The Last Mission Of The Wham Bam Boys

Author : Gregory A. Freeman
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 9780230120273
Total Pages : 256 pages
Book Rating : 4.7X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Last Mission of the Wham Bam Boys written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2011-05-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Before the famed Nuremberg Tribunal, there was Rüsselsheim, a small German town, where ordinary civilians were tried in the first War Crimes Trial of World War II. As the tide of World War II turned, a hitherto unknown incident set a precedent for how we would bring wartime crimes to justice: In August 1944, the 9- man crew of an American bomber was forced to bail out over Germany. As their captors marched them into Rüsselsheim, a small town recently bombed to smithereens by Allies, they were attacked by an angry mob of civilians -- farmers, shopkeepers, railroad workers, women, and children. With a local Nazi chief at the helm, they assaulted the young Americans with stones, bricks, and wooden clubs. They beat them viciously and left them for dead at the nearby cemetery. It could have been another forgotten tragedy of the war. But when the lynching was briefly mentioned in a London paper a few months later, it caught the eye of two Army majors, Luke Rogers and Leon Jaworski. Their investigation uncovered the real human cost of the war: the parents and a newlywed wife who agonized over the fate of the men, and the devastating effect of modern warfare on civilian populations. Rogers and Jaworski put the city of Rüsselsheim on trial, insisting on the rule of law even amidst the horrors of war. Drawing from trial records, government archives, interviews with family members, and personal letters, highly-acclaimed military historian Gregory A. Freeman brings to life for the first time the dramatic story. Taking the reader to the scene of the crime and into the homes of the crew, he exposes the stark realities of war to show how ordinary citizens could be drawn to commit horrific acts of wartime atrocities, and the far-reaching effects on generations.

Author : Gregory A. Freeman
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101635185
Total Pages : 329 pages
Book Rating : 4.86/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Gathering Wind written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2013-10-29 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: October 2012. A replica of the famous HMS Bounty, an eighteenth-century tall sailing ship, set a collision course with a storm that became the largest hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic—a clash that proved to be one of the most unforgettable stories of Superstorm Sandy. The Bounty, crewed by an eclectic team of seafarers and led by highly respected captain Robin Walbridge, departed from Connecticut as Sandy raced north. Walbridge, whose decisions decided the fate of his ship and crew, attempted to outmaneuver the storm by heading southeast. As violent gusts tossed the wooden vessel, the crew fought to save their ship—and themselves. When the storm finally overtook the ship, the crew was tossed into the churning sea. The men and women of a Coast Guard station in North Carolina courageously flew into hundred-mile-per-hour winds to rescue the survivors of the Bounty. After hours of white-knuckle flying, they accomplished one of their most memorable rescues ever. Based on interviews with Bounty survivors and unfettered access to Coast Guard rescue team members, The Gathering Wind is the most complete account of this heartbreaking, thrilling, and inspirational story. INCLUDES PHOTOS

Author :
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 628 pages
Book Rating : 4.91/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Military Review written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 628 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

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Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 108 pages
Book Rating : 4.63/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Professional Journal of the United States Army written by and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 108 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Author : Gregory A. Freeman
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780451224958
Total Pages : 356 pages
Book Rating : 4.57/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Forgotten 500 written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008-09-02 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The astonishing, never before told story of the greatest rescue mission of World War II—when the OSS set out to recover more than 500 airmen trapped behind enemy lines in Yugoslavia... During a bombing campaign over Romanian oil fields, hundreds of American airmen were shot down in Nazi-occupied Yugoslavia. Local Serbian farmers and peasants risked their own lives to give refuge to the soldiers while they waited for rescue, and in 1944, Operation Halyard was born. The risks were incredible. The starving Americans in Yugoslavia had to construct a landing strip large enough for C-47 cargo planes—without tools, without alerting the Germans, and without endangering the villagers. And the cargo planes had to make it through enemy airspace and back—without getting shot down themselves. Classified for over half a century for political reasons, the full account of this unforgettable story of loyalty, self-sacrifice, and bravery is now being told for the first time ever. The Forgotten 500 is the gripping, behind-the-scenes look at the greatest escape of World War II. “Amazing [and] riveting.”—James Bradley, New York Times bestselling author of Flags of Our Fathers

Author : Gregory A. Freeman
Publisher : St. Martin's Press
ISBN 13 : 0230100546
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.41/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Troubled Water written by Gregory A. Freeman and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The gripping account of the riot aboard the USS Kitty Hawk—and the first mutiny in U.S. Naval history In 1972, the United States was embroiled in an unpopular war in Vietnam, and the USS Kitty Hawk was headed to her station in the Gulf of Tonkin. Its five thousand men, cooped up for the longest at-sea tour of the war, rioted--or, as Troubled Water suggests, mutinied. Disturbingly, the lines were drawn racially, black against white. By the time order was restored, careers were in tatters. Although the incident became a turning point for race relations in the Navy, this story remained buried within U.S. Navy archives for decades. With action pulled straight from a high-seas thriller, Gregory A. Freeman uses eyewitness accounts and a careful and unprecedented examination of the navy's records to refute the official story of the incident, make a convincing case for the U.S. navy's first mutiny, and shed new light on this seminal event in American history.

Author : Howard Mansfield
Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN 13 : 1493081098
Total Pages : 161 pages
Book Rating : 4.97/5 ( download)

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Download or read book I Will Tell No War Stories written by Howard Mansfield and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2024-04-16 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When Howard Mansfield grew up, World War II was omnipresent and hidden. This was also true of his father’s time in the Air Force. Like most of his generation, it was a rule not to talk about what he’d experienced in war. “You’re not getting any war stories from me,” he’d say. Cleaning up the old family house the year before his father's death, Mansfield was surprised to find a short diary of the bombing missions he had flown. Some of the missions were harrowing. Mansfield began to fill in the details, and to be surprised again, this time by a history he thought he knew. I Will Tell No War Stories is about undoing the forgetting in a family and in a society that has hidden the horrors and cataclysm of a world at war. Some part of that forgetting was necessary for the veterans, otherwise how could they come home, how could they find peace? I Will Tell No War Stories is also about learning to live with history, a theme Mansfield explored in earlier books like In the Memory House, which The New York Times called “a wise and beautiful book” and The Same Ax,Twice, said by the Times to be “filled with insight and eloquence … a brilliant book.”

Author : Michael P. Croissant
Publisher : Citadel Press
ISBN 13 : 0806543043
Total Pages : 459 pages
Book Rating : 4.48/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Bombing Hitler's Hometown written by Michael P. Croissant and published by Citadel Press. This book was released on 2024-03-26 with total page 459 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A brilliant, groundbreaking slice of military history, this riveting story of white-knuckled action over one of Europe’s most heavily defended targets in the waning days of World War II also tells of the aftermath of the Linz, Austria, bombing—the heart-wrenching tales of survival and recovery, and the toll of warfare on both sides. In April 1945, Linz was one of Nazi Germany’s most vital assets. It was a crucial transportation hub and communications center, with railyards brimming with war materiel destined for the front lines. Linz was also the town Hitler claimed as home and had long intended to remake as the cultural capital of Europe, filling its planned Fuehrermuseum with world-famous art stolen from his conquered territories. Inevitably, Linz was also one of the most heavily defended targets remaining in Europe. The airmen of the Fifteenth Air Force were a mix of seasoned veterans and newcomers. As their mission was unveiled in the predawn hours of April 25th, audible groans and muffled expletives passed many lips. The reality of that mission would prove more brutal than any imagined. In the unheated, unpressurized B‑24 Liberator and B‑17 Flying Fortress heavy bombers, young men battled elements as dangerous as anything the Germans could throw at them. When batteries of German anti‑aircraft guns opened fire, the men flew into a man‑made hell of exploding shrapnel. Aircraft and men fell from the sky as Austrian civilians on the ground also struggled to survive beneath the bombs during the deadly climax of Hitler’s war. Drawing on interviews with dozens of America’s last surviving World War II veterans, as well as previously unpublished sources, Mike Croissant compellingly relates one of the war’s last truly untold stories—a gripping chronicle of warfare, the death of Nazi Germany, and the beginning of the Cold War. It is also a timeless tale of courage and terror, loss and redemption, humanity and savagery.

Author : Kevin T Hall
Publisher : Indiana University Press
ISBN 13 : 0253052629
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.29/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Terror Flyers written by Kevin T Hall and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2021-01-19 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Terror Flyers examines the "lynch justice" (Lynchjustiz) committed against American airmen in Nazi Germany during World War II. Using engaging first-person accounts of downed pilots, as well as previously unused primary sources, Terror Flyers challenges the notion that such lynchings were exclusively the domain of Nazi party officials and soldiers. New evidence reveals ordinary German people executed Lynchjustiz as well. Initially occurring as a spontaneous reaction to the devastation of the Allied air campaign against the cities of the Third Reich, Lynchjustiz offered the Nazi regime a unique propaganda opportunity to harness the outrage of the German population. Fueled by inspiration from America's own history of the lynching of African Americans, Nazi propaganda exploited the very same imagery found in US publications to escalate the anger of the German people. Drawing heavily on the accounts of the downed airmen themselves, testimonies from the "flyer trials" held in Dachau during 1945–48, and rarely seen Nazi propaganda, Terror Flyers offers a new narrative of this previously overlooked aspect of the Allied campaign in Europe and suggests that at least 3,000 cases of lynch justice likely occurred between 1943 and 1945.

Author : James M. Fenelon
Publisher : Scribner
ISBN 13 : 1501179373
Total Pages : 448 pages
Book Rating : 4.72/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Four Hours of Fury written by James M. Fenelon and published by Scribner. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this viscerally exciting account, a paratrooper-turned-historian reveals the details of World War II’s largest airborne operation—one that dropped 17,000 Allied paratroopers deep into the heart of Nazi Germany. On the morning of March 24, 1945, more than two thousand Allied aircraft droned through a cloudless sky toward Germany. Escorted by swarms of darting fighters, the armada of transport planes carried 17,000 troops to be dropped, via parachute and glider, on the far banks of the Rhine River. Four hours later, after what was the war’s largest airdrop, all major objectives had been seized. The invasion smashed Germany’s last line of defense and gutted Hitler’s war machine; the war in Europe ended less than two months later. Four Hours of Fury follows the 17th Airborne Division as they prepare for Operation Varsity, a campaign that would rival Normandy in scale and become one of the most successful and important of the war. Even as the Third Reich began to implode, it was vital for Allied troops to have direct access into Germany to guarantee victory—the 17th Airborne secured that bridgehead over the River Rhine. And yet their story has until now been relegated to history’s footnotes. Reminiscent of A Bridge Too Far and Masters of the Air, Four Hours of Fury does for the 17th Airborne what Band of Brothers did for the 101st. It is a captivating, action-packed tale of heroism and triumph spotlighting one of World War II’s most under-chronicled and dangerous operations.