I'm very busy working on a variety of projects this summer, which I hope will bear fruit in the fall, so I'm going to have to cut back on the frequency of my posts here for the next few months.
I will post every Friday.
Thanks for your support!
___________________
Blog updated every Friday
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
'Women are better spies... they're more devious'
Daily Mail Online: 'Women are better spies... they're more devious': The widows who became best friends after discovering both were World War II secret agents
As they sit side by side reminiscing on the sofa, the two elderly widows don't look any different to the other residents of their Virginia retirement community.
But these two women have a secret - both were spies during World War II.
Betty McIntosh, 96, and Doris Bohrer, 88, were part of a small band of women who worked for America's first intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, and both went on to work for the CIA after the war.
Mrs McIntosh travelled through China and India, writing 'black propaganda' to lower Japanese morale, while Mrs Bohrer created maps from aerial photos, eventually helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
They only discovered their shared past when they moved in on the same street of Lake Ridge seniors' village a few years ago, after a mutual CIA friend recommended the retirement community to both of them. Now they're inseparable.
Mrs McIntosh says she calls her friend every morning, just to make sure she's alive. Mrs Bohrer, who still drives, returns the favour by running errands.
The two women never met while they were working for the OSS, but often wonder whether they might have brushed past each other in the canteen.
Mrs McIntosh told the Washington Post: 'But you didn’t really mix with people. You wouldn’t know what to talk about. I couldn’t talk to you about Morale Operations. And I wouldn’t understand your maps.'
Along with their female colleagues, they became known as 'Donovan's Girls', after William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer who led the OSS.
The atmosphere was entirely male-dominated. Mrs Bohrer said: 'We were neglected. We had no privacy. Down the hall, there was a bathroom with no running water.
She was asked to deliver what she thought was a lump of coal to a Chinese operative, but only later discovered it was 'Black Joe', an explosive used to blow up trains.
The agent would board a train with the coal in his knapsack, throw it into the engine and then jump off.
She said: 'I felt very badly. I felt that this one piece of coal that I was responsible for killing all these men.'
They came into the OSS on very different paths. Mrs McIntosh, who grew up in Honolulu and went to the same school that Barack Obama would later attend, was working as a newspaper and wire service reporter in Washington.
She could speak Japanese and was desperate for a job reporting overseas. Then, in 1943, she was approached by an OSS operative when she was covering a Department of Agriculture event.
He asked her if she was interested in a secret overseas assignment for the government.
She said yes - and suddenly found herself learning how to fire a pistol.
She soon started work as a propagandist in Morale Operations, travelling to India to dream up authentic-sounding news articles and radio reports to lower Japanese morale.
On one mission, she had to forge a Japanese government order which told its soldiers in Burma to surrender if caught rather than fighting to the death.
An OSS agent shot dead a Japanese courier, then put the order in his knapsack. She told the Washington Post: 'Then the Burmese agent went to the Japanese and said, "Get your man."
'And the Japanese went through his knapsack and found the new order. At the end of the war in northern Burma, there were lots of surrenders'
Meanwhile Mrs Bohrer was stationed in Northern Italy, after signing up to the civil service soon after the Pearl Harbor attack.
At first she worked as an OSS typist, but in 1943 she was promoted and began analysing aerial photographs of Europe, turning them into relief maps made out of balsa wood so agents could go behind enemy lines and rescue spies.
At just 20-years-old, she found herself helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
She told the Post: 'It was an interesting way to look at the world. It was almost as good as flying. You’re looking over people’s shoulders. Maybe I am nosy.'
Her work even led her to discover where Hitler's concentration camps were. She said: 'That’s how we knew where the concentration camps were located, but we were too late.
Double life: A photograph of Doris Bohrer from her time stationed in Northern Italy
'We kept wondering where all the trains were going. The Germans were also building rocket and electronics factories. We watched what went in, what went out.'
When the war ended, both women continued their espionage careers with the CIA.
Mrs Bohrer went to Frankfrurt, where she wrote up interviews with German scientists kidnapped by Soviets during the war, and then came back to Washington, where she became the agency's deputy chief of counter-intelligence.
Mrs McIntosh joined the agency in the 1950s, but swore an oath of secrecy never to reveal what she did there.
Both women married fellow agents. Mrs Bohrer's husband, Charles, was the CIA's director of medical services.
Mrs McIntosh has had three husbands. She divorced her first, OSS agent Alexander McDonald, after they were posted apart for two long, and her second husband, Richard Heppner, died at his office in the Pentagon.
She married her third husband, Air Force pilot Fred McIntosh, soon after his death, and the couple were married for 45 years until his death in 2006.
The following year, a CIA friend, Murray Minster, recommended she move to the retirement village. A couple of years later, he made the same recommendation to another friend - Mrs Bohrer.
He said: 'Once they moved in here, I got them together, and then came all the questions. It’s just one of life’s 45 billion coincidences, I guess.'
As they sit side by side reminiscing on the sofa, the two elderly widows don't look any different to the other residents of their Virginia retirement community.
But these two women have a secret - both were spies during World War II.
Betty McIntosh, 96, and Doris Bohrer, 88, were part of a small band of women who worked for America's first intelligence agency, the Office of Strategic Services, and both went on to work for the CIA after the war.
Mrs McIntosh travelled through China and India, writing 'black propaganda' to lower Japanese morale, while Mrs Bohrer created maps from aerial photos, eventually helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
They only discovered their shared past when they moved in on the same street of Lake Ridge seniors' village a few years ago, after a mutual CIA friend recommended the retirement community to both of them. Now they're inseparable.
Mrs McIntosh says she calls her friend every morning, just to make sure she's alive. Mrs Bohrer, who still drives, returns the favour by running errands.
The two women never met while they were working for the OSS, but often wonder whether they might have brushed past each other in the canteen.
Mrs McIntosh told the Washington Post: 'But you didn’t really mix with people. You wouldn’t know what to talk about. I couldn’t talk to you about Morale Operations. And I wouldn’t understand your maps.'
Along with their female colleagues, they became known as 'Donovan's Girls', after William 'Wild Bill' Donovan, a Wall Street lawyer who led the OSS.
The atmosphere was entirely male-dominated. Mrs Bohrer said: 'We were neglected. We had no privacy. Down the hall, there was a bathroom with no running water.
She was asked to deliver what she thought was a lump of coal to a Chinese operative, but only later discovered it was 'Black Joe', an explosive used to blow up trains.
The agent would board a train with the coal in his knapsack, throw it into the engine and then jump off.
She said: 'I felt very badly. I felt that this one piece of coal that I was responsible for killing all these men.'
They came into the OSS on very different paths. Mrs McIntosh, who grew up in Honolulu and went to the same school that Barack Obama would later attend, was working as a newspaper and wire service reporter in Washington.
She could speak Japanese and was desperate for a job reporting overseas. Then, in 1943, she was approached by an OSS operative when she was covering a Department of Agriculture event.
He asked her if she was interested in a secret overseas assignment for the government.
She said yes - and suddenly found herself learning how to fire a pistol.
She soon started work as a propagandist in Morale Operations, travelling to India to dream up authentic-sounding news articles and radio reports to lower Japanese morale.
On one mission, she had to forge a Japanese government order which told its soldiers in Burma to surrender if caught rather than fighting to the death.
An OSS agent shot dead a Japanese courier, then put the order in his knapsack. She told the Washington Post: 'Then the Burmese agent went to the Japanese and said, "Get your man."
'And the Japanese went through his knapsack and found the new order. At the end of the war in northern Burma, there were lots of surrenders'
Meanwhile Mrs Bohrer was stationed in Northern Italy, after signing up to the civil service soon after the Pearl Harbor attack.
At first she worked as an OSS typist, but in 1943 she was promoted and began analysing aerial photographs of Europe, turning them into relief maps made out of balsa wood so agents could go behind enemy lines and rescue spies.
At just 20-years-old, she found herself helping to plan the Allied invasion of Italy.
She told the Post: 'It was an interesting way to look at the world. It was almost as good as flying. You’re looking over people’s shoulders. Maybe I am nosy.'
Her work even led her to discover where Hitler's concentration camps were. She said: 'That’s how we knew where the concentration camps were located, but we were too late.
Double life: A photograph of Doris Bohrer from her time stationed in Northern Italy
'We kept wondering where all the trains were going. The Germans were also building rocket and electronics factories. We watched what went in, what went out.'
When the war ended, both women continued their espionage careers with the CIA.
Mrs Bohrer went to Frankfrurt, where she wrote up interviews with German scientists kidnapped by Soviets during the war, and then came back to Washington, where she became the agency's deputy chief of counter-intelligence.
Mrs McIntosh joined the agency in the 1950s, but swore an oath of secrecy never to reveal what she did there.
Both women married fellow agents. Mrs Bohrer's husband, Charles, was the CIA's director of medical services.
Mrs McIntosh has had three husbands. She divorced her first, OSS agent Alexander McDonald, after they were posted apart for two long, and her second husband, Richard Heppner, died at his office in the Pentagon.
She married her third husband, Air Force pilot Fred McIntosh, soon after his death, and the couple were married for 45 years until his death in 2006.
The following year, a CIA friend, Murray Minster, recommended she move to the retirement village. A couple of years later, he made the same recommendation to another friend - Mrs Bohrer.
He said: 'Once they moved in here, I got them together, and then came all the questions. It’s just one of life’s 45 billion coincidences, I guess.'
Friday, June 17, 2011
Reporting Under Fire: a Survey of a Century of War Correspondents
The New York Times, World: Reporting Under Fire: a Survey of a Century of War Correspondents
MANCHESTER, England — Within a few hundred yards of each other in Old Trafford lie the Manchester United Football Club and the Imperial War Museum North. One is a monument to the global sport that unites continents and peoples, the other a monument to the study of forces that divide and despoil them.
Pass through the dagger-sharp, mirrored entrance of the Imperial War Museum North, and one of the first things you see inside are museum shop replicas of World War I and World War II military posters, and coffee mugs emblazoned with the British monarch’s crown and the even more British Churchill-era slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Just a few yards farther and you are dragged straight into Bush- and Blair-era Iraq, with the crumpled, rusting hulk of a car that was destroyed by a marketplace bomb in Baghdad in 2007.
The museum covers wars since 1914, and the number and range of the exhibits from the past century puts into poignant context a quote by Martha Gellhorn that is framed in stark yellow and black in the museum’s latest exhibition, “War Correspondent: Reporting Under Fire since 1914.”
The featured journalists are mostly British, although the exhibition also gives prominence to Ms. Gellhorn, an American who reported from the Spanish Civil War, and Alan Moorehead, an Australian who reported during World War II from the very same North African cities that feature in today’s headlines, including his entry to a ruined Benghazi on Christmas Day, 1941.
Indeed, what is most striking as you walk around the exhibition is the permanency of the themes. Ms. Gellhorn from 1937 Spain and her successors during the 1990s war in the Balkans made very similar observations about their drive for morality and truth rather than striving endlessly, and perhaps fruitlessly, for the appearance of absolute objectivity.
“We knew, we just knew, that Spain was the place to stop Fascism. That was it. It was one of those moments in history when there was no doubt,” says another of Ms. Gellhorn’s quoted remarks on the walls. And the many television screens embedded in the walls feature interviews with correspondents of a more recent era: Vaughan Smith of the Frontline news agency giving his assessment that “objective journalism isn’t wrong, it just needs to be identified and clearly packaged and labeled,” and Maggie O’Kane of The Guardian on her refusal while reporting from Sarajevo to equate documented human rights abuses on one side with unverifiable claims by spin doctors on the other.
The methodology of the reporting changes almost beyond recognition — from handwritten scribbled notes with a censor’s blue marks to dispatches delivered live on satellite feeds.
The terminology also changes over time. “Accredited” correspondents wearing military uniforms and epaulettes during World War II become “embedded” correspondents wearing “Press” flak jackets in the Persian Gulf.
However, the issues and problems remain constant: the struggle with censorship, the difficulty of balancing access to military commanders with control by them, the problem of identifying with the soldiers around you, the guilt of wearing helmets and bulletproof jackets while reporting from among civilians who do not have them, the struggle not to become inured to suffering and cynical in the face of abuses of power, the debate over whether to show graphic images of suffering, and perennial struggle to assess, minimize and justify the dangers involved in reporting from the front lines.
“A long career of risk-taking has taught me that gambles tend to come off: it’s the failure to take the plunge which you usually regret later,” opines John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor. “You can’t take no risks,” is the blunter conclusion from one of his television colleagues.
‘Sorry, but It’s Over’
The displays are certainly up-to-the-minute. They include mentions of Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan, and one contribution from a British television correspondent recorded on the roof of his hotel in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, during which he, somewhat glumly, illustrates the level of control that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government exerts over the Tripoli “pack” by pointing to the government-sanctioned transportation waiting in the parking lot for the next government-sanctioned photo opportunity.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the exhibition is the transition from a tone of almost sepia-tinged nostalgia during the early stages, to one of elegiac lament for what many of the participating correspondents regard as the imminent death of traditional war reporting.
That seems premature. Even a cursory glance at the changes on display, from the trenches of the Somme to a map of television correspondents embedded on D-Day in the Normandy landings, to Vietnam to Libya, would suggest that reporting — in some form or other — has survived profound technological, military and social changes.
However the section on social media and phenomena such as “citizen journalism” is as fascinating as any of those that preceded it. Furthermore the exhibition is as multimedia in presentation as in content. There is a section on Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger.
Large screens carry the opinions, expressed on Twitter, of visitors to the exhibition. Facebook responses are actively sought, and questions are also pasted to the floor as you walk around the museum, inviting written responses on cards offered just before the exit.
MANCHESTER, England — Within a few hundred yards of each other in Old Trafford lie the Manchester United Football Club and the Imperial War Museum North. One is a monument to the global sport that unites continents and peoples, the other a monument to the study of forces that divide and despoil them.
Pass through the dagger-sharp, mirrored entrance of the Imperial War Museum North, and one of the first things you see inside are museum shop replicas of World War I and World War II military posters, and coffee mugs emblazoned with the British monarch’s crown and the even more British Churchill-era slogan “Keep Calm and Carry On.”
Just a few yards farther and you are dragged straight into Bush- and Blair-era Iraq, with the crumpled, rusting hulk of a car that was destroyed by a marketplace bomb in Baghdad in 2007.
The museum covers wars since 1914, and the number and range of the exhibits from the past century puts into poignant context a quote by Martha Gellhorn that is framed in stark yellow and black in the museum’s latest exhibition, “War Correspondent: Reporting Under Fire since 1914.”
The featured journalists are mostly British, although the exhibition also gives prominence to Ms. Gellhorn, an American who reported from the Spanish Civil War, and Alan Moorehead, an Australian who reported during World War II from the very same North African cities that feature in today’s headlines, including his entry to a ruined Benghazi on Christmas Day, 1941.
Indeed, what is most striking as you walk around the exhibition is the permanency of the themes. Ms. Gellhorn from 1937 Spain and her successors during the 1990s war in the Balkans made very similar observations about their drive for morality and truth rather than striving endlessly, and perhaps fruitlessly, for the appearance of absolute objectivity.
“We knew, we just knew, that Spain was the place to stop Fascism. That was it. It was one of those moments in history when there was no doubt,” says another of Ms. Gellhorn’s quoted remarks on the walls. And the many television screens embedded in the walls feature interviews with correspondents of a more recent era: Vaughan Smith of the Frontline news agency giving his assessment that “objective journalism isn’t wrong, it just needs to be identified and clearly packaged and labeled,” and Maggie O’Kane of The Guardian on her refusal while reporting from Sarajevo to equate documented human rights abuses on one side with unverifiable claims by spin doctors on the other.
The methodology of the reporting changes almost beyond recognition — from handwritten scribbled notes with a censor’s blue marks to dispatches delivered live on satellite feeds.
The terminology also changes over time. “Accredited” correspondents wearing military uniforms and epaulettes during World War II become “embedded” correspondents wearing “Press” flak jackets in the Persian Gulf.
However, the issues and problems remain constant: the struggle with censorship, the difficulty of balancing access to military commanders with control by them, the problem of identifying with the soldiers around you, the guilt of wearing helmets and bulletproof jackets while reporting from among civilians who do not have them, the struggle not to become inured to suffering and cynical in the face of abuses of power, the debate over whether to show graphic images of suffering, and perennial struggle to assess, minimize and justify the dangers involved in reporting from the front lines.
“A long career of risk-taking has taught me that gambles tend to come off: it’s the failure to take the plunge which you usually regret later,” opines John Simpson, the BBC’s world affairs editor. “You can’t take no risks,” is the blunter conclusion from one of his television colleagues.
‘Sorry, but It’s Over’
The displays are certainly up-to-the-minute. They include mentions of Osama bin Laden’s death in Pakistan, and one contribution from a British television correspondent recorded on the roof of his hotel in the Libyan capital, Tripoli, during which he, somewhat glumly, illustrates the level of control that Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s government exerts over the Tripoli “pack” by pointing to the government-sanctioned transportation waiting in the parking lot for the next government-sanctioned photo opportunity.
Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the exhibition is the transition from a tone of almost sepia-tinged nostalgia during the early stages, to one of elegiac lament for what many of the participating correspondents regard as the imminent death of traditional war reporting.
That seems premature. Even a cursory glance at the changes on display, from the trenches of the Somme to a map of television correspondents embedded on D-Day in the Normandy landings, to Vietnam to Libya, would suggest that reporting — in some form or other — has survived profound technological, military and social changes.
However the section on social media and phenomena such as “citizen journalism” is as fascinating as any of those that preceded it. Furthermore the exhibition is as multimedia in presentation as in content. There is a section on Salam Pax, the Baghdad blogger.
Large screens carry the opinions, expressed on Twitter, of visitors to the exhibition. Facebook responses are actively sought, and questions are also pasted to the floor as you walk around the museum, inviting written responses on cards offered just before the exit.
Tuesday, June 14, 2011
World War II veteran recalls Bataan Death March
GainesvilleTimes.com: World War II veteran recalls Bataan Death March
After World War II was over, internal battles still raged for retired Army Col. Glenn Frazier, a survivor of the horrific Bataan Death March.
Speaking to the Gainesville Kiwanis Club Tuesday, he said he had "nightmares about nightmares" and was consumed with hatred toward the Japanese. Finally, he forgave his captors and let loose years of struggle.
"If you have any hate for anything ... get it out of there," Frazier said. "Get it out of there. Get it away from you."
Frazier, 87, spoke as a guest of club member Tracy Whitmire, who gave an emotional introduction.
Whitmire said she learned about Frazier after watching a History Channel documentary about the forced march of 12,000 American POWs by the Japanese in the Philippines.
She found a picture of Frazier and learned he lived in Alabama.
"I knew immediately — and I said to my husband — that I've got to get this guy to Gainesville," she said.
Frazier, who grew up in Alabama, gave a colorful talk to the group, including a description of a dubious start to his military career.
He recalled a misadventure that involved him riding his motorcycle through a honky-tonk in Montgomery and being chased by a man with a shotgun. He later shared that story with a man at a service station.
"He said, ‘You're crazy. That man is the meanest man in this country. He'll hunt you down and shoot you like a dog,' " Frazier said. "So I said, ‘Man, this is a day for the Army.' "
Frazier ended up getting deployed to the Philippines, and "I enjoyed it," he said. "It was a paradise."
Then, war broke out for the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941, with the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
The Japanese Army began a three-month siege of the Bataan Peninsula.
"It was a total catastrophe. Traffic was on one road and bumper to bumper, and the Japanese dive bombers were eating us up and bombing and strafing us, and killing people," Frazier said.
On April 3, 1942, the Japanese Army attacked malnourished and disease-ridden U.S.-Filipino forces in the peninsula.
The attack smashed defensive lines, eventually leading to an American surrender.
By that time, the U.S. had run out of supplies and ammunition, and the Japanese had issued an ultimatum that the Americans give up or face annihilation.
The Japanese then forced American POWs on the grueling march, which lasted 60 to 90 miles, "depending on where you joined it," Frazier said.
"They were killing us for trying to get water. If you fell down, you were shot," he said. "If you reached over and helped a buddy, both of you were killed. ... I saw all kinds of atrocities."
The march lasted six days with POWs receiving no food, water or sleep. Nearly 3,000 soldiers had died.
"At the end of it ... I couldn't do anything but drag my feet," Frazier recalled.
Soldiers then were placed in a POW camp where another 2,500 soldiers died.
"The stench of death (at the camp) was so bad you could go to the barbed wire fence to try to get away from it and still couldn't stand it," Frazier said.
Frazier, who had his book, "Hell's Guest," on sale at the club meeting, survived more than three years in POW camps.
"If you were me and you had been through some of that, would you hate the Japanese?" he asked the audience.
"I think maybe you would. ... I had hate so deep inside of me and I couldn't do anything about it, but it helped me survive and that was the main thing. I lived on hate."
Frazier recalled returning to the U.S., promptly falling on his knees and kissing the ground.
"I came home to a grateful nation," he said. "I came home with a great love for our flag."
Frazier said he eventually had to get rid of his deep hatred for the Japanese.
"If I hadn't ... I wouldn't be here today to talk to you."
He said he also knows that God was with him on the march, "every step of the way."
After World War II was over, internal battles still raged for retired Army Col. Glenn Frazier, a survivor of the horrific Bataan Death March.
Speaking to the Gainesville Kiwanis Club Tuesday, he said he had "nightmares about nightmares" and was consumed with hatred toward the Japanese. Finally, he forgave his captors and let loose years of struggle.
"If you have any hate for anything ... get it out of there," Frazier said. "Get it out of there. Get it away from you."
Frazier, 87, spoke as a guest of club member Tracy Whitmire, who gave an emotional introduction.
Whitmire said she learned about Frazier after watching a History Channel documentary about the forced march of 12,000 American POWs by the Japanese in the Philippines.
She found a picture of Frazier and learned he lived in Alabama.
"I knew immediately — and I said to my husband — that I've got to get this guy to Gainesville," she said.
Frazier, who grew up in Alabama, gave a colorful talk to the group, including a description of a dubious start to his military career.
He recalled a misadventure that involved him riding his motorcycle through a honky-tonk in Montgomery and being chased by a man with a shotgun. He later shared that story with a man at a service station.
"He said, ‘You're crazy. That man is the meanest man in this country. He'll hunt you down and shoot you like a dog,' " Frazier said. "So I said, ‘Man, this is a day for the Army.' "
Frazier ended up getting deployed to the Philippines, and "I enjoyed it," he said. "It was a paradise."
Then, war broke out for the U.S. on Dec. 7, 1941, with the Japanese invasion of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
The Japanese Army began a three-month siege of the Bataan Peninsula.
"It was a total catastrophe. Traffic was on one road and bumper to bumper, and the Japanese dive bombers were eating us up and bombing and strafing us, and killing people," Frazier said.
On April 3, 1942, the Japanese Army attacked malnourished and disease-ridden U.S.-Filipino forces in the peninsula.
The attack smashed defensive lines, eventually leading to an American surrender.
By that time, the U.S. had run out of supplies and ammunition, and the Japanese had issued an ultimatum that the Americans give up or face annihilation.
The Japanese then forced American POWs on the grueling march, which lasted 60 to 90 miles, "depending on where you joined it," Frazier said.
"They were killing us for trying to get water. If you fell down, you were shot," he said. "If you reached over and helped a buddy, both of you were killed. ... I saw all kinds of atrocities."
The march lasted six days with POWs receiving no food, water or sleep. Nearly 3,000 soldiers had died.
"At the end of it ... I couldn't do anything but drag my feet," Frazier recalled.
Soldiers then were placed in a POW camp where another 2,500 soldiers died.
"The stench of death (at the camp) was so bad you could go to the barbed wire fence to try to get away from it and still couldn't stand it," Frazier said.
Frazier, who had his book, "Hell's Guest," on sale at the club meeting, survived more than three years in POW camps.
"If you were me and you had been through some of that, would you hate the Japanese?" he asked the audience.
"I think maybe you would. ... I had hate so deep inside of me and I couldn't do anything about it, but it helped me survive and that was the main thing. I lived on hate."
Frazier recalled returning to the U.S., promptly falling on his knees and kissing the ground.
"I came home to a grateful nation," he said. "I came home with a great love for our flag."
Frazier said he eventually had to get rid of his deep hatred for the Japanese.
"If I hadn't ... I wouldn't be here today to talk to you."
He said he also knows that God was with him on the march, "every step of the way."
Monday, June 13, 2011
World War II bomber crashes outside Chicago
CBSNews: World War II bomber crashes outside Chicago
OSWEGO, Ill. - A B-17 bomber that dates to World War II crashed and burned Monday morning in a cornfield outside Chicago, aviation officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration believes the seven people on board the plane escaped uninjured, spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
"The plane is burning," Cory said.
The vintage plane took off from Aurora Municipal Airport on Monday morning and crashed about 20 minutes later in Oswego, Cory said.
Kevin Potts, a farmer in the area, said he saw the plane fly over. He told CBS News Station WBBM-TV in Chicago that the plane was obviously in trouble.
"I noticed that it was a little too low and was kind of coming down, and then I noticed flames coming out underneath its left wing," Potts told WBBM-TV.
Potts said the plane was being escorted by a plane from the Lima Lima flight team.
He jumped in an all-terrain vehicle and went to the crash scene, a cornfield about two miles away.
"It's just an amazing job by this pilot, and thank God that, apparently, everyone walked away," he said.
The pilot reported a fire shortly after taking off, said Sugar Grove Fire Chief Marty Kunkle.
"He attempted to make a return to the airport, but couldn't make it so he put it down in a cornfield," Kunkel said.
Firefighters from Oswego, Sugar Grove and Plainfield responded to the crash. Fire officials said they were having difficulty accessing the crash because of wet fields.
The aircraft was made in 1944 and is known as the "Flying Fortress." It is registered to the Liberty Foundation in Miami, Cory said.
OSWEGO, Ill. - A B-17 bomber that dates to World War II crashed and burned Monday morning in a cornfield outside Chicago, aviation officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration believes the seven people on board the plane escaped uninjured, spokeswoman Elizabeth Isham Cory said.
"The plane is burning," Cory said.
The vintage plane took off from Aurora Municipal Airport on Monday morning and crashed about 20 minutes later in Oswego, Cory said.
Kevin Potts, a farmer in the area, said he saw the plane fly over. He told CBS News Station WBBM-TV in Chicago that the plane was obviously in trouble.
"I noticed that it was a little too low and was kind of coming down, and then I noticed flames coming out underneath its left wing," Potts told WBBM-TV.
Potts said the plane was being escorted by a plane from the Lima Lima flight team.
He jumped in an all-terrain vehicle and went to the crash scene, a cornfield about two miles away.
"It's just an amazing job by this pilot, and thank God that, apparently, everyone walked away," he said.
The pilot reported a fire shortly after taking off, said Sugar Grove Fire Chief Marty Kunkle.
"He attempted to make a return to the airport, but couldn't make it so he put it down in a cornfield," Kunkel said.
Firefighters from Oswego, Sugar Grove and Plainfield responded to the crash. Fire officials said they were having difficulty accessing the crash because of wet fields.
The aircraft was made in 1944 and is known as the "Flying Fortress." It is registered to the Liberty Foundation in Miami, Cory said.
Saturday, June 11, 2011
US Open host Congressional also known for Venturi, Els and WWII
GoogleNews: US Open host Congressional also known for Venturi, Els and WWII
BETHESDA, Md. — Leave the five-iron at home if you want to probe the hidden history of Congressional Country Club. Bring a machete instead.
"Back in the woods," said Ben Brundred, former president and longtime club member, "to the left of the 11th, there's some fairly heavy woods back in there. And when we were kids, we used to roam around in there, and there's still some remnants of bunkers and pill boxes and stuff back in there that can be seen."
It doesn't take much of a detective to figure out the origins of a place with a name like Congressional. Nor is it hard to realize what it has become today — a prestigious, must-play destination for the world's top golfers, who will reconvene at the splendid but often unforgiving Blue Course for next week's U.S. Open.
In between, however, the 580 dazzling acres near the nation's capital have a vibrant history that hasn't always gone according to script. Those bunkers — not the kind made of sand, of course — are left over from the 1940s, when the club was leased to the Office of Strategic Services as a World War II training ground. Fairways became target ranges. Craters marred the course. Barbed wire, instead of spectator rope, was the standard partition of the day.
It's easy to say the club was doing its bit of sacrifice in the name of noble service for its country, but actually the country was saving the club. The OSS — predecessor to the CIA — paid US$4,000 per month to rent the place.
"Having gone through the Depression years of the '30s, the club was in serious financial trouble at that time," Brundred said, "and was probably on the verge of perhaps having to shut the doors, when the opportunity to lease the property to the OSS came along. It was being able to shut the doors and not have any expenses during those years and to put some money in the bank that allowed the club to sort of regroup."
Money woes didn't seem possible when Congressional was founded during the Roaring '20s, the brainchild of two Indiana congressman who envisioned an idyllic setting for politicians and businessmen to recharge their psychological batteries while contemplating the world's problems. Oscar Bland and O.R. Lubring wanted a place "where talk has no fetters and where exchanged opinion leads to clarity," according to a 1921 prospectus.
"The official or member of Congress, brain cleared by the bracing air, and exhilarated by the play in which he is engaged, finds a new and more adequate conception of his problems of government; and from his contact with minds that know the nation's needs, develops more surely the solutions essential for America's well being," the prospectus continued.
Five former presidents — Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge — are listed as founding life members. The opening gala in 1924 at the stylish clubhouse with its Mediterranean-style architecture was a grand occasion, but for many years Congressional was too lavish for its budget, particularly during the lean years before the war. Its remote location and lack of local dues-paying members posed problems.
Back on firm footing after the war, Congressional became less of a hangout for men in power and more of a conventional, exclusive country club for members and their families. It wasn't uncommon to spot a Capitol Hill foursome a half-century ago, but Brundred said that changed in the 1970s when it became less acceptable for congressmen to accept perks such as reduced fee memberships. Besides, the discounts offered to the lawmakers weren't helping the finances, so the club discontinued them.
It was also during the postwar era that Congressional realized it could become a place of champions. Renowned designer Robert Trent Jones was hired to overhaul the back nine of the Blue Course in the 1950s and later did the same to the front nine, a much-needed update to Devereux Emmet's original setup from the 1920s. Jones' son, Rees Jones, was called on to do another renovation in the late 1980s.
The changes met with resistance. But, unlike a football field that is always 100 yards long or a baseball diamond that always has 90 feet between bases, Congressional needed to keep up with the evolving nature of its sport.
"When I was on the board and we were getting ready to redo the Blue Course," said Enos Fry, another former club president, "I can remember some of the past presidents coming up to me saying, 'You're going to ruin this place. You're going to change this course, and you young guys should just never do anything like this.' And it was amazing after we got finished doing it, a couple of them came up to me and said, 'I'm glad we decided to do this.'"
The Blue Course's list of blue-chip events is impressive: the 1959 Women's Amateur, the 1976 PGA Championship, the 1995 U.S. Senior Open, and, of course, the U.S. Open in 1964 and 1997.
Fry worked at the 1964 Open, selling scrip coupons that spectators used to buy refreshments, and he got to witness Ken Venturi walking the down the fairway at No. 18. Exhausted and at times disoriented by the notoriously stifling mid-Atlantic heat and humidity, Venturi persevered through 36 holes on the final day to claim the championship in one of the most extraordinary performances the sport has seen.
But Congressional always had one nagging feature that caused a stir every time the big names came calling. Robert Trent Jones' redesign in the 1950s left the Blue Course with a par-3 finish, a scenic hole with a tee shot over a lake with the full expanse of the clubhouse in the background.
The members didn't mind, but it wasn't deemed fitting for a major event. Officials had to find ways around it. When Venturi won, the Blue Course borrowed two holes from the Gold Course so the tournament would end on the members' 17th hole, a classic and difficult par-4 finishing hole that leads downhill onto a peninsula by the lake. At the 1995 Senior Open, No. 18 became No. 10, creating a long and awkward walk from greens to tees at the start of the back nine.
In 1997, the U.S. Golf Association decided to give the par 3 finish a chance. The Open was played the members' way, and it proved a lacklustre means for ending a major. The make-or-break shots everyone remembers — particularly Tom Lehman's fateful 7-iron approach that bounded into the lake — happened at No. 17. The 18th hole was anticlimactic as Ernie Els took home the trophy.
"While the tournament was a great success," Brundred said, "in the years immediately following as we began to lobby the USGA to return the U.S. Open to Congressional, they kind of let us know that they would very much like to return, but they didn't want to finish again on a par 3."
So another facelift was in order. The par-3 hole has been reversed, with the tee and green swapping sides of the lake. It's now the 10th hole for everyone, members included, and fits naturally into the flow of the course. Next week, the golfers will finish on the same hole as Venturi did all those years ago.
The greens, which golfers claimed were too bumpy when Tiger Woods hosted the AT&T National at Congressional for three years, also have been rebuilt with a hybrid grass that better resists the humidity.
Now all can agree that Congressional has a course worthy of its setting.
"I think one of the great attractions to the USGA is a feeling that every so often the national Open should be held in our nation's capital," Brundred said. "More than anything else, that's what Congressional has going for it — that it's a championship golf course that happens to be located just outside our nation's capital."
BETHESDA, Md. — Leave the five-iron at home if you want to probe the hidden history of Congressional Country Club. Bring a machete instead.
"Back in the woods," said Ben Brundred, former president and longtime club member, "to the left of the 11th, there's some fairly heavy woods back in there. And when we were kids, we used to roam around in there, and there's still some remnants of bunkers and pill boxes and stuff back in there that can be seen."
It doesn't take much of a detective to figure out the origins of a place with a name like Congressional. Nor is it hard to realize what it has become today — a prestigious, must-play destination for the world's top golfers, who will reconvene at the splendid but often unforgiving Blue Course for next week's U.S. Open.
In between, however, the 580 dazzling acres near the nation's capital have a vibrant history that hasn't always gone according to script. Those bunkers — not the kind made of sand, of course — are left over from the 1940s, when the club was leased to the Office of Strategic Services as a World War II training ground. Fairways became target ranges. Craters marred the course. Barbed wire, instead of spectator rope, was the standard partition of the day.
It's easy to say the club was doing its bit of sacrifice in the name of noble service for its country, but actually the country was saving the club. The OSS — predecessor to the CIA — paid US$4,000 per month to rent the place.
"Having gone through the Depression years of the '30s, the club was in serious financial trouble at that time," Brundred said, "and was probably on the verge of perhaps having to shut the doors, when the opportunity to lease the property to the OSS came along. It was being able to shut the doors and not have any expenses during those years and to put some money in the bank that allowed the club to sort of regroup."
Money woes didn't seem possible when Congressional was founded during the Roaring '20s, the brainchild of two Indiana congressman who envisioned an idyllic setting for politicians and businessmen to recharge their psychological batteries while contemplating the world's problems. Oscar Bland and O.R. Lubring wanted a place "where talk has no fetters and where exchanged opinion leads to clarity," according to a 1921 prospectus.
"The official or member of Congress, brain cleared by the bracing air, and exhilarated by the play in which he is engaged, finds a new and more adequate conception of his problems of government; and from his contact with minds that know the nation's needs, develops more surely the solutions essential for America's well being," the prospectus continued.
Five former presidents — Herbert Hoover, William Howard Taft, Woodrow Wilson, Warren G. Harding and Calvin Coolidge — are listed as founding life members. The opening gala in 1924 at the stylish clubhouse with its Mediterranean-style architecture was a grand occasion, but for many years Congressional was too lavish for its budget, particularly during the lean years before the war. Its remote location and lack of local dues-paying members posed problems.
Back on firm footing after the war, Congressional became less of a hangout for men in power and more of a conventional, exclusive country club for members and their families. It wasn't uncommon to spot a Capitol Hill foursome a half-century ago, but Brundred said that changed in the 1970s when it became less acceptable for congressmen to accept perks such as reduced fee memberships. Besides, the discounts offered to the lawmakers weren't helping the finances, so the club discontinued them.
It was also during the postwar era that Congressional realized it could become a place of champions. Renowned designer Robert Trent Jones was hired to overhaul the back nine of the Blue Course in the 1950s and later did the same to the front nine, a much-needed update to Devereux Emmet's original setup from the 1920s. Jones' son, Rees Jones, was called on to do another renovation in the late 1980s.
The changes met with resistance. But, unlike a football field that is always 100 yards long or a baseball diamond that always has 90 feet between bases, Congressional needed to keep up with the evolving nature of its sport.
"When I was on the board and we were getting ready to redo the Blue Course," said Enos Fry, another former club president, "I can remember some of the past presidents coming up to me saying, 'You're going to ruin this place. You're going to change this course, and you young guys should just never do anything like this.' And it was amazing after we got finished doing it, a couple of them came up to me and said, 'I'm glad we decided to do this.'"
The Blue Course's list of blue-chip events is impressive: the 1959 Women's Amateur, the 1976 PGA Championship, the 1995 U.S. Senior Open, and, of course, the U.S. Open in 1964 and 1997.
Fry worked at the 1964 Open, selling scrip coupons that spectators used to buy refreshments, and he got to witness Ken Venturi walking the down the fairway at No. 18. Exhausted and at times disoriented by the notoriously stifling mid-Atlantic heat and humidity, Venturi persevered through 36 holes on the final day to claim the championship in one of the most extraordinary performances the sport has seen.
But Congressional always had one nagging feature that caused a stir every time the big names came calling. Robert Trent Jones' redesign in the 1950s left the Blue Course with a par-3 finish, a scenic hole with a tee shot over a lake with the full expanse of the clubhouse in the background.
The members didn't mind, but it wasn't deemed fitting for a major event. Officials had to find ways around it. When Venturi won, the Blue Course borrowed two holes from the Gold Course so the tournament would end on the members' 17th hole, a classic and difficult par-4 finishing hole that leads downhill onto a peninsula by the lake. At the 1995 Senior Open, No. 18 became No. 10, creating a long and awkward walk from greens to tees at the start of the back nine.
In 1997, the U.S. Golf Association decided to give the par 3 finish a chance. The Open was played the members' way, and it proved a lacklustre means for ending a major. The make-or-break shots everyone remembers — particularly Tom Lehman's fateful 7-iron approach that bounded into the lake — happened at No. 17. The 18th hole was anticlimactic as Ernie Els took home the trophy.
"While the tournament was a great success," Brundred said, "in the years immediately following as we began to lobby the USGA to return the U.S. Open to Congressional, they kind of let us know that they would very much like to return, but they didn't want to finish again on a par 3."
So another facelift was in order. The par-3 hole has been reversed, with the tee and green swapping sides of the lake. It's now the 10th hole for everyone, members included, and fits naturally into the flow of the course. Next week, the golfers will finish on the same hole as Venturi did all those years ago.
The greens, which golfers claimed were too bumpy when Tiger Woods hosted the AT&T National at Congressional for three years, also have been rebuilt with a hybrid grass that better resists the humidity.
Now all can agree that Congressional has a course worthy of its setting.
"I think one of the great attractions to the USGA is a feeling that every so often the national Open should be held in our nation's capital," Brundred said. "More than anything else, that's what Congressional has going for it — that it's a championship golf course that happens to be located just outside our nation's capital."
Friday, June 10, 2011
WWII veteran was also veteran philanthropist
TulsaWorld: WWII veteran was also veteran philanthropist
The Tulsa oilman was a major supporter of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and OSU.By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer
Drilling for oil kept his attention focused on the ground, but Sherman Smith's spirit showed a definite upward tilt.
The Tulsa oilman and philanthropist, who was a major financial contributor toward the development of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, became interested in aviation during World War II.
A member of an Army glider unit who also was trained as a paratrooper, Smith had parachuted into France after the D-Day invasion in 1944.
After the war, Smith became a licensed pilot and flew recreationally for a few years.
The interest found its ultimate fulfillment, however, in the part Smith played in the museum and the effort to preserve Tulsa's rich aviation history.
Smith was the major donor behind the Hangar One Museum, which opened in November 2005 at the Air and Space Museum, which is named for him and his wife, Ellie Smith.
A member of the Air and Space Museum's board of directors, Sherman Smith also contributed to the adjacent planetarium, which opened in 2006.
"We're so happy that the Air and Space Museum has done so well and for the school kids who get to visit," said Sherman Smith's son, Will Smith. "Early childhood education is one of our family's charitable missions, and it has been a wonderful vehicle for that."
Sherman Edward Smith died Monday. He was 88.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian under the direction of Moore's Southlawn Funeral Home.
The longtime president and CEO of Service Drilling Co. of Tulsa, which his father had co-founded, Smith became as well-known for the wellspring of his generosity as for the oil wells that made it possible.
A 1948 Oklahoma State University graduate and member of its college of engineering's hall of fame, he donated millions of dollars over the years to his alma mater's academic and athletic programs.
Smith often was mentioned in the same breath as fellow donor, oilman and alumnus T. Boone Pickens.
The pair, who were Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at OSU and business associates for decades afterward, contributed $1.5 million each in 2005 toward the renovation of OSU's football locker room and the construction of new grass practice fields. Sherman Smith followed that two years later with a $20 million donation toward the development of an indoor practice facility for the school's athletic teams.
Will Smith said his father's support of the athletic program should not, however, overshadow his interest in academics and the funding he set up for engineering scholarships.
"That was critically important to him," he said, adding that his father also donated toward the engineering program at the University of Tulsa.
Also in Tulsa, Sherman Smith and his family were longtime supporters of the Gilcrease and Philbrook museums, the Tulsa Boys' Home and The Salvation Army.
Smith is survived by his wife, Ellie Smith; one son, Will Smith; one daughter, Susan Burghart; two stepchildren, Stanley Hall and Nancy Born; one sister, Wilma Arnold; two grandchildren; and six step-grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, The Salvation Army or a charity of choice.
The Tulsa oilman was a major supporter of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and OSU.By TIM STANLEY World Staff Writer
Drilling for oil kept his attention focused on the ground, but Sherman Smith's spirit showed a definite upward tilt.
The Tulsa oilman and philanthropist, who was a major financial contributor toward the development of the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, became interested in aviation during World War II.
A member of an Army glider unit who also was trained as a paratrooper, Smith had parachuted into France after the D-Day invasion in 1944.
After the war, Smith became a licensed pilot and flew recreationally for a few years.
The interest found its ultimate fulfillment, however, in the part Smith played in the museum and the effort to preserve Tulsa's rich aviation history.
Smith was the major donor behind the Hangar One Museum, which opened in November 2005 at the Air and Space Museum, which is named for him and his wife, Ellie Smith.
A member of the Air and Space Museum's board of directors, Sherman Smith also contributed to the adjacent planetarium, which opened in 2006.
"We're so happy that the Air and Space Museum has done so well and for the school kids who get to visit," said Sherman Smith's son, Will Smith. "Early childhood education is one of our family's charitable missions, and it has been a wonderful vehicle for that."
Sherman Edward Smith died Monday. He was 88.
A memorial service is scheduled for 2 p.m. Friday at Kirk of the Hills Presbyterian under the direction of Moore's Southlawn Funeral Home.
The longtime president and CEO of Service Drilling Co. of Tulsa, which his father had co-founded, Smith became as well-known for the wellspring of his generosity as for the oil wells that made it possible.
A 1948 Oklahoma State University graduate and member of its college of engineering's hall of fame, he donated millions of dollars over the years to his alma mater's academic and athletic programs.
Smith often was mentioned in the same breath as fellow donor, oilman and alumnus T. Boone Pickens.
The pair, who were Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity brothers at OSU and business associates for decades afterward, contributed $1.5 million each in 2005 toward the renovation of OSU's football locker room and the construction of new grass practice fields. Sherman Smith followed that two years later with a $20 million donation toward the development of an indoor practice facility for the school's athletic teams.
Will Smith said his father's support of the athletic program should not, however, overshadow his interest in academics and the funding he set up for engineering scholarships.
"That was critically important to him," he said, adding that his father also donated toward the engineering program at the University of Tulsa.
Also in Tulsa, Sherman Smith and his family were longtime supporters of the Gilcrease and Philbrook museums, the Tulsa Boys' Home and The Salvation Army.
Smith is survived by his wife, Ellie Smith; one son, Will Smith; one daughter, Susan Burghart; two stepchildren, Stanley Hall and Nancy Born; one sister, Wilma Arnold; two grandchildren; and six step-grandchildren.
Memorial donations may be made to the Tulsa Air and Space Museum, The Salvation Army or a charity of choice.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
John Alison, daring WWII ace, dies in DC at 98
FoxNews: John Alison, daring WWII ace, dies in DC at 98
WASHINGTON – John R. Alison, a World War II fighter pilot who helped lead a daring and unprecedented Allied air invasion of Burma, has died, a son said Wednesday.
The retired Air Force major general and former Northrop Corp. executive died of natural causes Monday at his home in Washington, John R. Alison III said.
Alison's wartime achievements included seven victories, six in the air, qualifying him as an ace, according to the Air Force Association, an independent organization in Arlington, Va., that promotes public understanding of aerospace power.
Alison was chosen in 1943 by Army Air Forces commander Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold for a top-secret mission that flew more than 9,000 troops, nearly 1,300 mules and 250 tons of supplies behind enemy lines in Burma over six days, according to a Nov. 2009 article in the association's Air Force Magazine.
As deputy commander of the mission dubbed Operation Thursday, Alison piloted the first in a group of Waco CG-4A glider planes that were towed by C-47 transports and released to make risky jungle landings. Of 67 gliders that departed the first night, 32 arrived, 20 were lost en route and 15 turned back, according to the magazine article.
Alison's military decorations included the Army Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Order presented by King George VI of Great Britain.
Alison was born Nov. 21, 1912, in Micanopy, Fla.
His son said Alison will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
WASHINGTON – John R. Alison, a World War II fighter pilot who helped lead a daring and unprecedented Allied air invasion of Burma, has died, a son said Wednesday.
The retired Air Force major general and former Northrop Corp. executive died of natural causes Monday at his home in Washington, John R. Alison III said.
Alison's wartime achievements included seven victories, six in the air, qualifying him as an ace, according to the Air Force Association, an independent organization in Arlington, Va., that promotes public understanding of aerospace power.
Alison was chosen in 1943 by Army Air Forces commander Gen. Henry "Hap" Arnold for a top-secret mission that flew more than 9,000 troops, nearly 1,300 mules and 250 tons of supplies behind enemy lines in Burma over six days, according to a Nov. 2009 article in the association's Air Force Magazine.
As deputy commander of the mission dubbed Operation Thursday, Alison piloted the first in a group of Waco CG-4A glider planes that were towed by C-47 transports and released to make risky jungle landings. Of 67 gliders that departed the first night, 32 arrived, 20 were lost en route and 15 turned back, according to the magazine article.
Alison's military decorations included the Army Distinguished Service Cross and the Distinguished Service Order presented by King George VI of Great Britain.
Alison was born Nov. 21, 1912, in Micanopy, Fla.
His son said Alison will be buried at Arlington National Cemetery with full military honors.
Friday, June 3, 2011
Hunt is on for sunken WWII vessels off N.C. coast
VirginiaPilotOnline: Hunt is on for sunken WWII vessels off N.C. coast
HATTERAS ISLAND
The search for undiscovered World War II shipwrecks continues this summer off the Outer Banks, where researchers are especially eager this year to find the remains of a German submarine that attacked a 1942 convoy from Hampton Roads.
Bound for Key West, Fla., to deliver cargo for the war effort, the convoy of 19 container ships and five military escorts was attacked soon after leaving Hampton in July 1942. U-boat 576 succeeded in sinking a Nicaraguan tanker called Bluefields, but the submarine ultimately met the same fate when the convoy fought back.
After straying into a minefield off Hatteras Island, three other convoy vessels sank that day. Known as the Battle of Convoy KS-520, the clash is the latest focus of a research expedition now in its fourth year.
“It really is like a whole battlefield site that is now lying on the bottom of the ocean,” said Lauren Heesemann, research coordinator for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, one of many partners working on the project.
The project will progress this summer in four phases.
First, researchers will conduct a wide survey using remote-sensing technologies, including an autonomous – programmable unmanned – underwater vehicle. During this phase, the goal is to locate U-boat 576, Bluefields and the other three vessels sunk in the Battle of Convoy KS-520.
More targeted surveys will use multi-beam sonar systems to produce 3-D images and detailed models of the wreck sites.
Work began this week southeast of Cape Hatteras.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leads the expedition, which seeks to document the underwater remains of the Battle of the Atlantic – all without disturbing the wrecks, some of which are considered grave sites.
The waters off Hatteras Island, infamous as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” is the final resting place for about 80 World War II vessels of U.S and British naval fleets, merchant ships and German U-boats.
Funding will determine whether this is the final year for the project, Heesemann said.
The ultimate goal is to produce a comprehensive report on the wartime shipwrecks, she said.
“There are so many other stories to be told that are just lying off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia,” Heesemann said. “This project could go any number of ways and could last for years and years.”
For more information about the expedition, visit http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/missions/2011battleoftheatlantic/welcome.html
HATTERAS ISLAND
The search for undiscovered World War II shipwrecks continues this summer off the Outer Banks, where researchers are especially eager this year to find the remains of a German submarine that attacked a 1942 convoy from Hampton Roads.
Bound for Key West, Fla., to deliver cargo for the war effort, the convoy of 19 container ships and five military escorts was attacked soon after leaving Hampton in July 1942. U-boat 576 succeeded in sinking a Nicaraguan tanker called Bluefields, but the submarine ultimately met the same fate when the convoy fought back.
After straying into a minefield off Hatteras Island, three other convoy vessels sank that day. Known as the Battle of Convoy KS-520, the clash is the latest focus of a research expedition now in its fourth year.
“It really is like a whole battlefield site that is now lying on the bottom of the ocean,” said Lauren Heesemann, research coordinator for the Monitor National Marine Sanctuary, one of many partners working on the project.
The project will progress this summer in four phases.
First, researchers will conduct a wide survey using remote-sensing technologies, including an autonomous – programmable unmanned – underwater vehicle. During this phase, the goal is to locate U-boat 576, Bluefields and the other three vessels sunk in the Battle of Convoy KS-520.
More targeted surveys will use multi-beam sonar systems to produce 3-D images and detailed models of the wreck sites.
Work began this week southeast of Cape Hatteras.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration leads the expedition, which seeks to document the underwater remains of the Battle of the Atlantic – all without disturbing the wrecks, some of which are considered grave sites.
The waters off Hatteras Island, infamous as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic,” is the final resting place for about 80 World War II vessels of U.S and British naval fleets, merchant ships and German U-boats.
Funding will determine whether this is the final year for the project, Heesemann said.
The ultimate goal is to produce a comprehensive report on the wartime shipwrecks, she said.
“There are so many other stories to be told that are just lying off the coast of North Carolina and Virginia,” Heesemann said. “This project could go any number of ways and could last for years and years.”
For more information about the expedition, visit http://sanctuaries.noaa.gov/missions/2011battleoftheatlantic/welcome.html
A new World War II documentary honors a long day's dying at Omaha Beach
KansasCityStar: A new World War II documentary honors a long day's dying at Omaha Beach
They remember because the young medic was just a kid, a 15-year-old who used his brother's driver's license to fake his way into the Army. And they remember because how could you ever forget seeing a human being instantly reduced to a cloud of red mist when a Nazi shell explodes and releases a 7,000-mile-an-hour tornado of red-hot shrapnel?
Sixty-seven years later, the memory of the boy's death on a Normandy beach - he was crouched over a wounded man when the shell hit, administering bandages and sulfa drugs, just as he'd been taught - still reduces the old soldiers to tears.
"That's a rough thing to talk about," apologizes one.
There are so many deaths to talk about in "Surviving D-Day," the Discovery Channel's captivating, infuriating, terrifying and heartbreaking documentary on the 1944 Allied invasion of France that opened the final chapter of World War II. Men were ripped in half by German machine guns that fired 25 bullets a second, and they were blown to bits by 17,000 German landmines buried on the beach.
They drowned when they parachuted into open fields that American intelligence didn't know were flooded, and they were shot point-blank in the face in a suicide attack up a sheer cliff to destroy artillery that American intelligence didn't know had moved.
They died in little pieces, like the boy on the beach, and they died without a mark on their bodies, their internal organs mangled by concussion waves of super-compressed air pushed outward at thousands of feet a second by the explosion of artillery rounds. They died in such incomprehensible numbers that survival was even more incomprehensible.
"I had severe guilt for surviving," recalls one Normandy vet who recounts crawling through stacks of corpses and mounds of severed limbs. "I kept saying, 'Why me?'"
The answer, as "Surviving D-Day" shows over and over again, is almost certainly mere chance.
Airing two days before the invasion's anniversary, the documentary does not purport to be a comprehensive account of the Normandy operation. It concentrates almost exclusively on the bloodiest and most snafu-ridden of the invasion's five beachheads, the one code named Omaha. And it dwells on the quirky, random nature of mortality in war.
A horrifying number of men died because of what they ate for breakfast that morning on the ships carrying them to France. Navy cooks, hoping to build morale, laid out a sumptuous spread of steak, eggs and ice cream, which morphed into crippling seasickness on the landing craft lurching toward the beach through rough seas at H-Hour.
Crouched on their knees, puking their guts out, the soldiers were easy prey for German machine guns when the landing ramps dropped. Others tried to escape the lethal hail of lead by jumping over the sides of the landing craft, only to drown when their 100-pound loads of equipment dragged them to the bottom in 10 feet of water.
(The men who somehow managed to shed their packs and flak jackets in the water stood a much better chance of making it to the beach. In one of several fascinating forensic tests staged for "Surviving D-Day," even bullets traveling several thousand feet a second slow to a halt after traveling through less than a yard of water.)
The heavy shipboard meal, a well-intentioned gesture that turned into a murderous screw-up, was the rule rather than the exception at D-Day. The orderly way in which battles unfold in war movies has so warped our perception that when we're confronted with the chaos of real-life combat - the friendly-fire death of Pat Tillman in Afghanistan, for example - we suspect conspiracy. "Surviving D-Day" demonstrates that the expression "fog of war" is not merely some butt-covering euphemism but a palpable reality.
The mortar-fired grappling hooks that Army Rangers tried to use to storm a Normandy cliff mostly didn't work because they'd only been tested with dry ropes, not heavy ones soaked in seawater that slopped over the sides of the landing craft. Parachutes turned into burial shrouds for soldiers unexpectedly dropped into water because their buckles were not designed for quick release. The 29 amphibious tanks that were to lead the Army's charge up the beach against heavily fortified German pillboxes never arrived; 27 sank in the unexpectedly choppy sea.
What ultimately worked on Omaha Beach were the men. Their courage in the face of indescribable horror is practically beyond human conception, perhaps even their own. But when Norman Cota, a tubby, cigar-chewing general who at 51 could have been the grandfather of some of his men, shouted to them, "Gentlemen, we are being killed on the beaches! Let us go inland and be killed!" they followed him up the beach into the withering German fire.
Almost seven decades later, most of those who lived through the attack are no longer with us. And "Surviving D-Day" is part of a goodbye that hasn't been near long enough.
SURVIVING D-DAY
9-11 p.m. EDT Saturday
Discovery Channel
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
No Greater Ally, by Kenneth K. Koskodan
No Greater Ally: The Untold Story of Poland's Forces in World War II, by Kenneth K. Koskodan
Osprey Publishing, 2009
250 pages plus notes, further reading and index. 24 pages b&w photos
Library: 940.54094 KOS
Description
At the end of World War II, Poland was betrayed by the Allies and handed over to the Soviet Union. In the final victory over Germany, the millions of men and women who had fought for their freedom for six long years were abandoned to Soviet rule.
The fourth largest Allied military force deployed during the war, Poland is the only nation to have been involved at Leningrad, Arnhem, Tobruk, and Normandy. Following their valiant but doomed defense of Poland in 1939, members of the Polish armed forces fought wherever they could alongside other Allied forces, while at home the Poles created the most active and effective resistance of the war.
Packed with previously unpublished first-hand accounts, this is the true story of Poland's armed forces and their courageous resistance, and the betrayal which ultimately saw them conquered, despite their victory over GErmany.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Dawn of Darkness: Prelude to WWII
2. French Misfortunes: The Phony War and the Defense of France
3. Everything Was in Secret: The Underground war
4. On Wings of Eagles: The Polish Air Force
5. Warriors from a Wasteland: The Birth of the Polish 2nd Corps
6. A Bloody Job Well Done: 1st Armoured Division
7. A Bridge Not Far Enough: The 1st Polish Independent Parachute Brigade
8. Poles Under Soviet Command: Berlin's Army
9. Glory and Heartbreak: The Warsaw Uprising, 1944
10. For Your Freedom: A Costly Victory for Poland
Notes
Further REading
Index
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