RIP, shipmates.
Posted on 08/03/2003 7:20:37 AM PDT by AlaskaErik
Edited on 07/07/2004 4:49:02 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
PBY-5: Seaplane with seven aboard is thought to have fallen in 1942.
A search team from a U.S. Army lab that recovers the remains of American military service members arrived at Kiska Island on Friday morning to excavate the crash site of a World War II bomber possibly untouched for more than six decades.
(Excerpt) Read more at adn.com ...
RIP, shipmates.
The Battle of Kiska raged for two nerve-wracking days as the Allied soldiers slowly and awkwardly gained ground in the difficult mountainous terrain. Radio communication was poor, maps were inaccurate and company leaders were unsure how to proceed as the enemy continued its unabashed retreat. Messengers circulated among the platoons with word of the casualties, the wounded, and the abandoned enemy bunkers that had been found up ahead, food and tea still hot on the tables. Exhausted soldiers put themselves as deep as they could into their water-filled trenches at night. But there was no sleep for the weary: American soldiers who had let down their guard at Attu had been found bayonetted to death in their sleeping bags.
When the fighting was finally over (17August 1943), exhausted Allied troops pulled themselves out of their dank foxholes, dazed and wet, to look around them and count up the casualties. As Tokyo Rose had warned them, they were in for a dreadful surprise. There were 28 dead American soldiers, four dead Canadians, and over 50 wounded Allied soldiers. There were no Japanese. Americans and Canadians had only been shooting each other.
Read that book 30 years ago. The war in the Aleutians was really a mostly unknown war.
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