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The U-Boat campaign off the United States' coast is pretty well known. Complacency on the American side, and daring on the German side. Combining in a perfect storm that saw many, many losses in the early days after the United States joined the war. That said, not all those losses were American. Some U-Boats were lost too, including one particularly noteworthy one. U-166. A submarine sunk close off the Gulf Coast. This sinking became something of a controversy, in how the captain responsible was treated by the Navy. But the boat, herself, is interesting all her own. After all, this...

In 1945, Truman’s decision to drop two atomic bombs was grim—but it ended a war that could have cost millions more lives on both sides and unleashed even greater horrors. Disinformation and the Dropping of the Atomic Bombs Legitimate disagreement about the wisdom of dropping two bombs on Japan to end World War II in 1945 persists even 80 years later, as reflected in discussions this past week. But recently, there has often been no real effort even to present the facts, much less to consider the lose-lose choices involved in using such destructive weapons. In an age of revisionist...

Eighty years ago this week, the United States dropped two atomic bombs on Japan, forcing the end of World War II. On August 6, 1945, the B-29 Enola Gay dropped the “Little Boy” uranium bomb on Hiroshima, killing up to 166,000 people. Three days later, on August 9, the B-29 Bockscar was diverted from its primary target of Kokura due to bad weather and instead dropped the more powerful “Fat Man” plutonium bomb on the secondary target of Nagasaki, killing up to 80,000 and compelling Japan’s surrender.

The August 1942 landing on Guadalcanal was a colossal improvisation, concocted on the fly to take advantage of a recent dramatic turn in the Pacific war. We’ve all heard the sayings: “Haste makes waste,” “Look before you leap,” “Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.” They all make the same point: Be careful, especially when undertaking a difficult task. Prepare yourself. Think about the things that can go wrong, and have a plan ready when they do.However, sometimes you have no choice. An opportunity arises, you decide to respond, and you go ahead with whatever plans and resources you...

Eighty years after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, this analysis explores Operation Downfall, the massive Allied invasion of Japan that was averted by Tokyo’s surrender. The two-stage plan, Operations Olympic and Coronet, would have involved more than twice the forces of the Normandy landings and was expected to be unimaginably costly.

There is a statue of Harold Bray on the corner of Military and First streets in Benicia. The 7-foot-tall statue — created by Matt Glenn — shows smiling Bray as a teenager in his U.S. Navy uniform. “I wanted to show the sparkle in his eye as if he was saying, ‘Everything is going to be OK,'” said Glenn at the statue’s unveiling in 2023. Eighty years later everything is OK for the statue’s subject, who calls himself “The luckiest man in the world.” But on July 30, 1945, Harold Bray was anything but lucky. Bray was one of 317...

Incredible SOUND & NO announcer! USE HEADPHONES. Set Youtube to "1080p60 HD". P-51D Mustang "Quick Silver" at Oshkosh 2017 performs hesitation rolls, Cuban 8 and other maneuvers. Pilot Scott "Scooter" Yoak puts the Mustang through an aggressive and impressive routine. A "must see video" for Mustang lovers!

Many of you will recognize the name, Jake Larson lied about his age and joined the National Guard at age 15, later he stormed the Easy Red Sector of Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944. Larson's Granddaughter signed him up for Tik Tok and helped him attract over 1 million followers with Story Time with Papa Jake, which allowed to become quite a well-known Tik Tok content creator. Here a few short videos of Jake Larson from the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, he also made it to the 80th and 81st anniversaries. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMruLqIy-Pg

Marina Raskova (March 28, 1912 – January 4, 1943) was a pioneering Soviet aviator, navigator, and military commander, often compared to Amelia Earhart for her fame and achievements. Born in Moscow to a middle-class family, she initially pursued music, dreaming of becoming an opera singer like her father, Mikhail Malinin. After his death in 1919 and a middle ear infection that ended her singing ambitions, she turned to aviation. Raskova became the first woman in the Soviet Union to earn a professional air navigator diploma in 1933 and the first female instructor at the Zhukovsky Air Force Academy. She set...

A mysterious object spotted on the South Pacific seafloor has been identified as the bow of a torpedoed World War II ship that famously sailed thousands of miles backwards to avoid sinking, historians say. The nearly 100-foot long section of the USS New Orleans was found Sunday, July 6, by the Ocean Exploration Trust as it searched the seafloor near Guadalcanal with a remotely operated vehicle. A positive identification was made with the help of paint fragments still clinging to the hull, along with an engraved anchor, the trust reported. The bow, which fell to a depth of 2,214 feet,...

It always seemed as if Dorothy Day, founder of the Catholic Worker Movement, was in trouble for something. A 1956 article in the New York Times describes an instance in which Day was fined $250 for being the landlord of a building that failed to comply with the fire code. In addition to the fine she was also in danger of being forced to evict the sixty tenants from her house of charity. The paper explains that as she headed to court, “there was a group of needy men about the door, awaiting the distribution of clothing. From their midst...

One of history’s greatest “what ifs” is the question of what would have happened had the Germans been able to develop nuclear weapons during the Second World War. The Wehrmacht’s effort to do just that, called the Uranverein, or “Uranium Club,” began in 1939 when German Army physicist Kurt Diebner began to research the potential military applications of nuclear fission. By year’s end, the renowned German physicist Werner Heisenberg had expressed his belief that nuclear fission chain reactions, and thus, eventually, nuclear bombs, might be possible, but only if he had access to enough of a singular substance known as...

Germany didn’t go directly from Adolf Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 to the Holocaust. Like the jihad against Jews in America today, it was done in stages. A milestone in the death march was Kristallnacht, or “Night of Broken Glass,” on Nov. 9 and 10, 1938. In an orgy of violence, the Nazis torched synagogues and looted Jewish homes and businesses. Nearly 100 Jews were killed, and 30,000 were arrested and sent to concentration camps.

I need not tell fellow Freepers the story of the USS Indianapolis, we all know it.Harold Bray has lived in Benicia, California for many years (as did I). Mr. Bray routinely shared his story with high school history classes (both my sons heard his him). I met him once and spoke with him, he is a gentlemen and a hero. His birthday is coming up: June 15th. He will be 98 years old. His family and friends have asked for birthday cards and well wishes from as many people as possible. The address to send the cards is:Harold Bray PO...

General Charles de Gaulle: "I remember Palestine in 1941. Those Jewish youngsters were wonderful. They fought on our side, while the Arabs—we must admit—were on the other side." Cohen, Samy. De Gaulle, les gaullistes et Israël. France: A. Moreau, 1974. p.30. A Jean-Claude Servan-Schreiber venu s'entretenir avec lui en Juillet 1968, le général de Gaulle dit : « (...) je me rap-pelle la Palestine en 1941, et ces jeunes Juifs étaient merveilleux, ils se battaient à nos côtés alors que les Arabes — il faut bien le dire — étaient de l'autre bord. » — Source : Extrait inédit du...

AT THE FRONT LINES IN ITALY, January 10, 1944In this war I have known a lot of officers who were loved and respected by the soldiers under them. But never have I crossed the trail of any man as beloved as Capt. Henry T. Waskow of Belton, Texas.Capt. Waskow was a company commander in the 36th Division. He had led his company since long before it left the States. He was very young, only in his middle twenties, but he carried in him a sincerity and gentleness that made people want to be guided by him."After my own father, he...

To mark the 80th anniversary of the eventual Liberation of the islands, ‘Britain Under the Nazis: the Forgotten Occupation’ (w/t) tells the story of one the most controversial periods in WW2 British history, utilising eye-witness accounts from those who lived through it. In June 1940 Britain abandoned the Channel Islands to the Nazis. 69,000 islanders were left to live with the enemy, facing an impossible dilemma: to collaborate, resist, or tread a difficult line in between. Their words, drawn from little known diaries, memoirs and letters from both the occupiers and occupied, are brought to life by actors for the...

This Memorial Day, you could do much worse than remember John Basilone. Eighty years ago, the US military was grinding it out from one Japanese-held Pacific island to another in a brutal, costly campaign as gut-wrenching as any in American history. Basilone has an honored place in this story. Born in Buffalo and raised in New Jersey by his Italian-American parents, he enlisted in the Army in the 1930s as a teenager. Then, after a stint as a civilian, he signed up for the Marines in 1940. During the Battle of Guadalcanal in 1942, he almost single-handedly held off a...

Going Entebbe on the hostage-taking dictator, right in front of his patron, Vladimir Putin. For Venezuela's fraudulently elected Nicolas Maduro, in Moscow to pay tribute to his patron Vlad Putin, yesterday was kind of embarrassing for both of them. Way under the radar, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been busy, figuring out a way to make both of them look like weaklings, and with perfect timing, he succeeded: The U.S. welcomes the successful rescue of all hostages held by the Maduro regime at the Argentinian Embassy in Caracas. Following a precise operation, all hostages are now safely on U.S....

Hitler Wanted World Jewry Exterminated. LONDON, (.JTA).—An international agreement for the extermination of all Jews was the main provision of the peace treaty Hitler intended to dictate to the vanquished Allies, according to a Finnish physician, Dr. Felix Kersten, former medical advisor to Gestapo chief Heinrich Himmler. Quoting a statement by Himimler made to him in Zhitomir, in August 1942 Dr. kersten declares in an article in the Sunday Express that “a peace conference was to be held at Nuremberg with the participation of all neutral countries. A 'New Order' Europe would be proclaimed by Hitler at the Conference, the...