WAR ENDS

VICTORY OVER JAPAN

Hellcats Last-Minute Fight to the Death

Truman Takes Charge | A Pilots-Eye View of Enola Gay
PLUS: The Man with Steel Teeth | Vesuvius Attacks

V-J

speci
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ue

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SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015
HISTORYNET.COM

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WORLD

CON TEN TS SEP T EMBER /OC T OBER 2015

WAR II

Endorsed by The National World War II Museum, Inc.

FEATURES

32 The Last Air Battle

50 Truman Takes Charge

62 An American

For the U.S. Navy aviators of Task

Force 38, the air war in the Pacific
ran all the way to the limit

Bomber Group Takes

a One-Two Punch

DAVID SEARS

FDRs sudden death placed a

neophyte president at the helm
responsible for the wars biggest
decision JONATHAN W. JORDAN

40 Russias Rock

P ORT FOLI O

Though tortured in Stalins purges,

Konstantin Rokossovsky stood tall
for Mother Russia when it counted
most STUART D. GOLDMAN

58 Pilots-eye View

WE AP ON S M ANU AL

Artifacts collected by Enola Gay

copilot Robert Lewis provide an
intimate look into his historic
mission to drop the atomic bomb

68 Fat Man and Little Boy

WORLD WAR II

First Mount Vesuvius, then the

Nazis, wreaked havoc on B-25
airmen in Italy RICHARD R. MULLER

To end a war that had engulfed

the globe, Americans built earthshaking weapons JIM LAURIER

DEPARTMENTS
10 World War II Today

26 Fire for Effect

74 Battle Films

Rethinking wartime souvenirs;

Jochen Hellbecks Reading List

Oh, Darwin

Japans Longest Day: How the

Empire finally didnt strike back

ROBERT M. CITINO

28 Time Travel
20 Conversation

New Mexicos Trinity Site

B-29 flight engineer Fiske Hanley

endured brutality as a special
prisoner of the Japanese

ALETA BURCHYSKI

MICHAEL DOLAN

The duke, the duchess, and their

unsavory romance with Nazism;
The Ship That Wouldnt Die;
a Japanese scholar examines
how warring Japan mobilized
its citizenry

23 From the Footlocker

Curators at The National
World War II Museum solve
readers artifact mysteries

71 Reviews

MARK GRIMSLEY

IN EVERY ISSUE

6 Mail
79 Challenge
80 Pinup
Visit us at worldwarii.com
World War II magazine
@WWIImag

A view across 1944 Naples

includes Allied ships in the
harbor, and Mt. Vesuvius
simmering in the distance.
COVER: The Japanese delegation
somberly faces Allied ofcers
during the ofcial surrender
ceremony on the USS Missouri,
September 2, 1945.
THIS PHOTO, NATIONAL ARCHIVES;
COVER, BETTMANN/CORBIS

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

Contributors

EDITOR IN CHIEF

Michael A. Reinstein
Dionisio Lucchesi
William Koneval

Vol. 30, No. 3

B URCH Y S K I

G OLDM AN

JO R D A N

EDITOR

Roger L. Vance
CHAIRMAN & PUBLISHER
PRESIDENT
ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

Karen Jensen
Art Director
Senior Editor
Guy Aceto
Photo Editor
Bridgett Henwood Associate Editor
Jon Guttman
Research Director
Paul Wiseman
News Editor
David Zabecki
Chief Military Historian
Cynthia Currie

Michael Dolan

M U LLE R

ADVISORY
BOARD

Ed Drea, David Glantz, Jeffery Grey, John McManus,

Williamson Murray, Dennis Showalter, Keith Huxen

DIGITAL

Brian King
Gerald Swick
Barbara Justice

former associate editor at World War II

magazine. She is currently copy editor
at Outside magazine, in Santa Fe, New
Mexico. Since moving to the state, visiting
the Trinity Test Site, where the first atomic
bomb was detonated, has been at the top
of her weekend-excursions list.
Stuart D. Goldman (Russias Rock)
has been scholar in residence at the
National Council for Eurasian and East
European Research since 2009. From 1979
to 2009, Goldman was a Russian specialist
at the Congressional Research Service of the
Library of Congress. Before that, Goldman
served on the Pennsylvania State University
international studies faculty. He holds a
PhD in history from Georgetown University. His book, Nomonhan, 1939: The Red
Armys Victory That Shaped World War II
(Naval Institute Press), debuted in 2012.
Jonathan W. Jordan (Truman Takes

Charge) is the author of the New York

Times bestseller Brothers Rivals Victors:
Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, and the Partnership that Drove the Allied Conquest in
Europe and the recent American Warlords:
How Roosevelts High Command Led

Editor
Senior Graphic Designer

SEARS
CORPORATE

Aleta Burchyski (Time Travel) is a

Director

America to Victory in World War II, from

which his article is adapted. His writing has
appeared in World War II magazine and a
variety of military history publications.
Richard R. Muller (One-Two Punch)

is a military history professor at the

United States Air Force School of Advanced
Air and Space Studies. A native of New
Jersey, he has spent the last 24 years
educating air force officers at Maxwell Air
Force Base in Alabama (home of the B-25
Mitchell in the above photo). He is the
author of The German Air War in Russia
and coauthor of The Luftwaffe over Germany: Defense of the Reich. He is currently
writing a history of the 452nd Bomb Group.

David Sears (White-knuckle Countdown

to Peace) is a New Jersey-based historian
and author who writes frequently for
World War II and other HistoryNet publications. David served as a U.S. Navy officer
with extensive sea duty aboard a destroyer
and as an advisor to the Vietnamese navy
during the Vietnam conflict.David has published four popular military history books
includingPacific Air: How Fearless Flyboys,
Peerless Aircraft, and Fast Flattops Conquered the Skies in the War with Japan.

Paul Zimny
Greg Ferris
David Steinhafel
Karen G. Johnson
Rob Wilkins

George Clark

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Mail

East German leader

Erich Honecker visits
Prorathen home to an
East German military
schoolin 1972.

I enjoyed the story on the Third Reichs

holiday resort at Prora (Hitler-Era
Resort Undergoes Revival, May/June
2015). Although never completed, the site
was used by the Red Army after the war
and then housed the East German armys
Erich Habersaath Military Technical
School. It was also the location of one of
military historys most surreal moments.
On October 2, 1990, all East German personal assembled in full uniform. After the
band played the East German national
anthem and a short speech was given, the
East German flag was lowered.
The following day, October 3German
Unity Dayall personnel gathered once

Editors Note:
Regular readers of World War II will
have already noticed this issues
new cover stock and paperpart
of our ongoing effort to improve the
experience of reading the magazine.
Look for upgrades to all our sister
publications; to see the full range
of HistoryNet magazines, visit
historynet.com.

WORLD WAR II

more, now wearing the uniform of the

Bundeswehr, the unified armed forces of
Germany. The military band played
Deutschland ber alles, the troops all
saluted, and an army walked into history.
Mark Claussner
West Chicago, Ill.

Retaliation Tactics
I am surprised that the Doolittle Raid
article (Aftermath, May/June 2015)
made no mention of another consequence of the raid: the Japanese armys
determination to conduct a return raid
on the American homeland. This goal
was actually accomplished by the launch
of bomb-dropping balloons that floated
over the Pacific Ocean and then North
America in late 1944 and early 1945. This
amazing story was well reported in the
February 2003 edition of World War II.
Vernon Squires
Winnetka, Ill.

Tune In and Turn Up

Richard J. Evanss fine article on the
Volkswagen (Think Again, May/June
2015) mentions the Peoples Receiver, the
Volksempfnger, saying it was shortwave so listeners couldnt tune into for-

The Japanese army oated bombs

across America late in the war.

TOP LEFT, BUNDESARCHIV BILD Y 10-1908-80, PHOTO O.ANG.; TOP RIGHT, HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; BOTTOM, NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Backdrop to History

eign broadcasts. This is a misconception

about short-wavesperhaps he meant
short-range. Short-wave bands tune to
higher frequencies, and might have provided worldwide reception with a sensitive radio. Short-range radios, on the
other hand, tuned long- and mediumwave bands (the medium-wave band corresponds to the U.S. standard AM broadcast band). Nazi radios used these bands,
which normally work well over only short
distances, though sensitive medium-wave
sets could have provided long-range
reception at night. The radios were also
deliberately made to lack sensitivity to
weak signals. So, both legal prohibitions
and technical tricks were used to restrict
Germans to hearing only the Reichs

An Exclusive National WWII Museum Tour

Led by Author & Historian Donald L. Miller

May 6 12, 2016

Experience England through the Airelds, Towns, and Hangouts of
Americas Bomber Boys Who Fought the Air War Against Nazi Germany.
First class experience of a lifetime from start to
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- John and Janet, Bluffton, South Carolina

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Mail

version of the news.

Horace W. Hall
Colorado Springs, Colo.

Before Alan Turing

corroborate this data, but certainly not the Hollywood film

industry. A monument on the
grounds of Bletchley Park
gives credit to the Poles for
breaking the code.
Daniel E. Josephs
Westchester, Ill.

The Polish mathematicians

who broke the German
Enigma code were Marian
Rejewski, Henryk Zygalski,
and Jerzy Rycki. They conNot My Maker
structed copies of the Enigma
In Death in the West (May/
Henryk Zygalski, Marian Rejewski, and Jerzy Rzycki cracked the
machine but also created the
June 2015) the P-51 Mustang
Enigma code before the war, paving the way for Alan Turing.
original Bombe and the
design is incorrectly attributed
cyclometer, both of which were used to
to the Consolidated Aircraft Corporaearned recognition for the brilliant work
help break the code. All of this was turned
tion, not its actual maker: North Amerihe did on progressively breaking the
over to the British and French in the
can. Ouch! That hurts!
evolving versions of Enigma and for his
famous July 25, 1939, meeting between
It is tough enough when our comcreativity that led to the development of
Polish, British, and French intelligence
pany is forgotten by military hismodern computers. He was a brilliant
officers and cryptographers at an intellitorians, but when an established
man, but not the one who broke the
gence center in the Kabackie Woods,
military history publication,
Enigma code, as stated in May/June 2015s
near the village of Pyry, south of Warsaw.
such as yours, attributes the
Bletchley Park Time Travel piece (House
Alan Turing certainly deserves wellgreatest long-range fighter
of Games). There are many sources that
of World War II to a competitor who should be
remembered for its PBYs and B-24s, that
is too much!
Ed Rusinek, North American
Aviation Retirees Bulletin
Rossmoor, Calif.

PRELUDE to PEARL
A historical novel that chronicles the lives of a
young US naval intelligence officer, a ruthless
German spy, a cosmopolitan Japanese maiden,
and an ambitious Japanese naval aviator in the
tumultuous decade leading to the attack on
Pearl Harbor.
In the years immediately before the Second
Sino-Japanese war, Francis Marian, a young sailor
with a photographic memory, is enlisted by
the Office of Naval Intelligence to gather secret
information on Japan as it extends it tentacles
into China and southeast Asia. International
businessman, Werner Breidstein, actually a
German spy, comes to Manila where he spars with
Marian while gathering intelligence on Japans
escalating expansion into China, Indochina, and
the islands of the Central Pacific as war with the
United States draws closer and closer. The two
men share a common friendshipand possibly
morewith a young, once-innocent Japanese
woman who has a broken relationship with a
Japanese naval officer who knows the details of
the coming attack on Pearl Harbor. When Marian
seeks to warn Macarthur of the only-hours away
attack on Pearl Harbor, Marian and Breidstein
clash as family secrets are revealed.

Available as Hardcopy and ebook on Amazon.com

8

WORLD WAR II

Corrections
In the map on page 39 of the May/June
2015 issue, the label 5th Panzer Division should read 5th Panzer Army. The
5th Panzer Division (the best on the Russian Front) was in East Prussia preparing
to evacuate to northwest Germany.
James H. Stevenson
Pinehurst, N.C.
A caption on page 14 incorrectly identifies a stretch of Balkan shore. It should
read Baltic shore.

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W W I I T ODA Y

Painted in oils on copper,

this triple view of Englands
King Charles I, thought to be
from the school of Anthony
van Dyck, was returned to
its rightful German owner.

he spoils of warLugers,
German medals and
pins, Wehrmacht helmets,
Nazi flagscame home in
footlockers, boxes, and packages, whether to memorialize
fallen friends or impress
girls stateside. But European
Theater booty also crossed
the line into theft. Ignoring
repeated warnings from General Dwight D. Eisenhower,
GIs not only took legitimate
souvenirs but also robbed
churches, homes, castles, and
museums of valuable jewelry, art, and ancient books,
simply because they could.
Some swag is returning to
Reported and written by

Paul Wiseman

10

WORLD WAR II

its origins, thanks in part to

the Monuments Men Foundation. Started by oil man
and author Robert Edsel, the
foundation celebrates the
Allied militarys Monuments,
Fine Arts, and Archives program, which protected and
recovered art in war zones,
and has expanded its brief
to retrieving items looted by
Allied soldiers. The foundation has helped return 18
objects snatched at wars
end to European owners
or turned them over to the
National Archives in Washington. Veterans and heirs
suspecting they own or know
of stolen art can call 1-866994-4278 or e-mail info@
monumentsmenfoundation.
org to provide information

and seek advice.

Were now the clearinghouse for those with questions about cultural objects
sent or brought home after
the war by soldiers, immigrants, and others, Robert
Edsel says.
In a May ceremony in
Washington, DC, the foundation arranged repatriation
of five paintings. In a 1945
poker game, U.S. Army
750th Tank Battalion tank
commander Major William
Oftebro had won three
works pilfered from a salt
mine near Dessau. German
authorities had hidden the
works in the mine. The
paintings were The Prodigal
Son, by 17th-century Flemish
painter Frans Francken III,

CAN YOU
KEEP IT?
Call the Monuments
Men Foundation tip
line, 866-WWII-ART
(866-994-4278), if you
know about or suspect
you own stolen art.
MILITARY
EQUIPMENT

YES

CIVILIAN PROPERTY
OR GOODS

NO

POSSIBLE
HISTORICAL VALUE

MAYBE

BRANDON THIBODEAUX

Rethinking Wartime Souvenirs

W W I I T ODA Y
Landscape With Staffage,
by Austrian artist Franz de
Paula Ferg, and a landscape
by German artist Christian
Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich; each
is worth at least $25,000.
Oftebro died in 1994; his
widow had hung the paintings in her apartment. Twice,
appraisers told Oftebros
stepson the paintings had
been stolen and should be
returned. He balked, reasoning that Nazi evildoing
justified keeping the artwork,
until the 2014 movie The
Monuments Men, based on
Edsels book of the same title,
convinced him otherwise.
The other two returned
paintings were purchased
from GIs in postwar Nuremberg by Margaret Reeb, a
Womens Army Corps officer
and wartime acquaintance of

Frans Francken IIIs The

Prodigal Son was anted
up in a GI poker game.

Eleanor Roosevelt who was

overseas to set up libraries
for American servicemen.
One canvas depicts Queen
Victoria and her daughter;
the other, King Charles I.
Soldiers had stolen both from
Kronberg Castle Hotel, which
the army had requisitioned as
an officers club. Reebs heirs

found them in a safe deposit

box after she died in 2005.
The paintings are going back
to the hotel.
The line between fair and
foul gain is fairly distinct.
The taking of military equipment is condoned, but stealing noncombatants property
is not, says Seth Givens, an
Ohio University doctoral student who has written about
Allied looting and worked
with the Monuments Men
Foundation. In practice,
then, Lugers were fair play
but paintings werentthe
latter is looting and the
former is souvenir hunting.
Adds Edsel, Anyone who
goes into a church and takes
stuffyou cant say, I didnt
know who that belonged to.
But sometimes the line
wavers, as when a GI boosted

an historical artifact belonging to the man who started

the war. Near wars end,
paratrooper John Pistone
was in Adolf Hitlers home
at Berchtesgaden, Germany,
where he grabbed a 12-pound
catalog of photographs showing artwork looted by the
Germans during their heyday
and meant for a museum to
be built for the Fhrer. In
2009, at the urging of a local
history buff, Pistone gave up
the book through the Monuments Men Foundation.
The U.S. State Department
transferred the volume into
German hands. The catalog,
one of 31 that German curators assembled while Hitler
was riding high and the 20th
recovered since his defeat,
helped fill blanks in the history of Nazi art looting.

SS Accountant
Admits Complicity
TOP, MONUMENTS MEN FOUNDATION; BOTTOM, RONNY HARTMANN/POOL PHOTO VIA AP; INSET, HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

A repentant Grning
awaits judgment. His
younger self thought
the SS dashing.

n a German court, the accountant of Auschwitz charged

with being an accessory to 300,000 counts of murder
declared himself morally complicit in the concentration
camps horrors. Grning, 94, voiced repentance but said his
guilt is such that he cannot ask for forgiveness. As concerns
guilt before the law, you must decide, he told Judge Franz
Kompisch. The case was to wrap up in the summer.
After being conscripted, the former bank accountant volunteered in 1940 to join what he called the dashing and zestful
Schutzstaffel. At Auschwitz, Grning kept records of cash that
he and guards took from prisoners. In November 1942, he watched
an SS soldier silence a crying baby by fatally dashing the infant
against a truck. He also saw prisoners gassed. Repelled, Grning
sought a transfer from the camp, eventually succeeding.
In April, Auschwitz survivor Eva Mozes Kor approached
Grning as he ate a cheese sandwich during a break in
the near-empty courtroom, the Guardian reported.
Mr. Grning, Kor said, I have much sympathy for
you. I know it is mentally, physically, and emotionally
hard for you, and I think you are courageous.
Grning nodded.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

11

W W I I T ODA Y

Bestiality on Exhibit

he American captives
assumed the men in
white smocks were doctors,
not science-minded murderers who intended to use
them like lab rats. They
never dreamed they would be
dissected, said Dr. Toshio
Tono, who participated in
the 1945 experiments as a
student at Kyushu Universitys School of Medicine in
Fukuoka, Japan. The schools
faculty is admitting the institutions stained history; since
April a campus museum has
included an exhibit on vivisection of American POWs.
On May 5, 1945, after a
Japanese fighter rammed
a B-29 near Fukuoka, the
bombers crew bailed out.
Japanese authorities captured
at least eight survivors and
turned the men over to the
medical school, where for 19
days doctors treated them
like lab animals, injecting
seawater to test a saline substitute, ripping out a mans
liver to see how long he survived, cutting into aviators
brains. All eight men in these

Six of these airmen and two

others, including Dale Plambeck
(inset), died in Japanese hands.
Far right, the medical schools
full POW vivisection exhibit.

experiments died.
Trying to evade judgment,
medical school officials faked
documents to indicate that
the men were transferred
to Hiroshima and killed in
the atomic bomb strike. But
the truth came out, and in
1948 the Allied war crimes
tribunal sentenced five university workers to death and
18 to prison. Occupation
commander General Douglas
MacArthur commuted the
executions and reduced the

sentences; by 1958, all parties

had gone free. Meanwhile,
the U.S. government told the
vivisected mens families they
were missing in action.
After a newspaper mentioned the experiments,
the mother of Lieutenant
Dale Plambeck of Fremont,
Nebraska, pressed the War
Department to come clean.
In November 1947, the

family got notice that Plambeck and fellow POWs might

have died in the experiments.
Confirmation came in January 1950. A government
letter declared it impossible
to pinpoint the day Plambeck
died. It is necessary, therefore, to accept 2 June 1945,
the latest date on which your
son could have been alive,
as the date of his death, the
correspondence stated. The
episode faded from memory
until Tono later published
a book, Disgrace, about
the vivisections.

-Responding to a dance video shot at a Black Sea memorial

to World War II (left)nostalgia for which Russian President

Vladimir Putin uses to justify aggression in Ukrainea Russian
court in April convicted two women and a teenaged girl of
hooliganism. The performance included a dash of twerking,
a provocative move in which dancers crouch and thrust their
hips at high speed.

-Researchers located the amazingly intact wreck of the

USS Independence 2,600 feet down off Californias Farallon

Islands. The aircraft carrier, which fought in the Pacic, was
a target during the postwar Bikini Atoll atomic bomb tests
before being scuttled. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric
Administration found the wreck using a Boeing submersible
and Coda Octopus sonar imaging technology.

12

WORLD WAR II

TOP LEFT AND INSET, WW2DB.COM; RIGHT, AP PHOTO; BOTTOM, HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

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WORLD

W W I I T ODA Y

Search Goes on for

Anne Franks Betrayer

he identity of the Judas

who gave up the Frank
family to German forces
occupying Amsterdam is one
of World War IIs enduring
mysteries. Suspects come and
goa warehouse manager,
a petty thief, a cleaning lady.
A new Dutch-language book
names a fresh suspect: Nelly
Voskuijl, sister of one of the
familys protectors. As in
previous instances, the
allegations are murky.
The four Franks hid
for two years behind the
Amsterdam offices of Otto
Frank, Annes father. Elisabeth Bep Voskuijl, his
typist, kept the Franks fed
until 1944, when German
authorities came for them.
Anne, her sister Margot,
and their mother died at the
Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. After the war,
Otto found Annes diary.
Published in 1947, the book
became an international sensation, but the snitchs identity remained a mystery.
The latest allegations
appear in a biography of
Bep by her youngest son and
a Flemish journalist. Drawing on testimony by a third
Voskuijl sister and Beps
wartime fianc, Bep Voskuijl:
Silence No More presents
circumstantial evidence:
Nelly easily got a visa to visit
Germany; a Dutch police
officer claimed that a young
woman fingered the Franks;
the Nazis never arrested Bep,
possibly a nod to Nellys help.
But the Anne Frank House
in Amsterdam does not see
any reason to accept the

14

WORLD WAR II

DISPATCHES

-A Czech TV reality show

WHO SNITCHED ON ANNE?

Ever since Anne Franks wartime diary came into public view
in 1947, Dutch authorities and armchair detectives have
been trying to identify the person who reported the Frank
family to Nazi officials, setting them up for capture and
deportation to the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
NELLY VOSKUIJL, latest suspect

A new book theorizes that the sister of the

woman keeping the family fed did it. But
among the slim circumstantial evidence
is Nelly Voskuijls obtaining a visa to visit
Germanysomething true of many.
TONNY AHLERS, petty thief and Nazi

In a 2002 book, The Hidden Life of Otto

Frank, Carol Anne Lee notes that before the
Franks went into hiding Ahlers was blackmailing Otto, Annes father, apparently for
doubting Germanys prospects in the war.
The evidence is far from conclusive.
WILLEM VAN MAAREN, warehouse manager

is drawing re for a series

in which contestants live as
if on a farm in 1939 under
Nazi rule. In Holiday in the
Protectorate, members of
an actual family contend
with crude plumbing, vintage tools, conniving neighbors, and actors portraying
door-kicking, night-raiding Nazis. The payoff for
enduring eight episodes:
as much as $40,000. Critics
say the show trivializes
Nazi atrocities in the actual
Protectorate of Bohemia
and Moravia, from which
the Germans deported
82,000 to concentration
camps. The show drew a
respectable 500,000 viewers.
Director Zora Cejnkova says:
We want viewers to ask
themselves, What would
I do in that situation?

The manager of a warehouse adjoining the

Franks hideout, van Maaren set traps after
suspecting something was up. Inquiries in
1948 and 1963 found no conclusive evidence.

LENA HARTOG, cleaner

Questioned in 1948, Hartog, who cleaned

Otto Franks building, did not reveal where
she worked. She reportedly knew Jews were
on the premises and feared her husband, a
colleague of van Maaren, would be arrested.

allegations. Visas to Germany

were easy to obtain; the story
of the female informer is
insufficiently substantiated;
and the Nazis also neglected
to arrest Miep Gies, who, like
Bep, helped the Franks.
The hunt will likely prove
futile, says David Barnouw,
retired historian at the Netherlands Institute for War
Documentation. The Franks

refuge was visible from perhaps 100 windows, he notes.

Maybe dozens of people saw
something moving in the
hiding place but kept their
mouth shut, he says. One
of them could have told it
to a friend and the friend
to another friend and the
last in this line could have
informed the Germans. So we
will never know, I am afraid.

Above, TV Gestapo come

calling. Below, tensions
ease between takes.
RIGHT (BOTH), CESKA TELEVIZE; CENTER (ALL), HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

WAR II

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W W I I T ODA Y
THE READING LIST

Jochen Hellbeck
Life and Fate

to preserve their Polishness, Poles

collaborated with the occupiers, joined
the partisans, or wrote journals
all of this, and more, is documented in
this engrossing diary kept by a physician
practicing in an eastern Polish town that
became an epicenter of World War II.
Inexplicably, Klukowskis vivid account
is out of print, but used copies are
available on the Internet.

Vasily Grossman (1959)

Most Westerners fall in love with

Russia after reading Tolstoy and
Dostoyevsky. I started with
War and Peace and went directly for
Life and Fate. Both came from my
fathers library, and heonce a very
young soldier at the Eastern Front
encouraged me to study Russian.
Grossman was a war reporter in
Stalingrad during themost critical weeks
of thecitys defense, and readers of his
epic feel this presence on every page.
Watch for the little-known prequel
(Stalingrad) to come out in English.

Leningrad Under Siege

First-hand Accounts of the Ordeal
Daniil Alexandrovich Granin (2006)

As if in a morbid laboratory, inhabitants of Leningrad whose diaries comprise this collection observe, day by day,
how hunger reduces their bodies and
chips at their efforts to remain human
amid a German siege more than two
years long. This abridged translation falls
short of the original Book of the Blockade
(published in Russian in 1979), but does
offer English readers selections in these
important wartime voices.

The Inhumanity of War:

Russia, 19411944
Willy Peter Reese (2005)

When the wartime memoirs of this

young soldier and aspiring writer
debuted in German in 2003 they were
rightly hailed as a sensation. Reeses
feverish writings about his experience on
the Eastern Front exhibit a wrenching
paradox: he hails the landscape and the
spirit of Russia, yet partakes in atrocities
against Soviet citizens; he laments the
destructive violence of war, yet yearns to
return to the front line where he would
be killed in 1944.

Diary from the Years of Occupation

193944
Zygmunt Klukowski (1993)

How Poland desperately fought before

disappearing from the map; how the
Germans imposed a rule-bound regime
of deportations and mass killings; how,

WORD FOR WORD

Japan today is one of

the predatory powers;
she has submerged all
moral and ethical sense
and has become frankly
and unashamedly
opportunistic, seeking
at every turn to profit by
the weakness of others.
Joseph Grew, U.S. ambassador
to Japan, memo to State Department,
September 12, 1940
16

WORLD WAR II

The Unknown Black Book

The Holocaust in the GermanOccupied Soviet Territories
Joshua Rubenstein and Ilya Altman (2010)

Vasily Grossman and Ilya Ehrenburg,

two Soviet Jewish writers, teamed
during World War II to chronicle Nazi
atrocities against Soviet Jews.
The Unknown Black Book presents
scores of eyewitness reports that did not
go into the original Black Book.
The horrors they describe defy the imagination and make for difficult reading.
This masterful edition sheds light
on a crucial, yet barely known dimension of the Holocaust.
Jochen Hellbeck, scion of West German
diplomats, grew up in Asia and Europe,
including ve years in East Berlin. In 1989 he
watched the Berlin Wall breached from
Bloomington, Indiana, where he was an
exchange student. He holds a Ph.D. in Russian
history from Columbia University and teaches
at Rutgers University; his most recent book
is Stalingrad: The City that Defeated the Third
Reich (Public Affairs, 2015).

ILLUSTRATION BY MIKE CAPLANIS; BOTTOM, LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

A Stranger to Myself

The 70th Anniversary of WWII Conference Series

Presented by Tawani Foundation in association with Pritzker Military Museum & Library

NOVEMBER 1921, 2015

The National WWII Museum & Hyatt Regency New Orleans
Join The National WWII Museum and top scholars as we explore the dramatic nal throes of World War II.
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The Battle of the Bulge I The Battle of Manila I The Air War: The Effects and the Ethics I Planning the Postwar World I Iwo Jima
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W W I I T ODA Y
rys breadth. A
movie set during
the Napoleonic
Wars lambastes
the French. A Boer
War epic points
out that the British invented the
concentration
camp. Fictional
Russian soldiers
slaughter a
German family.
The 1941 film
I Accuse
released as
the Reich was
murdering the
disabledportrays a woman
with multiple
sclerosis begging her
husband, a doctor,
to end her misery.
And Jews are, of course, targets; 1940s The Eternal Jew
compares them to rats.
Moeller interviewed historians, filmmakers, officials,
former neo-Nazis, and ordinary filmgoers about the

Some Nazi
lms have
inadvertently
hilarious
elements
like the singing
pilots (below)
in Stukas. But
virtually all
like Sss the
Jew (right)
display a wide
spectrum
of hate.

Nazi Propaganda
Films Get an Airing

azi movies werent

just anti-Semitic. They
were anti-British, anti-Russian, anti-Polish and antiFrench. German director

Felix Moellers documentary

Forbidden Films: The Hidden
Legacy of Nazi Film, screened
in May at New Yorks Film
Forum, reveals the catego-

Third Reichs poison oeuvre.

Germany still bans dozens of
Nazi movies by title, allowing
screening only with experts
on hand to provide context.
Much of the fare is ludicrous.
A wartime musical features
German pilots crooning a
mid-mission paean to their
Stukas.
Still, the
films seem
to retain
persuasive power.
Forbidden
Films shows a
modern-day
German filmgoer leaving
Homecoming, which depicts
Poles abusing ethnic Germans, convinced Germany
had grounds for its 1939
invasion. Perhaps that is why
an Auschwitz survivor interviewed in the documentary
says it is dangerous to show
such films to an unprepared
audience. Its better to be
too careful than not enough.

ASK WWII

A: After arriving at Tinian, the

509th Composite Group made
a series of unescorted practice runs over Japan by small ights
of B-29s, each dropping a single bomb. The ights revealed
that the enemy was reluctant to expend their dwindling ghter,
fuel, and antiaircraft resources. Our strange tactics served to
confuse the enemy, Lieutenant Colonel Paul W. Tibbets wrote

18

WORLD WAR II

In July 1945 Iwo Jima was

awash in P-51 Mustangs
that often guarded B-29s
but not the A-bomb planes.

in his memoir. Although air

raid sirens would sound when
we came overhead, ghter
planes were seldom sent up,
and antiaircraft artillery was
unable to reach our 30,000foot altitude. The presence
of P-51s likely would have alerted the Japanese that something
was up and attracted ghters, ak, or both. Jon Guttman
Q Send queries to: Ask World War II, 19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA
20176, or e-mail: worldwar2@historynet.com.

TOP, HISTORYNET ARCHIVE (ALL); BOTTOM, NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Q: We had P-51 Mustangs

based on Iwo Jima; did they
escort Enola Gay and Bockscar
on their ights to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki? And did
the Japanese have antiaircraft
guns that could reach B-29s?
John Worth Gamel, Louisville,
Kentucky

THE RING OF SOVIET STEEL around

Berlin inexorably tightened Adolf Hitler
chose to remain in the German capital and
there meet his ultimate fate...
On the 20th of
April, 1945, the
WS315 occasion of his
56th birthday, the
German leader made his last public appearance
outside the fhrerbunker of the Reichkanzlei.
There, in the ruins of what remained of its
garden, a small group of decorated Hitlerjugend
were presented to him.
Slowly and deliberately he went down the
line of young boys shaking hands with each
one and occasionally paing a cheek or squeezing a shoulder in encouragement. By his side was
the Hitlerjugend Leader, Arthur
Axmann.

SETTING THE SCENE

KING & COUNTRYS latest WW2 release
portrays that fateful day in April 1945 with
ve special new sets...
WS312 shows Hitler and HJ leader
Axmann greeting 3 Hitlerjugend standing at

WS312

WS318
aention. WS313
represents a section
of the Fhrerbunker, itself.
WS314 is one
of the Ventilation
Towers, situated
in the ruins of the
Reichkanzlei garden.
WS315 comprises
2 SS bodyguards.
WS318 provides
2 additional HJ boys
waiting in line to meet Hitler.
Together all of these sets make an original
and historic display of the nal desperate
days of Hitlers crumbling thousand-year
Third Reich.
THE TREEFROG COLLECTION

WS314
WS313

Conversation with Fiske Hanley II

Engineered to Last
By Michael Dolan

guest of honor at last

years Hollywood pre-

miere of the lm Unbroken,

about airman Louis Zamperinis ordeal as a POW.
Former B-29 ight engineer
Hanley, 95, knows in detail
what Zamperini endured.
He also was shot down,
taken prisoner, and tormenteda story he tells in
his 1997 memoir, Accused
American War Criminal.

You took to ying early.

I was born in Texas in

1920. I was five when Dad
gave me an 1890 silver
dollar that became my
lucky charm. Hed bring
me to the airfield outside Wichita Falls.
Once, a Ford Tri-Motor pilot said hed
take up passengers for a penny a pound.
Dad anted half a dollar and I made my
first airplane flight.
You pursued aviation in college.

I studied aviation engineering at North

Texas Agricultural College and Texas
Tech University. I became an aviation
cadet to stay in school until spring 1943. I
got my lieutenants bars in February
1944. The air force assigned us to B-29s,
but didnt have B-29s yet; we trained in
B-24s and B-17s and simulators. In
December 1944 my 504th Bombardment
Group crew moved to Herington, Kansas,
where we finally got airtime in a B-29.

Upon ying to Hawaii you learned

things you wished you hadnt.

A college friend on a generals staff told

me about operations Olympic and Coronetthe invasion of the Japanese home
islandsright down to the November 1,
1945, start date. I didnt want to know
that. Id be flying over Japan, and had
been trained that if taken prisoner I was
to answer interrogation questions honestly. But off we flew to Tinian. In the
combat zone there was no dress code. I
went with suntanskhaki shirt and trousers with a watch pocket where I kept my
lucky silver dollar. Our first combat flight
was to Iwo Jima to hit the airfield. Unfortunately, our bombs landed on the beach.
We left craters Marines were able to shelter in, so the Marines loved us.

That was a very new plane.

Oh, the B-29 was still quite experimental.

Those Curtiss-Wright engines would
catch fire. And if you didnt watch carefully, you could use more fuel than you
thought, and youd run dry. We lost an
awful lot of planes that way.
20

WORLD WAR II

Late March 1945 saw your crew

take on a very signicant mission.

My crew got orders to mine the Shimonoseki Straits. It seemed like such a
cinch our tail gunner stayed home. But
the Japanese had learned the Allies would

be invading Okinawa.
There were searchlights,
tracers, flak. It was terrible
and chaotic. Our engines
caught fire. The navigator
and the gunner were
killed; the copilot said the
commander and the bombardier were dead. The
only way out was through
the nose wheel well, but to
reach the hatch, that nose
wheel had to be down.
That required electricity
and hydraulics, and our
systems were shot. All of a
sudden the nose wheel
dropped. As the two of us
were jumping, a song was
in my head: Accentuate
the positive, eliminate the negative. I
landed on Honsh in a rice paddy
couldnt see anyone from my planeand
people were on me with bamboo spears
and what all. A policeman pushed them
back and took me away on a fire truck.
Were you okay?

I had bad shrapnel wounds to my rear

end, which I didnt realize until I got to
the mayors office and bled all over his
divan. Medics put a needle into my chest
and bandaged my wounds. To do this
they undressed me, but they didnt find
my silver dollar. Kempeitai officers
arrived and took me outside. I saw my
copilot and tried to talk with him, but the
Kempeis beat us. Next the Kempeis sat
me by a charcoal grill with irons set on
the coals. I thought, This doesnt look
good. I answered every question. The
Kempeis never did reach for those irons.
The Kempeitai moved you to Tokyo.

They crammed eight airmen and three

Japanese into a 5-by-9-foot cell. We

GUY ACETO

ISKE HANLEY was a

couldnt bathe or wash; we used a honey

bucket. Our overseer was a corporal,
Yoshio Kubayashi. We called him
Shorty. He would punch us and beat us
with clubs made of bamboo slats called
kendo clubs. For two months, they interrogated me daily, asking how it would
affect the American population if everyone in Japan was willing to die in a wall of
corpses. I would say, I dont know, all I
read is the funny papers. But they never
asked about Operation Olympic.

If POWs tried to talk

with one another,
the guards would
knock us around
with gun butts.

My silver dollar seemed to be a piece of

hope. When we were by ourselves I would
take it out and wed hold it.
Not many men have had college
reunions in the midst of a POW camp.

The Japanese considered all captive

B-29 crewmembers special prisoners.

They wanted me to sign something

admitting to war crimes. I refused, so
they gave me the treatmentknocking
me around, sticking me with bayonets,
hitting me with kendo clubs and gun
butts. That would happen if POWs tried
to talk with one another, too.
August 14, 1945, was a big date.

COURTESY OF FISKE HANLEY II

The emperor said Japan would surrender.

The guards took us through Tokyo to
Omori Island POW camp, and told us to
bathe in Tokyo Bay. You should have
seen these human skeletonsI weighed
70 poundshappy as the devil, splashing
around. Then the Kempeitai turned us
over to Camp Omori prison.
Conditions improved.

Ill say. Each of us had his own 2-by-6foot sleeping spot, with clean blankets.
We got full rations and then some, and
brand-new uniforms the Japanese had

I bought a beautiful Ford convertible, offwhite, tan leather upholstery, $1,400. Bill
Grounds and his wife knew several
American Airlines stewardesses. I was a
big hit with them. I married the prettiest
one, Betty Baker, in 47.
Aviation became your career.

What a desperate situation.

One day new prisoners came in. This

fellow sits opposite me. Youre from
Texas, he says. Youre Fiske Hanley! It
was Bill Grounds. Wed been in ROTC at
North Texas Agricultural College.

Your back pay went to good use.

His childhood interest in ying led Fiske

Hanley II to become an aviation cadet.

captured. We were tickled to death. I

couldnt believe my good fortune. All day
Marine and navy planes dropped food
supplies. A torpedo bomber opened its
bomb bay and dropped a huge load of
Mounds candy barsright into a cesspool, an awful disaster! On August 28, a
Marine fighter dropped a note reading,
Tomorrow you will be liberated. At
midafternoon six Higgins boats landed
carrying Marines armed to the teeth.
I was still badly wounded, and wound up
in a hospital on Okinawa.
Was your family aware of
what had happened to you?

One of the Texas newspapers let my

family know I was all right, but only after
getting to San Francisco in October was I
able to put a call through. My mother
answered, and I spoke with Dad. The next
day the Red Cross said I was being expedited home because my father was dying
of cancer. Dad died two weeks after I got
to the house. I can think of no happier
occasion, even getting married, than
being with my family again.

I took a job at Convair for $1.25 an hour,

and gradually moved up to flying B-36
bombers. Then I became an executive in
engineering. I was in my office one day
when this Asian fellow, Bill Hagase, came
in. He worked for General Dynamics,
which had acquired Convair. I asked how
he got into aviation. I was a kamikaze,
he said. I told him about myself, and he
explained that when he was 16, waiting to
fly and die, the war ended. During the
occupation he worked for an American
colonel who sent him to Texas Christian
University. He married a Texas girl and
went to work at General Dynamics. Once
in a while Bill and I do a presentation
where we talk about our individual wartime experiences and our friendship.
How were you able to process
that wartime experience?

As I was recovering from being a special

prisoner, I couldnt sleep. I got out my
college typewriter and typed out what
happened. Id take two or three pages a
day to the stewardesses, who edited them.
Kept at it, and that was that. Never did
talk with anyone about it. After I retired
from General Dynamics in 1989, I wrote
my 504th Bomb Groups history. Betty
died in 1992. In 97 I wrote my book,
Accused American War Criminal.
What was it like to watch Unbroken?

My wife Peggy and I attended the premiere. Louie Zamperini had just died; I
sat in his seat. The flak and torture scenes
bothered me. I saw it again in Texas. Now
when Im going to speak with a group
about the film, I say, Okay, you watch it.
Ill be happy to talk with you afterward,
but Im not going to watch that again. 2
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

21

From the Footlocker

Curators at The National World War II Museum solve readers artifact mysteries

My grandfather, Roger Elmer, served with the 39th Infantry Regiment, 9th
Infantry Division, after V-E Day. His letters home had a logo, A-A-A-O, on the
envelope and stationary. Id appreciate any information regarding this logo.
Kevin Elmer, Chicago, Illinois

In 1943, while fighting in Sicily, the

39th Infantry Regiment acquired a new
commander, Colonel Harry Paddy
Flint, who was somewhat eccentric.
Paddy Flint is clearly nuts, but he
fights well, Patton once said. To galvanize his mens morale, Flint introduced
a new slogan: Anything, Anytime,
AnywhereBar Nothing. He had
the slogan, abbreviated to AAA-0,
painted on helmets and vehicles,
despite a ban on distinctive insignia
that could alert enemy intelligence to
American units identities. The men of
the 39th proudly embraced the slogan,
using it as their main identifier. A
sniper killed Flint in July 1944 in Normandy, but the 39th Infantry Regiment
emerged as one of the European Theaters most successful American units,
with three Presidential Unit Citations
and awards from Belgium and France.
Brandon Stephens, Curator

This SS pin, which I acquired

at an antique market in
northern Italy, is slightly
larger than a silver dollar

with no markings on the back. I have

several books on identifying World
War II items, but this is in none of

seasoned cavalryman, Colonel Harry

1 APaddy
Flint (below) was 55 when he

them. Thank you for any help you can

provide. Casey Martin, Aviano, Italy

took over command of the 39th Infantry

Regiment in 1943, and gave it the
distinctive slogan that marks Corporal
Roger Elmers letters home (above).

PHOTO: 9THINFANTRYDIVISION.NET

would-be SS
2 This
pin is a clever fake
known as a fantasy
pin: not only does
the item itself not
stem from the Nazi
era, neither does
the design.

Unfortunately, this appears to be a

fake. No such pin was issued in Nazi
Germany. The collectors market for
Nazi regalia began to grow shortly
after the end of the war, and fakes
have become increasingly common.
Fakes of this type, which are similar to
actual Nazi pins but entirely invented,
are known as fantasy pins and were
produced to be distinct enough from
originals that the makers and sellers
could get around antiforgery and fraud
laws. The motto, Meine Ehre heisst
Treue (My honor is loyalty), was
the SS motto and has become popuSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

23

Footlocker

WWII SERIES
BASED ON
ACTUAL EVENTS

288 members hold a banner

3 Sonderverband
praising Allah and identifying them as
volunteers from Algeria. The man in the
foreground has the unit patch on his sleeve.

PHIL
WARD

I was active duty United States

Air Force and found this patch
on a visit to Venice, Italy, in 1989.
Originally thinking it was from

the Africa Korps, I took it to an Antiques

Roadshow visit in Tampa in 1999; folks
there steered me to a German militaria
expert who suggested the patch was
not from the Africa Korps, but likely from
one of the Nazi liaison groups to the
Middle Eastern nations. But he couldnt
nail down the country or unit associated
with the patch. Can you? Mark T. Cripe,
Tampa, Florida

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24

WORLD WAR II

The patch is that of Sonderverband 288,

an extremely specialized unit that went on
to serve under Erwin Rommel in North
Africa. The unit, formed in 1941, included
many Germans who before the war had
been living in Africa, India, and the
Middle East, and were fluent in a variety
of languages. Sonderverband 288, which
acted outside the Wehrmacht command
structure, comprised some unusual entities, including a print shop and a group
trained to use disguises to blend in with
local populations.
Sonderverband 288s mission was to

exploit anticolonial sentiment in the

Middle East and India to cut Britain
off from its colonies and the natural
resources they provided. Once British
resistance in North Africa collapsed, the
unit was to race through Egypt inciting
unrest and capturing oil fields and other
infrastructureperhaps even taking the
Suez Canal, to sever Britains shortcut to
the Pacific and British India.
When the German offensive in North
Africa faltered, Sonderverband 288
never more than 12 companies at its
largestwas reorganized into a Panzergrenadier regiment and helped cover the
German retreat. As an elite force, the regiment was often held in reserve to assist
other units; despite mounting German
losses, it fought with distinction. The unit
was disbanded after the Axis collapse in
Africa. Authentic patches of this type are
quite rare. Brandon Stephens
Have a World War II artifact you cant identify? Write to Footlocker@historynet.com
with the following:
Your connection to the object and what you
know about it
The objects dimensions, in inches
Several high-resolution digital photos taken
close up and from varying angles. Pictures
should be in color, and at least 300 dpi.
Unfortunately we cant respond to every query,
nor can we appraise value.

PHOTO: COURTESY OF GERHARD MESSELBECK

Maj. John Randal is back in Book VII

of the Raiding Forces Series. Raiding
Force is tasked with interdicting Field
Marshal Rommels Afrika Korps 1200
mile supply lines, the Via Balbia that
run along the Mediterranean Sea coast
line. To accomplish their mission
Raiding Forces reorganizes into two
squadrons-Raiding Forces Desert
Squadron (RFDS) and Raiding Forces
Sea Squadron (RFSS).
Download and read Chapter 1 of
Desert Patrol at raidingforces.com.

lar with todays neo-Nazi organizations.

Brandon Stephens

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Fire for Effect

Adapt or Die

AR IS Darwinism writ extreme.

Consider the
Luftwaffe, whose war began
well enough. Leading the
pack at rearming during the
1930s, Germany produced
modern fighter designs like
the Messerschmitt Bf-109, the
first stressed-skin, low-wing
monoplane in general production, and the very effective Ju-87 Stuka dive-bomber.
German pilots spent more
hours training in the cockpit than did counterparts,
and most tasted action in the
Spanish Civil War. The 1939
to 1940 Luftwaffe could boast
the worlds best planes flown
by the worlds best-trained
pilots. Employed mainly in close support
of the army, German air units intervened
decisively in Poland, Norway, and France.
But within a year, the wars unpredictable course handed the Luftwaffe a
mission it could not handle: controlling
the skies over the British Isles. Germanys air advantage was mainly the result
of an early start, and Britain soon caught
up. The Hawker Hurricane fighter was a
match for the Bf-109, and the Supermarine Spitfire, which arrived in time for the
Battle of Britain, was more than a match.
With Adolf Hitler opening new fronts
and making new enemies seemingly by
the month, things for the Luftwaffe went
from bad to worse: a continental-scale
campaign against the Soviet Union, an
intensive campaign against the Allies in
North Africa and the Mediterranean,
and the imperative to defend home skies
against Allied strategic bombers. An air
force designed to do one thingsupport
troops on the groundwas now multitasking, and not very successfully.
The Luftwaffe tried to react, rush-

26

WORLD WAR II

ing new planes into production. But

Luftwaffe 2.0 was a fiasco. The Heinkel
He-177, for example, was a high-performance bomber design. This plane had
a very complex power planta pair of
twinned engines, each twin driving an
extra-long, four-blade propeller. Oh, and
those engines tended to blow up at midair in level flight. Wary crews dubbed the
He-177 the Luftwaffenfeuerzeugthe
Luftwaffes lighter. The Germans also
rushed the Messerschmitt Me-210 aloft
before thoroughly testing that heavy
fighter; the 210 proved unstable in level
flight and prone to spin at high angles of
attack. Management had no choice but to
yank both models out of production with
no backstops or substitutes.
As innovators, German engineers
yielded to none, and over time they developed a phenomenal aerial stable: jets and
rockets and buzz-bombs and even a prototype ICBM. They built every manner
of craft: strange pushmi-pullyus like the
Dornier Do-335 Arrow and a jet made of
woodthe He-162 Peoples Fighter.

But after 1941, innovation

mattered little. Germany was
now fighting the worlds three
greatest industrial economies,
able to manufacture in ways
the Reich could only imagine.
The war had become one of
attrition, and Germany could
only mass-produce whatever
it had going at the moment
the Bf-109, a 1935 plane long
since bypassed as the state of
the art. Other possibilities
jets, in particularwere not
ready for prime wartime.
Even mass production was
no panacea. Germany could
not fight a troop-heavy war
in the Soviet Union and man
enough factories well enough
to keep up with the Allies. In
this realm, the Nazis displayed typical
brutality, enslaving POWs and concentration camp inmates on an unimaginable
scale. Gargoyles out of central casting like
SS Commandant Otto Frschner were in
command, working prisoners to death
in vast underground factories like the
Dora-Mittelbau tunnel complex near the
Nordhausen camp.
But slavery could not turn the tide. In
1944, Germany produced 34,000 combat
aircraft, compared with 1942s 13,000.
However, that year the Allies built
127,000 warplanes, 71,000 of them made
in the United States. And the numbers
ignore quality control, a decisive Allied
advantage as the war was ending.
From its peak, the Luftwaffe had slid a
long way, descending from a swift, gleaming, and deadly debut into a nightmare of
skeletal slaves chained to presses, grinders, and lathes banging out parts for one
outdated Messerschmitt after another.
The Luftwaffe had devolved.
Darwin was right. Wartime military
forces adapt, or they die. 2

ILLUSTRATION BY JASON GREENBERG

By Robert M. Citino

Time Travel

The Original Ground Zero

Story and photos by Aleta Burchyski

New Mexicos Trinity Site

reects the emptiness that
made it so attractive to
Manhattan Project planners.

TS EARLY MORNING on Saturday,

April 4, and Im cruising down I-25
alongside mountains, farmland, train
tracks, and the gentle course of the Rio
Grande. Im on my way to White Sands
Missile Range to visit a wind-worn crater.
There, a fraction of a second before 5:30
a.m. on July 16, 1945, an explosion equal
to 19 kilotons of TNT lit up the landscape with the daylight of 20 suns before
its blast column surged thousands of feet
high, sending winds that warmed distant onlookers like a fireplace. This was
a test, codenamed Trinity, and with it the
atomic bomb went from scientific theory
to world-changing reality.
As I drive, I use my phones compass
to play at spotting the test site. Its still
another 90 miles away, but thats nothing given the monstrous size of the blast.
Santa Fe railway engineer Ed Lane was
just down the tracks from here, in Belen,
when he saw the explosion. All at once

28

WORLD WAR II

it seemed as if the sun had suddenly

appeared in the sky out of darkness,
Lane recounted in Ferenc Morton Szaszs
The Day the Sun Rose Twice. There was
a tremendous white flash. This was followed by a great red glare and high in the
sky there were three tremendous smoke

Geiger counters notwithstanding,

radiation levels at Trinity are low.

rings. The highest was many hundreds

of feet high. They swirled and twisted
as if being agitated by a great force. The
glare lasted about three minutes and then
everything was dark again, with dawn
breaking in the east. I try to transpose
this vision onto the expansive blue before
me, but the desert defies all sense of scale.
The final stretch of road leading to
White Sands Stallion Gate makes clear
why the desert aptly named Jornada del
MuertoJourney of the Deadwas
a natural for testing an A-bomb. To
the east and west, respectively, the San
Andres and San Mateo Mountains contain a 27-plus-mile flat expanse of rock,
sand, and scrub punctuated only by
an occasional yucca. In 1945, adjacent
Socorro County had 11,422 residents
only about 6,000 fewer than today. If
you want to unleash an unfathomable
payload without destroying anything of
value while shielding the event from the

CENTER, NATIONAL ARCHIVES

outside world yet be able to observe the

blast from every anglewithin easy commuting range of Los Alamosthe Jornada has it covered.
Of course, the Trinity Test was still
at the mercy of the weather, wars most
irascible factor. Planners had very little
historic meteorological data and, like
many of New Mexicos high deserts, the
Jornada has its own particular weather
patterns. In March 1945, Trinitys new
chief meteorologist, Jack M. Hubbard,
had to pinpoint a window for testing
clear and dry, with calm winds and stable
atmospheric temperatures. To avoid a
tropical system, he recommended July 18
to 21; a higher-up set the date for July 16.
Right in the middle of a period of thunderstorms, wrote Hubbard in his diary,
what son-of-a-bitch could have done
this? That would prove to be President
Harry S. Truman, hoping for a big reveal
at Potsdam. Fortunately for Truman, rain
and winds subsided, delaying the 4 a.m.
ignition by only 90 minutes.
This April morning the Jornada is
in a haze, as it was prior to the test. Im
grateful for the softened glare as I crawl
through the hour-long entry line. Fierce
sun is why the site is open in spring and
fall instead of the July anniversary, when
temperatures in the 90s are typical.
Finally I reach the checkpoint and,
after a quick reminder not to take photos
anywhere other than the Trinity Site,
Im zooming past anonymous equipment shelters and silos dubbed Permanent High Explosives Test Site. Even as
I approach the parking lot adjacent to
ground zero, a line of cars is pulling out.
Its 9:30 a.m., an hour and a half after the
gate opened, and Im one of thousands
already here on pilgrimage.
Army ROTC cadets point me to a
parking space, and I follow the stream
of visitors to Trinitys ill-used sentinel: a
rust-colored, open-ended, bus-size cylinder called Jumbo. Before the test, project
scientists worried that a failed detonation
would waste precious fissionable plutonium. The solution: fit the bomb inside a
25-foot-long, 10-foot-wide steel cylinder

Jumbo, which
went unused, had
14-inch walls to
contain plutonium
if the test failed.

SEE MORE
ARCHIVAL
IMAGES IN
OUR IPAD
EDITION

Scientists and workmen prepare to winch the test bomb, known as the Gadget,
to the top of a 100-foot tower. A bunker to the west of the tower held instruments
(bottom right); the blast fused sand into glassy, green-gray Trinitite (bottom left).

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

29

from which material could be recovered

for a second test bomb. Jumbo was, as
test director Kenneth Bainbridge later
called it, the physical manifestation
of the lowest point in the Laboratorys
hopes. By the time Jumbo was ready,
the Manhattan Project plutonium reactors were in full swing and confidence in
the weapons design had grown. Jumbo
instead would experience Trinity 800
yards from ground zero.
The steel container survived the blast
unscathed, but not the postwar years.
In 1946, the army stuffed it with eight
bombs that blew out both ends. It was
buried until the early 1970s, when the
army unearthed it; Jumbo has been at its
current post since 1979.
I have to work my way through the
crowd to get a moment face to face with
Jumbo, which echoes with children running around its innards. It feels right to
acknowledge Jumbo this way, since it
resembles playground equipment and has
a playful nameand given that Trinitys
success rendered it obsolete in an instant.
The procession down the dusty quarter-mile path to ground zero is subdued.
Paces slow, voices hush. The final steps
into the 240-foot-diameter chainlink ring
feel weighted.

Los Alamos

The
Trinity
Site

Santa Fe
Albuquerque
25

40

NEW MEXICO
Stallion Gate Entrance

UT

AZ

CO

KS

NM

Area of
detail

TX

Trinity Site
White Sands
Missile Range
Alamogordo
50 MILES

Here humanity unleashed the atom

with a five-foot-wide spherical bomb
known as the Gadget. And here the New
Mexico desert proved the greater force,
almost immediately swallowing the evidence. The blast made a four-foot depression in the ground, melting the sandy
surface into a crust of green glass dubbed
Trinitite. The tower holding the Gadget
was reduced to an anonymous outcropping with a bristle of rebar. Today the
crater is indistinguishable from the surrounding desert, save for the fence protecting the craters remaining foot of
slope. Radiation levels at the site are low;
an hour there delivers about one-twelfth
the radiation of a chest x-ray.

WHEN YOU GO
The Trinity Site
Open House
takes place on
the rst Saturdays in April
and October, from 8 a.m. to
2 p.m. The Stallion Gate
Entrance, on U.S. 380, is 90
minutes from Albuquerque;
if youre coming from
Texas, consider joining the
convoy known as the
Alamogordo Caravan
(alamogordo.com/trinity-site/), which meets just
north of Alamogordo at 8
a.m. and enters White
Sands Missile Range on the
eastern side.

30

WORLD WAR II

WHERE TO
STAY AND EAT
Albuquerque has
ample amenities
for a quick trip.
For a longer stay, Santa Fe
is two and a half hours
north of Trinity and makes a
great base for exploring
northern New Mexico. One
tried-and-true day trip:
spend the morning at the
33,000-acre Bandelier
National Monument for an
easy-access taste of nature
and ancient civilization,
then swing through Los
Alamos for a lunch of

Mexican and northern New

Mexican fare at local fave El
Parasol (elparasol.com).
WHAT ELSE TO SEE
If you like dinosaurs, dont miss
Albuquerques
New Mexico Museum of
Natural History & Science
(nmnaturalhistory.org). In
Los Alamos, the Bradbury
Science Museum provides
an excellent overview of
both the Manhattan Project
and the global conict, as
well nuclear science in general (lanl.gov/museum).

The Trinity Site opened for visitors

in 1953; in 1965, the army marked the
center of ground zero with an obelisk
of local volcanic rock. That monument
has become a staple of visitor photos,
though the more apt symbol is the model
of Fat Mana plutonium bomb, like the
Gadget, used at Nagasaki three days after
another A-bomb destroyed Hiroshima
sitting nearby on a tractor-trailer bed.
After a lap around the fence, I return
to the parking lot and board the bus that
runs to and from the site where workers assembled the Gadgets plutonium
core. The 1913 McDonald ranch house,
3,400 yards southeast of ground zero, is
a haunting little homestead, with tumbledown fieldstone outbuildings and
derelict spans of barbed wire. One of two
remaining wartime structures, it feels
more like a ghost town than a part of
world history. The base camp, where personnel lived and worked before the test,
was disassembled shortly after. Concrete
shelters where scientists and others sat
front row for the detonation 10,000 yards
away were also demolished.
The other surviving building is an
instrument bunker 800 yards west of
ground zero, on the sites access road.
With one last look at Jumbo and the obelisk beyond, I drive to the bunker, clamber its sandy bank, and try to imagine its
larger siblings, stuffed with physicists.
North Oscura Peak looks on in the distance. I still cannot fathom light brilliant
enough to illuminate its night-shrouded
shoulders brighter than day.
Already this far south and with nowhere else to be, I did what a handful of
Trinity scientists did post-test and head
another hour south to relax and recharge
at Elephant Butte Lake State Park, a
24,500-acre man-made oasis that is hopping even so early in the season. I hand
over the $8 overnight fee and drive a mile
or so down the dune-swept shore to a
secluded inlet. There, I pitch my tent and
surrender to the diluted beats of country
music drifting from the campsites across
the water and the occasional splash of a
trout jumping at late-afternoon gnats. 2

MAP BY HAISAM HUSSEIN

Time Travel

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For the U.S. Navy

aviators of Task
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Hellcat pilots of VF-88
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32

WORLD WAR II

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

over coastal Honshthe main Japanese home islandU.S.

Navy Lieutenant (junior grade) Henry J. OMeara marveled
to see a Tokyo Plain so thickly studded with airfields that 10
or a dozen were visible from almost any point. OMeara, 21,
had experienced combat, but many of his fellow aviators in
the aircraft carrier Yorktowns Fighter Squadron 88 were getting not only their first glimpse of Japans heartland, but a first
exposure to aerial warfare. After plastering enemy fields with
tons of fragmentation bombs on July 10, 1945, OMeara and
mates were brimming with swagger. However, OMeara wrote
afterward, the fliers also were quite disappointed over the lack
of Jap planes in the air.
The war was clearly in its closing daysor was it? For months
the Army Air Forces had dispatched B-29s carrying incendiaries over Honsh industrial centers like Tokyo, Nagoya, Kobe,
and Osaka to ignite firestorms. And with the Okinawa campaign finally over, Pacific Fleet commander Chester W. Nimitz
at last unleashed Third Fleet commander William F. Bull
Halsey to pound Japan from its home waters with aerial attacks,

ON JULY 1, TASK FORCE 38, COMMANDED BY VICE

Admiral John S. Slew McCain, had sortied from the Philippines, zigzagging at 17 knots toward Honshs Pacific coast,
roughly 1,800 miles northeast. McCain and Halsey still were
feeling the lash of a court of inquiry that had assigned the two
primary responsibility for fleet damage arising from a June 5,
1945, typhoon. Twice in less than a year inquiry findings had
faulted Halsey for putting his forces in the track of murderous
storms. U.S. Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal wanted
to retire the Bull but backed off; removing so popular a leader
might boost enemy morale and prolong the war.
As historian Samuel Eliot Morison later put it, Bull and
Slew now had blood in the eye and a force to express that
wrath. Three task groups, each consisting of two or three large
Essex-class carriers and two light carriers, with battleship,

VF-88 commander Dick

Crommelin points out details on
a map to fellow Hellcat pilots
(from left) Buck Rogers, Maury
Proctor, and Joe Sahloff.

34

COURTESY OF HERB WOOD

From his
Hellcat

shipping sweeps, and even shore bombardment.

But imperial militarists had not laid down their swords.
Allied calls for unconditional surrender motivated the Japanese to fight even harder. Invading the home islands would
cost dearly. Japanese warlords had concealed several thousand
planes for use in kamikaze attacks, hoping to destroy 30 to 50
percent of the invasion fleet before the Allies could land. Third
Fleets objective was to apply relentless violence in hopes that
Japan would stand downbut, if not, lay destructive groundwork for an invasion. Aboard, most seasoned veterans longed
for peace and home shores, but many untested menespecially hotshot aviators like those of VF-88were eager to
square off with a foe, even one bent on a final showdown.

On July 24,
1945, carrierbased U.S.
Navy planes
from the Third
Fleet bracket a
camouaged
Japanese
cruiser with
bombs at the
enemys Kure
naval base.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Once, Japanese airmen had

staggered U.S. Navy aviators.
Now the Americans all but
owned the Pacific sky.
cruiser, and destroyer screens, dominated the horizon. Army
Air Forces B-29s and U.S. Navy B-24s reconnoitered targets.
Other land-based aircraft thwarted Japanese reconnaissance.
And U.S. Navy submarines ensured the task force made its
approach undetected, or at least unmolested.
The power and personnel on the decks and in the ready
rooms of the three task groups embodied years of planning,
design, production, testing, recruiting, training, deployment,
and combat experience. Once, Japans airmen had staggered
U.S. Navy aviators. Now the Americans all but owned the
Pacific sky.
Through the war, the navys aviation training command
had delivered rookiesnuggets, in aviator parlanceto
staff squadrons. A nugget was likeliest to survive and thrive if
he stuck with and learned from his flight leader. Of the 14 air
groups in Task Force 38, eight, including Air Group 88, were
making their first combat deployment and were dense with
nuggets. VF-88, Air Group 88s Hellcat fighter component,
had formed at Atlantic City, New Jersey, less than a year ago

and had joined Yorktown only two weeks earlier.

VF-88s Gamecocks reported to Lieutenant Commander
Richard Dick Crommelin. The Alabaman was one of five
Annapolis-schooled brothers who served in the Pacific, four
as aviators. Crommelin, 28, had flown with VF-42 off the first
Yorktown. During the May 1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, Crommelin, then a lieutenant (junior grade) jockeying a Wildcat,
had helped destroy a Japanese flying boat and downed two
Mitsubishi Zeros before being splashed himself. At Midway
that June, Crommelin helped defend the doomed Yorktown.
Twice awarded the Navy Cross and credited with 3.5 aerial kills,
he had precisely the credentials to lead a fighter squadron.
His executive officer, Lieutenant Malcolm W. Chris Cagle,
was another matter. The 1941 Annapolis graduate had served
two years on tin cans, as sailors called destroyers, before
undergoing flight training, then became an assistant flight
instructor, and only now was facing combat.
VF-88, however, could count on half a dozen transfers with
extensive fighting experience. Lieutenant Howard M. Howdy
Harrison of Columbus, Ohio, for example, had seen action
over Makin, Eniwetok, Truk, Palau, and Hollandia. According
to S. P. Walker, a press officer on Task Group Commander
Arthur Radfords staff, Harrison was easily the most popular
man in the squadron. Eight others qualified as much pilots,
in airman argot, because they flew radar-equipped F6F-5N
Hellcats like Henry OMearas. In thick weather, these aviators
often guided radarless Corsairs and Hellcats. Like OMeara,
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

35

AS A JAPANESE AIRCRAFT CARRIER ARMADA HAD

when nearing Hawaii in early December 1941, Task Force
38 used a weather front to mask its July 9, 1945, approach to
Honsh. At 2 a.m. the next morning, the three task groups
emerged, launched planes, and slipped back into the front
to avoid counterattack. Weeks of elaborate planning paid
handsome dividends. Virtually unopposedeven flak was
meagerAmerican pilots pummeled 12 Tokyo-area fields,
destroying some 109 ground-bound planes and damaging 231.
Out to sea, only two Japanese aircraft probed the task force.
Combat air patrols took out both. Flak did hit Lieutenant
(junior grade) Ray Gonzalezs Hellcat, but Gonzalez ditched
safely near a rescue destroyer.
Refueling and replenishment ate up two days. When weather
canceled sorties set for July 13 against northern Honsh and
36

WORLD WAR II

TBF Avengers
(top) ew
to the last,
bombing
enemy elds.
Japanese
ground crews
had disabled
these Zeros
(right) by
removing their
propellers.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

most in this elite cadre could claim at least some combat experience; two exceptions were the neophyte Lieutenants (junior
grade) Ted Hansen of Santa Cruz, California, and Bill Watkinson of Montclair, New Jersey.
Two squadron stalwarts had distinctive personalities. Lieutenant (junior grade) Maurice Maury Proctor was alert,
quick off the mark, and apparently unafraid of anything or
anybody, wrote press officer Walker. And Lieutenant (junior
grade) Joseph G. Joe Sahloff, from near Albany, New York,
thought to handle a Hellcat as well as any naval aviator, stood
out for his gangling physiqueas Walker put it, in flight gear
he looked rather like an aeronautical Ichabod Craneand for
chain-smoking fat cigars, even aloft.
More typical of VF-88s younger set were Ensigns John Haag
of Lewiston, Pennsylvania, and Herb Woody Wood of Tipperary, Iowacapable aviators in need of seasoning. Wood,
22, already had a wife and baby; for luck, he had sewn one
of his daughters booties to his leather flight helmet. Back in
February, as Intrepid, the carrier ferrying VF-88 to Hawaii, was
departing San Francisco, a squadron mate had awakened him.
Hey Woody! Get up! the man shouted. Were going under
the Golden Gate! Wood burrowed into his rack.
No, he said. Ill see it when I get back.
Two other VF-88 youngsters required especially close
mentoring: Ensigns Wright C. Hobbs of Indiana, nicknamed
Hybrid for his fascination with strains of corn, and Eugene
Mandenberg, in prewar days a reporter in Detroit. Neither, many squadron mates thought, displayed fighter pilot
demeanor or discipline. Woody Wood felt both were too
excitable. Bill Watkinson knew Mandenberg well, although
he had not flown with him, and liked him. But, as Watkinson
recalled, he had a reputation of being more interested in the
flora and fauna than flying formation.

Hokkaido, the large island to its north, Task Force 38 retired

east out of range. The ships returned the next day, July 14, to
conditions scarcely better but sufficient to sustain two days of
flights against coastal targets as well as a foray by cruisers and
destroyers to shell targets ashore.
For aviators, risk rose in tandem with foul weather. Flying
by instruments toward a target that day, Joe Sahloffs Hellcat
grazed Dick Crommelins. Crommelin disappeared, never to
be found; a shaken Sahloff completed the mission. Executive
Officer Chris Cagle took command of VF-88 on the eve of
yet another loss: Lieutenant (junior grade) Herman Pancho
Chase, downed near southern Hokkaidos Otaru Harbor and
listed as missing in action.
During refueling on July 16, a second group centered on
British carrier HMS IndefatigableTask Force 37joined
Halseys fleet. July 18 strikes saw Yorktown lose two aviators,
one of them VF-88s Lieutenant (junior grade) Theron Gleason, claimed by flak. The Fighting Lady retired east with
Task Force 38 for four days to refuel, rearm, and replenish

Left, VF-88 pilot

Howdy Harrison
celebrates his
rescue from
the Inland Sea.
Right, Bill
Watkinson
kneels on his
Hellcat as
another man
examines ak
damage.

COURTESY OF HERB WOOD

Cagle led wingman Ken Nyer

into an overmatched fight with
more than a dozen Japanese
planes. Nyer went missing.
and let aviators rest. I am mixed up on the [dates], Wood
wrote in his diary. I was so tired I never got to write.
VF-88s new commander was putting his stamp on the unit.
During squadron meetings, Bill Watkinson recalled, Cagle
invited suggestions from veteransbut his body language
made clear he wanted none. He was a bull, no questions
asked, said Watkinson, who had revered Crommelin but held
Cagle in low regard. After a July 24 strike, Watkinson remembered, Cagle led wingman Lieutenant (junior grade) Ken Nyer
to the wrong rendezvous point, embroiling them in an overmatched fight with more than a dozen Japanese aircraft. In the
ensuing melee, Cagle shot down two Mitsubishi Jack fighters
and got away, but Nyer went missing. In scarcely two weeks
VF-88 had lost its veteran skipper and three other aviators.
July 25 dawned soupy, limiting flights to airfield sweeps.
Enemy flak forced Howdy Harrison to ditch in the Japanese-controlled Inland Sea that separates Kyshthe southernmost home islandand Honsh. Maury Proctor and Joe
Sahloff saw their fellow airman escape to his emergency raft.
Back on the Yorktown, they pressed to guide a Mariner rescue
flying boat, known as a Dumbo, to where Harrison was bobbing. That would keep the task force within range of Japanese

counterattack, but the two got approval from the task group
commanders chief of staff.
The three planes plowed through overcast with a radarequipped craft from another carrier initially bird-dogging the
way. I could hardly make out Dumbo, Sahloff said. Often
I couldnt see Proctor at all. In the ponderous Mariner,
pilot Lieutenant (junior grade) George B. Smith, low on fuel,
could not climb above the murk. A Japanese destroyer escort
threatened Harrison until carrier pilots rockets and machinegun rounds drove it off. I could hear the A.A. and see the
smoke, Harrison said. Then it got quiet again. Finally the
rescue triada big St. Bernardwith a couple toy bulldogs,
as Proctor put itbroke through to clear sky pocked by puffs
of enemy flak from a coastal airfield. Smith set down on the
swells for a double rescue: his crew heaved a lifeline to Harrison and towed the Hellcat pilots raft astern while cruising on
to fetch Ensign John H. Moore, a Corsair pilot from the carrier
Shangri-La who had ditched nearby.
After 45 anxious minutes, with both Harrison and Moore
finally aboard, the Mariner lumbered aloft, droned to Task
Group 38.4, and set down, fuel tanks all but dry. Smith, his
10-man crew, and their charges were hustled aboard the
destroyer Wren. As the task group sailed east, 40mm gun
crews aboard Wren and a second destroyer, the USS Mertz,
scuttled the abandoned rescue bird.
ON JULY 31, A TYPHOON THREATENED TASK FORCE
38. A cautious Halsey called off strike operations and instead
had ships refuel while crews waited out the storm. Under
orders from Admiral Nimitz, Bull also dialed down his appeSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

37

AFTER REFUELING ON AUGUST 14, TASK FORCE

38 poised for two August 15 scenarios: an end to hostilities, or another pummeling of Tokyo. At 4:15 a.m., carriers
launched combat air patrols and assembled aircraft for strikes
and sweeps. Two hours later, with planes in the first waves
approaching targets, Nimitz ordered Halsey to suspend offensive operations: Hirohito had promised to surrender. McCain
immediately recalled planes aloft and canceled impending
strikes. Pilots able to do so jettisoned their payloads at sea
and turned back. However, others, both Yanks and Brits, were
already over Japanand fighting to stay alive.
)RXU+HOOFDWVUHWXUQLQJWRHancock may have been the first
$PHULFDQVDWWDFNHGLQWKLVZKLWHNQXFNOHFRXQWGRZQWRSHDFH
38

WORLD WAR II

VF-88 pilot and diarist Herb

Woody Wood with his plane
at Hawaii, months before he
and his fellow airmen tangled
with Japanese ghters over
Honshu on August 14, 1945.

COURTESY OF HERB WOOD

tite for Tokyo targets. The air force boys had unspecified but
major plans, so he put the force on a northerly course to hit
northern Honsh and Hokkaido.
News of the A-blasts at Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9 animated speculation. An airman who had
taken a physics course tried to explain atomic energy, but his
lecture didnt sink in, Watkinson recalled. The evening of
August 10, according to the Yorktown after-action narrative,
all hands were electrified when a radio broadcast reported
that the Japanese government had announced its willingness to
consider the terms of the [Allies] Potsdam ultimatum, provided Emperor Hirohito could keep his throne. Wrote Woody
Wood: We really thought the war was over for us today.
But, if anything, action over Japan grew fiercer. On a strike
the day Nagasaki was hit, Wood saw more A.A. than ever
before and VF-88 lost Lieutenant (junior grade) William B.
Dad Tuohimaa. In retaliation, We shot the hell out of the
yellow S of Bs, Wood recalled. That same day, while pathfinding for Corsairs, Bill Watkinson took a hit to his Hellcats port
wing that left a rip as big as a manhole. He limped to Yorktown,
circled as other recoveries played outstaying aloft more than
six hoursand made a jolting pinpoint landing.
Enemy pilots now seemed determined to fight. On August
8, the four aviators in Woods combat air patrol downed two
would-be kamikazes. One plane burned right in front of me,
the other spinning in at 16,000 [feet] and crashed in the sea,
he wrote. On August 9 airmen saw no enemy planes over targets, but at sea combat air patrols splashed 12 Japanese aircraft.
Bad weather ruled August 11 and 12, with strikes canceled
in favor of refueling. On August 13 aviators destroyed more
than 400 enemy planes parked near Tokyo; combat air patrols
downed 19 at seaa red letter day for killing enemy aircraft,
Halsey declared. But it was also the day VF-88s Lieutenant
Wilson Dozier crashed in flames after losing a wing. With
peace near enough to touch, such losses were especially bitter.

Jumped by seven Japanese, leader Lieutenant Paul Herschel

and mates downed a Zero and two Jacks, taking no losses.
At 5:45 a.m., Zeros jumped HMS Indefatigable Grumman
Avenger bombers escorted by eight Supermarine Seafires
naval versions of the Spitfire fighternear a chemical plant
QHDU VRXWKHUQ +RQVKV 2GDNL %D\ 6XE/LHXWHQDQW )UHG
Hockley, flight leader for five of the Seafires providing close
cover, went down in the first enemy pass. Meanwhile, three
WRSFRYHU6HDILUHVOHGE\6XE/LHXWHQDQW9LFWRU/RZGHQ
FRQIURQWHGDVHFRQG=HURHOHPHQW/RZGHQ6XE/LHXWHQDQW
7DII\:LOOLDPVDQG6XE/LHXWHQDQW6SXG0XUSK\FRPELQHG
WRVSODVKVL[DWWDFNHUVDQGGDPDJHWZRPRUH6XE/LHXWHQDQWV
'RQ'XQFDQDQG5DQG\.D\WZRRIWKHQRZOHDGHUOHVVFORVH
cover pilots, rallied to down a pair of Zeros.
The Avenger crews held course, fended off other Zeros,
dropped bombs, and flew back. All bombers save one landed
on Indefatigable; the other ditched near a friendly destroyer.
The seven surviving Seafire aviators, concerned foremost with
+RFNOH\VIDWHRQO\OHDUQHGRIWKHFHDVHILUHXSRQWRXFKLQJ
down. (Hockley had bailed out, but the Japanese quickly cap
tured him and that night executed him in secret.)
6KRUWO\DIWHUWKH%ULWLVK-DSDQHVHDLUEDWWOH+HOOFDWV
and Corsairs from Yorktown, Shangri-La, and Wasp were
DSSURDFKLQJ&KVKLWKH7RN\RDUHDVHDVWHUQPRVWFLW\7KH
HLJKW9)+HOOFDWVZHUHWRVSOLWLQWRWZRJURXSVDW7RNXUR
zama airfield, northwest of Tokyo. Two pilots would stay high
WRUHFHLYHDQGUHOD\DQ\FHDVHILUHPHVVDJHZKLOHWKHUHVW
Howdy Harrison, along with Maury Proctor, Ted Hansen, Joe
Sahloff, Wright Hobbs, and Gene Mandenbergattacked.
+DUULVRQVVL[+HOOFDWVZHUHORZRYHU7RNXUR]DPDDW
DPZKHQWKH\JRWWKHFHDVHILUHQHZV'HFDGHVODWHU7HG

En route from
its last wartime
station, the
USS Yorktown
steams by the
Golden Gate
Bridge in
autumn 1945.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

Lets get our fannies out of

here, Hansen thought after
learning of the cease-fire. Then
Japanese fighters attacked.
Hansen, who had been flying on Maury Proctors wing, told
an interviewer that he recalled thinking, Oh God, lets get
our fannies out of here. Seconds later 17 Japanese fighters
Kawanishi Georges and Nakajima Franks along with Zeros
and Jacksassailed the Americans from behind and above.
Harrison turned his flight into the attack and opened fire.
Hansen thought himself a goner, but during the first headto-head pass he splashed two Franks, one of them about to
ram him; Maury Proctor shot the wing off a third. Hansen and
Proctor lost track of Harrison, Hobbs, and Mandenberg, but
when they spotted a Jack on Joe Sahloffs tail, both swung to
starboard. From 700 yards, Proctor exploded the troublesome
Jack, but Sahloffs F6F was smoking and clearly in trouble.
Sahloff headed for the coast but was never seen again.
Proctor had planned to escort Sahloff home until tracers
bracketed his own Hellcat. Knowing Hansen was weaving
somewhere above him, Proctor slewed right, allowing Hansen
to shoot a Frank off his tail. When Proctor reversed, he spotted
two more bandits in flames and seven Japanese, six ahead, one

behind, aiming his way. Fortunately, the six ahead started to

climb, giving Proctor a killing belly shot at one. After ducking into clouds to elude the bandit on his tail, Proctor flew
coastward and tried to radio the other five fliers. According
to Proctor, only Ted Hansen respondedbut Hansen recalls
hearing nothing from any of the five. He eventually touched
down on Yorktown, certain he was the sole survivoruntil
Proctor landed five minutes later.
The wild fight over Tokurozama, World War IIs last substantial air battle, interwove victory, tragedy, and irony. The
six VF-88 aviators battled harsh odds to claim nine kills but at
the cost of four missingand finally presumed dead: Howdy
Harrison, Hybrid Hobbs, Gene Mandenberg, and Joe Sahloff.
The fallen on both sides died in the opening moments of peace.
In VF-88s scant month of combat, the unit lost 10 aviators.
For all of Air Group 88, including men lost during training, the
tally was 31. The newest Yorktown had deployed so recently
that its airmen and sailors remained in the Pacific until October
1945. Only then did the Fighting Lady sail for San Francisco.
Departing the Bay months before, Herb Wood had resolutely
ignored the crowds cheering from the iconic bridge spanning
the Golden Gate. This time, though, Wood was on deck, anticipating a welcome, only to realize that the homeland he had
defended had made a far swifter transition to peace than he.
When I returned, having lost all those buddies, he said
wistfully in a recent conversation, there were only six people
waving to us from the bridge. 2
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

39

RUSSIAS
ROCK
Though tormented in Stalins purges,
Konstantin Rokossovsky stood tall for
Mother Russia when it counted most
BY STUART D. GOLDMAN

Konstantin Rokossovsky, here

commanding the 1st Belorussian
Front, earned broad respect for
his even temper, penetrating
analysis, and battleeld savvy.

40

WORLD WAR II

RAI NOVOSTI/ALAMY

THE RED ARMY MARKED THE END OF THE MOST TERRIBLE WAR

IN EUROPEAN HISTORY ON JUNE 24, 1945. RAIN WAS POURING AS

THE VICTORY CEREMONY, IN MOSCOWS RED SQUARE, BEGAN WITH
TWO BATTLE-WORN CAVALRYMEN RIDING INTO THE VAST SPACE:

42

WORLD WAR II

...AND THE HORSE

YOU RODE IN ON

Stalin longed to lead

Victory Day from
atop a horse, but as
he trained in secret
his spirited Arabian
mount threw him.
Not mentioning
the mishap, Stalin
gave the white
stallion, and the lead
position, to Marshal
Georgi Zhukov.

SOVFOTO/UIF VIA GETTY IMAGES

Marshal Georgi Zhukov, mounted on a white Arabian stallion,

and, on a black charger, Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky,
the parades official commander. Stocky and pugnacious,
Zhukovthe most famous and the most decorated of Joseph
Stalins generals and deputy commander in chief of the Red
Armytook the imposing, handsome Rokossovskys salute.
From a reviewing stand atop the Lenin Mausoleum, Stalin,
the supremo, looked on as an honor guard hurled hundreds of
captured German battle flags at his feet.
The premier and Rokossovsky had met for the first time
early in the war years.
Were you tortured in prison? the dictator asked.
Yes, Comrade Stalin, Rokossovsky answered.
He needed say no more; in the late 1930s, Stalin himself had
ordered the arrest, torture, and killing or imprisonment of a
third of the Red Army officer corps, Rokossovsky included.
Despite the trauma of his years-long ordeal, once Rokossovsky returned to military service he resolutely stepped up for
Mother Russia, playing a key role in Moscows 1941 defense
and in legendary battles at Stalingrad and Kursk. In 1945,
he commanded one of the three Soviet armies that invaded
Germany. Many senior Wehrmacht commanders regarded
Rokossovsky as the Red Armys ablest general, a conclusion
echoed by the prominence his own country accorded him in
Red Square that solemn, soggy Sunday.
According to the most reliable account of Konstantin
Rokossovskys childhood, he was born in 1896 in a small town
in northwest Russia to a Polish railway worker and his Russian
wife. When the boy was small, the family moved to Warsaw,
at the time part of the Russian Empire. By 1910, both parents
were dead. In August 1914, their bilingual sonhe spoke Russian with a Polish accentenlisted in the tsarist army as a cavalryman, rising from private to noncommissioned officer to
junior officer and seeing action that got him wounded twice
and earned him three Saint George medals.
After the revolution, Rokossovsky joined the Bolsheviks;
his old cavalry regiment elected him its deputy commander.
During the civil war he was wounded, again, in hand-to-hand
combat. His renown as a cavalry commander was of a piece
with his looks: tall and broad-shouldered, with piercing blue
eyes. Many of his fellow horse soldiers were coarse and swag-

gering; Rokossovsky projected refinement and modesty.

He and Zhukov met in 1924 at the Leningrad Higher Cavalry
School, where they became friendly rivals. By 1930, Rokossovsky was commanding the 7th Cavalry Division, which
included a regiment Zhukov led. Evaluating his subordinate,
Rokossovsky characterized his classmate as willful, decisive,
persistent, and brimming with initiativebut also excessively demanding, stubborn, and pathologically vain. An
ironic reversal of fortune would cast Rokossovsky as Zhukovs

subordinate in the Soviet Unions greatest struggle.

As Rokossovsky and Zhukov were advancing in the
ranks, Stalin was consolidating political control. In 1928, he
unleashed at horrific human cost a radical program of rapid
industrialization and forced collectivization of agriculture.
Peasants resisted state takeover of their land; mass shootings,
deportations, and a man-made famine left more than three
million dead. In this atmosphere of violence and terror, the
pathologically distrustful Stalin sought ever more control.

Riding Polyusthe
PoleRokossovsky
(right) shows equestrian
elan, as does fellow
horse soldier Zhukov.
Accompanying are their
aides-de-camp on
matching steeds.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

43

ROKOSSOVSKY
ON LEADERSHIP
A RETICENT MAN strenuously
marked by the perilous times in
which he lived, the field marshal
was not inclined to candor. Even so,
throughout A Soldiers Duty, his 1968
memoir, appear flashes of the real
Konstantin Rokossovsky:
Soldiers are only human and it
is quite natural that, especially in
times of danger, they want to feel
a comrades support and see their
commander. Furthermore, it is
essential for the section commander
to see his men, to be able to
encourage one or praise the other,
to influence them and keep them
in hand.
We did our best to create a
favorable working atmosphere in
which there would be no place for
relations based on an as you say,
sir footing, no place for a feeling of
restraint in which people hesitate to
express views differing from those
of a senior officer.
I was glad that my assistants were
educated men in love with their
Continued on page 47

44

WORLD WAR II

RIA NOVOSTI/ALAMY

Always at ease in the

company of soldiers,
Rokossovsky solicited and
trusted his mens opinions.

In 1937 he issued orders establishing categories of enemies

deemed hostile to, or insufficiently supportive of, his rule.
He set quotas for each category and pressured the NKVD,
or secret police, to round up ever-larger numbers of victims.
From mid-1937 to late 1938, the NKVD arrested approximately 1.5 million people, of whom some 700,000 were shot.
Stalin struck at the army as Rokossovsky was heading a
cavalry corps. On June 11, 1937, the general read in Pravda
that the NKVD had arrested eight of the Red Army high commands most distinguished leaders on charges of treason.
The next day they were shot. Within nine days, the NKVD
arrested 980 more officers, including 20 corps commanders
and 37 division commanders. Most were shot after being
forced under duress to implicate others. The terror escalated.
In 18 months the NKVD executed three of five marshals of
the Red Army, the commanders of every military district and
all 11 deputy commissars for defense, the chiefs of staff of the
army, navy, and air force, 14 of 16 army commanders, all eight
full admirals, 60 of 67 corps commanders, 136 of 199 division
commanders, 221 of 397 brigade commanders, and half of the
armys regimental commanders. Of the U.S.S.R.s 75,000 to
80,000 military officers, 30,000 went to prison or the grave.
Few, if any, had committed a crime.
On August 17, 1937, it was Rokossovskys turn. The NKVD
arrested him, imprisoned him in Leningrad, and leveled the
standard accusations of sabotage, treason, and espionage.
Weeks of interrogation cost the accused general nine teeth
later replaced with steeland three cracked ribs; his inquisitors smashed his toes with hammers, ripped out his fingernails,
and twice stood him before mock firing squads. He did not
confess. Prosecutors bungled kangaroo court proceedings so
badlya co-conspirator they claimed gave evidence against
Rokossovsky had died in 1920that Rokossovsky escaped execution. He spent the next three years in prison near Leningrad.
In March 1940, following the Red Armys miserable performance against Finland in the Winter War, the NKVD released
Rokossovsky. His 1968 memoir, A Soldiers Duty, strikingly
says not a word about his arrest, torture, and imprisonment.
Rokossovsky told his daughter, however, that following his
1940 release he made sure always to have a pistol handy. If the
secret police came at him again, they would not take him alive.
Rokossovsky began rebuilding his career. A former comrade-in-arms, Commissar for Defense Semyon Timoshenko,
offered him command of a cavalry corps in the Kiev Military
District, noting that if war came, the Kiev sector would be crucial. Its commander was Rokossovskys long-time colleague
Zhukov, who had passed unscathed through the purges.
A rigid, by-the-book culture now prevailed in the Red
Army. The hardheaded, domineering Zhukov exemplified this
approach, which became a source of tension between him and
Rokossovsky. However, within months Zhukov departed for
Moscow to become chief of the general staff.

Zhukov (left) and Rokossovsky met

in cavalry school, from which they
graduated in 1925. Except during
the purge years of the late 1930s,
their careers often intertwined.

HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

ON JUNE 24, 1941, ROKOSSOVSKY DREW THE

GERMAN 13TH PANZER DIVISION INTO AN
ARTILLERY AMBUSH THAT SENT THE ENEMY
TANKERS REELING WITH HEAVY LOSSES.
Rokossovsky, 44, moved up to major general, assuming
command of a new mechanized corps that was made up of
two tank divisions and a motorized infantry division.
The lifelong cavalryman readily grasped armor doctrine.
True to the nature that had put him at odds with Zhukov,
Rokossovsky insisted that he would foster in each and every
officer an aptitude for independent and bold action.
However, though Zhukov was gone another vexing personality took his place. As a sector commander, the inept General
Mikhail Kirponos was far out of his depth. In spring 1941, with
the Germans massing troops on the frontier, Kirponos ordered
all his artillery units to a distant firing range for gunnery practice. Rokossovsky refused to send his guns and gunners away
from Kieva decision that would prove crucial.
In June 1941, when the Wehrmacht stormed into the
U.S.S.R., the Red Army all but collapsed. In three weeks, the
Soviets lost nearly two million men, 3,500 tanks, and more
than 6,000 aircraft. German commanders termed the Soviet

performance infantile. One reason was lack of preparation

Stalin had disregarded warnings of the German attack from his
own intelligence services and from foreign governments.
The purge also figured, claiming as it had so many able leaders. Yet the Red Army rebounded, and capable commanders
emerged. Besides Zhukov, many generalsIvan Bagramyan,
Vasily Chuikov, Ivan Konev, Rodion Malinovsky, Aleksandr
Vasilievsky, and Nikolai Vatutinhad avoided the purges.
Others tried to set aside memories of torment; 15 percent of
officers imprisoned in the purge fought Germany.
The most illustrious was Rokossovsky. Keeping his artillery
at hand paid off. Thanks to those big guns, the 9th Mechanized
Corps could hit hard. On June 24, 1941, for example, Rokossovsky drew the German 13th Panzer Division into an artillery ambush that sent the enemy tankers reeling with heavy
losses. All around, however, Soviet command, control, and
communications were dissolving. Stalin had forbidden retreat,
a diktat to which Kirponos blindly adhered even though Western Front commander Timoshenko personally told him to fall
back from Kiev to avoid encirclement.
Fighting in that pocket killed Kirponos and many other
senior commanders. The Red Army lost 650,000 men there
but not Rokossovsky, who Timoshenko had called to Moscow
and assigned a special unit. Initially comprising three tank
divisions and an infantry division, the Rokossovsky group
had broad authority. As Rokossovsky later recounted in A
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

45

Soldiers Duty, his orders empowered him to assume command over any other troops I met on the way to Yartsevo.

olling into the Russian heartland, German troops had

taken Yartsevo, east of the city of Smolensk, some 200
miles from Moscow. Rokossovsky checked the German
advance and helped stabilize the situation in the Smolensk
region. His troops temporarily repulsed the Wehrmacht,
retaking Yartsevo, but the situation remained touch-and-go.
In the face of a German tank attack supported by Stuka
dive-bombers, some frontline Soviet troops began to break and
rununtil they saw Rokossovsky and his artillery commander
in plain view of the enemy, upright and unmoving.
Wait! Where are you running? men yelled to those fleeing. Look at the generals! Theyre still there! Back! Soldiers returned to their positions and resumed firing. A Soviet
76mm battery knocked out several enemy tanks, the rest of the
German vehicles withdrew, and the attack ended.
Rokossovsky strove always to understand his troops. One
day, during the fighting around Smolensk, he crept to the front
line, where standard individual foxholes cratered the ground.
The general took the place of one of his soldiers in a foxhole.

In June 1941, a purge-ravaged

Soviet army could not keep
the condent Wehrmacht
from barreling deep into the
Russian heartland.

Instantly he felt alone. All around him men were dug in, but
Rokossovsky could neither see them nor feel their presence.
I was an old soldier and had taken part in many battles but,
to be quite frank, I was not at all comfortable or at ease in that
hole, Rokossovsky wrote later. I kept wanting to crawl out
and see if my comrades were still in their own foxholes; or perhaps they had abandoned them and I was alone in the field?
That day Rokossovsky ordered all his units to replace foxholes
with defensive trenches and sent Timoshenko a report to that
effect. Timoshenko endorsed the change and soon the armys
lines stiffened. German pressure, however, forced Rokossovsky to conduct a fighting withdrawal east from Smolensk.
Rokossovskys successful delaying tactics led to command
of the 16th Armysix tank and infantry divisions plus sundry
tank and artillery unitswhich was assigned a 30-mile front
along the route to Moscow, the Smolensk-Vyazma road.
Rokossovsky defended masterfully, inflicting heavy losses and
slowing the Germans, who found their momentum also being
sapped by an early, exceptionally brutal winter.
Meanwhile, Stalin was amassing reserves east of Moscow for
a major counteroffensive coordinated by Zhukov. The assault
began before dawn on December 6, 1941, spearheaded by 18

ULLSTEIN BILD/AKG-IMAGES

fresh divisions, 1,700 tanks, and 1,500 aircraft redeployed from

Siberia and the Soviet Far East, along with Rokossovskys 16th
Army and many other units that had been fighting the Germans for months. The devastating counterattack pushed the
enemy from the gates of Moscow to a line 100 to 200 miles
west and held the invaders there through the winter.
However, Stalin and Zhukov overreached, attempting
a major spring offensive without adequate preparation or
reserves. A powerful German counterthrust hurled back the
Soviet troops and steamrolled south toward Ukraine and the
Caucasusthe campaign that culminated at Stalingrad.
On March 8, 1942, Rokossovsky was at his command post
near Maklaki, a village southwest of Moscow, when an enemy
artillery round burst only yards away. Shrapnel badly wounded
him in the back. Evacuated by air to Moscow, he spent months
recuperating while the Germans began their southward thrust.
In July 1942, a recovered Rokossovsky assumed command
of the Bryansk Front: four field armies, a tank army, two additional tank corps, and a cavalry corps, facing German forces
near Tula and Voronezh, south of Moscow. In September,
however, Stalin suddenly summoned him and Zhukov to
Moscow and ordered them to fly immediately to Stalingrad to
assess that grave situation. After a quick inspection, Zhukov
told Rokossovsky to assume command of that front.
I requested that I be allowed to command the troops myself
within the spirit of the overall task set by GHQ, adapting to
the situation in hand, Rokossovsky recounted later. In other
words, Zhukov said with a smile, theres no point in my being
here? All right. Ill leave today.
Rokossovsky took over at once and set about examining his
new force and its circumstances. To inspect General Chuikovs
62nd Army, grimly holding the last Soviet foothold inside
Stalingrad, Rokossovsky and staff crossed the frozen Volga
on foot. Drawing enemy artillery and mortar fire and dodging shell bursts, now spurting forward, now doubling back,
we finally reached the other bank, Rokossovsky wrote. The
[62nd] Army occupied a narrow strip of land along the riverfront and the section of the city adjoining the river, of which
nothing remained but piles of rubble with the occasional skeletons of buildingsturned into impenetrable fortresses. A
vast area in front of the [German] defense line was dotted with
our damaged and gutted tanks: the dismal result of the hastily conceived and haphazard counterattacks into which our
troops had been thrown. We would make no such attack! We
would prepare the offensive thoroughly.
Zhukov, Rokossovsky, and their colleagues prepared an
assault that began with a two-pronged envelopment by armor
aiming at the enemys flanks. In mid-November, five days
of hard fighting forged the first slender bands of Red Army
encirclement, which gradually thickened, tightened, and doubled. An inner ring clenched General Friedrich von Pauluss
Sixth Army in Stalingrad; a second ring faced outward to repel

Continued from page 44

work, but what I liked most in them

was their ability to uphold their
views. This made me think twice
over a suggestion, and as often
as not I would end up by saying,
Youre right there, I overlooked
that point.
If you want to form an opinion
of an officer listen to what he says
about his subordinates. It is part
of the character of a good
commander to be able to define
his comrades contribution to
the common cause in the difficult
struggle with the enemy.

AND ON DEALING
WITH THE PRESS
...THE RETREATING NAZIS set
villages on fire and mined the
houses they had not burned down.
Major General A. A. Lobachev,
Chief of Staff Mikhail Malinin,
several other comrades, and I took
up quarters in one of these houses,
after demining, of course. We
unfolded our maps and were about
to get down to our work of taking
stock of the situation when some
correspondents burst in, followed
by several newsreel men with their
cameras. They filled the room, the
only habitable one in the house, and
it was quite impossible to work.
Something had to be done.
The defused mines suggested
an idea. A simple pulley clock
hung on the wall. Its proper
weights had been replaced by
cloth bags filled with some heavy
substance. Looking up, I remarked
that the Nazis planted all kinds
of booby-trapsa fact that the
newsmen knew only too welland
warned them to be careful not to
touch the clock.
My words acted like magic,
and in a few moments we were
able to go on with our work without
having actually turned the unwanted
visitors out.
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

47

attempts at relief. On January 26, 1943, Rokossovsky unleashed

an offensive that split the Sixth Army and crushed German
resistance. On January 31, he and artillery commander General Nikolai Voronov accepted von Pauluss surrender. At
Stalingrad, Germany and its allies lost as many as 800,000 men
killed, missing, seriously wounded, or capturedlosses from
which Hitlers army would never recover.

fter Stalingrad, the Red Army faced the Germans on

an enormous, nearly continuous front reaching from
the Baltic to the Black Sea. Toward the center, near
Kursk, a bulge in the Soviet line poked 120 miles west into
German-held territory. Rokossovsky, who commanded the
forces in that salient, expected the enemy to try to pinch off
the bulge and trap his men. In a detailed memo to the general staff he accurately predicted the exact axes of German
attack and recommended those areas be reinforced with dense
tank and artillery formations augmented by a multi-echelon
defense in depth and a very large reserve held well to the rear
of the salientprecisely what Zhukov did.
German preparations for the Kursk offensive were massive,
methodical, and obvious. Perhaps not since the Somme in
1916 had an attacker so blatantly telegraphed his intentions.
German forces slowly massed on the northern and southern

SOME BELIEVE STALIN WANTED TO

DENY ROKOSSOVSKY, WHO WAS PARTLY
OF POLISH DESCENT, THE GLORY OF
CAPTURING HITLERS CAPITAL.
flanks of the Kursk salient, but Hitler repeatedly postponed
the attack, awaiting delivery of more Panther and Tiger tanks
needed to defeat the Soviets fleet of stalwart T-34s.
Recapitulating their duet at Stalingrad, Zhukov had overall strategic command while Rokossovsky exercised battlefield command of the central front. On the night of July 4,
1943, Soviet troops captured several German sappers clearing
minefields. The captives claimed enemy troops were poised at
jump-off points for a 3 a.m. attack. Gambling that the prisoners spoke the truth, Rokossovsky immediately had his 500
heavy guns, 460 mortars, and 100 rocket launchers open fire.
The impromptu barrage, which disrupted the northern wing
of the German attack, began the Battle of Kursk, Germanys
last strategic offensive in the East. Rokossovskys prescription
for a defense in depth and large reserves proved decisive. Both
sides endured awful losses, the Soviets losing more heavily in

ITAR-TASS PHOTO AGENCY/ALAMY

Soviet soldiers carrying

an antitank rie and PPSh
submachine gun race past
a defunct enemy tank,
emblematic of the Red
Army pivot that drove
the Germans back west.

48

WORLD WAR II

men and machines. But the German army failed strategically

and had to retreat, a withdrawal that continued nonstop for 22
months, from Kursk to Berlin.
The Soviet surge forced the Wehrmacht into fighting
retreatsa German forte. Rokossovsky adroitly countered
every feint and parry, like a grandmaster at the chessboard.
He even bucked Stalin. In May 1944, the high command was
readying a broad offensive into Poland. With the boss present,
Rokossovsky urged a two-pronged assault at one sector; Soviet
doctrine demanded a single breakthrough point. Disagreeing
strongly, Stalin twice ordered him to step outside to think
it over. Rokossovsky stood his ground. After the premier
pressed a third time, an ominous silence overtook the room.
Stalin, who stood more than a head shorter than his general, reached up and patted the cavalrymans shoulder. The
front commanders insistence proves that the offensive has
been fully thought out, he said. This is a reliable guarantee
of success. And it was. The action was code-named Bagration
for General Pyotr Bagration, who brilliantly led tsarist armies
against the Poles, the Turks, and Napoleon. I have no Suvorov
[a legendarily undefeated Russian general of the same era],
Stalin said later. But Rokossovsky is my Bagration.

GALERIE BILDERWELT/GETTY IMAGES

y 1944 Rokossovsky was commanding the 1st Belorussian Front: 10 field armies, one tank and two air armies,
three tank, one motorized infantry, and three cavalry
corps, and naval craft on the Dnieper River. His mission was to
drive the Wehrmacht out of northwest Ukraine and Belorussia,
through Poland, and back into Germany. He had an advantage
in manpower of as much as four to one, and an edge in artillery and armor as high as six to one. On August 1, as his forces
approached the Polish capital, resistance fighters loyal to the
Polish government-in-exile25,000 strong but armed mainly
with light weaponsrose against Warsaws German occupiers.
Miles east, Rokossovsky halted his advance and satfor two
monthswhile the Germans slaughtered the Polish Home
Army and 30,000 noncombatants, leaving Warsaw a ruin.
Stalin almost certainly ordered this pause so the Nazis could
exterminate foes he otherwise would have had to face in postwar Poland. In his memoir, Rokossovsky sticks to the Soviet
line that his forces were exhausted, his supply lines overextended, and he could do nothing to help foolish Poles who had
risen up prematurely without consulting him or Moscow.
After the Polish Home Army surrendered on October 2,
1944, Rokossovsky resumed the offensive. On November 12,
however, Stalin phoned him to announce that Zhukov would
be taking over the 1st Belorussian Front and Rokossovsky
would shift to the less critical 2nd Belorussian Front.
This was so unexpected, Rokossovsky recalled, that I
blurted out without thinking, What have I done to be transferred from the main to a secondary sector?! Stalin tried to
placate him, explaining that both Belorussian fronts and Gen-

Zhukov (center) and Rokossovsky greet Bernard

Montgomery (black beret) in Berlin after a July
1945 ceremony decorating the Russian generals.

eral Konevs 1st Ukrainian Front would collaborate to assault

the enemy homeland. If you and Konev dont advance,
Rokossovsky quotes Stalin as saying, neither will Zhukov.
Instead, as the Red Army pushed into Germany in January
1945, general headquarters ordered Rokossovsky north, then
into East Prussia toward the Baltic Sea, then west along the
Baltic coast, while Zhukov drove west to Berlin. Some believe
Stalin wanted to deny Rokossovsky, who was partly of Polish
descent, the glory of capturing Hitlers capital. On April 30,
hours after Hitlers suicide, men of Zhukovs 3rd Assault Army
hung a huge red banner on the Reichstag. Three days later,
near the Baltic port of Wismar, Rokossovskys 3rd Guards
Tank Army linked up with British Field Marshal Bernard
Montgomerys Second Army. The war in Europe was over.
Rokossovsky had earned command of that Victory Day
parade. Soon after, Stalin made him Soviet viceroy in Poland.
Declared a Polish citizen in 1949, he was that countrys defense
minister for seven years. Zhukov became Soviet defense minister in 1955. Their wartime boss died in 1953. In 1961, Premier
Nikita Khrushchev had Stalins body moved from the Lenin
Mausoleum to an obscure niche in the Kremlin Wall. Rokossovsky was 71 when he died in August 1968; his ashes rest in the
Wall as wellin a place of honor. 2
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

49

Accompanied by a grim Bess

Truman, Harry S. Truman takes
the oath of ofce in the White
House Cabinet Room on April
12, 1945, some three and a half
hours after FDRs death.

CENTRAL PRESS/GETTY IMAGES; OPPOSITE, HARRY S. TRUMAN LIBRARY

War does not

tarry for any
mans death
not even a
commander
in chief s
Truman Takes Charge
BY JONATHAN W. JORDAN

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

51

N THE WHITE HOUSE Cabinet

Room at 7:09 p.m. on April 12,
1945, a short, bespectacled man
who thought he would be playing poker that night was holding
a Bible and repeating the oath of office
to Chief Justice Harlan F. Stone. Meanwhile, U.S. Army chief of staff General
George C. Marshall, Secretary of War
Henry L. Stimson, chief of naval operations Admiral Ernest J. King, and special
military advisor Fleet Admiral William
D. Leahy were preparing to explain to
an unplanned president what they had
been doing to win the war.
An hour and a half earlier, Harry S.
TrumanFranklin D. Roosevelts vice
president for all of 83 dayshad been
summoned to the White House and
directed to Eleanor Roosevelts second-floor sitting room,
where she delivered the news of her husbands death. Though
obviously shaken, the First Lady was, in her moment of grief, a
tower of dignity and strength. With the uplifting spirit that had
given heart to thousands of wounded soldiers and millions of

From AMERICAN WARLORDS: How Roosevelts High Command Led America To Victory In World War II by Jonathan W. Jordan. Published by arrangement with NAL Caliber, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division
of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright 2015 by Jonathan W. Jordan.

Americas poor, she stood and put her

hand on a shaken Trumans shoulder.
Is there anything I can do for you?
Truman asked her.
Is there anything we can do for you?
Mrs. Roosevelt answered. You are the
one in trouble now.
Harry Truman was, in nearly every
way, a different man from the glib
glad-hander who had ruled the White
House since 1933. Quick and plainspoken, he made no small talk, avoided no
question. At ease among close friends,
Truman lacked the instant familiarity
that FDR offered freely to one and all.
And unlike Roosevelt, he believed the
buck stopped in the Oval Office. As
Truman later told British foreign secretary Anthony Eden, I am here to make
decisions, and whether they prove right or wrong, I am going
to make them.

RUMAN HAD KNOWN the job of president might

be thrust upon him prematurely. In August 1944, FDR
had his new running mate over to the White House
for lunch and a photo session on the South Lawn. When he
got back to his Senate office, Truman told a friend that when
Roosevelt tried to pour cream into his tea, more went into the

JOURNEY TO THE END OF WORLD WAR II

APRIL 25, 1945: Secretary of War
Henry Stimson briefs newly sworn-in
President Harry
S. Truman on
the imminent
completion of
the most
terrible
weapon
in human
history, the
atomic bomb

APRIL 25, 1945

52

WORLD WAR II

MAY 8:
V-E Day;
troops in
Europe prepare
to move to
the Pacic

MAY 8

JUNE 7

JUNE 7: China
drives back Japans
Twentieth Army,
ending the last
major Japanese
offensive of the war

FROM LEFT: (MANHATTAN PROJECT PATCH) GUY ACETO, ARCHIVE PHOTOS/GETTY IMAGES, HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

It is very
important
that I should
have a talk
with you
as soon as
possible on a
highly secret
matter, the
war secretary
told Truman.

FROM LEFT: LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL LABORATORY, US ARMY, NATIONAL ARCHIVES

saucer than into the cup. He added, It doesnt seem to be a

mental lapse of any kind, but physically hes going to pieces.
The juggler, as FDR had called himself, refused to see the
pieces crumbling, and was, by his own design, the only man
who knew what the right and left hands of his administration
were doing. For 12 years he had fragmented information,
ignored jurisdictional lines, and overlapped responsibilities.
Secretive while being genial, concealing everything when being
garrulous, Roosevelt rendered no concessions to his political
or physical mortality by taking his vice presidentany of his
vice presidentsinto his confidence.
When deriding the qualifications of Roosevelts Republican
opponents, Truman had told the newspapers, To entrust the
winning of the war and the framing of the peace into the hands
of any man with a limited outlook and without the experience
needed for such a job would be the sheerest folly. Yet FDR
never showed Truman any of his secret cable exchanges with
Stalin and Churchill. Truman had never seen the White House
Map Roomwhere FDR charted the course of the waror
even been told of its existence. He knew nothing of Allied
strategy or the atomic bomb.
War secretary Henry Stimson knew the new president
would be laboring under the terrific handicap of coming into
such an office where the threads of information were so multitudinous that only long previous familiarity could allow him
to control them. After giving Truman several days to adjust,
Stimson felt one topic could wait no longer. On April 24, he
wrote the new president:
I think it is very important that I should have a talk
with you as soon as possible on a highly secret matter.

I mentioned it to you shortly after you took office, but

have not urged it on account of the pressure you have
been under. It, however, has a bearing on our present foreign relations and has such an important effect
upon all my thinking in this field that I think you ought
to know about it without much further delay.
Truman summoned his war secretary to the White House
the next day.
Acquainting Truman with details of the innocuously dubbed
Manhattan Project, which was working to develop a nuclear
weapon out of a laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, and
elsewhere, Stimson said the weapons destructive power made
it the most terrible weapon ever known in human history.
In time, he said, its secrets would undoubtedly spread to other
nations. Statesmen would be called upon to develop thorough-going rights of inspection and internal controls sufficient to prevent the weapon from being used irresponsibly.
With these controls, Stimson said, a new relationship between
mankind and the atom offered an opportunity to bring the
world into a pattern in which the peace of the world and our
civilization can be saved.
Stimson suggested creating an advisory committee on
the political and policy effects of the bomb, which Truman
approved. Stimsons Interim Committee included, among
others, himself, an assistant secretary of state, a navy undersecretary, and the incoming secretary of state, James F. Byrnes.
Stimson also invited four eminent scientists: J. Robert Oppenheimer, head of the Los Alamos complex, and Nobel laureates
Enrico Fermi of Columbia, Arthur Compton of Chicago, and
Ernest Lawrence of the University of California. Sitting with

JUNE 21:
After 82 days of
ghting, Allies
declare
Okinawa
secure

JUNE 18: Truman

approves November 1
invasion of Japan

JUNE 16: First A-bomb test, at

New Mexicos Trinity Site, succeeds

JUNE 16

JUNE 18

JUNE 21
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

53

A DEVASTATING NEW WEAPON UNLEASHED

JULY 24, 1945

JULY 25

them as guests were Generals Marshall and Leslie J. Groves,

military overseer of the Manhattan Project.
Stimsons committee met periodically throughout May,
holding its climactic meeting the last day of the month. Deferring to the generals on military matters, the scientists joined
in a discussion of the bombs effects. The gaunt Oppenheimer
described his vision of the hellish blast. The visual effect
would be tremendous, he promised. It would be accompanied by a brilliant luminescence which would rise to a height
of 10,000 to 20,000 feet.
Stimson said he preferred to use the bomb with no advance
warning, in an area sufficiently populated as to make a profound psychological impression on as many of the inhabitants
as possible. On this point there was little dissent. Oppenheimer went further, suggesting multiple simultaneous strikes,
though Groves argued that each individual bombing would
provide valuable information that could make subsequent
attacks more effective.
As Stimson recalled, the committee carefully considered
alternatives such as bombing an uninhabited area, or giving an
advance warning. A specific warning, they feared, might prompt
the Japanese army to move American prisoners to the target
area. Moreover, some in the administration did not believe the
bomb would work. Admiral Leahy, for one, called it a professors pipe dream. It might stiffen Japanese resistance if the
United States announced the development of a fantastic new
weapon and the fantastic new weapon turned out to be a dud.
Stimson had discussed ways of warning Japan and which
targets to use two days earlier with Marshall and Assistant
Secretary of War John J. McCloy. Jack McCloy had been Stimsons emissary, troubleshooter, and right-hand man since early
54

WORLD WAR II

AUGUST 6

1941, and he was one of the few men Stimson entrusted with
the full story of the atomic bomb. Marshall had suggested hitting a purely military target, such as a naval installation, with
the first bomb. He also believed some kind of warning should
be given to Japans citizens, designating a number of manufacturing areas that the United States intended to destroy with a
short time to evacuate. We must offset by such warning, he
said, the opprobrium which might follow from an ill-considered employment of such force.
Planning military operations around an unprecedented
weapon was not easy, given the veil of secrecy concealing
it even from those charged with its use. Admiral King, for
instance, could not tell anyone on his staffnot even his intelligence chiefsof the bombs existence. In early summer he
called in Captain William Smedberg, his intelligence head, and
told him, Smedberg, now this is very, very secret, what Im
going to say to you. I want you to go back and I want you and
your staff to work and in the next two or three days I want you
to tell me when you think the Japanese will surrender if the
most awful thing you can imagine happens to them in, say, the
next two or three months.
A baffled Smedberg returned to his office with no idea of
what King was talking about. The most awful thing you can
imagine, he supposed, was a big earthquake. Japan had a long
history with them, and he knew the Allies had discussed packing a line of freighters with explosives and detonating them
along a fault line. Perhaps that was what King meant.
On June 1, the Interim Committee submitted its recommendations to Truman, proposing to use the bomb against Japan
as soon as possible, without warning, and against a target that
would demonstrate the weapons devastating strength. With

FROM LEFT, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; HARRY S. TRUMAN LIBRARY

JULY 24: At Potsdam Conference in occupied Germany,

Truman informs Stalin of successful Trinity blast

JULY 25: Truman

authorizes use of
atomic bomb as soon
as weather permits
visual sighting of target

AUGUST 9:
B-29 Bockscar
drops Fat Man
on Nagasaki
The Soviet Union
declares war on Japan;
Soviet forces enter
northern China
AUGUST 6:
B-29 Enola Gay
drops Little Boy
on Hiroshima

AUGUST 8:
The Soviet Union
dissolves neutrality
pact with Japan

AUGUST 8

AUGUST 9

some discussion and hand-wringing, the committee reaffirmed its recommendation that the weapon be used against
Japan at the earliest opportunityon a dual target, namely, a
military installation or war plant surrounded by or adjacent to
homes or other buildings most susceptible to damage.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES (BOTH)

N A MONDAY AFTERNOON a little more than

two weeks later, Harry Truman sat at his desk and
listened carefully as Leahy, Stimson, Marshall, and
King spoke of death. Death the nation could expect to suffer in
Operation Downfall, the two-stage invasion of Japan.
The Joint Chiefs and General Douglas MacArthur had planned Operation
Olympic, the invasion of Japans southern island of Kysh, to commence in
November 1945. About four months
after that, they would launch another
invasion, Operation Coronet, against
Japans main island of Honsh. MacArthur would command the first invasion with an army of 750,000 soldiers.
For the second, he would lead just over
a million.
The question weighing on Trumans
mind was how many of those American
soldiers would be buried in Japanese soil
before the war ended.
Earlier that month, former president

Herbert Hoover had sent Truman a memorandum suggesting

that an invasion of Japan would cost a million American lives.
Truman forwarded the memo to Stimson for analysis, since
the Joint Chiefs had been working with a number closer to half
a million total casualtieskilled, wounded, and missing.
All these numbers were little more than guesswork. At the
June 18 strategy meeting, Marshall told Truman there was no
reliable projection of American dead and wounded. Considering only Kysh, the smaller of the two islands, Marshall
gave Truman a rather vague ratio of American and Japanese
losses, based on which he concluded that during the first 30
days on Kysh, American casualties
would not exceed the proportionate
price the nation paid for Luzon in the
Philippinesabout 31,000 casualties.
Of course, those casualties were only
a down payment. In the end, no one
could say whether the entire population of Japan would rise up against the
invaders in a national hara-kiri.
Leahy approached the question of
casualties from a different angle. On
Okinawa, he pointed out, American
forces suffered a 35 percent casualty
rate. He asked Marshall the size of the
force he planned to use for Olympic,
and the general replied that 766,000
troops would be used. No one got out

Weighing
on Trumans
mind was
how many
American
soldiers would
be buried in
Japanese soil
before the
war ended.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

55

a pencil and paper to do the math, and

King pointed out that Kysh offered
more attack options than Okinawa did.
But it was easy to see that if the Okinawa
ratio held, total casualties on Kysh
might top 268,000.
And Kysh, of course, was only step
one. Another 1.2 million enemy soldiers
awaited on Honsh, and that meant
more Americans would die.
Japanese military casualties would
depend on how many soldiers the
emperor fielded. The math itself was
easy: take the total number of Japanese soldiersthere were 350,000 on
Kyshand subtract a tiny fraction
of those left alive but too badly injured
to commit suicide. That would give the
number of Japanese combat deaths.
Civilian deaths could not be predicted, but, as in all wars, they
would be far more numerous.
Trumans war chiefs were divided on the wisdom of invasion. Planners for U.S. Army Air Forces commander Henry
H. Hap Arnold argued that conventional air bombardment
would bring Japan to its knees. By the time of the invasion,
General Arnold had predicted, there would be virtually no
industrial centers left; large portions of Japans major cities
would simply have ceased to exist.

Admiral Leahy believed a naval blockade, combined with air bombardment,

would force the island nation to surrender on reasonable terms. Nippon no
longer had access to oil or steel. It had
little in the way of food, and the Joint
Chiefs were considering a plan to drop
salt over rice paddies to spoil crops as
they were maturing. A blockade might
take more time and more money, but
would cost fewer American lives.
King agreed with Leahy. Letting fortified islands starve had worked magnificently for Rabaul and Truk. Blockading
Honsh would simply be a die on the
vine strategy writ large. King later
wrote of his private objections to invasion: I have said many times we (U.S.)
didnt have to get in such a fix if we
could merely wait for the effective Naval Blockade to starve
the Japanese into submission for lack of oil, rice and other
essentials. The Army, however, with its complete lack of
understanding of Sea Power insisted on a direct invasion and
occupational conquest of Japan properwhich I still contend
was wrong!
Marshall would not countenance a war lasting into late 1946.
As in Europe, he looked for the fastest and surest way to end
the fighting. And as with Nazi Germany, Marshall believed

THE FALL OF THE IMPERIAL JAPANESE EMPIRE

AUGUST 18: Soviet forces
land in northern Korea and
Japans Sakhalin and
Kuril Islands

AUGUST 15: Emperor Hirohito announces Japans surrender

AUGUST 15, 1945

56

WORLD WAR II

AUGUST 18

FROM LEFT, ASAHI SHIMBUN VIA GETTY IMAGES; HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

Japans
indifference
to casualties
convinced
Marshall
a blockade
would
lengthen
the war for
not months,
but years.

FROM LEFT, NATIONAL ARCHIVES; AMERICAN PHOTO ARCHIVE/ALAMY

Japans will to resist would be broken quickest by invasion, not

by blockade or bombardment. Fanatical resistance on Okinawa
and Saipan, Japans legendary contempt for surrender, and its
apparent indifference to the massive firebombing campaign
the U.S. Army Air Forces Pacific bomber commander, Major
General Curtis LeMay, had been conducting since March convinced Marshall that a blockade would lengthen the war, producing more casualties than would be avoided. Airmen shot
down and naval victims of kamikaze attacks, to say nothing of
Russian and Japanese casualties in Manchuria, would pile up
as Japan held out for months, perhaps years.
Marshall later described his mindset the day he urged invasion on Truman: We had to assume that a force of 2.5 million Japanese would fight to the death, fight as they did on all
those islands we attacked. We figured that in their homeland
they would fight even harder. We felt this despite what generals with cigars in their mouths had to say about bombing the
Japanese into submission. We killed 100,000 Japanese in one
raid in one night, but it didnt mean a thing insofar as actually
beating the Japanese.
However mixed their inner feelings, at the White House
meeting the Joint Chiefs appeared united. General Arnolds
representative, Lieutenant General Ira Eaker, fell in line with
Marshall, pointing out that air casualties would run about 30
percent per month if bombers attacked an enemy able to focus
all its domestic resources on antiaircraft defense. King voiced
general agreement with Marshall, and emphasized the importance of taking Kysh as a springboard for air and naval operations. Leahy, who had told the Joint Chiefs he would go along
with the invasion only if they persuaded President Truman,
questioned Marshalls estimates, but never openly disagreed

with Marshalls premise that invasion was a prerequisite to

Japans surrender.
Henry Stimson, recovering from a migraine headache that
morning, said he favored invasion. But before taking that last
step, he suggested that the Allies find a way to reach out to
what he called the submerged class in Japan. He believed
a silent majority opposed the war; this underclass would fight
tenaciously if their islands were invaded by white soldiers,
but they also might force Japan to give up before an invasion
became necessary.
After listening to his war chiefs, Truman summarized the
consensus. He said he understood the Joint Chiefs to be unanimous in recommending an invasion of Kysh in November
as the best solution under the circumstances. The chiefs said
they agreed.
With nothing left to discuss, the meeting began to break up.
As the participants stood up to leave, the president noticed
Jack McCloy standing silently off to one side. Realizing that
the undersecretary had not voiced an opinion, Truman asked
McCloy what he thought.
McCloy said they should look for a political solution that
did not require an invasion. Fixing his eyes on Truman, he
referred obliquely to the new weapon.
His reference to a new weapon brought shocked looks
from around the room. It was just like mentioning Skull and
Bones at Yale, McCloy said later. You shouldnt have said
that out loud, yet everyone knew it was there.
Jack McCloy had brought the atomic bomb into the question of Japans fate, and Harry Truman told his advisers to
sit back down.
They had one more item to discuss. 2

SEPTEMBER 2:
V-J Day: Japan
formally surrenders aboard battleship USS Missouri,
ofcially ending
World War II

AUGUST 28: Occupation of Japan,

under Allied Supreme Commander
Douglas MacArthur, begins

AUGUST 28

SEPTEMBER 2
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

57

A stylized drawing by Enola Gay copilot Robert A. Lewis (right)likely derived from
sketches at an August 4, 1945, brieng by the B-29s weaponeer, William Deke Parsons
shows the B-29s approach to the target, bomb release, and abrupt departure in a diving,
155-degree turn. Lewis quotes Parsons as saying, now lets look at these sketches, and
you will better understand this designed maneuver and why every second is critical. The
aftermath of the bombing was the most dangerous part of the mission for the B-29s crew:
no one knew if the massive bomber could withstand the shock waves from the blast.

58

WORLD WAR II

ALL IMAGES, BONHAMS,

EXCEPT WHERE NOTED

SHOCK AND AWE

PORTFOLIO

Pilots-eye View
Captain Robert Lewis preserved
an archive of an epic moment in history

THIS PAGE, COURTESY

509TH BOMB WING

f I live a hundred years, Ill never quite get

these few minutes out of my mind,
Robert A. Lewis wrote shortly after the
B-29 he was copiloting, the Enola Gay,
dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. In
August 1945 the condent and rambunctious
Lewis was 27, with sturdy, all-American good
looks and a reputation as a skilled pilot and
determined ladies man. Lewis had enlisted
in the Army Air Corps early in the war; electronics experience got him a gig testing
weapons systems on a bomber under development, the B-29 Superfortress. Another
pilot in the B-29 program, Lieutenant Colonel
Paul W. Tibbets, selected Lewis to join him in

a combat forcethe 509th Composite

Grouptraining in secret to use the bomber
to deliver a weapon of unprecedented power.
Lewis, later a settled family man with ve
children, spent a lifetime reecting on the
mission. He would place items on the dining
room table and then we would spend most of
our day together discussing them in detail,
Lewiss youngest son, Steven, recalled. The
elder Lewis gave the artifacts on these pages
to Steven; they went up for sale last April at
New Yorks Bonhams auction house, where
the collection brought in $112,000, and
offered a revealing look at one mans war
story. Karen Jensen

SILVERPLATE SPECIAL
On June 14, 1945, Bob Lewis ferried a modied B-29 known only as Superfortress 44-86292 to the
Utah base where the 509th Composite Group was training for its special assignment. Mission leader
Paul W. Tibbetsstanding at far right, next to Lewislater named the B-29 after his mother.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

59

PORTFOLIO

Ephemera from Lewiss historic mission

include shock wave calculations (top left)
and a drawing of the approach and
escape plans of Enola Gay and its two
companion aircraft (above). I was ying
the biggest of all bombers as if it were
a ghter plane, chief pilot Tibbets later
remarked. A rare color shot taken inside
the Enola Gay (left) shows radio operator
Richard Nelson at work at his position
likely during one of the practice runs in
Tinian in July 1945. Nelson, 20, was the
youngest member of the crew. After the
bomb detonated over Hiroshima and the
bomber successfully about-faced and
survived the shock waves, Nelson
transmitted a two-word code to mission
superiors: Results excellent.

60

WORLD WAR II

MAGAZINE COVER, TIME INC.

IN THE DETAILS

UNFORGETTABLE
En route, Lewis made notations in a log
(top) and detailed events in a notebook
(left), as he had agreed to do for William
L. Laurence, the New York Times reporter
covering the mission. Just how many
Japs did we kill? he wrote as Enola Gay
headed home. I honestly have the feeling
of groping for words to explain this or
I might say my God what have we done.
Lewis would become known for those
words, repeated by Time magazine (above)
on the 40th anniversary of the bombing.
Ill never forget that feeling, Lewis
reected a year before his death in 1983.
You could see a good sized city, then you
didnt see it anymore. It was simply gone.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

61

OOEn route to bomb

German troops at
Cassino, Twelfth Air
Force B-25s pass Italys
Mount Vesuvius. Its
March 1944 eruption
caused turbulence aloft
and did damage below.

62

WORLD WAR II

An
American
Bomber
Group
Takes a
One-Two
Punch.
First
Nature,
then
Nazis
By Richard R. Muller
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

63

Many young GIs in Italy from 1943 to 1945 were

making their first trips overseas, and the vivid traces
of ancient culture they encountered fascinated them.
Troops landing at Salerno in September 1943 gazed at the
awesome Greek temples at Paestum. A month later Naples fell
to the Allies. That battered gem quickly became a magnet for
tourists in olive drab, along with the Roman city of Pompeii.
That city was destroyed in 79 AD by Vesuviusmainland
Europes only active volcanoand subsequently excavated.
The volcano itself, just east of Naples, proved an irresistible draw. The Red Cross organized jaunts up the smoking
slope via funicular railroad. At the base, British and American
troops gaped at droolings of lava issuing from fissures, as
one American recalled. GIs drank volcano-made coffee; an
urn of java lowered into the lava crust emerged piping hot.
Volcanically toasted bread was popular. Souvenir hawkers did
a brisk trade in ashtrays made from coins pressed into blobs of
molten lava. GIs suspectedcorrectlythat not long ago the
same vendors had been selling versions bearing Nazi insignia.
Vesuvius had erupted periodically for centuries and inter-

OOGIs of the
Fifth Army watch
the volcano spew
ash and gas.

mittently emitted reminders of its power. Small disturbances

had been occurring more recently, but locals swore that when
Vesuvio, as they called it, was noisy, all was well; the time to
worry was when the mountain got quiet. Until March 1944 the
volcano had hardly figured in the war, except as a geographic
obstacle between Salerno and Naples. Once the Allies moved
beyond Naples, the region around Vesuvius became a quiet
rear area where pilots occasionally reported bumpy air caused
by thermals rising from the crater. At night a dull red creep of
lava mocked Allied blackout procedures by marking the route
to Naples harbor10 miles due westfor German aviators.
Many Allied units set up housekeeping in the vicinity. Just
east of the restive mountain, the 340th Bombardment Group
was based at Pompeii airfield, a new strip and a big improvement over the outfits previous field at muddy and overcrowded Foggia. Headquarters staff took over a villa three
miles from the flight line; lower ranks made do with requisitioned houses or tents. Group headquarters and
each of the four attached squadrons intelligence
sections captured the experience in detailed histories and war diaries. We found ourselves based
on a fine field cleared among orchards and vineyards, one such diary recorded. Vesuvius reared
up into a soft blue sky a few miles away, smoking
and steaming quietly. Used to eruptsomeone
had said. We all knew that was away back in dead
history somewhere.

nown as The Avengers, the 340thpart

of the Twelfth Air Forceflew the North
American B-25 Mitchell medium bomber.
The unit began its war in early spring of 1943 based
at Medenine, in southeast Tunisia, bombing Afrika
Korps chief Erwin Rommels supply lines. By years
end the crews were at Foggia, assisting the Allied
slog up the Italian boot. With a Distinguished Unit
Citation in hand the 340ths fliers thought they
were hot stuffthough even the hottest hands had
to admit the units bombing accuracy and formation discipline had slackened lately. Spells of bad
weather, inactivity, and boredom had dulled the
groups edge. Change was in order.
New Years 1944 brought relocation to Pom-

GEORGE RODGER, LIFE PICTURE COLLECTION/GETTY IMAGES (BOTH); ALL OTHER PHOTOS, NATIONAL ARCHIVES

flows like metal in a foundry. The towns of San

Sebastiano and Massa di Somma were being
overrun by the lava today, a stream 50 feet
high, slowly engulfing everything in its path.
Trees, a hundred feet away, suddenly swell and
burst from the expanding sap and are immediately consumed with fire. GIs hauled terrified civilians to safety, the impromptu convoys
blocked by camera-toting soldiers heading to
the lava flow the locals were trying to escape.
Near midnight the mountain seemed to
calm itself, but at 2 a.m. the crater began spewOOAs debris from the erupting Vesuvius darkens the skies, citizens ee for
ing pea-size pellets. By dawn on the 22nd, a
safer precincts. Towns at the foot of the slope were engulfed in molten rock.
black snow storm of ash was falling and the
missiles had grown to walnut size with occapeii field and a new broom. On January 8 Lieutenant Colosional baseballs, wrote Captain Everett Thomas of the 488th
nel Charles D. Jones assumed command, immediately laying
Bombardment Squadron. Lightning, a frequent accompanion rigorous practice missions and scrutinizing the results.
ment to volcanic eruptions, added to the spectacle. Bolts at the
Another skipper making the same demands might have raised
summit seemed to summon larger spouts of lava. Still, group
hackles, but Joness affable professionalism and high standards
headquarters, in that sumptuous villa some three miles from
quickly won converts. Soon Jones was whipping the group
the flight line, did not grasp the situation. Command staff
into its old-time condition of morale and efficiency, a war
instructed ground crews to keep the wings shoveled off and
diarist noted. By mid-January, the group was striking enemy
the planes protected as well as possible, Thomas wrote.
transport choke points in support of the Anzio landings. By all
Now the volcano was throwing superheated pyroclasts the
measures, performance dramatically improved.
size of footballs that shattered on impact to reveal glowing
On March 10, 1944, over the Littorio marshalling yards
white-hot cores. The phenomenon had passed a bit beyond
north of Rome, flak took down the bomber in which Jones was
the purely interesting stage, a droll ground crewman reported.
flying. Observers saw five of seven crew members parachute
Chunks of hot rock smashed plane turrets and cockpits, ripsafely before the blazing B-25 augered in. German radio soon
ping through fabric control surfaces. Despite frantic sweepannounced that the popular and esteemed Jones was a POW.
ing, heavy ash accumulated on wings and fuselages. Finally,
A week later the unquiet Vesuvius became even more so.
after several hours of confusing orders and counter-orders, the
Daily, the crater sent an enormous pillar of steam and smoke
groups personnel evacuated the shattered base, leaving behind
miles into the heavens; by night, huge lava spouts arced skynot only ruined aircraft but most of their equipment and perward. A new lava flow a mile long, a quarter mile wide, and
sonal possessions. In trucks and jeeps, the bedraggled convoy
eight feet deep began slithering toward Naples.
crept along roads covered by a foot of drifting volcanic ash.
Even so, Pompeii field seemed safe. From our side we could
By nightfall the worst was over. Civil and military authorisee only the usual bubbling red cone and silhouette, no lava
ties tallied 28 dead, mostly locals. The personnel of the 340th
flowing, one war diarist wrote. The 340ths new commandgot off very lightly; the only injuries were a broken nose and a
ing officer, Colonel Willis F. Chapman, decided to stay put.
broken arm. GI medics treated evacuated civilians. The sight
He wanted to keep attacking the enemy, and avoid tempting
of San Sebastiano horrified one British soldier. Where it had
Luftwaffe night raiders by crowding nearby fields. He also had
stood was nothing but a big slag heap of lava, and a memory,
faith in locals assurances. Flights of B-25s kept hitting targets
he wrote in a letter to his parents. Bombs make a terrific row
through March 20, as Vesuvius, in the words of a nervous
and leave ruins. Lava makes no sound and leavesnothing.
airman, continued to grunt like a giant pig.
The men of the 340th returned on March 25 to Pompeii field,
Events of March 21 called Chapmans judgment into queshoping to find only scorched paint and fabric and destroyed
tion. Vesuvius going stronger than ever, a squadron member
Plexiglas. But heaped tons of volcanic ash had twisted wings
dutifully recorded. At suppertime blasts were getting to be
and tail surfaces, reducing many bombers to scrap.
one continual rumble and just after supper it began to seem
German radio propagandist Axis Sally ballyhooed the disasthat the whole top of the mountain was going to come off
ter, claiming Germany had nature on its side. We got the
the lava started to come down our side, dropping in big hot
colonel, she crowed, referring to the captive Jones. VesuSEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

65

OOA B-25 whose fabric control surfaces have burned away stands useless,
above. Below, a crewman digs at cinders that nearly buried a ruined
planes aft machine-gun mount and destroyed its Plexiglas bubble. The
weight was enough to crush a tail assembly. At right, a ground crewman
sweeps a wing of debris; note how the nose wheel is off the ground.

66

WORLD WAR II

VIEW
MORE
IMAGES IN
OUR IPAD
EDITION

vius got the rest. German radio claimed the group had been
wiped out to the last man and ship. She was nearer right than
she knew on ships at least, one squadron historian lamented.

sh and soot sifted from the sky for weeks, but the
Avengers recovered swiftly. Only four days after the
evacuation the group was flying again from a field
near Paestum with six borrowed B-25s per squadron. Replacements returned the unit to full strength, using the latest model
B-25, by mid-April. All 88 Mitchells at Pompeii$25 million
worthseemed to be shot to hell, but maintenance crews cannibalized hulks until, by the end of April, they had 14 planes
in working order. From Paestum the unit followed the Allied
advance, relocating in late April 1944 to Alesan airfield on the
east coast of Corsica, so checkered with American bases that
crews nicknamed the island USS Corsica.
As the 340th resumed its attacks on German infrastructure,
the press of combat pushed thoughts of Vesuvius to the side.
Joness admonition to watch for enemy sorties became sidelined as well. Even unit war diaries noted that complacency
was again setting in. Aside from the occasional nuisance raider
or photo-recon snooper, the Luftwaffe had never brought a
serious attack to bear on the 340th at any of its bases. Protection by Allied night fighters patrolling out of other Corsican
fields added to the sense of invulnerability.
On May 12, 1944, the airmen gathered for movie night. The
popular 1943 comedy Holy Matrimony, starring Gracie Fields
and Monty Woolley, had men rolling in the aisleseven after
they saw tracer fire to the north, which they assumed was from
nuisance raiders. Like children, a squadron diarist recorded,
everyone enjoyed the sight of streams of incendiary rounds.
What 340th personnel were seeing was a heavy Luftwaffe
attack on Poretta airfield, 15 miles north and home to the
fighters that guarded Corsicas Allied bomber bases. The Germans, knowing an enemy offensive was in the works, had
coordinated efforts to disrupt Allied air cover for that attack
and take pressure off fellow defenders. The Junkers Ju 88
bombers that hit Poretta returned to Ghedi in northern Italy
to rearm and refuel, and set out againthis time for Alesan.
At 3:30 a.m. on May 13, a German pathfinder laid flares
among the bases dispersed B-25s, many of them brimful of
fuel and loaded with ordnance for the morning sortie. The
flares make the field appear as though there is a night baseball
game being played back home, a 489th Bombardment Squadron member wrote. I can hear planes overhead but cannot
see them. Enemy fragmentation and light demolition bombs
shredded the parked planes. Planes continue to burn, the
writer continued. It is a holocaust but an awe-inspiring one.
The Luftwaffe killed nearly two dozen men and injured
more than 75. Ground crewssome in slit trenches, others

caught in the opentook especially heavy casualties. Several of

the dead were new arrivals, their gear barely unpacked. Tightlipped airmen trudged to the medical tent to donate blood for
the wounded. Of the 65 B-25s the Germans hit, 30 were total
losses. Some Americans noted that Vesuvius had done worse
damage, but most agreed with a squadron diarists sentiment:
Vesuvius was bad but man wreaks much greater destruction
than nature. The string of funerals hit the 340th hard. Men
lamented their carelessness in days past, when wearing helmets and digging slit trenches was considered almost cowardly, a diarist wrote. Have we learned a bitter lesson? All
four squadrons resolved that if the Luftwaffe returned, the
Germans would find everyone at last dug in.
The 340th rebounded, mounting a mission the next day.
Colonel Chapman stayed in command, and welcomed the
newly freed Jones at wars end. In September 1944 the group
received another Distinguished Unit Citationand in time
became unexpectedly immortal. Eight days after the Alesan
raid, a replacement bombardier arrived. Lieutenant Joseph
Heller, 21, soaked up chatter about the attack, flew 60 combat
missions, and throughout took heed of personalities and
events on Corsica. In 1953 Heller began transmuting his war
into fiction; in 1961, Simon & Schuster published his novel
Catch-22, which became a bestseller and remains in print.
But that is another story. 2

OOA repair crew

hoists a fresh nose
into position to
replace one the
eruption destroyed.

WEAPONS MANUAL by Jim Laurier

Americas Atomic Bombs

The tools that made nuclear war a
reality had code names from fiction.
A fan of hard-boiled novelist Dashiell
Hammett, Manhattan Project physicist Robert Serber
dubbed one Thin
Man for a Hammett protagonist; a
second Fat Man, from The Maltese
Falcon, and a third Little Boy, as
world-weary Sam Spade calls a hoodlum. Thin Man went unused; B-29
crews dropped Little Boy on Hiroshima and Fat Man on Nagasaki. In
Little Boy, 10 and a half feet long,
28 inches wide, and weighing 9,700
pounds, a 6.5-inch cordite gun fired
a large piece of uranium-235 into a
smaller one to cause an explosion
equal to 12,500 tons of TNT. Nine
feet long and 59 inches wide, the
10,800-pound Fat Man detonated a
dynamite wrap to mash a plutonium
core and yield a blast equal to 21,000
tons of TNT.

As Fat Man hangs from a chain on Tinian Island, a worker

sprays sealant over puttied joints on the casing.

68

WORLD WAR II

No Direction Home
UHF antennas let crews
track bombs as they fell.

Armed and Dangerous

The red knobs are arming
plugs. The Naval Gun Factory
in Washington, DC, cast Little
Boys gun and breech.

Enola Gay pilot Paul W. Tibbets thought Little Boy, here being
loaded onto the B-29, was misnamed. It was a monster
compared with any bomb that I had ever dropped, he wrote.

PHOTOS: NATIONAL ARCHIVES (ALL)

Destroyers of Worlds

Little Boys Lineage

As each test bomb was completed,
workers stenciled on a production
number. To minimize risk of an accident
at takeoff from Tinian, Little Boy L-11
was armed aboard Enola Gay in ight.

Fat Mans F-bomb

The Fat Man team signed
their work. JANCFU stood
forpolitelyJoint Army
Navy Civilian Foul Up.
On their bomb, Little Boy
handlers added, Greetings
to the Emperor from the
men of the Indianapolis.

A Case of U-235
Both bombs steel casings were assembled
from components whose fabrication was
divided among three factories to keep the
design secret. Each bombs detonation style
called for a differently shaped shellhence
the long Little Boy and the round Fat Man.

Fins for Falling

Tail ns stabilized
the bombs in
descent. Expert
Tool and Die Co.
in Detroit, Michigan,
built the fairings and
mounting brackets.

HOW THEY
STACK UP
In explosive power, the new
weapons outdid standard
ordnance to an almost
incomprehensible degree.

The Competition

BOMB

GERMANY
SC 2500
German SC 2500
Introduced in 1940 during the London Blitz,
the 5,500-lb. Max, part of a family of cylindrical German bombs, was so heavy that it
often buried itself too deeply to inflict much
damage on intended targets.

British Grand Slam

Ten Ton Tess, which debuted in 1945, cost
cash-strapped Britain so much to build that
aircrews accustomed to jettisoning unused
ordnance on aborted missions had orders
to return with their 22,000-lb. Grand Slams.

BRITAIN
GRAND SLAM
U.S.
FAT MAN

TONS OF TNT*

1.5
7.5
21,000

*Equivalent

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

69

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REVIEWS
[

BOOKS

Friends with the Enemy

Adolf Hitler and the
Duchess and Duke of
Windsor (looking
down, center) had
a mutually solicitous
relationship.

17 CARNATIONS
The Royals, the Nazis, and
the Biggest Cover-up in History
By Andrew Morton. 370 pp. Grand Central
Publishing, 2015. $28.

ALAMY

ndrew Morton is what we reviewing hacks call a pathographera

biographer who specializes in his subjects personal shortcomings. For most
of his career, Morton has
confined himself to contemporary celebrities: boffo sorts
like Madonna, Tom Cruise,
and more British royals than
you can shake a jeweled scepter at. With 17 Carnations,
however, hes gone back in
time to the decades bracket-

ing the war. But hes still in the land of

celebrity pathology.
Carnations concerns the Duke and
Duchess of Windsor, perhaps the first
international celebrities in the 20thcentury style: victims or beneficiaries of
ubiquitous, global mass media. Wallis
Simpson was the ambitious American
divorce; Edward was the English ruler
who fell for her so hard that he abandoned his throne to marry
her in 1936.
Morton portrays both
Windsors as almost pathologically self-indulgent. When
war came, it impressed
itself on them mainly as an
inconvenience. To get the
duke as far as possible from

the action, Churchill appointed Edward

governor of the Bahamas, where he
mostly fretted about his villas in France,
quietly beseeching the Nazis to maintain
them unharmed. The duchess obsessed
particularly over bed linens. Discovering
that she had left behind a favorite green
swimming suit, she demanded the help
of American diplomats in securing its
return. They obliged.
Stupid and foppish royals are nothing newlike hemophilia, theyre just
another consequence of all that in-breeding. What made the Windsors singular
and what required Edwards appalled
family after the war to undertake the
cover-up in the subtitlewas their
romance with Hitler and his thugs. In the
prewar years, Nazi officials shamelessly
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

71

REVIEWS

flattered the duchess, addressing her as

Your Royal Highness, and treated the
couples prewar visits as state affairs.
Once war commenced, Hitler plotted to
kidnap Edward and install him as puppet
king upon Britains inevitable fall to the
German advance. Horrifying to contemplate, the duke might have obliged. As it
was, he spoke in private of the utility of
the Blitz as a way to force the British government to see reason and sue for peace.
What a shame that he is no longer king!
said Joseph Goebbels. With him an alliance would have been possible.
During the war, Morton writes in
this highly readable, slightly breathless account, Allied officials treated the
duke as they would any treasonous politician, like a Quisling or Laval in the
making, watched warily by both Washington and London. When the war
ended, he and his wife sank into political
and diplomatic irrelevance, celebrities
cast into genteel exile. It was probably a better fate than they deserved.
Andrew Ferguson is a senior editor at
the Weekly Standard.

By Victor Brooks. 256 pp.

Carrel, 2015. $34.99.
Toggling between home
front and battlefronts,
Brooks shows how history teetered on the
fulcrum of events during a year in which the
promise of victory proved brutally elusive.

STORMTROOPER
FAMILIES
Homosexuality and
Community in the Early
Nazi Movement
By Andrew Wackerfuss.
352 pp. Harrington Park,
2015. $90 hardbound, $35 paper.
If ever a subculture tested tolerance for
gays, it was the Sturmabteilung, a gang of
butch goons who helped Hitler take power

72

WORLD WAR II

The Popular Perspective

GRASSROOTS FASCISM
The War Experience
of the Japanese People
By Yoshimi Yoshiaki, translated by Ethan
Mark. 347 pp. Columbia, 2015. $45.

ostwar Japan, unlike Germany, has

had trouble finding a comfort zone
in which to discuss its wartime history.
When Yoshimi Yoshiaki, a professor of
modern Japanese historyadmired by
many but vilified by the
countrys vociferous far
rightwrote Grassroots
Fascism in 1987, he had on
his mind precisely Japans
need to engage in a deep
self-inspection following
German examples. Now
available in English with
an excellent introduction
by translator Ethan Mark,

[
THE LONGEST YEAR
America at War and at
Home in 1944

BOOKS

BRIEFS

the book demonstrates just how farreaching, complex, and oftentimes perfectly voluntary Japans wartime popular
mobilization was.
Grassroots Fascism weaves together
material from a variety of sources, including official documents, contemporaneous
diaries, letters, and postwar memoirs.
The book begins in 1937, with the China
War, and is divided into four chapters:
From Democracy to Fascism, Grassroots Fascism, The Asian
War, and Democracy from
the Battlefield. Yoshimis
definition of wartime Japanese polity as fascist might
be challenged, but he makes a
compelling argument throughout that Japans was fascism
under the emperor. The deep
involvement of politics in the
everyday life of ordinary men

and were rewarded for it with the Night of

the Long Knives.

LAST TO DIE
A Defeated Empire,
A Forgotten Mission,
and the Last American
Killed in World War II
By Stephen Harding. 288 pp.
Da Capo, 2015. $26.99.
Every war ends badly for one combatant.
In the Pacic, that was Sergeant Anthony J.
Marchione, as Harding ably chronicles.

THE COST OF
COURAGE
By Charles Kaiser. 278 pp.
Other, 2015. $26.95.
When France fell the three
Boulloche siblings joined
the Resistance, ghting
clandestinely through the occupation. They

kept their story untold until, through a family

connection of his own, Kaiser, a master
raconteur, winkled out the amazing details.

WAR CRIMES IN
JAPAN-OCCUPIED
INDONESIA
A Case of Murder
by Medicine
By J. Kevin Baird and
Sangkot Marzuki. 274 pp.
Potomac, 2015. $34.50.
With Japanese denialism stronger than ever,
it is appropriate that Baird and Marzuki raise
a cleansing wind of fact. In detail and with
rigor their book reveals the Greater East
Asia Co-Prosperity Spheres murderous
nature, which cost millions of Indonesians
their lives when Japan tried to avoid blame
for enslaving them by slaying them.
Michael Dolan is the senior editor of
World War II.

NATIONAL ARCHIVES

REVIEWS

and women does indeed make it seem

that Japanese society was, at the very least,
fascistic in character. Especially at the
wars start, most Japanese believed that
victory would bring a better future, and
enough of these people organized themselves to support a totalitarian regime.
Patriotic zeal sometimes became frantic, leading to fierce competition among
womens associations, with each group
enthusiastically recruiting members and
sending countless care packages to soldiers on the front lines.
Convinced that Japans war held
some higher meaning beyond territorial
aggrandizement, such as overturning
Western colonialism and white supremacy, too many were eager to overlook the
campaigns more destructive implications for those it supposedly was liberating. Yoshimi convincingly shows that the
apparently seamless whole encompassing
the home front, war theaters, and Japans
occupied territories was in fact highly
diverse. For example, enormous tensions
affected different minority and social
groups of the empire, as expected in the
administering of any massive region.
Yoshimi does not reserve his normative
judgment here: The order of imperial
fascism was built upon the blood sacrifices of many people who suffered discrimination and oppression.
This chronicle of wartime mentalities
from the bottom up is essential reading
for anyone interested in fascism conceptually and the Asia-Pacific Theater
of World War II. It testifies to Yoshimis
unflinching scholarship and his ongoing
quest to promote serious debate about
Japans wartime past, including his pioneering research into comfort women,
or sex slavesanother contentious
term that he valiantly stands by. Now
69, Yoshimi is a founding member of
the Center for Research and Documentation on Japans War Responsibility.
Eri Hotta is the author of Japan 1941:
Countdown to Infamy, which was selected
as one of the Best Books of 2013 in a nonfiction category by Kirkus Reviews.

BOOKS

Open Water Resilience

THE SHIP THAT WOULDNT DIE
The Saga of the USS Neosho;
A World War II Story of Courage
and Survival at Sea
By Don Keith. 382 pp. NAL Caliber,
2015. $27.95.

aking aerial scouting reports at face

value could mislead World War II
eet commandersand court disaster.
On December 16, 1941, for example,
Lexington dive-bomber pilots mistook
an abandoned dynamite barge for a
Japanese carrier. They bombed it
but missed. The Lex task force commander meanwhile detached eet oiler
Neosho, sending the vessel and its volatile cargo out of harms way. Nearly
ve months later, in the lead up to the
1942 Battle of the Coral Sea, Japanese
scouts mistook Neosho itself for a carrierand nearby destroyer Sims for a
cruiser. Carrier commander Chuichi Hara
trusted this aerial sighting because it
conformed to his expectations. Hara dispatched 80 strike planes due south to
destroy the would-be enemy. His real
opponentFrank Jack Fletchers Task
Force 17was over 300 miles northwest. Haras misstep gave Fletcher the
initial advantage in what, though a tactical draw, became an important strategic
U.S. Navy victory.
Most accounts of the Battle of the
Coral Sea treat the attack on Neosho
as a footnotea fateful lapse that Hara
ascribed to Japans victory fever.
Author Don Keith takes a different angle,
sticking with Neosho, Sims, and their
crews as they battle the
Japanese and then the
cruel sea and blistering sun.
The story is replete with
heroic endurance and selflessnessbut also human
failings and miscues. Keith
doesnt airbrush the inglorious. Instead, he balances

all elements to construct a satisfying

narrative with deep human interest
and cliffhanger appeal.
One caveat. Keith styles himself
a storyteller; in the authors note he
admits to putting words in the mouths
and thoughts in the heads of people
who may or may not have spoken those
precise words or held those exact
thoughts. He reasons that historical

The USS Neosho (center) avoided

damage at Pearl Harbor, but
wasnt as lucky in the Coral Sea.

sources are themselves subject to

inaccuracy; even rst-person accounts
decay with time. Hes right, but documented sources also anchor historical
storytelling and need not kill pace. When
Keith creates multipage dialogues (as
he does when Neoshos skipper delivers
nal abandon-ship instructions) they
sound contrivedand risk further muddying history. Other narrative devices
would have served better.
That said, Keith keeps his facts
straight, doing justice to Neosho, Sims,
and the men who fought courageously
in a crucial but unappreciated role at the Battle of
the Coral Sea. The Ship
That Wouldnt Die makes a
good readthough a grueling one. David Sears is
the author of this issues
lead story, White-knuckle
Countdown to Peace.

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER

73

Battle Films

Enduring the Unendurable

By Mark Grimsley

74

WORLD WAR II

TOHO COMPANY/THE KOBAL COLLECTION

N AUGUST 15, 1945, milsumoto) rises to respond, Okalions across Japan stared at
moto superimposes a clock, then
radios, listening in amazement to
the films title. The documentary
their emperors voice, reproduced
structure falls away and Japans
on a 78-rpm phono disc. Hirohito
Longest Day plays out as a drama
was reading an edict declaring that
intercutting the cabinet and
his military forces would surrenemperor as they make their final
der unconditionally. Many listendeliberations, the push to record
ers missed his meaningmost
and air the capitulation edict, and
commoners had never heard an
hardcore militarists plotting to
emperor speak and Hirohito, who
keep the emperors speech from
was using classical Japanese diffireaching the Japanese people.
cult for most of his countrymen to
It is impossible to continue to
follow, never actually said defeat
prosecute this war, Hirohito tells
or surrender. Afterward, an
the cabinet, voice halting as he
announcer drove home the godtries to control his emotions. No
kings stunning point. For the first
matter what happens to me . . . my
time in Japans 2,600-year history,
people . . . save my people. I can
the nation had met defeat.
no longer endure letting them
In 1967, Toho Company, Ltd.
suffer any longer. Kihachi photofamous in America for its Godzilla
graphs this scene carefully, hiding
franchisereleased Japans LonHirohitos face. Besides showing
gest Day, an account of the 24
deference to the emperor, this
hours before Hirohitos broadcast.
framing focuses our attention on
'LUHFWHG E\ 3DFLF :DU YHWHUDQ
Anamis reaction to his sacred
Little known in the U.S., this 1967 lm hews closely
.LKDFKL2NDPRWRZKRVHOPV
leaders declaration. When the rest
to the factual history of the 24 hours it chronicles.
LQFOXGHPDQ\ZLWK:RUOG:DU,,
of the cabinet is bursting into tears,
Minister Baron Kantar Suzuki (Chish
themes, Japans Longest Dayin the
the dry-eyed Anami, who knows of the
Ry). The diehards strongest voice is the
style of The Longest Day, its 1962 Hollywould-be coup, wears an expression of
empires war minister, General Korewood namesakefeatured an all-star
austere resignation. His heart is with the
HQVHPEOH OHG PHPRUDEO\ E\ 7RVKLU chika Anami (Mifune). Reluctant at best
hardcore militarists, but to join the resis0LIXQH-DSDQV-RKQ:D\QH7KHOP to accept surrender, Anami argues that
tance would be to defy his emperor, and
the Potsdam Declaration does not offer
closely based on fact, became Japans
he is too traditional a man to do so.
adequate assurance that the Allies will
VHFRQGKLJKHVWJURVVLQJOPRI
For the rest of the film, characters race
7KHWLWOHUHIHUVWRWKHJULSSLQJHYHQWV permit the emperor to keep the throne.
one another and time. The cabinet wranThe cabinet, he insists, must force the
between noon August 14, when Hirohito
gles over the edicts wording. Staff-level
Allies to be clear on this point. Because if
importuned his cabinet to end the war,
officers deduce what is underway and
that is not the case, the general tells the
and the following days *\RNXRQKV,
plot a coup dtat. Commanders at key air
cabinet,
fist
on
the
hilt
of
his
long
sword,
or Jewel Voice Broadcast.
bases Atsugi and Kodama vow to fight on
we must fight to the last man.
In a 21-minute documentary-style
by sending kamikazes against an AmeriUnable to decide even with Hiroshima
opener, Okamoto portrays the cabinet
can fleet off the coast. Anami, after sternly
and Nagasaki in radioactive cinders and
struggling to answer Potsdam Declarainstructing his staff to obey the emperor,
the Soviets invading Manchuria, the cabtion demands for unconditional surrengoes into foreboding seclusion.
inet finally meets with the emperor to
der, with the only alternative prompt
Okamotos juxtapositions can be starseek resolution. Suzuki, then Anami,
and utter destruction. The cabinet splits.
tling. Civilians, including many schoolpleads his case. As Hirohito (Haku MatA pro-peace faction centers on Prime
children, throng an airfield to sing an

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Battle Films

anthem of support for pilots preparing to

fly to their deaths. The song continues as
the perspective cuts to officials placing
the finished edict before the emperor,
who signs it. The recording session takes
place; the emperors men hide the disk at
the Imperial Household Agency. The
plotters invoke the impending kamikaze
attacks as they plead with General
Takeshi Mori (Shgo Shimada), commander of the 1st Imperial Guard Division, to join their coup. Rebuffed, the
conspirators murder Mori, forge orders
in his name, and transmit them to the
empires remaining forces. Imperial
Guard detachments surround the palace
and ransack the royal household looking
for Hirohitos surrender recording.
The coup begins to fall apart. The
guardsmen cannot find the record. The
forged orders origins come to light. General Shizuichi Tanaka (Kenjiro Ishiyama),

Live on, and work

earnestly, Anami
tells his companions.
In no other way
can the nation
be rebuilt.

commander of the Eastern District Army,

arrives at the palace to stop the plot for
good. In counterpoint, Anami, alone but
for two young subordinates, resolutely
prepares to commit seppukuself-disembowelment. He tells his companions,
who are there to witness his suicide, that
they must help to rebuild Japan. Each
and every Japanese must stand by their
station, live on, and work earnestly,
Anami urges the pair. In no other way
can the nation be rebuilt.
Anami kills himself. Separately, so do
the plotters, whose bodies are on screen
as we hear the announcers voice introducing the emperors recording. Japans
Longest Day ends not with an outright
rejection of militarism70 years on,
Japan has yet to come to terms with what
its aggression wroughtbut with the suggestion that for a new Japan to rise, the
old Japan had to die. 2

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Challenge

ANSWERS

Hollywood Howlers

to the May/June
Challenge

ANSWERS: FROM TOP, TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX CORPORATION; NATIONAL ARCHIVES; HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; HOWLERS, PARAMOUNT PICTURES; WHAT THE, HISTORYNET ARCHIVE; PATCH, GUY ACETO COLLECTION

What the?!?
Mine-clearing wheels
mounted on a 712th Tank
Battalion tank

Maps in the 2001 Stalingrad epic Enemy at

the Gates portrayed a Germany-dominated
Europe to a wildly inaccurate degree. One

goof in particular rises mountainously

higher than others. In what way did these
movie mapmakers really mess up?

Hollywood Howlers
The guns were 20mms
but the ak was 88mm

Name That Patch

The 69th Infantry
Divisionthe patch
forms a six and a nine
Congratulations
to the winners:
Robert Derrit, Garrett
DeMeyer, and Thom
Whitledge

Please send your answers

to all three questions, and your mailing address, to:
September/October Challenge, World War II
19300 Promenade Drive, Leesburg, VA 20176
or e-mail: challenge@historynet.com
Three winners, chosen at random from all correct entries submitted by
October 15, will receive the book The Ship That Wouldnt Die by Don Keith.
Answers will appear in the January/February 2016 issue.

What the...?!?
Name this apparatus.

Name
That
Patch
Which unit
wore this
insignia?
SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER 2015

79

WORLD

WAR II

Pinup

80

Gorgeous Dolores Moran had the looks

a caption in the November 23, 1944,

to make her a popular pinup, although

edition of the China-Burma-India Theater

they failed to propel her to fame in the

newspaper CBI Roundup read. Dont

lm industry. Not that any GIs complained.

you wish Dolores Moran would get out

Youve probably a feeling of nostalgia for

of the way and quit blotting out the

a California swimming pool, so thats the

background? the paper asked. Oh,

reason for this page one picture,

you wouldnt. Oh.

WORLD WAR II

HISTORYNET ARCHIVE

The View

REMEMBER AND HONOR

Holocaust Remembrance
Necklace and Earring Set

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My Paintings, My Memories,
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Book of Paintings

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Item# 19175 . . . . . . . Price: $14.99

USMC Honor
Guard 7 Statue

Red Poppy
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Scarf

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Price: $45.00

USN Crackerjack
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Red Poppy Remembrance Tie

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Enter promo *code MEMORY15 on the shopping cart screen to receive a 15% discount on your entire purchase.
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*Offer valid thru December 31, 2015. Offer not valid on Memberships, Gift Cards, Donations, or items already discounted.

Open Seven Days, 9:00 am-5:00 pm

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