Free Republic

Seventy-five years ago this Sunday, some 150 Japanese warships, 250 warplanes and 25 admirals were steaming toward a small atoll 1,300 miles northwest of Oahu. Imminent was the most crucial naval battle of World War II—Midway. But in a windowless basement near the fleet’s Pearl Harbor headquarters, codebreakers under Cmdr. Joe Rochefort pored over intercepted Japanese radio traffic. Independent, impolitic, single-minded, Rochefort “left the basement only to bathe, change clothes, or get an occasional meal to supplement a steady diet of coffee and sandwiches,” one officer recalled. “For weeks the only sleep he got was on a field cot pushed...

AUSTIN — Richard Overton is right where he wants to be. He’s sitting in a lawn chair on the front porch of the Austin home he built nearly 70 years ago, working on his fifth Tampa Sweet cigar on a 91-degree sunny day. The smooth tunes of the Isley Brothers flow from a portable speaker. Birds are chirping in the late afternoon breeze. “I’m feeling pretty good today,” Overton says, emphasizing the word pretty, because any day spent on this porch smoking cigars is a pretty good day for the 111-year-old. This is where you’ll find the nation’s oldest veteran...

The Army deployed 65 infantry divisions for the Second World War. Each was a small town with its own equivalents for community services within eight categories of combat arms. Units such as artillery, engineering, and heavy weapons engaged the enemy directly. Yet of all categories, the foot soldier faced the greatest hazard with the least chance of reward. These civilians become warriors confronted the most dismal fate of all whose duty was uninterrupted by missions completed or a fixed deployment time. The infantryman was enveloped within a most deranged, barbaric, and brittle existence against a resolute enemy where victory often...

Hardly anyone thinks of "heroes" when you say "Hollywood" today. But not long ago, most of Hollywood's leading men--or those who would later go on to be stars---fought and many died in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. Of course Jimmy Stewart always is among the first mentioned, flying missions in B-24s over Europe and remaining in the Air Force Reserve after the war to become a general. But did you know these stars also served in the USAAF? Charles Bronson, Gene Autry, Gene Roddenberry, Burgess Meredith, Cameron Mitchell, Kevin McCarthy, Dale Robertson, George (Superman) Reeves, Jackie Coogan (gliders), Martin...

Two Czech agents, trained by the British, attempted to assassinate Obergruppenfurher Reinhard Heydrick on a street in Prague, Czechoslovakia. Jan Kubis and Jozef Gabcik severely wound Hedyrick when they attacked him. Heydrick would die on 4 June from infection due to his wounds. He was one of the most brutal, coldhearted man in the Nazi pantheon of brutal evil men. Hitler called him "the man with the Iron Heart". As part of the retaliation for Heydrick's death, the entire village of Lidice was destroyed, it's inhabitants killed, the live stock and pets were killed and even the cemeteries were dug...

JAPANESE peace campaigners have written to US President Donald Trump urging him to declare the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings a war crime. A copy of the letter from the Society for Requiring the Admission of Historic Responsibility of the US Government for Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan, dated today was sent to the Morning Star. “This indiscriminate mass killing should not be forgiven, because it was a crime against humanity,” it read, pointing to the 340,000 deaths from the bombings on August 6 and 9 in 1945. But Washington continues to justify the atrocities “with the excuse that they hastened...

A U.S. Marine Corps veteran recovered from an illness to fulfill his goal of being the "something blue" at his niece's wedding in Missouri. Bill Lee Eblen, 92, was a sergeant in the Marine Corps during WWII and a sergeant in the Air Force Korean War, according to Alison Ferrell, Eblen's niece. "When I first I got engaged I knew I wanted to include Uncle Bill in a special way," Ferrell told Fox News. "My family always taught us to have a lot of respect for people in the armed forces. It just seemed like the perfect fit. Eblen was...

1917: U.S. Army Gen. John Joseph “Black Jack” Pershing is named commander-in-chief of the American Expeditionary Force, which is destined for European combat the following year. 1942: The Northrop P-61 “Black Widow” night fighter makes its first flight. The twin-boom P-61 is the first aircraft to carry radar and the U.S. military’s first night fighter. The warplane saw service in both the Atlantic and Pacific Theaters, and is widely believed to be credited with the last “kill” of an enemy aircraft in World War II, when a Japanese “Tojo” fighter pilot flies into the water while attempting to evade a...

Glenn Miller "mystery" solved. Alleged plane crash into English Channel was a lie. Truth finally told by retired Army officer on General Bradley's staff says his investigation proves Miller died in Paris in December 1944 - Hunton Downs tells MilitaryCorruption.com that a Nazi spy in General Eisenhower's HQ betrayed Miller's mission to meet with German representative of anti-Hitler forces to bring early end to war in Europe. The 90-year-old Downs says famed band leader's nude body was dumped outside a Paris brothel.

My wonderful step-father (WW2 Vet) is experiencing delusions. He has Macular Dejeneration and Dementia. Noticed, today, he thinks people are "in the household ". Very agitated. Talked to many "people" in the room.

Guy finds an old pistol in his basement, posts it on Reddit to find out what it is. Turns out to be a rare Hamada Type 2 from WW2 worth about $30,000.

90-year-old veteran set to graduate college CHARLOTTE, NC -- A 90-year-old World War II veteran who lives in Charlotte is about to graduate college for the very first time. Robert Winters has been taking classes at Central Piedmont Community College for years, and has now finally reached his dream of earning his diploma. “This has been a long time coming,” Robert said. “I dropped out of high school -- World War II -- to join the Navy.” He spent the next 25 years serving the United States, in World War II, Korea and Vietnam wars ........A man who crossed the...

On April 18, 1942 - 75 years ago Tuesday - 80 incredibly brave men in 16 bombers took off from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet to bomb Tokyo and other Japanese cities in retaliation for the sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. It was called the Doolittle Raid, after the group’s charismatic leader, Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle, a renowned avaiator even before the war. Doolittle’s B-25 was the first to take off from the Hornet. Sitting beside him was a quiet, lanky young man from Dayton, Ohio, named Dick Cole. On Tuesday, the 101-year-old will be at the National Museum of...

Some sixty-eight years before U.S. special forces killed Osama bin Laden, America conducted an assassination of another kind. This time, the target wasn’t a terrorist. It was the Japanese admiral who planned the Pearl Harbor operation. But the motive was the same: payback for a sneak attack on the United States.

A USS Arizona sailor who survived the attack on Pearl Harbor was laid to rest inside the ship he escaped. The remains of Retired Master Chief Petty Officer Raymond Haerry, 94, were interred inside the hull of the USS Arizona Saturday afternoon. More than 100 people gathered at the USS Arizona Memorial for the interment ceremony -- a symbolic military funeral only offered to shipmates who survived the attack.

On the day the Nazis ambushed his guerrilla camp in the dark forests outside Vilna, Benjamin Levin could feel the gunshots whizzing past. One of his comrades fell, and Levin grabbed him by the leg and dragged him from behind, looking for an escape. Blood-splattered, heart pounding, the Jewish resistance fighter ran straight into “a hurricane of bullets” and kept running until he could no longer hear them. He doesn’t know how he made it out alive, but offers one explanation: At just 14 years old, he was so short, the bullets went right over his head.

Sean Keeley of The American Interest noticed a curious statement from National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster when he briefed reporters on the Syrian strike. And the one thing that I will tell you though, there was an effort to minimize – to minimize risk to third-country nationals at that airport – I think you read Russians from that – but that – and we took great pains to try to avoid that. […] And then there were also measures put in place to avoid hitting what we believe is a storage of sarin gas, so that that would not be ignited...

My Review and Build of Trumpeter Kit #05309, 1/350 New Orleans Class Heavy Cruiser, USS Vincennes, CA-45 REVIEW & BUILD, Doolittle Raid Vessel Note: You can see all the pictures in highest resolution at My USS Vincennes, CA-44, Flickr Album, or you can cloick on any of the pictures here and get a higher resoultion image. New Orleans Class Heavy Cruisers The New Orleans-class cruisers were a class of seven heavy cruisers built for the United States Navy (USN) from 1933–36. All of them were put into commission bb 1938. They were succeeded by the Baltimore Class Heavy cruisers...but the...

Our annual Living History Weekend is the largest event of its kind in Texas, with visitors from across the nation coming to view our award-winning Living History Displays, shop in the Military Swap Meet, and to witness the roar of tanks in our WWII Battle reenactment! This family-friendly event is sure to have something for everyone! Physical Address: 19124 Highway 6 South College Station, Texas 77845

(CNN) - A 14-year-old Danish boy doing research for a history class found the wreckage of a German World War II plane with the remains of the pilot in the cockpit. Daniel Kristiansen and his father, Klaus, discovered what's believed to be a Messerschmitt fighter plane buried in a field on their farm near Birkelse in northern Denmark. "We went out to the field with a metal detector," Klaus Kristiansen told CNN. "I hoped we might find some old plates or something for Daniel to show in school." Instead, they found bits of plane debris. So they borrowed an excavator...