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.
By Todd DePastino Somewhere out there are 35 Marines who enlisted together on a summer evening at the old Metropolitan Stadium in Bloomington, Minnesota, almost sixty years ago. Some of them may be gone, but their sons, daughters, grandchildren, neighbors, or old friends would know what became of them. Either way, author and Marine
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 Brad Washabaugh Few problems of modern warfare are more agonizing than friendly fire. Getting wounded or killed by the enemy is one thing. But receiving fire from your own side has historically carried a hint of shame, and sometimes has been covered up by military authorities. But friendly fire is a perennial problem
By Bill Mayhue, LTC (Ret.) Military humor is unique, and few things inspire more jokes that the huge compendia of jargon that the branches of services accumulate and dispense every year. For retired Army Lieutenant Colonel Bill Mayhue, that language shaped the way he viewed one of life's most memorable missions: getting his wife
