American to win an NBA championship.

Video

Derek Cincotta was in the open hatch of a World War II warplane, fighting the wind and looking down at a quilted French countryside thousands of feet below. The man running the drop yelled "Go!" and the immediate rush, as Cincotta leapt from the plane and focused on his body positioning, resolved into calm once he pulled his parachute.

Various U.S. military installations on Friday marked the Army's 244th birthday with celebratory events. President Donald Trump, whose birthday is on the same day, also tweeted a tribute to the Army.

On Tuesday, the agency announced it has chosen a military base as a temporary shelter: Fort Sill in Oklahoma, which was used during World War II as a Japanese internment camp. Before that, it was the longtime prison for Apache leader Geronimo.

Dwight D. Eisenhower and the history he made left their mark on Abilene, Kansas.

Retired U.S. Col. Gail Halvorsen — better known in these parts as the “Candy Bomber” — will always be a hero in the eyes of the German children who grew up in postwar Berlin, no matter how old they grow. On Monday, some of those who remember Halvorsen's heroics gathered to honor him.

Eight former Rosie the Riveters (and welders) attended the commemoration ceremonies Thursday at the 75th D-Day Commemoration on Thursday at the Eisenhower Presidential Library and Museum in Abilene, Kansas.

About 500 American soldiers died during a typhus epidemic in 1814, the year after the city was reclaimed from British capture during the War of 1812.

Book review

Observances of the 75th anniversary of D-Day are properly focusing on the troops and the architect of Operation Overlord, Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, who freed Europe from Hitler and his Nazi hordes. One person – a woman – has not received the credit she deserves for her efforts with the French Resistance.

Moe Berg's exploits on the baseball field in the 1920s and 1930s for the Washington Senators and other teams would come to be overshadowed by his cunning as a wartime spy in the infancy of the Office of Strategic Services. A new documentary explores continuing mysteries about the famed player.

Veterans who took part in World War II invasion of Normandy, "an awesome responsibility far beyond their years," were honored Thursday in a 75th anniversary ceremony at the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C.

Abraham Lincoln fired off a gruff note to Charles H. Ray, the editor-in-chief of the Chicago Press & Tribune. "Does Sheahan write them?" Lincoln sneered, a sarcastic reference to James Sheahan, editor of the Chicago Times, a Democratic Party paper and the Tribune's chief rival.

Gallery

While June 6 is a date remembered around the world, just a few days before, the Texas National Guard's 36th Infantry Division – known as the "Texas Army" – had pulled off a brilliant overnight maneuver known as the "breakout at Anzio," which led to the immediate fall of Rome on June 3 and 4.

Most Americans believe the United States was right to participate in World War II but many are either skeptical or don’t know, according to a poll released ahead of the 75th anniversary of the D-Day invasion that kicked off the liberation of Europe.

Nelson Henry, 95, of Philadelphia, received word Monday from the Army Correction of Military Records office that his discriminatory “blue discharge” from 1945 because he was black has been changed to honorable. He called the unanimous decision by a three-member board a miracle.

During a Monday visit to Buckingham Palace, President Donald Trump mentioned a 1945 photo of the future queen repairing a military truck engine. Here's the story behind the photo.

Twenty men from a small town in rural Virginia were killed on D-Day. With the opening of a new tribute center, their families are finally sharing their mementos, stories and grief.

As the 75th anniversary of D-Day approaches, thousands of people are descending on Normandy to mark the occasion at events large and small, spread out near the beaches allies stormed in the pivotal invasion that helped pave the way for victory over the Nazis.

Analysis

China today is supremely confident, richer than it could have imagined three decades ago, and more convinced than ever of its repressive model of authoritarian political control. In many ways it's a direct result of a seismic event that took place 30 years ago.

Richmond's newspapers argued fiercely in favor of abolition. Thomas Jefferson's grandson pushed a plan to free slaves and help them settle in the new African nation of Liberia. Even a leader of the militia that put down Turner's rebellion called for a gradual end to slavery.

Dad Mac sat in his living room and furiously scribbled the names the German propaganda machine rattled off. Names of GIs whose moms and dads and siblings and sweethearts in Florida and Iowa and Oregon. Loved ones who for weeks or months had wondered and worried and wrung their hands. Mac would fill out and address a postcard. It would say: Your boy is alive.

The ceremony featured the dedication of a new grave marker for 1st Lt. John W. Van Natta, a member of the famed 83rd Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry who fought in more than 18 Civil War battles.

Chinese Americans didn’t serve in segregated units like Japanese or African Americans, but they still experienced both interpersonal and institutional racism.

While the B-21 bomber under development by the Air Force garnered many of the headlines during Col. John Edwards’ tenure as commander of Ellsworth Air Force Base, he quietly presided over a transformation in the combat role of the base’s nearly 40-year-old fleet of B-1s.

A life-sized statue depicting a bearded Master Sgt. John Chapman in tan camouflage, and a replica of his Medal of Honor, was revealed Thursday inside the Alcide "Bull" Benini Heritage Center at Pope Army Airfield.

Interior Secretary David Bernhardt got a close-up view of the disabled USS Arizona Memorial Wednesday before pledging to finish the repairs to its concrete passenger dock as soon as possible.

PERSPECTIVE

"OK, Dad," Uncle Dick asked. "What are you most proud of in your life?" I think I half expected my grandfather to say the time he shot even-par 72. What could be better than that? This was chitchat, brag-about-the-family stuff, set up on a tee. Instead, he knocked us over with his response. "D-Day," he said.

The last World War II Mohawk Code Talker, Louis Levi Oakes of the Saint Regis tribe, died Tuesday at the age of 94. Oakes saw action in the South Pacific, New Guinea and Philippines theaters, and was awarded the Silver Star.

The 37th Airlift Squadron sent three C-130Js to France on Wednesday decked out with a new paint scheme. World War II veterans who fought at Normandy likely would recognize the markings immediately.

Thousands of spectators lined Constitution Avenue in the nation's capital Monday to pay tribute to the past and present U.S. military in the National Memorial Day Parade.

The World War II veterans and others who visited the National World War II Memorial Monday morning for the traditional Memorial Day ceremony were reminded that the "overwhelming genius and valor" of what has become known as the Greatest Generation "achieved a profound victory of liberty over tyranny for our modern world."

Of the more than 15,000 Union soldiers who were buried at Fredericksburg National Cemetery after the Civil War, only 2,473 were identified. That's one of the reasons why Donna Moore came to the cemetery Saturday evening for the 24th annual luminaria.

If not for the Spanish-American War, people in several island nations would likely be leading very different lifestyles today. The brief hostilities left the U.S. with possession of Guam, Puerto Rico and the Philippines and temporary control of Cuba.