Free Republic

It sounds like a familiar story: on a bright Sunday in December, nearly 70 years ago, Japanese planes blazed out of the sky to strafe and bomb an American warship while it lay at anchor. The surprise attack caught the crew off-guard, and despite valiant action, the ship was critically damaged, had to be abandoned, and soon sank. If you said December 7th, 1941, Pearl Harbor, you’d be wrong. The date was December 12, 1937, and the place was the Yangtze River in war-torn China. The vessel? The gunboat USS Panay. It was a sudden and deliberate attack that might...

Norman Alley's Bombing of USS Panay Special Issue 1937 Newsreel (1) Reel 1 - "Nanking" (2) Reel 2 - "Uncensored!!! Unedited!!! The U.S.S. Panay Bombing in its entirey - exactly as photographed!" (this newsreel special is 22 minutes long, with music and narration)

SIERRA VISTA — Four years before Pearl Harbor was attacked, a local man sailed on a U.S. Navy ship that was bombed and sunk by Imperial Japanese warplanes. The incident happened on Dec. 13, 1937, as the USS Panay was evacuating U.S. embassy personnel from Nanking, China’s capital of that era. It was a city under siege whose downfall became the infamous Rape of Nanking. The Panay was a gunboat that belonged to the U.S. Asiatic Fleet, whose 1930s peacetime mission included protection of American lives and property from pirates along the lawless Yangtze River, under a treaty with the...

SIERRA VISTA - Sixty years ago today, Dennis C. Jones was relaxing. He had taken a shower, shaved and eaten. It was Armistice Day - as today's Veterans Day is called. But for Jones - Casey to his friends - Nov. 11, 1944, was far from idyllic. There was no armistice the day Jones took a break on Panay Island in the Philippines. The area was still under Japanese control as he and a few other airmen made their way up the island - a 35-day trip - to where they would board a submarine to be taken to Australia....