By Bob Von Bargen Few veterans today remember the phrase "purple suit." I was reminded of that recently after giving a presentation on the origins of Armed Forces Day. At the end, I asked the audience whether anyone remembered the expression. No one did. That surprised me because, for many of us, "putting on
By Todd DePastino On December 17, 1944, hundreds of American bombers crossed Central Europe on a mission against Nazi Germany’s synthetic fuel industry. One of them, a B-24J Liberator known only by the number painted on its fuselage—“White 47”—never returned. The airplane broke apart nearly five miles above Silesia and fell into a snowy
By Jay Lacklen By 1976, Air Force pilot Jay Lacklen had spent years flying one of the largest and most demanding aircraft in the U.S. inventory, the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress. In the excerpt below from his memoir Flying the Line: An Air Force Pilot's Journey, he recalls two flights that nearly ended in disaster.
The Berlin Airlift lasted only fifteen months, from June 1948 to September 1949, yet it changed the course of modern history. It demonstrated that the Western Allies could resist Soviet expansion without firing a shot, sustained more than two million West Berliners through one of the Cold War's first great crises, and laid the
By Todd DePastino As I circulated at our Veterans Breakfast at the Town and Country Diner in Bordentown, New Jersey, Dimitry Olhovsky caught my eye. White hair, piercing blue eyes, a Slavic accent, and “U.S. Air Force” on his name badge. That combination told me he had a story to tell. Dimitry was born
By Todd DePastino West Berlin native Bibi LeBlanc is collecting firsthand memories of the Berlin Airlift—one of the Cold War’s defining humanitarian missions. In this VBC conversation, she explains her Voices of the Berlin Airlift oral history project and invites anyone with Airlift stories to share them before they’re lost. 👉 To share your
