Un Armed Un Armored And Un Escorted

Inducted in 1942, Johnson went through pilot training, then airborne operations flight training with 27th Troop Carrier Squadron, 10th Troop Carrier Group, then with 49th Troop Carrier Sqdn, 313th Troop Carrier Wing, for training in Sicily. Assigned to 36th TCS, 316th TCG, for D-Day and the Allied advance across Europe. During Operation Market Garden his C-47 was shot down and he became a POW. In addition to detailing his life as a POW, he includes details of what it was like back home for his family, particularly after he was listed as MIA after being shot down, including his parents' efforts at trying to get more details from politicians, the Army and members of his unit in England. This is a detailed personal account by a C-47 pilot who flew Unarmed, Unarmored and Unescorted over the skies of Europe, delivering men and materiel where it was needed to defeat the enemy. A Merriam Press World War II Autobiography. 35 photos and documents.

Revised Second Edition. The roots of Tactical Airlift and Air Mobility Command Missions were founded in the Troop Carrier Groups of World War II. Meticulously researched and documented, Col Mark Vlahos' "Men Will Come" A History of the 314th Troop Carrier Group 1942 - 1945, will not only be the definitive history of this unit, but fills a major void in USAAF History. Activated March 9, 1942, the 314th participated in every major Airborne Operation in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operations. Through the school of hard knocks, tough lessons were learned as the new Airborne, Air-land, and Glider missions matured in WWII. The 314th played a major role in this evolving process. As we celebrate the 75th Anniversary of D-Day, this book is a must read for anyone interested in WWII Airborne, Troop Carrier Operations and the contribution of our Greatest Generation. -Gen Carlton Everhart II, USAF-Ret, former Commander Air Mobility Command. 327 photos, maps, documents; index. NOTE: This revised second edition includes a small number of typographical corrections but most importantly a number of additions in Appendix 9, specifically a number of aircraft were inadvertently missing from "Operation NEPTUNE #1 Mission Flight Crew Listing, June 5 - 6, 1944" and "Operation NEPTUNE #2 Mission Flight Crew Listing, June 7, 1944". A Merriam Press World War II History.

Leading the Way to Victory is the official history of the 60th Troop Carrier Group, featuring unpublished first-person accounts by participating veterans and expertly written by retired USAF Colonel Mark C. Vlahos, combat veteran and former Vice Wing Commander of 314th Airlift Wing at the Little Rock Air Force Base. The December 7, 1941, surprise attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II. Just six months later in May 1942, flying new C-47 transport aircraft, the 60th Troop Carrier Group led the way as the first U.S. TCG to deploy to England and the European Theater of Operations in World War II. Leading the way to victory, the 60th TCG’s first mission—dropping U. S. paratroopers outside of Oran, North Africa—was not only the first combat airborne mission in U.S. Army history, but also the longest airborne mission of the entire war. This drop spearheaded Operation TORCH, also known as the Invasion of North Africa, by taking key Axis airfields just inland from the amphibious landing zones. The 60th TCG went on to fly some of the first combat aeromedical evacuation missions and the first combat mission towing CG-4A “Waco” gliders during Operation HUSKY—the Invasion of Sicily. As the new airborne, air land, aeromedical evacuation, and glider missions matured in World War II, the 60th TCG continued to play a major role, paying in blood for valuable lessons learned in the school of hard knocks. The group later flew dramatic missions into Yugoslavia, supporting Partisans as part of the secret war in the Balkans, an episode of World War II history still all but unknown today and dropped British paratroops in the airborne invasion of Greece. The Group was inactivated at the end of the war. Drawing on official United States Army Air Forces microfilm records, operational records in the National Archives, photographs from both collections, published historical materials, and many personal accounts, author Mark C. Vlahos’ expertly written and highly readable volume is certain to become the standard history and go-to reference for the 60th TCG. This work offers scholars and lay readers alike an authoritative, informative, and engaging saga of the Group’s battles, adversity, hardships, and triumphs from inception through the Allied victory in Europe.

During World War II, Allied casualty rates in the air were high. Of the roughly 125,000 who served as aircrew with Bomber Command, 59,423 were killed or missing and presumed killed—a fatality rate of 45.5%. With odds like that, it would be no surprise if there were as few atheists in cockpits as there were in foxholes; and indeed, many airmen faced their dangerous missions with beliefs and rituals ranging from the traditional to the outlandish. Military historian S. P. MacKenzie considers this phenomenon in Flying against Fate, a pioneering study of the important role that superstition played in combat flier morale among the Allies in World War II. Mining a wealth of documents as well as a trove of published and unpublished memoirs and diaries, MacKenzie examines the myriad forms combat fliers' superstitions assumed, from jinxes to premonitions. Most commonly, airmen carried amulets or talismans—lucky boots or a stuffed toy; a coin whose year numbers added up to thirteen; counterintuitively, a boomerang. Some performed rituals or avoided other acts, e.g., having a photo taken before a flight. Whatever seemed to work was worth sticking with, and a heightened risk often meant an upsurge in superstitious thought and behavior. MacKenzie delves into behavior analysis studies to help explain the psychology behind much of the behavior he documents—not slighting the large cohort of crew members and commanders who demurred. He also looks into the ways in which superstitious behavior was tolerated or even encouraged by those in command who saw it as a means of buttressing morale. The first in-depth exploration of just how varied and deeply felt superstitious beliefs were to tens of thousands of combat fliers, Flying against Fate expands our understanding of a major aspect of the psychology of war in the air and of World War II.

A military history detailing the key role two US Army special forces commanders and their infantry divisions played in during the second world war. Generals during World War II usually stayed to the rear, but not Matthew Ridgway and Maxwell Taylor. During D-Day and the Normandy campaign, these commanders of the 82nd “All-American” and the 101st “Screaming Eagle” Airborne Divisions refused to remain behind the lines and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with their paratroopers in the thick of combat. Jumping into Normandy during the early hours of D-Day, Ridgway and Taylor fought on the ground for six weeks of combat that cost the airborne divisions more than forty percent casualties. The Paratrooper Generals is the first book to explore in depth the significant role these two division commanders played on D-Day, describing the extraordinary courage and leadership they demonstrated throughout the most important American campaign of World War II.

Letters to Libby/ Part Two is part two of a three part series. The books are comprised of edited letters written by Joseph A. White II to his wife (Elizabeth T. White ["Libby"]) during World War Two. The letters in Part Two chronicle a tale beginning in Goubrine, Tunisia (August 12, 1943), and ending in Caserta, Italy (June 4, 1944). The misery of separation from the woman he loves and the vicissitudes of Army-Air Corps life are themes well explored in Letters to Libby/ Part Two.

In this book a former United Nations Envoy offers an insider perspective on conflict management and peace efforts during the three most recent failed peace initiatives and three wars in Gaza. Robert Serry shares his reflections on walking the tight rope of diplomacy between Israel and Palestine and his analysis of what has gone wrong and why a “one-state reality” may be around the corner. Offering fresh thinking on how to preserve prospects for a two-state solution, this book examines the UN’s uneasy history in the Arab-Israeli conflict since partition was proposed in resolution 181 (1948) and provides a rare insight into the life of a United Nations Envoy in today’s Middle East.

Since Vietnam, both the way we fight and our reasons for going to war have become much more complex. The importance of a conflict is determined not by its size or by the numbers of combatants involved but by its ripple effects and its influence upon future events. In a series of thrilling recreations of eight of the most significant encounters of the last three decades, military historian Richard Connaughton presents a fascinating insight into modern warfare, including interviews with some of the major figures. The conflicts include Goose Green in the Falklands, the invasion of Grenada, Operation Desert Storm - the first Iraq War, Operations in Mogadishu as immortalized in the book and film Blackhawk Down, the Siege of Gorazde and Operation Barras in Sierra Leone, as well as more recent events at Fallujah, Iraq, and in Helmand Province, Afghanistan. Richard Connaughton has interviewed most of the major figures involved in each of the conflicts and offers powerful insights into why battles either work or don't. This book will tell you what warfare means in the contemporary world and how it can affect tomorrow.

Following thirty years of research, including research into recently declassified government archives, this newly revised and expanded edition of Linda Melvern's classic of investigative journalism reveals how policymakers continue to refuse to properly acknowledge their responsibilities under international law. The new edition includes copious new material reckoning with the information that came to light during the 2022 trial of Félicien Kabuga, the alleged financier of the genocide. This new evidence feeds not only into a revised chronology and a wholly new section on the build-up to the genocide, but also into a new appendix that lists the six major genocide memorial sites in Rwanda along with now-incontrovertible details of the massacres that occurred there. Throughout it all, Melvern reveals in unmatched detail the scale, speed, and intensity of the unfolding genocide, and she exposes the Western governments and individuals who could have prevented what was happening if only they had chosen to act. What emerges is a shocking indictment of how Rwanda was ignored in 1994 and of how it is misremembered in the West today-an indictment that renders all the more poignant Melvern's accounts of the unrecognised heroism of those who stayed on during the violence, from volunteer peacekeepers to NGO workers.