One of DC's several war comics back in the day, of which my dad was obviously a big fan. To the extent I see anyone online talking about Fighting Forces (or Our Fighting Forces, whichever), it's in reference to Jack Kirby's stint as writer/artist of the Losers. Which started around issue #152, and lasted for maybe a year.
My dad doesn't have any of that. This is the from last issue of the title I ever saw in his collection, out of maybe five, total, all between this one and when the Losers took over as the lead feature in #123. Essentially a proto A-Team, consisting of a PT boat skipper (Captain Storm), a fighter pilot (Captain Johnny Cloud), and two Marines (Gunner and Sarge), thrown together as a squad to handle jobs that required all their disparate skills. Unfortunately, none of the issues I have had good splash pages for the Losers.
They were "losers" because, well, they'd all lost. Storm's PT boat got blown up on a mine and only he survived. Cloud was shot down along with the rest of his squadron and only he survived. Gunner and Sarge had done pretty well in the Pacific Theater, but once they were reassigned to the Western Front, they too lost their entire squad.
And since Robert Kanigher never met a horse he wouldn't beat until it was dog food, the four of them were constantly bemoaning their fate as losers. If the little boat they used for a nighttime incursion sank as soon as they reached shore, well it was from associating with losers like them. If the only plane they could get was a 30-year-old biplane, well that's just a loser's luck. Even when they were succeeding in missions they were somehow still losers.
The power of positive thinking is clearly lost on these guys.
They took over as lead feature from Lt. Hunter and his Hellcats (literally as Hunter and his crew need someone to handle a mission while they go on R&R), which took over from Captain Hunter, which took over from the "Fighting Devil Dog", who took over from Gunner and Sarge (and Pooch!).
Besides the Losers story, the issue would usually contain one other, slightly shorter story. Usually set in an earlier historical time period, possibly with some sort of twist to it. Such as "The Invincible Armada", where the Spanish Admiral up there sinks with his fleet, and 350 years later, his descendant is a Luftwaffe bomber pilot trying to avenge his ancestor's defeat by bombing England. It doesn't go any better for him, and naturally, his plane sinks into the channel and comes to rest next to a Spanish galleon. Remarkable how that works.
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