← BACK TO VBC BLOG VVI and VVA 862 Vietnam Veterans Day Ceremonies VVI Ceremony - March 29, 2021 VVA 862 Ceremony - March 29, 2021

← BACK TO VBC BLOG How Desert Storm Changed Our Language and Culture Marines of Co. C, 1st Bn., 2nd Marine Div., move out on a mission after disembarking from a Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron 263 (HMM-263) CH-46E Sea Knight

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Four Chaplains weren’t the only heroes from the SS Dorchester tragedy. Stewards-Mate First Class Charles Walter David Jr., US Coast Guard Photo (Wikipedia) Charles David, Jr. was a Steward’s Mate on the USCGC,

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Up Close and Personal in a WWII B-17 Sperry Ball Turret Thanks to Carl Rectenwald for passing along this great 2-min video of WWII B-17 and B-24 Ball Turret .50-cals firing at the Big Sandy Shoot

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The “Six Triple Eight” Gets Overdue Recognition for Heroic Service in WWII Image from US Dept of Defense via history.army.mil A new film heralds the service of 855 Black women soldiers who comprised the

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Battleships Fired Their Last Shots 30 Years Ago This Month. How Did They Become Obsolete? Image via National Interest You can call the 20th century the “Century of the Battleship.” Japan’s stunning defeat of

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Navy’s First Black Female Fighter Pilot Image from the U.S. Navy via military.com Lt. j.g. Madeline Swegle made history in July 2020 as the US Navy’s first Black female fighter pilot. She completed

← BACK TO VBC BLOG “BRRRRRRRRRRT!” The Sound First Heard in Combat 30 Years Ago  At our VBC events, we often hear veterans talk about the beautiful zipper sound of the Warthog. Anyone in ground combat over the past 30 years

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Operation Desert Storm in 38 Photos From The Atlantic: A destroyed Iraqi tank rests near a series of oil-well fires during the Gulf War, on March 9, 1991, in northern Kuwait. David Longstreath / AP

← BACK TO VBC BLOG USS Pittsburgh (CA-72) Veterans Recount Losing the Bow in 1945 Typhoon The heavy cruiser USS Pittsburgh should live in fame as the ship that saved the carrier USS Franklin on March 19, 1945, after a devastating

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Last Civil War Widow Dies at Age 101 She never took her $73.13-a-month Veteran’s Pension. Helen Jackson sits with portrait of her husband, a Civil War Veteran. Image from cherryblossomfest.com Until three years ago,

← BACK TO VBC BLOG How Fast Can You Take Apart and Re-assemble a .50 Caliber Machine Gun? @Smag94_ is the account of Sarah M., who has a lot of cool TikTok videos about Basic Training and Drill Sergeant life. Here

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Story of Eugene Ely, the First Navy Test Pilot Ely at Tanforan Racetrack shortly before takeoff. Note the football helmet on his head and inflated bicycle tires over his shoulders. The tires were to

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Don’t Call Her “Marinette”: Dot Cole, the Oldest Marine, Dies at Age 107 Image from the Marine Corps Times. Dorothy “Dot” Schmidt Cole died on January 7 in her North Carolina home at age

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Surprising Map of US Military Overseas  Image from Smithsonian Magazine. Two years ago, Smithsonian Magazine published a great map put together with painstaking research of US military activities in 80 countries over six

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Red Cross Donut Dollies: Vietnam Vets Love Them . . . WWII Vets, Not So Much Donut Dollies image from coffeeordie.com I’ve decided my favorite branch of service are the Donut Dollies, nickname for

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Operation Desert Storm at 30 Years A Marine Corps M-1A1 Abrams main battle tank moves across the desert during the ground phase of Operation Desert Storm. Image via https://nara.getarchive.net This week marks the 30th

← BACK TO VBC BLOG What’s Up with the VA’s COVID-19 Vaccinations? There’s been much discussion at our VBC events lately about the VA’s COVID-19 vaccination program. Officially, the VA is only vaccinating veterans who:     Are over the age

← BACK TO VBC BLOG DOD's Top 90 Photographs of 2020 Sky Swirl - Marines prepare to bed down for the night after live-fire training at Fort Pickett, Va., July 18, 2020. This photo was created by stacking together 75

← BACK TO VBC BLOG To Understand a Military Veteran, You Must Know These Things We all get bombarded with email forwards of jokes, cat videos, and political rants. Usually, we delete without reading. But one forward recently came my way

← BACK TO VBC BLOG We want YOU to add to our Best WWII Movies Living Document! If you haven’t joined our Wednesday morning coffee hour in a while, you’ve missed a rapid-fire on-going conversation about war movies. We’ve been focusing

← BACK TO VBC BLOG How and Why Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas” Became the Best-Selling Record of All-Time “I’ll be home for Christmas” is the optimistic refrain of soldiers and sailors heading off to war. When war begins, few can imagine

← BACK TO VBC BLOG How a Cereal Toy Bo’sun’s Pipe Helped Launch Apple Computers In 1966, as war raged in Vietnam, Quaker Oats began putting little plastic Bo’sun’s Pipes inside boxes of Cap’n Crunch cereal. They called it the “Cap’n

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Japan’s Submarine Kamikazes in WWII You’ve heard of Japanese Kamikazes in World War II, but probably not Kaiten, the underseas version of the famous suicide attacks on Navy warships in 1944-1945. Kaiten was a top-secret manned

← BACK TO VBC BLOG It’s the Coolest Military Hat, but Only a Few Get to Wear It The slouch hat with the brim pinned on the side is an icon of the Australian military, and it used to be common

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Christmas in Corsica, 1944 by Genevieve Norwood, Army nurse This story comes to us from Rich Norwood (USAF, ret), whose aunts Genevieve and (right) and Katherine Norwood (left) were Army nurses in WWII. Genevieve served in

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Ask the Navy: What's the difference between a ship and a boat? PT Boat 109 commanded by LT John F. Kennedy The Navy, more than any branch, harbors mysteries. How long is a fathom? What is “gedunk”?

← BACK TO VBC BLOG WWII Veteran Spotlight: Henry Geyer Hated Every Minute of Building the Alaskan (Alcan) Highway, the Biggest Construction Project of World War II The monument at the starting point of the Alaska Highway Ten years ago, WWII veteran

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Our We Left As Brothers Documentary is Airing on WQED! The VBC is excited to announce that We Left as Brothers will air on WQED-TV on Saturday, November 21 at 10:00pm. In March of 2018, eighteen members

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Deuce-and-a-Half Truck That Won WWII and Kept Rolling for 80 Years Several years ago, WWII veteran Maury Deul declared at a breakfast, “I’ll tell you what won WWII: the deuce-and-a-half truck. That thing could go anywhere. I drove

← BACK TO VBC BLOG "Veterans Day," "Veteran's Day" or "Veterans' Day": Which Is It and Why? Here’s a grammar lesson for Veterans Day. Specifically, the proper punctuation of “Veterans Day.” Keep in mind, grammar is arbitrary and doesn’t make a lot of sense.

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Privilege Granted to Armored Division Soldiers in WWII...then Taken Away Here’s a an interesting, albeit useless, piece of WWII trivia: check out these photos of armored division soldiers in WWII. Notice anything unusual about them? Specifically, the way

← BACK TO VBC BLOG VBC Veteran Goes Viral on TikTok! Vietnam veteran and Navy Corpsman Ray Amelio is now a social media celebrity.  Unless you’re under 25-years-old, you’ve most likely heard about the social media app TikTok, but you probably have

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Halloween, WWII Style Several Octobers ago, I woke up, looked out the window and saw pumpkins smashed, some decorations strewn about the street, and my neighbor’s two-year old Bradford pear tree snapped at the lower trunk like an autumn

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Unlucky Charms: Candy So Scary, It Had to be Removed from MREs The military is awash in tradition. Challenge coins, the Court of Neptune, Mustache March. When bullets fly, folklore becomes psychic armor, offering magical protection as long as

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Photograph That Shocked America in 1944 (and its Pittsburgh connection) In October, 1944, Americans across the country opened their newspapers and saw this photograph of a B-17 Flying Fortress with a nose grotesquely flayed open by enemy anti-aircraft

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The U-2 Spy Plane is 65 Years Old and Still Making Headlines A few weeks ago, Chinese authorities charged that a US U-2 spy plane had violated Chinese air space during a People’s Liberation Army training exercise. The most

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Happy Birthday, Navy! Do You Know Who Your Father Is? Hint: Probably not John Paul Jones When I was in school, textbooks told us that daring Revolutionary War hero John Paul Jones was the “Father of the American Navy.”

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Say Goodbye to the Navy Peacoat On October 1, the US Navy completed the phase-out of the venerable Navy peacoat in favor of the “Black Cold Weather Parka.” The new parka is superior in every way: warmer, lighter, more

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Swept Away: Life and Death at Sea in WWII Jack Brawdy Lauren’s wonderful piece on the sound-powered telephone—a staple of any Navy or Cost Guard ship—triggered a memory of a tragic story shared by Jack Brawdy, a

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Forgotten Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima Video of the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, shot by Marine photographer Bill Genaust. 23 February 1945. Source: https://archive.org/details/CEP413 A few years ago, an amateur researcher named Eric Krelle

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Phone That Never Dies I bet everyone has found themselves in the precarious situation when your phone dies at the most inconvenient time. Half-way to your destination and forgot your charger? Lost! Chatting with your beau, he’s saying

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Beer Runs in WWII Look closely at this picture of a British Spitfire in World War II. Those aren’t bombs under its wing. They’re beer barrels. If you talk with a veteran long enough about their service, the subject

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Great P-38 Can Opener: Next to the Jeep, the Most Perfectly Designed Device in Military History Next time you’re talking with a Vietnam veteran, ask if they’re carrying a P-38. Chances are, they have one in their pocket.

← BACK TO VBC BLOG Happy Birthday, Air Force! Meet Your Grandfather, Professor Thaddeus Lowe and his Aeronautical Corps. General Henry "Hap" Arnold Thaddeus Lowe The “Father of the US Air Force” was General Henry “Hap” Arnold, the man who steered the branch

← BACK TO VBC BLOG The Four Essential Facts about World War II With stories, context is everything. When talking with a veteran, it helps to know about their time in service, their war. Without such knowledge, the meaning of their stories can get

The Only Color Footage of the Japanese Surrender Aboard the USS Missouri on September 2, 1945 Aboard the USS Missouri 75 years ago, Navy Commander George Kosco shot the only color footage of the formal Japanese surrender  His son, Colonel William Kosco, will join our program Wednesday night to