Axis fighter aircraft focused on defending against Allied bombers while Allied fighters ' main role was as bomber escorts.

With the Luftwaffe largely cleared from the skies, Allied fighters increasingly served as attack aircraft.

Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service primarily operating the Mitsubishi A6M Zero, and the Imperial Japanese Army Air Service flying the Nakajima Ki-27 and the Nakajima Ki-43, initially enjoyed great success, as these fighters generally had better range, maneuverability, speed and climb rates than their Allied counterparts.

By mid-1942, the Allies began to regroup and while some Allied aircraft such as the Brewster Buffalo and the P-39 were hopelessly outclassed by fighters like Japan's Zero, others such as the Army's P-40 and the Navy's Wildcat possessed attributes such as superior firepower, ruggedness and dive speed, and the Allies soon developed tactics ( such as the Thach weave ) to take advantage of these strengths.

First, second-generation Allied fighters such as the Hellcat and the P-38, and later the Corsair, the P-47 and the P-51, began arriving in numbers.

Other problems with Japan's fighter aircraft also became apparent as the war progressed, such as their lack of armor and light armament, which made them inadequate as bomber interceptors or ground-attack planes — roles Allied fighters excelled at.

By mid-1944, Allied fighters had gained air superiority throughout the theater, which would not be contested again during the war.

Late in the war, Japan did begin to produce new fighters such as the Nakajima Ki-84 and the Kawanishi N1K to replace the venerable Zero, but these were produced only in small numbers, and in any case by that time Japan lacked trained pilots or sufficient fuel to mount a sustained challenge to Allied fighters.

The mass-produced, low-cost Liberator pistol of World War II, which was manufactured and distributed by U. S. forces to Allied Resistance forces and Guerrilla fighters as an assassination pistol, is the most common example of a mass-produced single-shot pistol.

After repeated failures in Allied bombing attempts to hit the factory, a team of French Resistance fighters and SOE agents distracted the German guards with a game of soccer while part of their team entered the plant and destroyed machinery.

" M. K. Dziewanowski has noted that " if Polish forces fighting in the east and west were added to the resistance fighters, Poland had the fourth largest Allied army in the war ( after the USSR, the U. S. and Britain )".

The risk of Luftwaffe interception was judged small, given the crushing air superiority of Allied fighters but there were concerns about the increasing number of flak units in the Netherlands, especially around Arnhem.

One reason is the US strategy of daylight precision bombing and the corresponding high loss rate it causes to the American bombers to enemy antiaircraft fire and enemy fighters, the latter being aggravated by the fact that there are not yet any US or Allied fighters with sufficient range to escort the bombers to and from their targets.

These RAF commandos accompanied the Allied invasion forces in all theatres ; their main role was to allow the forward operation of friendly fighters by servicing and arming them from captured air fields.

As the squad is down to its last few rounds of ammunition, the weather clears, allowing Allied fighters to attack the Germans and C-47 transports to drop supplies, enabling the 101st to hold.

Good weather in November 1943 found the Japanese Army air forces ready to challenge Allied forces again, and they began night and day raids on Calcutta and the Hump bases while their fighters contested Allied air intrusions over Burma.

The Fokker Scourge was a term coined by the British press in the summer of 1915 to describe the then-current ascendancy of the Fokker Eindecker monoplane fighters of the German Fliegertruppen over the poorly-armed Allied reconnaissance types of the period.

This aircraft and its successors-also commonly known as the Eindecker ( German for " Monoplane ") for the first time supplied an equivalent to Allied fighters.

Later versions of the Nieuport, as well as most new Allied fighters, were fitted with them for the rest of the war.

Formally reported from November 1944 onwards, witnesses often assumed that the foo fighters were secret weapons employed by the enemy, but they remained unidentified post-war and were reported by both Allied and Axis forces.

Teen Hunter Clubs were initially sponsored by affiliated members of the Allied Merchandising Corporation.

There was also the fact that by the time he meets Mr. Khrushchev, the President will have completed conversations with all the other principal Allied leaders.

As Kennan shows, the judgment of the Allied governments about what was happening in Russia was warped by the obsession of defeating Germany.

* 1942 – World War II: Battle of Savo Island – Allied naval forces protecting their amphibious forces during the initial stages of the Battle of Guadalcanal are surprised and defeated by an Imperial Japanese Navy cruiser force.

* 1944 – Heinrich Kreipe is captured by Allied commandos in occupied-Crete.

* 1943 – World War II: The U. S. Seventh Army under General George S. Patton arrives in Messina, Italy, followed several hours later by the British 8th Army under Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, thus completing the Allied conquest of Sicily.

A Japanese naval transport convoy headed towards Guadalcanal is turned-back by an Allied air attack, losing one destroyer and one transport sunk, and one light cruiser heavily damaged.

The Allied fleet then sailed to the Thracian Chersonese, still held by the Persians, and besieged and captured the town of Sestos.

Wellington is better-known to posterity, because he led one of the two Allied armies at the final decisive victory of the Napoleonic Wars ( the battle of Waterloo in 1815 ), although Wellington's superior reputation is perhaps also because he only once faced Napoleon, whereas Charles was confronted by Napoleon in battle more times than any other commander.

During the Western Allied invasion of Germany in April 1945, the airfield was seized by the United States Third Army, and used by the USAAF 354th Fighter Group which flew P-47 Thunderbolts from the aerodrome ( designated ALG R-82 ) from late April until the German capitulation on 7 May 1945.

To stop the ethnic cleansing and genocide of Albanians by nationalist Serbs in the former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's province of Kosovo, Clinton authorized the use of American troops in a NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia in 1999, named Operation Allied Force.

The Bulgarian government declared a token war on the United Kingdom and the United States near the end of 1941, an act which resulted in the bombing of Sofia and other Bulgarian cities by Allied aircraft.

A resistance movement called Otechestven front ( Fatherland front, Bulgarian: Отечествен фронт ) was set up in August 1942 by the Communist Party, the Zveno movement and a number of other parties to oppose the elected government, after a number of Allied victories indicated that the Axis might lose the War.

At Méteren, near the Belgian border at Bailleul on 13 October 1914, during an Allied counter-offensive, he was shot through the right lung by a sniper.

Allied assault on the Schellenberg – taken by coup de main on 2 July – provided the Allies with an excellent river crossing.

A French reconnaissance under the Marquis de Silly went forward to probe the enemy, but were driven off by Allied troops who had deployed to cover the pioneers of the advancing army, labouring to bridge the numerous streams in the area and improve the passage leading westwards to Höchstädt.

At 02: 00 on 13 August, 40 squadrons were sent forward towards the enemy, followed at 03: 00, in eight columns, by the main Allied force pushing over the Kessel.

The centre, commanded by the Duke's brother, General Charles Churchill, consisted of 18 battalions of infantry arranged in two lines: seven battalions in the front line to secure a foothold across the Nebel, and 11 battalions in the rear providing cover from the Allied side of the stream.

By 16: 00, with the enemy troops besieged in Blenheim and Oberglau, the Allied centre of 81 squadrons ( nine squadrons had been transferred from Cutts ' column ), supported by 18 battalions was firmly planted amidst the French line of 64 squadrons and nine battalions of raw recruits.

" Threatened by Allied guns, other units followed their example.

With Marshal Villars sitting strong on the Moselle, the Allied commander – whose supplies had by now become critical – was forced to call off his campaign on 16 June.

Savoy would then serve as a gateway into France by way of the mountain passes or, alternatively, an invasion with naval support along the Mediterranean coast via Nice and Toulon in connection with redoubled Allied efforts in Spain.

Two hours later the Duke, accompanied by the Dutch field commander Field Marshal Overkirk, General Daniel Dopff, and the Allied staff, rode up to Cadogan where on the horizon to the westward he could discern the massed ranks of the French army deploying for battle along the four mile ( 6. 4 km ) front.

In Taviers on his right, he placed two battalions of the Greder Suisse Régiment, with a smaller force forward in Franquenée ; the whole position was protected by the boggy ground of the Mehaigne river, thus preventing an Allied flanking movement.