"...the simple fact is that ten men, boy's really, came together out of nowhere... did what was asked of them, and returned to their nowhere". These are the no-nonsense words of Crew 313's navigator, Mike Ozckus, that hint at the camaraderie, skill, danger, and sacrifice required for missions over Nazi-occupied Europe in the B-24 heavy bomber, known not-so-affectionately as the "Flying Boxcar". Nose gunner, Emmett (Mac) MacKenzie weaves the memories of his crewmembers with historical accounts about air combat during the Second World War. Every daunting mission demanded heroism, yet Ozckus modestly wrote that their actions wouldn't warrant even a "footnote in history". Crew 313 is the story of ordinary Americans who answered their county's call to do the extraordinary. Mackenzie brings their history alive in this testament to courage.
During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were high. Of the roughly 125,000 who served as aircrew with Bomber Command, 59,423 were killed or missing and presumed killed—a fatality rate of 45.5%. With odds like that, it would be no surprise if there were as few atheists in cockpits as there were in foxholes; and indeed, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in Flying against Fate, a pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II. Mining a wealth of documents as well as a trove of published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, MacKenzie examines the myriad forms combat fliers' superstitions assumed, from jinxes to premonitions. Most commonly, airmen carried amulets or talismans—lucky boots or a stuffed toy; a coin whose year numbers added up to thirteen; counterintuitively, a boomerang. Some performed rituals or avoided other acts, e.g., having a photo taken before a flight. Whatever seemed to work was worth sticking with, and a heightened risk often meant an upsurge in superstitious thought and behavior. MacKenzie delves into behavior analysis studies to help explain the psychology behind much of the behavior he documents—not slighting the large cohort of crew members and commanders who demurred. He also looks into the ways in which superstitious behavior was tolerated or even encouraged by those in command who saw it as a means of buttressing morale. The first in-depth exploration of just how varied and deeply felt superstitious beliefs were to tens of thousands of combat fliers, Flying against Fate expands our understanding of a major aspect of the psychology of war in the air and of World War II.
From a mesmerizing storyteller, the gripping search for a missing World War II crew, their bomber plane, and their legacy. In the fall of 1944, a massive American bomber carrying eleven men vanished over the Pacific islands of Palau, leaving a trail of mysteries. According to mission reports from the Army Air Forces, the plane crashed in shallow water—but when investigators went to find it, the wreckage wasn’t there. Witnesses saw the crew parachute to safety, yet the airmen were never seen again. Some of their relatives whispered that they had returned to the United States in secret and lived in hiding. But they never explained why. For sixty years, the U.S. government, the children of the missing airmen, and a maverick team of scientists and scuba divers searched the islands for clues. With every clue they found, the mystery only deepened. Now, in a spellbinding narrative, Wil S. Hylton weaves together the true story of the missing men, their final mission, the families they left behind, and the real reason their disappearance remained shrouded in secrecy for so long. This is a story of love, loss, sacrifice, and faith—of the undying hope among the families of the missing, and the relentless determination of scientists, explorers, archaeologists, and deep-sea divers to solve one of the enduring mysteries of World War II.
This book tells the inspiring story of a swim club that accepted minority swimmers when others would not, a swim coach who could not swim, and his five young swimmers who became Olympic gold medalists.
How could a perfectly sound U.S. military fighter plane simply vanish from formation on a training flight? Why did the crew of a speeding train choose death over salvation? What really happened one foggy night in 1929 when the Coast Guard fired on a rumrunner in Narragansett Bay? Do guardian angels really exist? Can an airplane be jinxed? In his latest book, Jim Ignasher chronicles twenty-three long-forgotten tales of disaster in the Ocean State. His research includes declassified government reports, which allow for some stories to be told in their entirety for the first time. Collectively, these tales present heroes and villains, adventure and the human condition, strange happenings and unsolved mysteries.
Cold War crescendo: in the author’s first three volumes in a series on battles of the Korean War, North Korean forces cross the 38th Parallel, rolling back US and South Korean forces into a small corner of the Korean peninsula. Months later, commander of the United Nations Command (UNC) in Korea, General Douglas MacArthur, launches a daring counteroffensive invasion at Inchon, enveloping North Korea. Despite a warning from Beijing that it will intervene if US forces cross the 38th, MacArthur uses the UN’s conditional authorization to land elements of the US X Corps at Wonsan and Riwon in North Korea. The Eighth US Army and South Korean forces capture the North Korean capital, P’yngyang, while American paratroops make the first combat jump of the conflict at Sunch’n and Sukch’n, cutting the road to the Chinese border. While MacArthur’s ground forces edge closer to the Yalu River, and the general having designs of chasing the retiring North Koreans across the river into China, in October 1950 the Chinese politburo immediately deploys 200,000 members of the 13th Army Group of the newly titled People’s Volunteer Army (PLA) on a pre-emptive ‘defensive’ operation into North Korea.
Following the French reoccupation of Indochina at the end of World War II, the pro-Communist Vietnamese nationalists, or Viet Minh, launched a grassroots insurgency that erupted into a full-fledged war in 1949. After nearly ten years of savage combat, the western world was stunned when Viet Minh forces decisively defeated the French Union army at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in May 1954. Logistics dominated every aspect of the First Indochina War, dictating the objectives, the organization of forces, the timing and duration of the operations, and even the final outcome. In A War of Logistics, Charles R. Shrader meticulously examines both French Union and Viet Minh logistical units during the period of active conventional warfare, as well as external support provided to the French by the United States and to the Vietnamese by China. Although the Vietnamese had few advantages over their opponents, their military leaders brilliantly employed a highly committed network of soldiers and civilians, outfitted to accommodate the challenging terrain on which they fought. Drawing on extensive research such as declassified intelligence documents, the reports of French participants, and accounts by Viet Minh leaders, including Vo Nguyen Giap and Ho Chi Minh, A War of Logistics provides in-depth coverage of the often-ignored but critically important topic of logistics in modern military campaigns.
First major clash with a communist army The Korean War was America's first ideological conflict and the first large-scale clash between U.S./UN forces and a Communist army. More than any other event, it signaled the beginning of Cold War mobilization for the U.S. and NATO, and even though the specter of international communism had since faded away, the animosities of The Forgotten War threaten to flare up even today. Focuses on military topics The Korean War contains articles of varying lengths on key topics that range from the origins of the conflict, ground, naval and air operations, and tactical planning to the Truman-MacArthur face-off, the POW issue, and armistice negotiations. The bulk of the Encyclopedia focuses on such military topics as the use of artillery, the pioneering concept of helicopter evacuation of wounded, new infantry tactics dictated by Communist POW riots, civil affairs, larger military units, and communications. There are also articles on civilian and military leaders, including President Eisenhower, General Ridgeway, Kim Il Sung, Chou En lai, Syngman Rhee, and others. Special features *Articles written by experts in the field *Useful to librarians, scholars, researchers and students alike *Includes 48 maps and photographs *Covers an extraordinary range of key topics *A chronology, extensive bibliography, and a subject index are included
This book is an exciting personal WW2 story which holds the reader's interest from beginning to end --- a true "page turner' of fast moving events. Written in a non-sophisticated language style, Frank shares intimate happenings, thoughts and details of some of his harsh experiences while in intense combat, cruel captivity and a frustrating afterwards. The reader will find the wartime events enlightening and somewhat entertaining in an unusual manner. After registering for the draft when 18, at Lopez, PA. Frank was called up March, 1943, and after completing three months of intense combat engineering training at Fort Lewis, WA, he was offered officer candidate training at Fort Belvoir, VA or the Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) at Brigham Young University, BYU, Provo, Utah. Since General "Ike" needed infantrymen for the invasion of France in 1944, Frank reluctantly had to leave BYU and was assigned to Company C, 1st Battalion, 274th Regiment, 70th Division, Camp Adair, OR. As a youngster, Frank was a tough, outdoor type of kid, since his boyhood life included lots of hard work during the 1930 depression years as well as trapping, fishing and hunting. All contributed to a terrific background for the rigors of becoming a well-trained infantryman. After completing three months of rough training in the swamps of Oregon, he was selected and qualified to attend West Point. After much deliberation and consideration of West Point requirement to serve many years after graduation, Frank elect6ed to stay with Co. C as an infantry scout. Within a short time, Frank and his outfit were shipped to Marseilles, France, in December 1944. By Christmas time, Frank was on the West Bank of the Rhine River in frigid, snowy northern France. On January 4, 1945, he was assigned to lead a large scaled attack as a scout onto Phillipsbourg, France. He barely survived the horrors and ordeals of eyeball to eyeball combat until being relieved on January 19, 1945. His unit was recognized for successful tenacious combat against well-seasoned German troops. While going to another assignment on January 20th, Frank fell off an icy snow covered mountainous trail and severely sprained his left ankle. He was assigned to a snow covered large concrete pillbox on the Maginot Line with three other infantrymen to spy on nearby German troops. At midnight on January 21, during a blizzard, a white clad Waffen S.S. Troop patrol fired explosives into the isolated pillbox and Frank and his buddies became prisoners of war. Frank's recollection of his five hour interrogation by a face slapping German Intelligence officer in an isolated farm house somewhere across the Rhine in Germany was intense and of a dramatic movie scene quality that shook him to the core of his being. Transport in a crowded filthy 40 and8's boxcar for five days through Germany was the beginning of cruel treatment by his captors. Besides the train being strafed by American planes, since it was not marked, the prisoners were spat on and sworn at by civilians in train stations. Stalag XI-B at Fallingbostel in Northern Germany near Bremen was filled with thousands of POW's from the many nations that Hitler had conquered, as well as captured Allied troops. Many POW's died each day and were buried in mass trenches. Frank's barracks, filled with sad looking American GI's, was unheated and loaded with lice. Since he was not an officer, Private 1st Class Yarosh had to work digging out tree stumps without breakfast or lunch after walking about 4 miles to the proposed V2 rocket site. Supper back at the barracks consisted of one slice of dark hard bread and maybe two small cold boiled potatoes and a cup of weak cold soup. This slim diet soon produced a skeleton frame on many POW's. Since Frank had an excellent knowledge of the Russian language, he made many dangerous nighttime trips to the nearby Russian compounds to buy vegetables with American cigarettes. Th
