Doris Miller earned the Navy Cross for his actions during the Japanese attack on the US base at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. Now, the US navy is to honour his actions by naming a new aircraft carrier after him.
WWII
BEHIND THE IMAGE: Kristallnacht, by Charlotte Salomon, from Life? Or Theatre? 1940-1942
With its warm tones and bustling figures, this month’s image could – at first glance – appear almost to represent a scene of innocent activity. The truth, however, could not be more different.
REVIEW – Aerial Warfare: the battle for the skies
This book is written rather in the style of an excellent set of lecture notes produced by a diligent tutor. Frank Ledwidge, a Fellow of Law and Strategy at the Royal Air Force College at Cranwell, leaves very few stones unturned as he leads the reader through the complete history of manned and unmanned flight, quoting liberally from a wide range of authoritative sources.
REVIEW – The hidden places of WWII
Like a sort of Second World War smorgasbord, you can take a look and pull tasty morsels out of Hidden Places of World War II. After digesting these, you look for some more titbits. The wartime stories are all linked to places that can be visited.
REVIEW – Waiting for War: Britain, 1939 – 1940
Most Britons are proud of their country’s role in helping to bring about victory in the Second World War. There is nothing to be proud of, however, in the way the government and its agencies ran the first nine months of war, from September 1939 to May 1940 – the period known as ‘the Phoney War’.
The YB-40 Gunship
When the USAAF’s Eighth Air Force arrived in Britain in mid-1942, it was confident that unescorted formations of B-17 Flying Fortresses could make precision daylight bombing raids without suffering serious losses.
War on Film: 1917 reviewed
Just when you thought there was nothing else to say about the First World War after four years of commemorations, along comes 1917 – a hugely imaginative, totally immersive story set on the Western Front.
Midway on film
The Battle of Midway is the subject of a new blockbuster, directed by Roland Emmerich and starring Ed Skrein, Patrick Wilson, and Luke Evans. But this is by no means the first time that the event has caught the eye of film-makers.
Remembering the dead in the wildest of crash sites
The Brecon Beacons National Park is an unusual place for a commemoration. But in early November, it played host to a ceremony on the site where, in 1944, a Vickers Wellington bomber crashed, killing everyone on board.
REVIEW – Photographs of the Third Reich: Images from the Wehrmacht
Although its subject matter is Germany, this slim volume is packed full of photographs garnered by the author from around the world, from the USA to such surprising places as Argentina, Turkey, and Israel.
Advertisement