THE ANGEL ON OUR TREE

There she reigns, with dignity
Atop our Christmas tree
The place of honor that’s been hers
Since 1943

And as I stand and gaze at her
The years just fade away
As the precious gift of memory
Recalls my yesterday

I see the mounting excitement
As the children gather near
While we make preparations for
The best time of the year

The tree, in nature’s beauty
Stands with outstretched arms
As little hands adorn her
With pretty man-made charms

And when it’s finally gifted
With tinsel, lights, and snow
It awaits the final treasure
Our Angel’s special glow

And so the Angel’s taken
And is handed up to me
For the childrens’ arms cannot reach
The tip-top of the tree

As I place her gently on the top
And Dad plugs in the light
The joy I see in the childrens’ eyes
Is such a lovely sight

And now, it is the present
The years have flown so fast
But our Angel is still with us
A token from the past

Her wings are bent a little
And dust has grayed her hair
Her gown is somewhat soiled and frayed
But still, she hovers there

Signature’s Of Love, I call
The smudges on her face
They were placed there by the children
Before I put her in her place

Her halo may have slipped a bit
But casts its golden glow
Down through the laden branches
Onto the ones below

And when it’s time to take her down
She’s packed away with care
For as long as we shall have a tree
Our Angel must be there

12/17/71 Phyllis DeWitt VanVleck

My Top 10:

The Academy sometimes gets it right. Casablanca is easily the best film of 1943.

1. Casablanca
2. Shadow of a Doubt
3. In Which We Serve
4. For Whom the Bell Tolls
5. The Ox-Bow Incident
6. This Land is Mine
7. Five Graves to Cairo
8. Heaven Can Wait
9. Watch on the Rhine
10. The More the Merrier

Academy Awards:

• Best Picture:  Casablanca
• Best Director:  Casablanca
• Best Actor:  Paul Lukas  (Watch on the Rhine)
• Best Actress:  Jennifer Jones  (The Song of Bernadette)
• Best Supporting Actor:  Charles Coburn  (The More the Merrier)
• Best Supporting Actress:  Katina Paxinou  (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
• Best Screenplay:  Casablanca  (from the play Everybody Goes to Rick’s)
  
• Best Original Screenplay:  Princess O’Rourke
• Best Original Story:  The Human Comedy

Consensus Awards:

• Best Picture:  In Which We Serve
• Best Director:  George Stevens  (The More the Merrier)
• Best Actor:  Paul Lukas  (Watch on the Rhine)
• Best Actress:  Jennifer Jones  (Song of Bernadette)
• Best Supporting Actor:  Akim Tamiroff  (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
• Best Supporting Actress:  Katina Paxinou  (For Whom the Bell Tolls)

Top 5 Films  (Top 1000):

• Casablanca – #15
• Shadow of a Doubt – #330
• I Walked with a Zombie – #488
• Fires were Started – #590
• Heaven Can Wait – #944

Top 5 Awards Points:

1. The Song of Bernadette – 688
2. Watch on the Rhine – 416
3. Casablanca – 410
4. For Whom the Bell Tolls – 401
5. The More the Merrier – 360

AFI Top 100 Films:

• Casablanca – #2  (1998) /  #3  (2007)

Nighthawk Awards:

• 

  Nighthawk (and Oscar) winner Katina Paxinou and Nighthawk winner (and Oscar nominee) Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

• Best Picture:  Casablanca
• Best Director:  Michael Curtiz  (Casablanca)
• Best Actor:  Humphrey Bogart  (Casablanca)
• Best Actress:  Ingrid Bergman  (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
• Best Supporting Actor:  Claude Rains  (Casablanca)
• Best Supporting Actress:  Katina Paxinou  (For Whom the Bell Tolls)
• Best Adapted Screenplay:  Casablanca (from the play Everybody Goes to Rick’s)
• Best Original Screenplay:  Shadow of a Doubt
• Best Foreign Film:  Sanshiro Sugata

Nighthawk Notables:

• Best Film to Watch Over and Over:  Casablanca
• Best Scene:  Singing of “La Marseillaise” in Casablanca
• Best Line  (comedic):  “My health.  I came to Casablanca for the waters.”  “But we are in the middle of the desert.”  “I was misinformed.”  (Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains)
• Best Line  (dramatic):  “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”  (Casablanca – Humphrey Bogart)
• Best Ending:  Casablanca

Ebert Great Films:

• Casablanca

What would 1943 be as a Year in Film if Casablanca had been released in L.A. in November of 1942 like it was in New York?  There is Hitchcock’s favorite of his films and Noel Coward co-directing with David Lean (Lean’s first directorial effort) In Which We Serve but neither did great at the Oscars (Serve gets a Best Picture nomination but only 1 other while Doubt gets nominated only for its story).  The more successful films at the Oscars (The Song of Bernadette, The More the Merrier, For Whom the Bell Tolls) have not been aged as well.  Fewer nominations go to solid films from exiled European directors Billy Wilder (Five Graves to Cairo), Fritz Lang (Hangman Also Die) and Jean Renoir (This Land is Mine).  There is no year where there is a more distinct drop after the top 5 than this one.  Casablanca is one of the greatest films ever made, then #2 through #5 are mid range **** films, but after that there is a precipitous drop, with my #6 film in the lower ***.5 range.

Film History: The Hollywood Foreign Correspondents Association (later known as the Hollywood Foreign Press) is founded and awards the first Golden Globes.  While Frank Capra is beginning the Why We Fight series and war films begin to dominate the box office, Howard Hughes fights his war to focus on the breasts of Jane Russell.  Two big directors of the thirties, Max Reinhardt and W.S. Van Dyke, both die.  Leslie Howard is killed in a plane crash while working for the British government.  Akira Kurosawa directs his first film, Sanshiro Sugata.  One of the great marriages in film history (both in length and in artistic collaboration) takes place on 30 October between Federico Fellini and Giuletta Masina.

Academy Awards: In the last year of 10 Best Picture nominees, The Ox-Bow Incident becomes the last film to get nominated for Best Picture and receive no other nominations.  Bette Davis is not nominated for Best Actress for the first time since 1937.  Ingrid Bergman, Greer Garson and Jennifer Jones are all nominated for the first of 3 consecutive years (though Jones’ nomination in 1944 will be for Supporting Actress).  Harold Arlen is nominated three times in the same category (Best Song) and loses all three.  For the second year in a row, Greer Garson is Oscar nominated for the title character of a film (Mrs. Miniver and Madame Curie) and Walter Pidgeon is nominated for playing her husband.  Casablanca becomes the last film until 1974 to win the Oscar without winning another major movie award (one of the main critics, the Golden Globe or the BAFTA).  The only film since to do this are The Godfather Part II and Braveheart.

• Worst Oscar:  Best Original Screenplay for Princess O’Rourke
• Worst Oscar Nomination:  Best Director for The Human Comedy
• Worst Oscar Omission:  Best Editing for In Which We Serve
• Worst Oscar-Nominated Film:  Thank Your Lucky Stars
• Worst Oscar Category:  Best Song
• Best Oscar Category:  Best Supporting Actress
• Oscar / Nighthawk Award Agreements:  Best Picture, Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Interior Decoration – Color

Awards: In Which We Serve, nominated for Best Picture, had won both the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review the year before.  For 1943, the NYFC goes with Watch on the Rhine (which they also give Best Actor) and the NBR goes with The Ox-Bow Incident.  While Paul Lukas goes on to win the Oscar, Ida Lupino becomes the first actress since Greta Garbo in 1935 to win the NYFC and fail to get an Oscar nomination.  George Stevens comes from behind to win Best Director on the seventh ballot after trailing William Wellman (The Ox-Bow Incident) and Fritz Lang.

Golden Globes: This was the first year of the Golden Globes and the big winner was The Song of Bernadette (this, combined with its 12 Oscar nominations is why it finished first in points) which took Best Picture and Best Actress.  Paul Lukas made it a clean sweep of Best Actor to go with his Oscar and NYFC Award.  The two supporting awards went to Akim Tamiroff and Katina Paxinou as the rebels in For Whom the Bell Tolls.  All of the initial Golden Globe winners received Oscar nominations (or wins), something that would continue until 1950 when the lead acting roles were divided by genre.  If there were nominees, their names are lost to time as the HFPA shows no record of anyone other than the winners all the way up until 1948.

Donald Duck and Joe Carioca in Saludos Amigos (1943)

Under-appreciated Film of 1943:

Saludos Amigos

I’m very much the champion of the second hero.  I don’t have a particular interest in Superman, Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse.  But damn, am I ever a fan of Batman, Daffy Duck and Donald Duck.  There are few scenes in all of film history I enjoy as much as the piano duel between Daffy and Donald in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.  So it’s odd that it took me so long to finally get around to watching this as I was finishing up the list of official Disney Animated features back in 2006.

When people think of the Disney list, they think of the original bunch of brilliant animated films (Snow White, Pinocchio, Fantasia, Dumbo, Bambi) and then jump ahead to the literary adaptations of the 50’s (Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Lady and the Tramp) and they always seem to forget that Disney did make animated feature films throughout the 40’s.  It just that they were a different kind of film, often a mish-mash of various stories thrown together, anthologies of short films put together as longer films for feature release that have been given short-shrift, not only by critics and film historians, but by Disney itself.

Just think about it.  How many of the following have you seen: Saludos Amigos, The Three Caballeros, Song of the South, Fun and Fancy Free and Melody Time?  Certainly Disney has tried to forget Song of the South, though it is no more politically incorrect than Gone with the Wind, but the others just seem to disappear with it.  But they are good films.  They’re not great and certainly none of them would belong among the peak films of the early era, the 50’s or the 1989-1994 rebirth, but they are very good, fun to watch and enjoyable.  They’re as good, if not better than a lot of other Disney “classics” like The Jungle Book, The Aristocats or The Fox and the Hound.

The key to Saludos Amigos, which might be the best of the bunch, is the presence of Donald Duck.  Yes, he is only part of the film and there is a good Goofy segment and the interesting segment with Pedro the plane, but Donald is the key.  The adventures that he has in South America with Joe Carioca are the impetus for the follow-up, The Three Caballeros (probably the weakest of the five) and when he doesn’t have to play second fiddle to Mickey we get to enjoy him for who he is, a very irritable but funny duck who is amazingly difficult to understand.

Is this not the most persuasive review?  Well, think about this.  As I write this, Monsters vs. Aliens and Ice Age 3 are the #6 and 7 biggest films of the year.  Do you really want to own those?  Is there much originality or even quality in them?  Even in this year of 5 Oscar nominees for Best Animated Film neither is likely to be nominated.  You could do much worse than to settle for an old, quirky Disney film with Donald as its star.

Swimming sucks.

apocalex: When last we left him, I (him) was going through my (his) year of gaming. The evil villain of SUMMER had reared his (. . . his) ugly head and was attacking the fair shores of Suppressingboredomica. And our hero was left like a junkie without a fix, and therefore used his points like a frequent flyer, dropping a fair wad of his money and self-respect to buy a XBLive Arcade game by the name of Battlefield Ninteen Forty Three, the karmic successor to Battlefield Nineteen Forty Two, which was succeeded by Battlefield Two and Battlefield Twenty One Forty Two, and usually left forgotten like the terrible stepchild: Battlefield Vietnam. Which must be the strangest line of  numbering since that one logic puzzle where the dad is three times the age of the – oh YOU go buy Layton!

I’ve been a fan of the series for a long time. And BF has been a welcoming and awesome host. It allowed PC gamers to track stats and build incredible mods. Our BF1942DCFVFF apartment server (Battlefield: 1942, Desert Combat, Fountain Valley, Friendly Fire) was a great way to waste a boring night shooting the ever-spawning flood of stupid AI in a wobbly chopper piloted by me and my crappy Saitek joystick.

This post is a long time coming, mostly because without a story to complain about (and I have been very harsh on games lacking story), it’s on pure gameplay. And BF1943 delivered pretty well. The only complaint for a game of this nature is the lack of any way whatsoever to check your ping, or connect to servers. In many ways this “dumbing down” of servers culminates in MW2, where it takes many agonizing minutes to connect to terrible servers. The same problem exists in BF1943, although there is literally no way to tell you are lagging until the game starts and you notice that you’ve pulled out your gun six times when you try and switch weapons.

I’m going to keep it short because it is an arcade game. If I am to interpret an XBL Arcade game to be just that, an arcade game for a home console, and judge it like that, then it is excellent. Few games on XBL keep me coming back for me (except for the really mindless or time tested ones – Bankshot Billiards, Hexic, and Bomberman for me).

If I may, and I may cause I am the writing this, name a genre of games, I will name it: CMO – Competitive Multiplayer Online. Unlike MMO’s, they are smaller, squad based games (although they can expand to much larger experiences), and they are online. And, unfortunately, they seem to be a dying breed. Many of the games in this subset are of the larger FPS denomination – which is one genre that has metastasized into an umbrella genre – encompassing all sorts of different game types. The CMO genre also includes games like Counter-strike or Unreal Tournament – games with a paper thin (if any) plot, and a “built on multiplayer” idea. (MW2 – Ha, sorry kid, you are NOT).

BF1943 was fun. There’s a lot to that statement. “Was” – because it held my attention for a little bit, and now I’ll probably never go back to it. And “Fun” – because it was. It did what many games did not, it made me keep wanting to play. The “Conquest” mode that I think was introduced by the BF series made camping a tactic that was not very rewarding for most. Sniping was difficult, and barring extremely well placed headshots, was not overpowering. And despite the regenerating health and ammunition, it never felt like one team or another could totally and overwhelmingly control an area (well, except maybe for Iwo Jima’s Mt. Suribachi). It made camping less of a controller breaking annoyance.

Recommended for:

Got money to blow on one hit wonders

MW2 boycotters

Enjoy a higher difficulty sniping experience

Author Rating: A

Murder At A Police Station (read 12/2/09) recommended

What a wonderful British murder mystery from 1943!

The protagonist is a wanna-be poet/police sergeant named Pork in the little village of Severing who, suffering from toothache and anxious about coming down with the mumps, receives a mysterious phone call from someone who seems to be in trouble. When Sergeant Pork arrives at the house to which he was directed, he finds that he has been the victim of some kind of prank, but when he returns to the police station, there is a man, shot through the heart, laying dead on the floor in the charge room. Pork had locked the doors when he went out and they were still locked when he got back. Who is this man and how did he get here?

Absolutely delightful.

For nearly three weeks, the 312th called the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam home. This ship was originally a Holland-America luxury liner that carried 800 passengers from Southampton to New York in six days. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, the Nieuw Amsterdam was sent to Nova Scotia and turned into a troop ship.

The S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam would take the 312th to Australia.

The 312th was crammed aboard this ship with a Dutch crew of 600 and over 7000 other men. Officers slept in staterooms, and the enlisted men slept wherever they could– on deck, below in hammocks, or on mattresses. Life on the ship consisted of two meals a day, a news broadcast, playing poker, reading, and whatever other activities the men could think of. There were occasional life boat drills and heated discussions as well. On November 19th, 1943, after a two month journey, the Nieuw Amsterdam docked in Sydney, Australia.
Once the 312th reached Sydney, they were taken to the tent camp Warwick Farms Racetrack, where they stayed for two days. On the 21st, half of the Group traveled to Brisbane, 600 miles to the north. There they waited for a couple of days before the other half of the Group joined them at Camp Moorooka. The men had to get used to spring weather (since they left autumn behind in the norther hemisphere), driving on the opposite side of the road in the right side of a vehicle, beer being served at room temperature, and the conversion between the American dollar and Australian pound.
About the same time the 312th made it to Australia, the unassembled P-40Ns made it to Archerfield, the main airport in Brisbane.

Richard A. Wilson of the 386th Squadron in his P-40N at Gusap.

The 312th relocated to Archerfield because they would be flying these planes to New Guinea. The N model was a lighter, faster version of the P-40 that was good to fly for fun as well as for combat. It also had smaller, lighter undercarriage wheels, head armor, four wing-mounted guns and aluminum radiators and oil coolers. The 386th Squadron was the first of the Group to receive this plane, and they wasted no time becoming proficient in flying the P-40s. On December 10th, the Squadron set off for Gusap. They reached their destination on the 13th without incident.
Meanwhile, the 389th had arranged to share P-40s with the 49th Fighter Group. They left Brisbane by rail to Townsville, where they climbed aboard a C-47 bound for Port Moresby and arrived there on the 13th. While flying with the 49th, the men learned patrol and escort mission procedures, practiced their dive-bombing skills and experienced antiaircraft fire on fighter sweeps to Finschhafen.
By the end of 1943, the Group was reassigned from dive-bombing to light bombardment. This became official on December 21st, but the Squadrons got these orders over several weeks. The 386th transferred on the 21st, the 387th on the 27th, followed by the 388th and 389th on January 8, 1944. During this change, the Group would keep flying the P-40s until they got new planes.
The ground echelon was still at Camp Moorooka in November, and they prepared for the journey to Port Moresby. After arriving on December 21st, the men realized they were in a war zone with the half-submerged S.S. Macdhui (bombed by the Japanese in June 1942) as a constant reminder. The men got settled at Seventeen Mile, also called Durand, Airdrome, a drier section of New Guinea, located away from the rain belt of the Owen Stanley Mountains.

Durand Airdrome.

Even though they were in a drier area, the men still had to take precautions against malaria by taking Atabrine tablets on a regular basis. Living conditions were fairly rustic and the men would bathe by pouring water into their helmets and then washing and rinsing with the same water. The ground echelon wouldn’t join the air echelon at Gusap until the very end of December 1943.

The German air raid on the Italian port of Bari would have, under normal circumstances, occupied a minor space on the shelves of history.  It is notable that the attack, which took place on the evening of December 2, 1943 and involved 105 Junkers Ju-88 bombers, caught the Allies completely off guard and achieved a ”Pearl Harbor”-esque level of surprise.

But Bari was primarily a supply port and depot, so the targets were hardly as glamorous as Battleship Row, with capital ships lined up like so many immobile ducks in a shooting gallery.  Still, there were a lot of supply ships and merchantman moored about.  The Germans succeeded in hitting two ammunition ships and, as we would suspect, they exploded in titanic fashion.  An oil pipeline was also severed, dumping fuel oil into the harbor.  Once it caught fire, the harbor became a sheet of flame, igniting other merchant and supply ships.  In all, nearly 20 ships were destroyed and the port was closed for three weeks.

A good tally for the Germans, to be sure, but really not enough to make it stand out on its own.  So what makes this particular event different?…what gives it more historical “shelf space” than others?

The SS John Harvey.

The John Harvey was a Liberty ship that arrived in Bari with a special cargo…a classified top-secret cargo.  In her holds were 2,000 bombs carrying mustard gas.  Used extensively in World War I, this chemical agent caused terrible burns when contacting the skin and respitory damage when inhaled.  The use of chemical weapons had been outlawed in the 1920’s, but the military feared that the Germans, in the face of defeat, might resort to unconventional weapons of their own.  The John Harvey was an Allied “contingency” plan…and it back-fired badly.

The John Harvey was one of the victims of the raid, and as she exploded and sank, some of the the mustard gas was released.  It mixed in with the oily water, which coated sailors as they struggled for shore.  It got into the air, mixing with the smoke of the fires and passing over the city of Bari.

Within 24 hours, hundreds of civilians were showing up at medical facilities with strange burns, acute illness, and blindness.  Medical staff found it increasingly difficult to handle the work, not only because of the volume of cases, but also because many of them (having been exposed to the sailors and wounded) were now being affected by the agents.

The Allied High Command kept quiet, desperately wanting to keep the mustard gas a secret, which forced medical personnel to “fish in the dark” for the causes of the symptoms.  It wasn’t until weapons experts were brought in and began examining the situation that the source was discovered.

And it would be another three months until the news was made public.  But by then, hundreds (and probably thousands) of people had died from exposure.  It’s likely that many deaths were not counted simply because so many people fled the city to escape the “mystery disease” that burned, blinded, and killed.

The final reports were classified by the U.S. until the late 1950’s, but the British documents were actually sanitized, changing the cause of death from World War II’s only release of chemical agents to “burns due to enemy action”.  It wouldn’t be until the 1980’s that the British admitted the truth.

Recommended Reading: The Day of Battle

After the 312th left Hunter Field, they moved on to De Ridder Army Air Base, which was approximately 50 miles north of Lake Charles, Louisiana. While living at this smaller base, the 312th learned more about supporting ground units in combat. Through this training, they realized how much they needed to work on coordination between operations, intelligence, and communication personnel. Aircrews practiced various dive-bombing techniques and small groups of pilots and intelligence officers spent time with Army units learning about their strategy and tactics.
The Group stayed at De Ridder until they received orders on March 27, 1943 to pack up and move to their next base, Rice Army Air Base, in southern California. It took about two weeks for them to get everything ready for the cross-country trip. During this time, the Group had to deal with their first and only loss at De Ridder: 1/Lt. Elmer R. Cawthon had climbed into an A-24 for an unscheduled flight after leaving a gathering at the Officers’ Club. Cawthon’s plane never returned to the base. The plane wreckage was found near Camp Polk and it appeared that the Cawthon failed to pull the plane out of a steep dive.

Once at Rice, the Group discovered that the living conditions there were a far cry from the comforts they first experienced at Hunter Field. Here, the men lived in tents and endured desert temperatures of over 120 degrees. They couldn’t work between 12:30 and 5:00pm because planes, tools and vehicles were too hot to touch.

At Rice, the 312th’s training included lectures and drills with weapons instruction to sharpen their soldiering skills. While practicing the dive-bombing, the crews got bored bombing disks painted on the sand, so they scrounged around the desert and found abandoned cars from the 1930s. They also practiced attacking railroad centers, crossroads, and supply areas to improve their navigation and bombing skills.
In April, the 312th received their first Curtiss P-40 Warhawks. The A-24 was weak against the Japanese Mitsubishi A6M “Zeke” fighter in combat, so the group transitioned to the P-40. This single-seat, single-engine plane had six .50-caliber machine guns in the wings and held a 500-pound bomb under the fuselage.

The pilots had to get used to a few differences when flying the plane through a bombing run. There were no dive brakes, so pilots would reach nearly 500mph in a near-vertical dive. When approaching the target, the pilots had to quickly pull out of the dive and this was a very dangerous task. They switched from dive-bombing to glide bombing to keep planes at a 45-degree angle. While sorting out the differences between the two planes, the crews had a couple of other problems to deal with. The intense heat at Rice caused the P-40 engines to regularly overheat and the rubber on the landing gear to soften when the planes would land. Sand covered the runways and abraded the tires on landing. Because of this, P-40 tires were only good for about six landings.
In May, the 312th lost two members of the Group. 2/Lt. James N. Goe was flying an A-24 and demonstrating dive-bombing to his passenger, 1/Lt. James P. Matthews, when the plane inverted as it was coming out of the run and crashed into the trees.
By the time July rolled around, another move was imminent. This time to Salinas Army Air Base, 400 miles northwest of Monterey, California. At the new base, the 312th would have to work harder for proficiency in flying and maintaining the P-40, something they didn’t quite pass at Rice.
The Group was happy to be out of the scorching desert and back in the barracks at Salinas. Of course, the men were kept busy learning interception tactics and taking part in military training. While at this base, the 312th lost two more men. On September 12th, 2/Lt. William H. Gillette was flying a P-40 near Point Sur when he collided with another plane. Both pilots bailed out, but Gillette died of hypothermia. A week after Gillette’s crash, 1/Lt. Jay E. Gowers died when his P-40 crash-landed at Stockton, California. In September the Group started to prepare for the overseas voyage that would soon come. The 312th marched and hiked, practiced first aid, learned how to move up and down ship ladders and were taught censorship regulations and emergency procedures. On November 1, 1943, the Group left San Francisco aboard the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam. They didn’t know where they were going until close to the end of the trip, but they knew they were heading to war.

Usually, when I cover a topic, the search for related artwork or photos is relatively easy.  But when the subject is the USS Liscome Bay, such is not the case.  There are very few photos available.  And that’s because the life of Liscome Bay was short, and it was a life that ended quickly…and violently.

She was known as CVE-56 in Navy-number-speak, as was classified as a Casablanca-class escort carrier.  That means she was about half the size of a conventional carrier, and carried a smaller compliment of men, aircraft, and armor.  But its smaller size also meant it was cheaper to build and could be finished in much less time than bigger flattops.  So it’s no surprise that, in the 20 months that Casablanca-class carriers were built, a staggering 50 examples were built…more than any other carrier class ever.  The St. Lo, which we just talked about last month, was a Casablanca-class carrier.

Normally, escort carriers were fairly slow got the more mundane jobs like supporting land-based activity such as close air support and interdiction strikes.  Casablanca-class carriers were moderately fast (capable of 20 knots), but were still considered too slow for major fleet action (bigger carriers, battleships, and such could all make 30 knots or more).  Still, they got to mix it with the big boys on occasion, as Taffy 3 did in Leyte Gulf.

But St. Lo and Taffy 3 and Leyte Gulf were in October of 1944, and this was November of 1943…almost a year earlier.  At this point the Navy was thinking about the Philippine Islands (and Leyte Gulf and all that), but the work at hand involved the Gilbert Islands, specifically those around Betio…Tarawa.  Concurrent with the landings at Tarawa were the landings on Makin, a small group of islands about 100 miles south.  The small Japanese garrison on Makin (less than a 1000 men) was expected to fall quickly…a day, maybe two.

Like most Pacific operations, however, it didn’t play out that way.  Cleaning up Makin took 3 full days.  And of course, this ground operation was supported by the escort carriers…in this case, the Liscome Bay, Corregidor, and Coral Sea.  Having just been commissioned in August, our subject was brand new, carrying 28 aircraft and more than 900 men.

In the early morning (just after 5:00am) of November 24, 1943, she was preparing to launch aircraft when one of the ship’s lookouts yelled, “Here comes a torpedo!”  Indeed, the Japanese submarine I-175 had arrived the day before and selected the Liscome Bay as her target.

At 5:10am, a single torpedo struck the aft engine room and exploded.  But the real catastrophe occurred when the torpedo remnants plowed into the aircraft bomb magazine.  When ammunition cooks off, it does so in dramatic fashion, and the Liscome Bay was no exception.  Witnesses said the ship was just a massive ball of orange flame, and bits of ship hit other task force vessels nearly 3 miles away.  At 5:33am, Liscome Bay slipped beneath the waves, carrying with her nearly 650 sailors and officers.

The operation on Makin Atoll was intended to be a relatively clean one-day operation.  One explosion, however, had caused U.S. casualties to achieve near parity with the Japanese.

Recommended Reading:  Tarawa:  A Hell of a Way to Die

Dan državnosti Bosne i Hercegovine obilježava se danas u Federaciji BiH u spomen osnivačkoj skupštini ZAVNOBiH-a koja je postavila temelje savremene državnosti naše zemlje.

Spomen na osnivačku skupštinu Zemaljskog antifašističkog vijeća narodnog oslobođenja Bosne i Hercegovine, održanu 25. novembra 1943. god. u Mrkonjić Gradu, slavi se samo u Federaciji BiH.

Vlasti u republici Srpskoj ne priznaju obilježavanje Dana državnosti uz izgovor da BiH nema zakona o državnim praznicima.

Hmmm…

Za sve one koji Bosnu i Hercegovinu smatraju svojom jedinom domovinom, iskrene čestitke!

Vaša EDINA!

Sixty-seven years ago, the newly formed 312th Bomb Group was stationed at Hunter Field in Georgia. Hunter Field was a new Army post with comfortable barracks, a chapel, tennis courts, baseball diamonds, and clubs for the enlisted men and officers. In the relative comfort of this base, the 312th men learned what they needed to do to function as a bomb group. Everybody from maintenance to the parachute department was kept busy fine-tuning their various skills.

An aerial view of Hunter Field in January 1943.

The Group started training on the Vultee A-35 Vengeance dive-bomber, a very troublesome aircraft for pilots and mechanics alike. The A-35 was a single-engine plane that held a pilot and rear gunner, six .50-caliber wing-mounted machine guns and a single .50-caliber machine gun in the rear. It could carry a bomb load of up to 2000 pounds, but the aiming system was terrible and caused the crews to miss their targets by as much as 100 yards.

The A-35 Vengeance dive-bomber: a troublesome but easy-to-fly aircraft.

When pilots went to land their planes, they hoped that the landing gear wouldn’t collapse on them because it was so poorly designed. As problematic as the plane was, it was easy to fly and fairly stable. The maintenance crews also benefited from the challenges of this aircraft by gaining substantial experience dealing with all the problems. The men worked on and soon perfected their navigation skills and flying in formation.

The 312th BG flew the A-35s until they received the A-36 Apache dive-bomber in late November. This plane was a version of the P-51 Mustang with lattice-type dive brakes in the wings and would not exceed 300mph with the dive brakes extended in a vertical dive. Unlike the A-35, pilots actually enjoyed flying this aircraft. Not long after they started training on these planes, the 311th Bomb Group took them to India. The 312th then flew the Douglas A-24 Dauntless dive-bomber, a slower plane that allowed the crews to train for providing closer support to Army ground forces.

(Left) The A-36 was used by the 312th for a short time. (Right) Once the 311th Bomb Group was sent to India, the 312th started flying the A-24.

November 23, 1943 was a tragic day for the Group. While returning to Hunter Field from Little Rock, Arkansas, two members of the 388th Squadron, 1/Lt. Reynolds H. Middleton and M/Sgt. David L. Dean, crashed near Macon, Georgia when they flew into a severe thunderstorm. They were the Group’s first fatalities.
The 312th rotated to Statesboro, Georgia for ten days to practice maneuvers and experience life in the field. Working and sleeping in tents at Statesboro was the first taste of Army life for many men. As the months progressed, the Group continued and finished their training at Hunter Field by the middle of February 1943. From there, they moved to De Ridder Army Air Base and later Rice and Salinas air bases in California, where they transitioned to the P-40. Salinas was the final Stateside training base for the Group.

It was now 1943, and the new year began very cold and damp. Dad was not too well and stayed indoors as much as possible. We had the job of finding enough wood and coal to keep the fire going. We missed our sister Lil, as she was the one who found the most coal along the railway track. Lil managed to send a little money home each month, and this helped to buy some extra coal, it was a great help to Mum and Dad. There were the usual arguments about who was going to fetch the water from the stream, particularly if it was raining, or even worse, snowing. We were all very pleased when the first signs of spring started to appear.

Dad seemed very reluctant to start on the allotment. Even when the weather started to improve he showed no interest in planning what he would be growing that year. The doctor visited Dad a few times, but this had happened before and we did not take much notice. The month of May began with some nice sunny weather, but Dad still stayed indoors most of the time. Mum was looking very tired and worried, the new baby was due at the end of the month, and we thought that was the reason. Our brother George would rush home from school, and if Dad was in bed he would sit quietly at the bottom of the bed.

Then one awful day, it must have been a Saturday as we were all home from school, our Dad was rushed to hospital. As there were only days left before the birth of her baby, Mum did not go with him. She was not too well and Dad told her to stay home. It was something she always regretted, not going to the hospital with him. When they carried Dad out to the waiting hospital car, we all rushed out to the lane to wave goodbye to him. He lifted his arm to wave back but even that was too much for him, and he just looked out of the back window. As the car pulled away we did not know that it was the last time we would ever see our beloved Dad. When we turned back to Mum she was standing there crying.

We were all very quiet the next day, and tried to help Mum as much as possible. Being a Sunday there was no bus service, and Mum said she had made her mind up to visit Dad the following day while we were at school. George did not want to go to school, saying he wanted to go with Mum, but she explained that no children were allowed to visit the hospital. He replied that he would wait outside and Dad could wave to him. Mum began to get cross, and told George that he had to go to school the next day. It was May 21st, and as we said goodbye to Mum and started to leave for school, our brother George began crying saying that he wanted to see his Dad. We could see that our Mum was near to tears, so we dragged George off to school.

When we arrived home that day, our next door neighbour was in the kitchen preparing our dinner. Mrs Williams said Mum was upstairs as she was not feeling very well, and that we were to be very good and quiet. She then told us that Mum had some very sad news for us. We all looked at one another but none of us could think what she meant. When our Mum came downstairs later, she looked awful, her face was all blotchy and tearstained, and when she began to speak she started to cry. Seeing Mum cry made us cry, even though we had no idea why she was crying. Her words when she managed to speak made no sense to me. She said: “Your Dad passed away today.” Mum then started to cry again, and went back upstairs.

Mrs Williams came back in the evening, and I asked her what ‘passed away’ meant. She told us that our Dad had died, and we would never see him again. At the thought of never seeing Dad again, we all began to cry. Our George shouted that he was going to see his Dad and nobody was going to stop him.

My Father’s body was brought home from the hospital the day before the funeral. The coffin was placed in the front room on a table, and the lid was left open for anyone to pay their last respects to him. When I went in to see Dad, I thought at first he was sleeping, but he was laying so still, and his hand was so cold when I touched him, that I ran out of the room crying.

As I was only ten at the time I could not comprehend the meaning of death, but I knew my Dad was not just sleeping. I could not bring myself to go into the front room anymore while Dad was laying there.

During the day my elder sisters arrived home, followed by my Gran, uncle Bill and aunt Dot. They had come to attend the funeral the next day. As nobody wanted to sleep in the front room where Dad was, it was difficult for Mum to sort out the sleeping arrangements. My eldest sisters shared the front bedroom with Mum, and my brothers had to sleep in our bedroom, leaving their room free for Gran. The only place left for my aunt and uncle was the kitchen, so Mum made a bed up for them on the kitchen floor. It must have been quite uncomfortable as the floor consisted of stone slabs.

The day of the funeral dawned. Mum had decided that it would be better for us to attend school, rather than go to Dad’s funeral. So the only memories I have of the day are how the teachers were so nice to us.

The headmaster even mentioned in assembly that morning, what a sad day it was for my family, and this made me feel quite important. When we arrived home from school, my sister Lil said Mum was having a rest as she was not feeling well. Lil started to prepare the evening meal, and as there were more of us then usual it took longer. Gran kept saying how cold and hungry she was, but made no attempt to help in any way. I heard our Lil mutter: “Oh shut up you miserable old cow.” I was shocked to hear Lil speak like that as it was so unlike her. I looked at Gran to see if she had heard, but luckily she was busy talking to uncle Bill.

It was well into the evening before my Mother came downstairs, and when she did she looked quite ill. Her eyes were red from crying, and there were tears running down her face. Lil made her sit near the fire as she was shivering. She then gave Mum a small bowl of stew to eat, but Mum only had a few spoonfuls then she left the rest. Lil told her to go back to bed, and said not to worry about anything, as she would see that everyone had a meal. We could see how worn out Mum looked, and tried to be helpful, but it was Lil who did most of the work. We all would have been lost without her. Later that evening we said goodnight to our relatives and went quietly to bed.

At the time I did not realise what the death of my Father meant to Mum and the family, emotionally, and financially. Now with hindsight, I can only look back in admiration at how my Mother coped. She had been left a widow at the age of forty two, with six children of school age to raise, and the birth of a new baby due any day.

The following day Emm and Anne left, and soon after Gran, and my uncle and aunt started to pack their belongings. I noticed that uncle Bill had Dad’s only suit, even though it was quite shabby, and he also packed various tools belonging to Dad. Then Gran asked where Dad’s silver tobacco box was, as she thought it would be a nice memento to have. Luckily Mum had given it to Emm to keep.

When they had finally gone our Lil said: “Good riddance, I am fed up of waiting on them.” Mum must have thought the same as she did not tell Lil off for being rude.

click to enlarge

I recently read an article about the single remaining fragment of Adolf Hitler’s skull being tested and being found to have belonged to a woman. With that in mind I was interested, though I’m not sure I believe it, when my friend told me the following story, about Hitler having heavy-duty plastic surgery and escaping to the Vatican in 1943.

Jane Russell, 1943, The Outlaw, Howard Hughes

When Operation Citadel was abandoned by Adolf Hitler in July of 1943, it left in its wake the scattered bit of destroyed aircraft, the hulks of thousands of tanks, the burned out remains of more artillery pieces, and the still, quiet corpses of even more Russian and German soldiers.

While not marking the eastern-most advance of Germany’s territorial conquests (those honors go to places like Stalingrad and Moscow), it certainly was the last best chance the vaunted Wehrmacht had to push eastward.  When Citadel ended near the city of Kursk, the Germans would be, for the next two years, steadily drifting west.  The city of Kharkov (south of Kursk) was wrested from German hands six weeks later (toward the end of August), and the Russian advance picked up some momentum.

Somewhat more than 200 miles to the west of Kursk lies Kiev, the Ukranian capital and, at the time, the 3rd-largest city in the Soviet Union.  Two months after retaking Kharkov, the Russians armies were on the cusp of again taking ownership of Kiev.

To the south, Soviet forces were struggling with difficult terrain and well-deployed German defensive positions, and it was believed that a stronger push to the north (around Kiev) might either draw off German guns from the south or allowed those forces to be encircled.

On November 1st, the Soviet 38th Army attacked Kiev (part of the 1st Ukranian Front, comprising nearly three-quarters of a million men), which was occupied by the 4th Panzer Army.  On the 3rd, a massive artillery bombardment (partially using pieces quietly moved from the south) rained down on the Germans, and the Soviet 60th Army entered the fray, supported by heavy firepower from the air.

The Germans were simply overwhelmed and, with their heavy casualties and equipment losses, could do little to stop the onslaught.  It was time to get out of town.  But, as is so often the case in war, the exiting army took time to destroy whatever valuables they could find.

So when the Soviets retook Kiev on November 6, 1943, the city was a smouldering wreck and most of the city’s vast collection of antiquities were nothing more than shattered and burned memories.

Recommended Reading: The Eastern Front – Day By Day, 1941-45

Son of Dracula is an American horror film released in 1943. It was directed by Robert Siodmak – his first film for Universal studios – with a screenplay based on an original story by his brother Curt. The film stars Lon Chaney, Jr. and his frequent co-star Evelyn Ankers. Notably it is the first film where a vampire turns into a bat on screen.

It is the third in Universal Studios’ Dracula trilogy, beginning with Dracula and Dracula’s Daughter.

The film was the first to show on-screen the bat-to-man transformation of a vampire. The effect was the work of special-effects wizard, John P. Fulton, A.S.C. Fulton was Universal’s chief special-effects artist starting with 1933’s The Invisible Man. He won an Academy Award in 1957 for his work on The Ten Commandments, most notably for his work on the parting of the Red Sea.

Louise Allbritton

Evelyn Ankers

Remaking  old games is not a new thing to the Xbox Live Arcade or PlayStation Network. Some of them have been great, others not so. Battlefield 1943 is an online World War II first person shooter. Gamers play as either the United States Marine Corps (USMC) or the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN). There are 4 maps in the game, one of which is a plane only air battle which was unlocked after community players obtained 43 million kills. There are 3 playable classes, Infantrymen, Riflemen and Scouts, each with their own selection of weapons. Players have unlimited reloads, and regenerate health. As well as this, there are different types of drivable vehicles, such as jeeps, boats, tanks and planes. Gun emplacements are also located around the maps and usable.  Players can call in air raids on a specific area. The aim of the game is to capture flags to gain points. The first team to reach the target wins.

For an XBLA/PSN game, Battlefield 1943 has incredible graphics. Simply the scale of it is amazing. Making use of the Battlefield: Bad Company Frostbite engine makes the gameplay well structured. Vehicle driving can be done in 1st or 3rd person, which is a nice feature.  The Squad systems also means you can easily play with your friends, and makes spawning easier and quicker.

There is no doubt this is a great game. However, if improvements were made, it could be even better. Firstly more maps are needed, as the main 3 start to get repetitive. Also, as fun as online is, some offline play wouldn’t go amiss. Adding these things though however would increase the price, and make it more like a full title.

To conclude, Battlefield is a fantastic game, and one of the best XBLA/PSN titles. For this, I rate it 4/5.  Had  it got more maps, it would have obtained full marks. Battlefield 1943 can be purchased on XBLA for 1200 Microsoft Points, or on PSN for £9.99. The PC Version is released next month.

Final Score: 4/5

I found another cute Japanese classic cartoon uploaded by the same person from my last post. This one is about a Ladybug and a spider. So awesome it gave me that warm fuzzy feeling.