Veterans...Get the hell in here now!

BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
1651318466643.png​

Adolf Hitler, dictator of Germany from 1933 to 1945, committed suicide via gunshot on 30 April 1945 in his bunker in Berlin. Eva Braun, his wife of one day, also committed suicide by taking cyanide. In accordance with his prior written and verbal instructions, that afternoon their remains were carried up the stairs through the bunker's emergency exit, doused in petrol, and set alight in the Reich Chancellery garden outside the bunker.

Although records in the Soviet archives indicate that the burned remains of Hitler and Braun were recovered and interred in successive locations until 1946, and that they were exhumed again and cremated in 1970, this has been shown to be extremely unlikely, since eyewitnesses testified that there were no bodies per se remaining after the burning, just ashes. The suggestion that the bodies were serially exhumed and re-buried is considered to be part of a Soviet disinformation campaign on the order of Joseph Stalin to sow confusion regarding Hitler's death.

One of the Nazi principles was that death was better than dishonor, which may have prompted Hitler to rather choose suicide than (if he survived the capture) be tried for his crimes against humanity. He may also have believed that a captain doesn’t abandon a sinking ship, which would make trying to flee a dishonorable act. Hitler may have decided to stay in Berlin right till the end to prove that he stand by his ideals and was there for his people.

While hiding out in the bunker, Hitler got word that Mussolini was captured when trying to escape with his mistress and that they both were shot and their bodies hung a town square where they were reviled by vengeful people. Hitler didn’t want anything like that to happen to him and wrote in his last will and testament that he didn’t want to become a “spectacle.”

www.historyonthenet.com

Adolph Hitler: His Life, Ideology, Rise, and Downfall - History

Adolph Hitler, German politician and leader of the Nazi Party, led his nation into a disastrous war and exterminated millions of his own citizens.
www.historyonthenet.com www.historyonthenet.com
en.wikipedia.org

Death of Adolf Hitler - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org
 
doublejj

doublejj

Well-Known Member
BarnBuster said:

On April 30, 1943, Lieutenant Norman Jewell, commanding the submarine HMS Seraph (P219), read the 39th Psalm over the man who never was. With briefcase containing “secret” documents padlocked to his wrist, the homeless man who in death would help defeat Nazi Germany, was gently pushed into the Atlantic, off the Spanish coast.

The idea was a head fake. Disinformation intended to make the Nazi government believe that their adversaries intended to invade Sardinia and Greece in 1943, rather than the real targets of North Africa and Sicily. British Military Intelligence called it “Operation Mincemeat”.

The hoax worked out, nicely. A Spanish fisherman recovered the body and a Nazi agent intercepted the papers, as intended. Mussolini insisted correctly that the allied attack would come through Sicily, but Hitler wasn’t buying it. He had swallowed the Mincemeat scam whole, insisting that the Sicilian attack was nothing but a diversion from the real objective.

When the Allies invaded Sicily on the 9th of July, the Germans were so convinced it was a feint that forces were kept out of action for a full two full weeks. After that, it was far too late to effect the outcome.

Operation Mincemeat - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

This Man Pulled Off One of the Greatest Deceptions in Military History—After His Death | HistoryNet

Undercover The 'man who never was' pulled off one of the greatest deceptions in military history--after his death. When the campaign in North Africa was
www.historynet.com www.historynet.com
Click to expand...
My father was in the invasion of Africa & Sicily and Italy.....
 
Last edited:
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:

1651397280056.png 1651397414562.png​

"On May 1, 1960, a U-2 flight piloted by Francis Gary Powers disappeared while on a flight over Russia. The CIA reassured the president that, even if the plane had been shot down, it was equipped with self-destruct mechanisms that would render any wreckage unrecognizable and the pilot was instructed to kill himself in such a situation. Based on this information, the U.S. government issued a cover statement indicating that a weather plane had veered off course and supposedly crashed somewhere in the Soviet Union. With no small degree of pleasure, Khrushchev pulled off one of the most dramatic moments of the Cold War by producing not only the mostly-intact wreckage of the U-2, but also the captured pilot-very much alive. A chagrined Eisenhower had to publicly admit that it was indeed a U.S. spy plane.

The U-2 was the brainchild of the Central Intelligence Agency, and it was a sophisticated technological marvel. Traveling at altitudes of up to 70,000 feet, the aircraft was equipped with state-of-the-art photography equipment that could, the CIA boasted, take high-resolution pictures of headlines in Russian newspapers as it flew overhead. Flights over the Soviet Union began in mid-1956. The CIA assured President Eisenhower that the Soviets did not possess anti-aircraft weapons sophisticated enough to shoot down the high-altitude planes.

On May 16, a major summit between the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France began in Paris. Issues to be discussed included the status of Berlin and nuclear arms control. As the meeting opened, Khrushchev launched into a tirade against the United States and Eisenhower and then stormed out of the summit. The meeting collapsed immediately and the summit was called off. Eisenhower considered the “stupid U-2 mess” one of the worst debacles of his presidency. The pilot, Francis Gary Powers, was released in 1962 in exchange for a captured Soviet spy, Soviet Colonel Rudolf Abel, a senior KGB spy who was caught in the United States five years earlier. (Abel returned to Moscow, where he was forced into retirement by the KGB, who feared that during his five years of captivity U.S. authorities had convinced him to become a double agent. He was given a modest pension and in 1968 published KGB-approved memoirs. He died in 1971."

U-2 Spy Plane Incident | Eisenhower Presidential Library

www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov
.
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today In Military History:

1651533952692.png
"Scratch One Flat Top" (Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Dixon, May 7, 1942, Coral Sea)​

"May 3, 1942 – The first day of the first modern naval engagement in history, called the Battle of the Coral Sea, a Japanese invasion force succeeds in occupying Tulagi of the Solomon Islands in an expansion of Japan’s defensive perimeter. The United States, having broken Japan’s secret war code and forewarned of an impending invasion of Tulagi and Port Moresby, attempted to intercept the Japanese armada. Four days of battles between Japanese and American aircraft carriers resulted in 70 Japanese and 66 Americans warplanes destroyed. This confrontation, called the Battle of the Coral Sea, marked the first air-naval battle in history, as none of the carriers fired at each other, allowing the planes taking off from their decks to do the battling. Among the casualties was the American carrier Lexington; “the Blue Ghost” (so-called because it was not camouflaged like other carriers) suffered such extensive aerial damage that it had to be sunk by its own crew. Two hundred sixteen Lexington crewmen died as a result of the Japanese aerial bombardment. Although Japan would go on to occupy all of the Solomon Islands, its victory was a Pyrrhic one: The cost in experienced pilots and aircraft carriers was so great that Japan had to cancel its expedition to Port Moresby, Papua, as well as other South Pacific targets."

(Many Australians believed at the time and still do today that this battle essentially "saved Australia" by stopping the southern expansion of IJN forces. At one time immediately after the war, they celebrated Coral Sea Week to honor USA and ANZAC forces. "More recently the commemorative emphasis has moved from the ‘Battle that saved Australia’ to the broader concept of the ‘Battle for Australia’, held on the first Wednesday in September. This now marks not only the Battle of the Coral Sea, but also the contribution and significance of all those who helped defend Australia at its most vulnerable time – the men on the Kokoda Track, the airmen in northern Australia and Papua, the sailors and merchant seamen keeping supply lines open, and the men and women in Australia in the services, as civilian workers, or volunteers on the home front.") bb​

Four Medals of Honor were awarded at Coral Sea:
  • Lieutenant John J. Powers (Yorktown, VB-5) for actions while attacking Shoho on 7 May at Tulagi, and on 8 May in while attacking Shokaku (killed in action)
  • Lieutenant Milton E. Ricketts (Yorktown), engineering repair party, on 8 May (killed in action)
  • Lieutenant William E. Hall (Lexington, VS-2) for his attack on Shoho on 7 May and interception of Japanese torpedo planes (too few available fighter aircraft forced the use of dive/scout bombers as low-level interceptors) on 8 May (survived)
  • Chief Water Tender Oscar V. Peterson (Neosho) for his heroism in the ship's engineering spaces on 7 May (died of wounds)
4 books worth a read, specifically about the Battle of the Coral Sea:

The Coral Sea 1942: The First Carrier Battle (Campaign) – by Mark Stille
Blue Skies and Blood: The Battle of the Coral Sea – by Edwin P. Hoyt
The Battle of the Coral Sea: Combat Narratives – by Office of Naval Intelligence
Scratch One Flattop: The First Carrier Air Campaign and the Battle of the Coral Sea – by Robert C. Stern

also:
The First South Pacific Campaign: Pacific Fleet Strategy, December 1941-June 1942 - by John B. Lundstrom
The Barrier and the Javelin - H.P.Willmott

The Battle of the Coral Sea - ANZAC Day Commemoration Committee

anzac day commemoration committee
anzacday.org.au anzacday.org.au
www.historyonthenet.com

The Battle of the Coral Sea: The Debut of Aircraft Carriers

The Battle of the Coral Sea was a 1942 Pacific naval battle between Japan, the U.S. and Australia. Aircraft carriers engaged each other for the first time
www.historyonthenet.com www.historyonthenet.com

Battle of the Coral Sea

The Battle of the Coral Sea was the first time since the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that the enemy’s seemingly relentless advance into the Pacific was checked. It was also the first major U.S. Navy fleet action against Japan and the first naval engagement in history in which the...
www.history.navy.mil www.history.navy.mil
military-history.fandom.com

Battle of the Coral Sea

The Battle of the Coral Sea, fought during 4–8 May 1942, was a major naval battle in the Pacific Theater of World War II between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval and air forces from the United States and Australia. The battle was the first action in which aircraft carriers engaged...
military-history.fandom.com military-history.fandom.com
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today In Military History:
1651688133579.png
1651688385427.png 1651688696571.png​

On May 5, 1945 in Lakeview, Oregon, Mrs. Elsie Mitchell and five neighborhood children are killed while attempting to drag a Japanese balloon out the woods. Unbeknownst to Mitchell and the children, the balloon was armed, and it exploded soon after they began tampering with it. They were the first and only known American civilians to be killed in the continental United States during World War II. The U.S. government eventually gave $5,000 in compensation to Mitchell’s husband, and $3,000 each to the families of Edward Engen, Sherman Shoemaker, Jay Gifford, and Richard and Ethel Patzke, the five slain children.

The explosive balloon (called by the Japanese 'Fu-Go' or fire-balloon campaign) found at Lakeview was a product of one of only a handful of Japanese attacks against the continental United States, which were conducted early in the war by Japanese submarines and later by high-altitude balloons carrying explosives or incendiaries. The U.S. government estimates that, of the 9000 balloons launched by Japan, 1000 probably reached the mainland and, of those balloons, only approximately 284 have been found (according to National Geographic).

J. David Rodgers of the Missouri University of Science and Technology told National Public Radio that the balloon bombs “were 33 feet in diameter and could lift approximately 1,000 pounds, but the deadly portion of their cargo was a 33 lb anti-personnel fragmentation bomb, attached to a 64–foot-long fuse that was intended to burn for 82 minutes before detonating.” In addition to the high explosives, the balloons also carried a payload of incendiary chemicles.

(Undetonated bombs are still found periodically, the latest ones in 2014 by a forest service crew working in the Monashee Mountains northeast of Vancouver, British Columbia, and by a hunter near McBride, British Columbia in October 2019, bb)

There was a movie about the construction of the bombs; "On Paper Wings" if you can find it.

www.smithsonianmag.com

In 1945, a Japanese Balloon Bomb Killed Six Americans, Five of Them Children, in Oregon

The military kept the true story of their deaths, the only civilians to die at enemy hands on the U.S. mainland, under wraps
www.smithsonianmag.com www.smithsonianmag.com
www.historylink.org

Elsie Winters Mitchell of Port Angeles and five children are killed i

On May 5, 1945, Elsie Winters Mitchell (1919-1945) of Port Angeles and five children from the Bly, Oregon, church that her husband pastors become the only civilians killed in an enemy attack on the U
www.historylink.org www.historylink.org
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:

1651787153723.png 1651787170782.png 1651787265963.png​

On May 6, 1942, U.S. Lieutenant General Jonathan Wainwright surrenders all U.S. troops in the Philippines to the Japanese.

The island of Corregidor remained the last Allied stronghold in the Philippines after the Japanese victory at Bataan (from which General Wainwright had managed to flee, to Corregidor). Constant artillery shelling and aerial bombardment attacks ate away at the American and Filipino defenders. Although still managing to sink many Japanese barges as they approached the northern shores of the island, the Allied troops could hold the invader off no longer. General Wainwright, only recently promoted to the rank of lieutenant general and commander of the U.S. armed forces in the Philippines, offered to surrender Corregidor to Japanese General Homma, but Homma wanted the complete, unconditional capitulation of all American forces throughout the Philippines. Wainwright had little choice given the odds against him and the poor physical condition of his troops (he had already lost 800 men). He surrendered at midnight. All 11,500 surviving Allied troops were evacuated to a prison stockade in Manila.

(Homma was executed for war crimes in 1946)
sofrep.com

LTG Masaharu Homma Executed on This Day 1946, For Bataan Death March

Homma made 10 different requests to Tokyo for food for the POWs, requesting 100,000 tons of rice. But the Japanese sent him just 1/30th of his request.
sofrep.com sofrep.com

Three years and three months later, in August 1945, Wainwright was released from a liberated prisoner-of-war camp. Two weeks later, he stood behind MacArthur on the USS Missouri when the general signed the Japanese surrender documents. After that, Wainwright returned to the Philippines to witness the surrender of the local Japanese commander.

Wainwright considered himself a failure because he had surrendered, but in September 1945, he was promoted to four-star general and awarded the Medal of Honor. He received a hero's welcome when he returned to the United States. After the war, Wainwright commanded the 4th Army at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, before retiring from active duty in August 1947. He died in 1953 and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.

Loyalty was high on his list of virtues, and he went to his grave as firm an admirer of Douglas MacArthur as he had been in 1941. As a soldier, Wainwright would never be remembered for his global vision or strategic insight. Yet the old cavalryman—tough, brave, and always mindful of his men—in many respects embodied the cardinal virtues of the Old Army. It was his tragedy that he never got over his responsibility for the largest surrender in American history.

www.historynet.com

'A Dreadful Step': Surrender at Luzon

Former cavalry officer Jonathan Wainwright sank to unimaginable depths after he was compelled to surrender American forces to the Japanese in the Philippines in April 1942.
www.historynet.com www.historynet.com
sofrep.com

LTG Masaharu Homma Executed on This Day 1946, For Bataan Death March

Homma made 10 different requests to Tokyo for food for the POWs, requesting 100,000 tons of rice. But the Japanese sent him just 1/30th of his request.
sofrep.com sofrep.com
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:

1651879049769.png​

On May 7, 1915, less than a year after World War I (1914-18) erupted across Europe, a German U-boat torpedoed and sank the RMS Lusitania, a British ocean liner en route from New York to Liverpool, England.

The earlier German attacks on merchant ships off the south coast of Ireland prompted the British Admiralty to warn the Lusitania to avoid the area or take simple evasive action, such as zigzagging to confuse U-boats plotting the vessel’s course. The captain of the Lusitania ignored these recommendations, and at 2:12 p.m. on May 7, in the waters of the Celtic Sea, the 32,000-ton ship was hit by an exploding torpedo on its starboard side. The torpedo blast was followed by a larger explosion, probably of the ship’s boilers. The Lusitania sank within 20 minutes.

Germany justified the attack by stating, correctly, that the Lusitania was an enemy ship, and that it was carrying munitions. It was primarily a passenger ship, however, and among the 1,201 drowned in the attack were many women and children, including 128 Americans. Colonel Edward House, close associate of U.S. President Woodrow Wilson, was in London for a diplomatic visit when he learned of the Lusitania‘s demise. America has come to the parting of the ways, he wrote in a telegram to Wilson, when she must determine whether she stands for civilized or uncivilized warfare. We can no longer remain neutral spectators.

Wilson subsequently sent a strongly worded note to the German government—the first of three similar communications—demanding that it cease submarine warfare against unarmed merchant ships. Wilson’s actions On the afternoon of May 7, 1915, the British ocean liner Lusitania is torpedoed without warning by a German submarine off the south coast of Ireland.

Faced with the overpowering size and strength of the British Royal Navy at the outset of World War I, Germany realized its most effective weapon at sea was its deadly accurate U-boat submarine. Consequently, in February 1915, the German navy adopted a policy of unrestricted submarine warfare, declaring the area around the British Isles a war zone, in which all merchant ships, including those from neutral countries, would be subject to attack.

Though the United States was officially neutral at this point in the war, Britain was one of the nation’s closest trading partners, and tensions arose immediately over Germany’s new policy. In early May 1915, several New York newspapers published a warning by the German embassy in Washington that Americans traveling on British or Allied ships in war zones did so at their own risk. On the same page, an advertisement announced the imminent sailing of the British cruise liner Lusitania from New York back to Liverpool.

On the German side, fear of further antagonizing Wilson and his government led Kaiser Wilhelm and Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg to issue an apology to the U.S. and enforce a curb on the policy of unrestricted submarine warfare. By early 1917, however, under pressure from military leaders who advocated an aggressive naval policy as an integral component of German strategy in World War I, the government reversed its policy, and on February 1, 1917, Germany resumed its policy of unrestricted U-boat warfare. Two days later, Wilson announced that the U.S. was breaking diplomatic relations with Germany; the same day, the American liner Housatonic was sunk by a German U-boat. The United States formally entered World War I on April 6, 1917."

Sinking the Lusitania, May 7, 1915, Part 2: Death and Blame

Reports and opinions in Scientific American on a key tragedy in World War I
blogs.scientificamerican.com blogs.scientificamerican.com
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
1652002190356.png 1652003737879.png​

"On May 8, 1945, both Great Britain and the United States celebrate Victory in Europe Day. Cities in both nations, as well as formerly occupied cities in Western Europe, put out flags and banners, rejoicing in the defeat of the Nazi war machine during World War II.

The eighth of May spelled the day when German troops throughout Europe finally laid down their arms: In Prague, Germans surrendered to their Soviet antagonists, after the latter had lost more than 8,000 soldiers, and the Germans considerably more; in Copenhagen and Oslo; at Karlshorst, near Berlin; in northern Latvia; on the Channel Island of Sark—the German surrender was realized in a final cease-fire. More surrender documents were signed in Berlin and in eastern Germany.

The main concern of many German soldiers was to elude the grasp of Soviet forces, to keep from being taken prisoner. About 1 million Germans attempted a mass exodus to the West when the fighting in Czechoslovakia ended, but were stopped by the Russians and taken captive. The Russians took approximately 2 million prisoners in the period just before and after the German surrender. Meanwhile, more than 13,000 British POWs were released and sent back to Great Britain.

Pockets of German-Soviet confrontation would continue into the next day. On May 9, the Soviets would lose 600 more soldiers in Silesia before the Germans finally surrendered. Consequently, V-E Day was not celebrated until the ninth in Moscow, with a radio broadcast salute from Stalin himself: “The age-long struggle of the Slav nations… has ended in victory. Your courage has defeated the Nazis. The war is over.”
 
Hiphophippo

Hiphophippo

Well-Known Member
I’ve been watching these new documentaries on war stories that’s the name it has literally every battle during every conflict and moments throughout and breaks them down into hour long if not longer documentaries of very good style and goes in-depth on every situation using actual footage and stories and witnesses of the actual events to put it together any history buff or military buff would love it check it out war stories
 
MaritLage

MaritLage

Member
Hiphophippo said:
I’ve been watching these new documentaries on war stories that’s the name it has literally every battle during every conflict and moments throughout and breaks them down into hour long if not longer documentaries of very good style and goes in-depth on every situation using actual footage and stories and witnesses of the actual events to put it together any history buff or military buff would love it check it out war stories
Click to expand...
|that is a great resource .
|thanks for posting it .
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military History:

1652265171439.png 1652265371707.png​

May 10-20, 1969: Hamburger Hill was the scene of an intense and controversial battle during the Vietnam War. Known to military planners as Hill 937 (a reference to its height in meters), the solitary peak is located in the dense jungles of the A Shau Valley of Vietnam, about a mile from the border with Laos.

The Vietnamese referred to the hill as Dong Ap Bia (or Ap Bia Mountain, “the mountain of the crouching beast”). Though the hill had no real tactical significance, taking the hill was part of Operation Apache Snow, a U.S. military sweep of the A Shau Valley. The purpose of the operation was to cut off North Vietnamese infiltration from Laos and enemy threats to the cities of Hue and Da Nang.

Under the leadership of General Melvin Zais, commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division, paratroopers engaged a North Vietnamese regiment on the slopes of Ap Bia Mountain on May 10, 1969. Entrenched in well-prepared fighting positions, the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment repulsed the initial American assault, and after suffering a high number of casualties, U.S. forces fell back.

The soldiers of the North Vietnamese 29th Regiment—battle-hardened veterans of the Tet Offensive—beat back another attempt by the 3rd Battalion, 187th Infantry on May 14. An intense battle raged for the next 10 days as the mountain came under heavy air strikes, artillery barrages and 10 infantry assaults, some conducted in heavy tropical rainstorms that reduced visibility to near zero.

Due to the bitter fighting and the high casualty rate, Ap Bia Mountain was dubbed “Hamburger Hill” by journalists covering the Vietnam War. Speaking to a reporter, 19-year-old Sergeant James Spears said, “Have you ever been inside a hamburger machine? We just got cut to pieces by extremely accurate machine gun fire.”

On May 20, General Zais sent in two additional U.S. airborne battalions (the 1st Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment and the 2nd Battalion, 501st Parachute Infantry Regiment), plus a South Vietnamese battalion as reinforcements for his increasingly disgruntled soldiers.

One U.S. soldier—who had fought in nine of the 10 assaults on Hamburger Hill—was quoted as saying, “I’ve lost a lot of buddies up there. Not many guys can take it much longer.”

Finally, in the 11th attack, the North Vietnamese stronghold was captured on May 20, when thousands of U.S. troops and South Vietnamese soldiers fought their way to the summit. In the face of the four-battalion attack, the North Vietnamese retreated to sanctuary areas in Laos.

On June 5—just days after the hard-won victory—Ap Bia Mountain was abandoned by U.S. forces because it had no real strategic value. The North Vietnamese re-occupied Hamburger Hill a month later.

“The only significance of the hill was the fact that your North Vietnamese (were) on it … the hill itself had no tactical significance,” General Zais was quoted as saying.

Reports of casualties vary, but during the 10 days of intense fighting, an estimated 630 North Vietnamese were killed. U.S. casualties were listed as 72 killed and 372 wounded.

The bloody battle over Hamburger Hill and the fleeting victory resulted in a firestorm of criticism from anti-war activists. Outrage over what appeared to be a senseless loss of American lives was exacerbated by photographs published in Life magazine of U.S. soldiers killed during the battle.

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Edward Kennedy scorned the military tactics of the Nixon administration. Kennedy condemned the battle for Ap Bia Mountain as “senseless and irresponsible.” General Creighton Abrams, commander of U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam, was subsequently ordered to avoid such intensive ground battles.

But not all the soldiers and military leaders agreed that Hamburger Hill was a wasted effort. Of the criticisms leveled at U.S. commanders, General Zais said, “Those people are acting like this was a catastrophe for the U.S. troops. This was a tremendous, gallant victory.”

Vietnam: The Battle Of Hamburger Hill

Information On The Battle of Hamburger Hill During The Vietnam War, also known as Hill 937, and as depicted in the 1987 Movie "Hamburger Hill."
www.historynet.com www.historynet.com

Studies in Battle Command | eHISTORY

ehistory.osu.edu ehistory.osu.edu
 
BarnBuster

BarnBuster

Virtually Unknown Member
Today in Military history:
1652736527978.png​

On May 17, 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes one of the first B-17 crews to complete 25 missions over Europe and return to the United States.

The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the United States, film footage was shot of Belle‘s crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one. Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber.

The Memphis Belle documentary would not be released for another 11 months, as more footage was compiled to demonstrate the risks these pilots ran as they bombed “the enemy again and again and again—until he has had enough.” The film’s producer, Lieutenant Colonel William Wyler, was known for such non-military fare as The Letter, Wuthering Heights and Jezebel.
www.historynet.com

Memphis Belle: 25 Trips to Hell and Back

In the flak-filled sky over a German U-boat installation in occupied France on January 23, 1943, Memphis Belle was battling for her life. The U.S. Army Air Forces Boeing B-17F,
www.historynet.com www.historynet.com

["The Cold Blue" an outstanding film from the restored outtakes of William Wilders classic "Memphis Belle". 16mm to 4K. The color enhancement is amazing. Sound was masterfully added as well. Wilder's original film was shot during 5 actual B-17 WW2 bombing runs over Germany. Make sure you watch the "Extras"]bb
1652736729666.png​
www.latimes.com

Review: ‘The Cold Blue’ painstakingly restores vivid WWII footage of 8th Air Force missions

Fans of classic war stories and aerial action are in for a unique and stirring mix of audio and visuals in Erik Nelson’s “The Cold Blue.”
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com


See the "Memphis Belle" in all her restored glory at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio

1652736579547.png​
 
Hiphophippo

Hiphophippo

Well-Known Member
BarnBuster said:
Today in Military history:

On May 17, 1943, the crew of the Memphis Belle, one of a group of American bombers based in Britain, becomes one of the first B-17 crews to complete 25 missions over Europe and return to the United States.

The Memphis Belle performed its 25th and last mission, in a bombing raid against Lorient, a German submarine base. But before returning back home to the United States, film footage was shot of Belle‘s crew receiving combat medals. This was but one part of a longer documentary on a day in the life of an American bomber, which included dramatic footage of a bomber being shot out of the sky, with most of its crew parachuting out, one by one. Another film sequence showed a bomber returning to base with its tail fin missing. What looked like damage inflicted by the enemy was, in fact, the result of a collision with another American bomber.

The Memphis Belle documentary would not be released for another 11 months, as more footage was compiled to demonstrate the risks these pilots ran as they bombed “the enemy again and again and again—until he has had enough.” The film’s producer, Lieutenant Colonel William Wyler, was known for such non-military fare as The Letter, Wuthering Heights and Jezebel.
www.historynet.com

Memphis Belle: 25 Trips to Hell and Back

In the flak-filled sky over a German U-boat installation in occupied France on January 23, 1943, Memphis Belle was battling for her life. The U.S. Army Air Forces Boeing B-17F,
www.historynet.com www.historynet.com

["The Cold Blue" an outstanding film from the restored outtakes of William Wilders classic "Memphis Belle". 16mm to 4K. The color enhancement is amazing. Sound was masterfully added as well. Wilder's original film was shot during 5 actual B-17 WW2 bombing runs over Germany. Make sure you watch the "Extras"]bb
www.latimes.com

Review: ‘The Cold Blue’ painstakingly restores vivid WWII footage of 8th Air Force missions

Fans of classic war stories and aerial action are in for a unique and stirring mix of audio and visuals in Erik Nelson’s “The Cold Blue.”
www.latimes.com www.latimes.com


See the "Memphis Belle" in all her restored glory at the National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Dayton, Ohio

Click to expand...
They don’t make beauties like that anymore.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top