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On May 14, 1944, an A-20 havoc (serial number 42-86768), with a crew of three and one passenger, departed Momote Airfield, Los Negros Island, for a courier flight to Nadzab Airfield, New Guinea. For unknown reasons, this plane was forced to ditch in the ocean off the north coast of New Guinea. Both engines failed at low altitude, and the aircraft's nose hit the water hard. Three men failed to emerge from the sinking wreck and were lost in the crash. One crew member survived and was rescued by a passing barge. An aerial search the next day found no...

The sole living survivor from the sinking of the USS Arizona during the Pearl Harbor attack that brought the US into World War II has now died. Lou Conter, who lived in Grass Valley, was 20 years old at the time of the attack on Dec. 7, 1941. There were 2,403 Americans killed in the attack – including 1,177 of Arizona's crew. Conter was one of the only 335 officers and crewmen who survived. Over the years, Conter shared his experiences and visited Hawaii for remembrance ceremonies. "Minute it happened, we sounded general quarters and they were in there and...

Lou Conter, the last living survivor of the USS Arizona battleship that exploded and sank during the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, has died. He was 102. Conter passed away on Monday at his home in Grass Valley, California, following congestive heart failure, his daughter, Louann Daley said, adding she was beside him along with two of her brothers, James and Jeff. The Arizona lost 1,177 sailors and Marines in the 1941 attack that launched the United States into World War II. The battleship’s dead account for nearly half of those killed in the attack.

David Walker from Norfolk, Va., was 19 years old when Japanese torpedoes sunk his battleship at Pearl Harbor in 1941. Walker was presumed dead following the attack on the Hawaii naval base, but his body was never recovered — that is, until recently. Officials announced on Thursday that Walker's remains were finally accounted for, thanks to scientists at the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) whose mission is to recover and return missing service members from past conflicts. In a news release, the DPAA said that in 2018, military officials exhumed the unidentified remains of 25 people who were from Walker's...

Dick Higgins, the Bend resident and Pearl Harbor survivor whose public appearances and first-person recollections of that infamous day – Dec. 7, 1941 – became ever more special with every day, week and year, passed away early Tuesday at the age of 102, his grieving yet grateful family announced."Gramps went home to be with Jesus this morning. He was a humble, generous, funny and loving husband, father, grandfather, great grandfather and friend. This community has celebrated and honored him and we are forever grateful for the impact he has made on all of us. At 102 years old, we have...

A teenage cook whose heroics onboard a warship helped shorten the Second World War has been honoured in his home town after a public vote. The regenerated centre of North Shields, North Tyneside, has been named after Thomas Brown, who was awarded the George Medal for helping to retrieve codebooks from a sinking German U-boat in October 1942. The books were later used to crack the Enigma code by experts at Bletchley Park, enabling the British to decipher Nazi messages. Two naval men died while searching the stricken submarine but Thomas, a 15-year-old civilian who lied about his age to...

  Our Troops Rock!  Thank you for all you do!   For the freedom you enjoyed yesterday... Thank the Veterans who served in The United States Armed Forces.   Looking forward to tomorrow's freedom? Support The United States Armed Forces Today!     ~ Hall of Heroes ~Hershel W. Williams Info from here.             Hershel Woodrow "Woody" Williams (born October 2, 1923) is a retired United States Marine who received the Medal of Honor for his actions in the Battle of Iwo Jima during World War II. Born in Fairmont, West Virginia, on October 2, 1923,...

During the Battle of Iwo Jima, in the face of powerful enemy resistance, Marine Cpl. Hershel "Woody" Williams succeeded in destroying several heavily-defended machine-gun pillboxes, and was awarded the Medal of Honor. But his service to his country, and his gallantry, did not end there. In this "Sunday Morning" profile that originally aired on May 30, 2021, Williams (who died on June 29 at the age of 98) talked with CBS News national security correspondent David Martin about his efforts for uring the Battle of Iwo Jima, in the face of powerful enemy resistance, Marine Cpl. Hershel "Woody" Williams succeeded...

On March 4, the world´s oldest person, Maria Branyas Morera, celebrated her 117th birthday in Catalonia. Morera was born in San Francisco, USA, but returned to Spain with her family at the age of eight, spending the rest of her life in Catalonia. For the past 23 years, she has stayed in the nursing home, Residencia Santa Maria del Tura. “Order, tranquillity, good connection with family and friends, contact with nature, emotional stability, no worries, no regrets, lots of positivity and staying away from toxic people” is what Morera credits her health and longevity to. Morera´s family arrived in Barcelona...

Brig. Gen. Paul Tibbets, better known as the man who piloted the Enola Gay during the bombing of Hiroshima, became a well-known figure in the United States at the end of the Second World War. Despite his fame, Tibbets asked that upon his death he receive no funeral or gravestone. Paul Tibbets started his career as an abdominal surgeon before enlisting in the US Army Air Corps. He initially served for three years, qualifying as a pilot in 1938, and opted to stay on active duty when the US entered the Second World War. While he is best known for...

Granada Relocation Center, Amache, Colorado. Image credit: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The US officially has a new national park. Amache National Historic Site near Granada, Colorado, has officially joined the likes of Yellowstone and Yosemite, the National Park Service announced last week. Amache – also known as the Granada Relocation Center – has a dark past, having been one of 10 incarceration sites established by the War Relocation Authority during World War II to imprison Japanese Americans. Over 10,000 people, mostly American citizens, were detained at Amache from 1942 to 1945. At its peak, the site housed...

A World War II Veteran who claimed he was the first Allied soldier to receive a message that the Nazis had surrendered vowed to keep the historical document in his family despite intense interest from museums. Bernard Morgan — who turns 100 on Wednesday — was working as a codebreaker for the Royal Air Force around May 6, 1945, when he received a world-changing message through his Typex machine. “The German War is now over. At Rheims last night the instrument of surrender was signed which in effect is a surrender of all personnel of the German forces – all...

The Navy is about to name a ship in honor of Omaha’s World War II “Hero of the Solomons.” Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro announced last week that one of the next new Arleigh Burke-class destroyers (DDG 142) will be named for Petty Officer 1st Class Charles Jackson French, who was born in Arkansas in 1919 but was raised by his sister in Omaha after his parents died. The Navy traditionally names its destroyers after Navy and Marine Corps heroes. Other ships in the Arleigh Burke class have been named for Revolutionary War Capt. John Paul Jones and Civil War...

While federal authorities did not bring legal charges against the black press for the balance of the war, that doesn't mean they shifted to a hands-off approach. Instead, they ratcheted up both intense monitoring and informal pressure. In the first half of 1942, FBI agents visited leading black newspapers that had carried critical stories about the federal government. Moreover, postal inspectors admonished two leading papers that the "benefits of citizenship" carried an obligation not to "'play up' isolated and rare instances in such a fashion as to obstruct recruiting and in other ways hamper the war effort."

Dated May 25 and delivered by plane while the Yorktown was about a hundred miles from Oahu, the report that Nimitz read was sobering...One day ahead of schedule, on May 27, the Yorktown limped into Pearl Harbor. The next morning, after Nimitz had cut orders voiding the safety rule of spending a day purging her tanks of stored aviation fuel, the Yorktown eased into Drydock Number One. The caissons closed behind her, and pumps began draining out the water. With at least a foot of water still remaining in the drydock, men in waders gathered to inspect the hull. One...

World War II depth charges, smoke floats and munition cases are among the latest eerie relics to be discovered on a deep-water survey ten miles off the coast of LA. High–resolution cameras found a massive dumping ground of munitions from the Pacific War which were tossed overboard warships before they could endanger the ports they were returning to. A team from the University of California's San Diego Scripps Institution of Oceanography found the objects up to 3,000ft down between LA and Catalina Island, in the same area where thousands of barrels of the outlawed pesticide DDT were discovered three years...

On this date in 1946, fascist William Joyce, famous by the nickname “Lord Haw-Haw” for his English-language Nazi propaganda broadcasts, was hanged at Wandsworth Prison for treason. As a pugilistic young anti-Semite with the unusual credential of being a Unionist Irish Catholic, Joyce had been a moving spirit in the interwar British fascist party. (Since audio broadcasts would define Joyce’s life, it seems appropriate to refer the reader for a fuller biography to this recent Oxford biography podcast.) But because time loves a good laugh, it had the guy haranguing his countrymen for insufficient patriotism marked out for the last...

PEARL HARBOR, Hawaii (NNS) -- Commander, U.S. Pacific Fleet declared Oct. 31 that the sunken submarine recently discovered by divers in the Western Pacific is, indeed, the World War II submarine USS Wahoo (SS 238). "After reviewing the records and information, we are certain USS Wahoo has been located," said Adm. Gary Roughead, the U.S. Pacific Fleet commander. “We are grateful for the support of the USS Bowfin Submarine Museum and Park, and appreciate greatly the underwater video footage of the submarine provided by our Russian navy colleagues, which allowed us to make this determination. This brings closure to the...

A painting dated from the 16th century depicting the biblical figures of Adam and Eve, looted from the collection of Dutch-Jewish art dealer Jacques Goudstikker during World War II, has been returned to Goudstikker’s only living heir. The scene, attributed to Dutch artist Cornelis van Haarlem, was returned after being offered for donation by a private collector to Musée Rolin, a museum in Autun, a city in central-eastern France. According to New York law firm Kaye Spiegler, which facilitated the painting’s return, museum officials raised flags internally over the painting’s ownership record after uncovering a label with Goudstikker’s surname on...