Free Republic 1st Qtr 2024 Fundraising Target: $81,000 Receipts & Pledges to-date: $73,548
90%  
Woo hoo!! And we're now over 90%!! Thank you everyone!! God bless.

Keyword: ww2

Brevity: Headers | « Text »
  • Hurricane that crash-landed on Dunkirk beach during WW2 takes to the skies again 77 years on (tr)

    06/23/2017 6:39:27 AM PDT · by DFG · 18 replies
    UK Daily Mail ^ | 06/23/2017 | Amie Gordon
    An iconic Second World War fighter aircraft which crash landed as it tried to rescue Allied troops has taken to the skies for the first time in nearly 80 years. The Mk 1 Hawker Hurricane thundered through the skies after taking off at Elmsett in Suffolk following a £2 million restoration project and some 25,000 hours of highly-skilled labour. In May 1940, the Hurricane of 245 Squadron took off from Kent with Pilot Officer Kenneth McGlashan at the controls, before being shot down on a Dunkirk beach. But now the distinctive sound of the P2902 with its Merlin engine is...
  • North Texas Teen Racing Against Time to Interview War Heroes

    06/17/2017 5:24:10 PM PDT · by nickcarraway · 7 replies
    NBC DFW ^ | Jun 17, 2017 | Larry Collins
    We are losing World War II veterans at an alarming rate. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of more than 370 World War II veterans die every day. But, 17-year-old Andy Fancher is dedicated to keeping their legacy alive and he's racing against life's clock to tell their stories. "I would see this man just sitting in his wheelchair with no one to talk to," Fancher recalled. He was only 12-years-old when he met that gentleman, and it was then that he realized someone had to record the story of those veterans. He decided to use his...
  • RAF squadron leader who devised the REAL Great Escape is to be honoured (tr)

    06/17/2017 6:33:50 PM PDT · by DFG · 39 replies
    UK Daily Mail ^ | 06/17/2017 | Iain Burns
    The architect of the Second World War prison break immortalised by The Great Escape is to be honoured with a plaque on the spot where Gestapo officers murdered him in 1944. Daredevil skiier, ladies' man and multilingual Cambridge-educated barrister Roger Bushell helped 76 prisoners of war escape from Stalag Luft III, a Nazi camp in occupied Poland. Just 33 at the time of his death, Squadron Leader Bushell - played by Richard Attenborough in the classic 1963 film - had been in enemy hands since his first day of combat, when he was shot down in a Spitfire during the...
  • World War II hero, Medal of Honor recipient Art Jackson dies in Boise at age 92

    06/15/2017 5:44:12 PM PDT · by Borges · 24 replies
    Idaho Stateman ^ | 6/15/2017 | John Sowell
    Art Jackson, who singlehandedly destroyed a dozen enemy pillboxes and killed 50 Japanese soldiers during a fierce battle on the Pacific island of Peleliu, died Wednesday at the Boise VA Medical Center. Nine Marines, including Jackson, were presented the Medal of Honor for their roles in the battle. Fighting for control of the island lasted for two months, beginning in September 1944. The Japanese, entrenched in caves, killed 1,800 American soldiers and injured 8,000 more.
  • Why Chinese-Americans Flooded a Georgia WWII Veteran’s Funeral

    06/13/2017 1:32:07 PM PDT · by Cecily · 28 replies
    The Atlanta Journal Constitution ^ | June 13, 2017 | Joshua Sharpe
    When 1st Lt. Robert Eugene Oxford’s flight went down in 1944, he was carrying supplies from China over the Himalayas. On Sunday, hundreds of Chinese-Americans poured into his tiny hometown of Concord, about 50 miles south of Atlanta, to honor him. His remains returned to Georgia last week 73 years after the mysterious plane crash in a remote ravine. “These mourners went to honor a man who had sacrificed everything to defend a country to which he did not belong, a people that he did not know,” read a story in the Atlanta Chinese Life publication. “The 308th Bombardment Group...
  • Remembering a hero Community rallies together to honor WWII veteran

    06/13/2017 8:13:20 AM PDT · by SandRat · 4 replies
    Sierra Vista Herald ^ | Monique Brand
    SIERRA VISTA — Whether they had met him once or had known him for several years, the words “kind,” “sweet,” and “caring,” were repeated by many guests describing 97-year-old Sierra Vista resident Frederick “Fred” Tilton Moore Drew at his memorial service on Monday. Drew, who died in February, received a formal farewell complete with military honors at the chapel of the Southern Arizona Veterans Memorial Cemetery. The Patrol Guard Riders provided an escort through the cemetery to the chapel. Though there was a crowd of 47 people in attendance, not a single one was a blood relative. “Fred didn’t have...
  • Fred ‘Earl’ Smith, Pearl Harbor vet, former Santa Rosa Junior College instructor, dies at 94

    06/09/2017 8:17:45 PM PDT · by rey · 6 replies
    Press Democrat ^ | 9 June 2017 | CHRIS SMITH
    The day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, an 18-year-old sailor named Fred “Earl” Smith, quite a baseball player, took the infield for two intra-Navy games. Smith and his shipmates from the battleship USS Tennessee took on the team from the Arizona, then from the West Virginia. The first game was close, the future Santa Rosa Junior College instructor recalled in an interview in 2015, until he hit a home run. “It won the game against the Arizona,” Smith told Hawaii Public Radio. “The West Virginia, we stomped ‘em.” The Navy baseball players partied that Saturday night...
  • Grease Gun of WW2

    06/07/2017 10:19:45 AM PDT · by w1n1 · 55 replies
    Am Shooting Journal ^ | 6/7/2017 | J Certo
    In this segment of WW2 firearms, two lucky shooters from Iraqveteran8888 Youtuber got a chance to fire the M3A1 "Grease Gun" and in doing so they were in awed by its raw power. Watch as they shoot this historic firearm, showcasing how forceful it still is today. According to Wikipedia, “The original M3 was an answer to the somewhat complex design and high production cost of the M1A1 Thompson during World War II.” This 'Grease Gun' was made cheaper for WWII, and used actively up until Desert Storm. Did you notice how accurate the firing was? It was by no...
  • The Horrible Waste of War

    06/06/2017 4:37:31 AM PDT · by MNJohnnie · 13 replies
    Indiania Unviersity Press ^ | 06-16-1944 | Ernie Pyle
    The Horrible Waste of War NORMANDY BEACHHEAD, June 16, 1944 – I took a walk along the historic coast of Normandy in the country of France. It was a lovely day for strolling along the seashore. Men were sleeping on the sand, some of them sleeping forever. Men were floating in the water, but they didn’t know they were in the water, for they were dead. The water was full of squishy little jellyfish about the size of your hand. Millions of them. In the center each of them had a green design exactly like a four-leaf clover. The good-luck...
  • Unsealed 75 years after Battle of Midway: New details of alarming WWII press leak

    06/05/2017 4:00:36 PM PDT · by DUMBGRUNT · 29 replies
    Chicago Tribune ^ | 5 June 2017 | Michael E. Ruane
    ... an intriguing side story: "Navy Had Word of Jap Plan to Strike at Sea."It was a fascinating, and detailed, description of much of what American intelligence knew beforehand of the enemy's fleet and plans. Indeed, it was too detailed. The report - 14 paragraphs long - suggested a secret U.S. intelligence coup, and became one of the biggest and potentially damaging news leaks of World War II. "This is the only time in American history that the United States government has ... taken steps toward prosecuting a member of the media under the Espionage Act," The story went on...
  • D-Day: June 6th 1944 as it happened (it had already begun by now)

    06/05/2017 6:25:07 PM PDT · by John S Mosby · 69 replies
    The Telegraph (UK) ^ | 6:00PM BST 06 Jun 2014 | Richard Preston & Ben Hazell
    Timeline of the D-Day landings of 6th June 1944 hour by hour as events unfolded on the day
  • A 'Eureka' moment: How Andrew Higgins landed himself on the U.S. Navy's radar

    06/04/2017 2:57:21 PM PDT · by BBell · 32 replies
    THEN: In 1939, the U.S. Navy awarded the relentless Andrew Higgins with a contract to build his Eureka boats for the military. Despite his now-famous contribution to the U.S. effort in World War II -- most notably his Higgins landing craft, a later version of the Eureka boat -- the path to this contract was bumpy and difficult, something that only someone as determined as Higgins could overcome. Although the New Orleans boat builder had successfully sold his boats to the Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers, the Navy was more interested in developing its own technology than testing...
  • The Hession Rifle

    06/04/2017 9:25:29 AM PDT · by marktwain · 36 replies
    The American Rifleman ^ | 23 August, 2012 | Frank Miniter
    Predictably such restrictions reduced the number of firearms in law-abiding citizens’ hands. Then came the Battle of Dunkirk in 1940. As the German war machine advanced, the British Expeditionary Force evacuated back across the English Channel. The retreat was costly. In their haste British troops abandoned most of their equipment. The massive loss of military arms, combined with the fact that the English people had been mostly disarmed, left the British people almost helpless before the advance of the Third Reich. Luckily, they had gun-owning friends across the Atlantic. In 1940 a group of Americans, headed by C. Suydam...
  • 'Five Came Back' (vanity)

    06/03/2017 5:15:59 PM PDT · by Borges · 16 replies
    For the WW2 and film buffs out there...please check out this documentary playing on Netflix. It documents how five of the most prestigious Hollywood film directors (John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, George Stevens, John Huston) put their career on hold to serve in the Armed forces and make films for the war effort. Each one approached the task in a different way. After the war, their work was noticeably changed. Interestingly, the first film made by four of the five was each among the best American films of the 1940s. Ford's 'They Were Expendable, Wyler's 'The Best Years of...
  • The American Guts and Grit That Sank Japan at Midway

    06/03/2017 8:09:12 AM PDT · by DUMBGRUNT · 53 replies
    WSJ ^ | 2 June 2017 | Robert R. Garnett
    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...
  • At age 111, America's oldest veteran is still smoking cigars, drinking whiskey and loving life

    06/03/2017 3:59:20 AM PDT · by SkyPilot · 41 replies
    Dallas News ^ | 2 Jun 17 | Brendan Meyer
    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 Magnificent Infantry of WW II

    05/29/2017 8:46:16 AM PDT · by Retain Mike · 51 replies
    Self | May 29, 2017 | Self
    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...
  • Reminder of when Hollywood produced heroes

    05/29/2017 10:34:29 AM PDT · by LS · 40 replies
    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...
  • On this date in 1942

    05/27/2017 4:18:41 PM PDT · by Bull Snipe · 21 replies
    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...
  • Japan: Trump must declare Hiroshima a ‘war crime’

    05/26/2017 4:23:27 PM PDT · by 2ndDivisionVet · 190 replies
    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...