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During World War II, 300,000 United States Army Air Corps airmen were shot down. Of that number, 51,000 were prisoners of war or listed as missing in action. Bombardiers, positioned in the vulnerable bombardiers' compartment at the front of the aircraft, were in high demand. The authors' fathers were two such bombardiers, one on a B-17 and the other on a B-24. Like so many of the post-war generation, the authors traveled on their own emotional journeys to reconstruct their fathers' WWII experiences. Their fathers fought in the flak-ridden "blue battlefield," and like thousands of other airmen shot out of the sky, became prisoners of war. They would endure deprivation, loneliness, and great p...
The first full reappraisal of one of Britain’s great fighter aces, this book examines the truth behind Tuck’s 1956 biography, Fly for Your Life. It looks at the evidence behind the myths, checks out some of the exaggerated stories and reveals the real Stanford Tuck. In January 1942 Bob Tuck was the top-scoring British fighter ace with an official score of 29 enemy aircraft destroyed. With film-star looks he was the glamorous role model for the RAF publicity machine and an eager press and public wanting wartime heroes. He had joined the RAF in 1935 and quickly showed his excellent flying skills. In 1940 his Spitfire squadron was fighting over Dunkirk where he proved himself an expert shot...
This book explores the extraordinary story of Jewish POWs in German captivity during the Second World War - extraordinary because of the contrast between Germany's genocidal policy towards Jews on one hand, and its relatively non-discriminatory treatment of Jewish POWs from western countries on the other. The radicalisation of Germany's anti-Semitic policies entered its last phase in June 1941 with the invasion of the Soviet Union; during the following four years, nearly six million Jews were murdered. In parallel, Germany's POW policies had gone through a radicalisation process of their own, resulting in the murder of millions of Soviet POWs, of Allied commando soldiers, and of POW escapees...
This book surveys historical and emerging global air and space power issues and provides a multidisciplinary understanding of the application of air and space power in the past and present, while exploring potential future challenges that global air forces may face. Bringing together leading and emerging academics, professionals, and military personnel from Australia within the field of air and space power, this edited collection traces the evolution of technological innovations, as well as the ethical and cultural frameworks which have informed the development of air and space power in the 20th and 21st centuries, and contemplates the future. It covers topics such as the insurgents' use of ...
It shows the variety and depth of the men sent into harms way during World War II, something emphasised by the population of Stalag Luft III. Most of the Allied POWs were flyers, with all the technical, tactical and planning skills that profession requires. Such men are independent thinkers, craving open air and wide-open spaces, which meant than an obsession with escape was almost inevitable' - John D GreshamBetween dusk and dawn on the night of March 24th–25th 1944, a small army of Allied soldiers crawled through tunnels in Germany in a covert operation the likes of which the Third Reich had never seen before.The prison break from Stalag Luft III in eastern Germany was the largest of its...
"Quickly, I climbed up to the surface and immediately found the rope… I felt no signal, so it was not safe yet. Then I felt three distinct tugs and slowly popped my head up. The nearest 'Goonbox' was at least 200 feet away; but, indeed, I was twenty feet from the edge of the woods.” - Bram Vanderstok "A born raconteur. His escapes, his operations as a Spitfire pilot, his experiences as a prisoner of war, and his incredible escape crossing the Pyrenees - all are described in a breathtaking manner which made me read his book through in one sitting' - Prof. Dr. L de Jong, Founder/Director of the Dutch Institute for War Documentation “Such a modest man, such a dramatic story – you’ll b...
Introduction -- Engineering The great escape : from book to film (and in-between) -- Tunneling in : The great escape : style, theme, and structure -- After-lives -- Appendix : "It really happened".
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos, 1933–1945, Volume IV aims to provide as much basic information as possible about individual camps and other detention facilities. Why were they established? Who ran them? What kinds of prisoners did they hold? What kinds of work did the prisoners do, and for whom? What were the conditions like? The entries detail the sources from which the authors drew their material, so future scholars can expand upon the work. Finally, and perhaps most important, this is a work of memorialization: it preserves the histories of places where people suffered and died. Volume IV examines an under-researched segment of the larger N...
In early 1942 the Third Reich opened a maximum security prisoner-of-war camp in Lower Silesia for captured Allied airmen. Called Stalag Luft III, the camp soon came to contain some of the most inventive escapers ever known.The escapers were led by Squadron Leader Roger Bushell, codenamed 'Big X'. In March 1944, Bushell masterminded an attempt to smuggle hundreds of POWs down a tunnel built right under the noses of their guards. In fact, 76 Allied airmen clambered into the tunnel and only three made successful escapes.This remarkable breakout would be immortalized in the famous Hollywood film The Great Escape, in which the bravery of the men was rightly celebrated. Behind the scenes photographs from the film are included in this definitive pictorial work on the most famous POW camp of World War II.
I am one of those lucky ones who survived the war, and I can remember my emotional experiences, and those of my friends, as if they had happened yesterday. For many of us the horror, the injustice, and the cruelty can never be forgotten or forgiven; but I have tried to write without too much bitterness - Bob van der Stok On the night of 24th March 1944, Bob van der Stok was number 18 of 76 men who crawled beyond the barbed wire fence of Stalag Luft III in Zagan, Poland. The 1963 film, The Great Escape, was largely based on this autobiography but - with van der Stok's agreement -filmmakers chose to turn his story into an Australian character name Sedgewick, played by James Coburn. His memoir ...