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As History.com notes, on this day in 1941 the Japanese
attacked Pearl Harbor.
At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time,
a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its
wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360
Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor
in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the
U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
Note: It was on December 7, 1976, that my
late father, Edward M. Davis, died.
He was a proud veteran who
enlisted in the U.S. Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor and fought in the
Pacific as a Navy chief and UDT frogman. (He is seen in the center of his UDT 5
team in the above photo).
Influenced greatly by my
father, I too joined the Navy when I was 17 and served on the aircraft carrier
USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War.
Above is a photo of my old
ship, circa 1970, as she passes the USS Arizona Memorial at the Pearl Harbor
naval base in Hawaii.
Some years ago, I came across an account of the disastrous World
War II raid on Dieppe written by a British naval intelligence officer who
viewed the raid from the deck of a warship off the coast of France.
The intelligence
report read like a thriller, which should come as no surprise, as the naval
intelligence officer was Royal Navy Lt. Commander Ian Fleming, who went on to
write the classic James Bond thrillers.
The Dieppe Raid
was the stuff of thrillers, and Canadian historian David O’Keefe has written a
fine book about the failed operation called “One Day in August: Ian Fleming,
Enigma and the Deadly Raid on Dieppe.”
I reached out to
David O’Keefe and I asked him why the Dieppe Raid was controversial, tragic and
something of a mystery.
As an Ian Fleming aficionado, I wrote about
One Day in August: Ian Fleming, Enigma and the Deadly Raid On Dieppe and offered my interview with David O’Keefe in my Washington
Times On Crime column back in December of 2020.
You can read the column via the below link to the Washington
Times or the text below:
Some years ago, I came across an account
of the disastrous World War II raid on Dieppe written by a British naval
intelligence officer who viewed the raid from the deck of a warship off the
coast of France.
The intelligence report read like a
thriller, which should come as no surprise, as the naval intelligence officer
was Royal Navy Lt. Commander Ian Fleming, who went on to write the James Bond
thrillers.
The Dieppe Raid was the stuff of
thrillers, and Canadian historian David O’Keefe has written a fine book about
the failed operation called “One Day in August: Ian Fleming, Enigma and the
Deadly Raid on Dieppe.”
I reached out to David O’Keefe (seen in the bottom photo) and I
asked him why the Dieppe Raid was controversial, tragic and something of a
mystery.
“In less than 9 hours on August 19th,
1942, over 1,000 Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen died in a raid on the
German-held port of Dieppe, France in the English Channel,” Mr. O’Keefe said.
“The vast majority of these deaths, 907, were taken by the Canadians, but the
British and the Americans (fighting their first actions against Hitler in
Europe) also paid a heavy toll. Right from the start, the excuses given for the
inception and the intent behind the raid did not seem to fully explain what the
Allies were attempting to do on that one day in August.”
As a teenage sailor, I served aboard an aircraft carrier in the
early 1970s during the Vietnam War. In between line periods in the Gulf of
Tonkin off the coast of North Vietnam, we made memorable port of calls to
Honolulu, Hong Kong, Japan and the Philippines. I was interested in James
Kestrel’s crime thriller, “Five Decembers,” as his characters operate in those
interesting places, albeit during an earlier era, World War II.
I reached out to
James Kestrel and asked what inspired him to write a crime thriller set in
World War II.
“I have always
been interested in history, and the history of WWII is particularly interesting
because it still has so many visible impacts on the world,” Mr. Kestrel
replied. “I live in Honolulu, so on any given weekend, I might run across a
pillbox on a beach or an old ammunition storage tunnel in the side of a
mountain. My grandfather and great uncle were both in the US Army Air Forces
during the war, in Europe, and as I child, I used to love it whenever I could
stay up late enough to hear them talk about their experiences.”
Mr. Kestrel said
his day job often took him to Japan and Hong Kong, and, wanting to write a book
on a much larger canvas than anything he’d tried before, he began to explore
Tokyo and Hong Kong.
How would you
describe the novel?
“It’s the story
of a Honolulu Police Department detective who catches a double murder
investigation in late November 1941. Unfortunately for him, his investigation
leads him across the Pacific to Hong Kong, which is where he is when America is
drawn into the war,” Mr. Kestrel said. “It’s certainly a noir novel, but it has
a middle section that is probably different than what most readers would expect
going into a book that starts off with a detective in a fedora drinking a
whiskey in a Chinatown dive.”
As onthisday.com notes, on this day in 1944 the Allies hit the Normandy beaches.
On
June 6, 1944, Allied forces invaded Europe. The Normandy landings, the largest
amphibious invasion ever undertaken, took years to plan, involved the invention
of new technologies and proved that Hitler's 'Fortress Europe' was made of sand.
Photographer Robert F. Sargent took the above photo
- aptly named "Into the Jaws of Death" - as troops waded ashore on
Omaha Beach, the most calamitous of the landing sites. On the day at Omaha, little
went to plan, most landing craft missed their targets and German defenses were
unexpectedly strong.
Nevertheless, the Allies secured a foothold on all
beaches. From there they broke out into Normandy proper as German resistance
faltered. D-Day stands out as one of the most crucial moments in history: along
with the German collapse on the Eastern Front, the success of the Allies in the
West ensured that the Nazi defeat was near.
Colonel Charles T. "Buck" Lanham was a soldier who wanted to be a writer. Ernest Hemingway was a writer who wanted to be a soldier.
The two men met in Europe in WWII and became good friends. Lanham was the commanding officer of the 22nd Infantry Regiment and Hemingway was a combat correspondent for Collier's magazine.
Hemingway was not content to just report on the war. He became engaged personally in several combat incidents.
Lanham later said that Hemingway was the bravest man he knew.
After the war Hemingway told Lanham that the character of Colonel Richard Cantwell in his novel Across the River and Into the Trees was based in part on Lanham and in part on Hemingway himself.
David Sears at HistoryNet.com offers a piece on the wartime friendship of the writer and the soldier.
As History.com notes, on this day in 1941 the Imperial Japanese
Navy attacked Pearl Harbor.
At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time,
a Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its
wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360
Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor
in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the
U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
Thomas W. Schaaf Sr., a
retired naval aviator whose aircraft carriers frequently moored in Subic Bay, Philippines,
offers a review in the Washington Times of James M. Scott's Rampage: Macarthur, Yamashita, and
the Battle of Manila.
“Rampage” is the story of Gen. Douglas
MacArthur’s return to the
Philippines after his escape from Corregidor on April 9, 1942, with
this family and a small staff aboard four PT boats. Barely one month later
Bataan fell followed by the surrender of Corregidor a little more than three
weeks later.
The rugged Philippine
peninsula where thousands of MacArthur’s men had fought and died had become an
emotional brand burned deep into the general’s conscience. By mid-1944 the Navy
and Marine Corps had battled the Japanese across the central Pacific and some
senior naval leaders were advocating bypassing the
Philippines and saving American lives by avoiding a costly invasion
of the
Philippines when the imminent fall of Japan would end their
occupation. This proposal had outraged
MacArthur and he refused to back down. In a showdown in a beachfront mansion in
Hawaii where the Joint Chiefs and the president were meeting, MacArthur fought
to bend American strategy in his favor going so far as to threaten Roosevelt.
Before World War II, Manila was
known as the “Pearl of the Orient.” In the chapters leading to the deadly and
destructive Battle of Manila
in February 1945, Mr. Scott describes how our policymakers after the Spanish
American War (1898) realized Manila would
need a face-lift if it were to be the front door to the markets of China, India
and Malaya. Manila
had blossomed into a 14-square-mile modern city, one whose population had
tripled to 623,000 residents by the eve of the war in the Pacific.
And a brutal war it was. “The
stage was now set for the Battle of Manila, a
battle distinguished for ferocity and destruction. It is the story of how that
beautiful city was sacked by the Japanese Army when General MacArthur returned
to Manila.
The carnage followed for 29 days.”
You can read the rest of the
review via the below link:
As the U.S. Defense
Department notes, on June 6, 1944, nearly 160,000 Allied troops landed along a
heavily fortified, 50-mile stretch of French coastline in the historic
operation known as D-Day. Allied casualties were heavy - an estimated 10,000
killed, wounded and missing in action - but by day's end, the Allies had gained
a foothold to begin liberating Europe.
You can visit the Defense
Department’s special report on D-Day via the below link:
As History.com notes, on this
day in 1941 the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
At 7:55 a.m. Hawaii time, a
Japanese dive bomber bearing the red symbol of the Rising Sun of Japan on its
wings appears out of the clouds above the island of Oahu. A swarm of 360
Japanese warplanes followed, descending on the U.S. naval base at Pearl Harbor
in a ferocious assault. The surprise attack struck a critical blow against the
U.S. Pacific fleet and drew the United States irrevocably into World War II.
You can read the rest of the
piece via the below link:
Below is a photo of my old
ship, the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk, circa 1970, as she passes the USS Arizona Memorial at the Pearl Harbor naval base in Hawaii:
The Washington Times published my review of Peter Eisner's MacArthur's Spies: The Soldier, The Singer, and the Spymaster Who Defied the Japanese in World War II.
The Bataan Death March in the
Philippines in World War II that was orchestrated by the occupying Imperial
Japanese Army is well documented.
The forced march of Americans
and Filipinos who surrendered to the Japanese caused the death of thousands.
The prisoners were denied proper food and water and stragglers were shot or
bayoneted to death. Those who survived the death march were placed in military
camps under inhuman conditions.
In Australia, Gen. Douglas
MacArthur announced that he had been ordered by President Roosevelt to break
through the Japanese blockade of the Philippines and travel to Australia in
order to mount a campaign against the Japanese.
“I came through,” the general famously told
the crowd that greeted him. “And I shall return.”
But before he was able to
return triumphantly to the Philippines, the general required intelligence and
an organized resistance to the Japanese occupiers.
Not as well known as the
Bataan Death March and Gen. MacArthur’s departure and return to the
Philippines, is the story of the Americans and Filipinos who refused to
surrender to the Japanese and headed to the hills to form guerrilla bands.
These guerrillas and intelligence operatives defied the Japanese and performed
acts of sabotage and espionage. Despite the brutal efforts of the Japanese army
and the dreaded Kempeitai, the Gestapo-like Japanese military police, they were
able to provide crucial intelligence to Gen. MacArthur. These brave and
resourceful men and women played an important role in the war.
In Peter Eisner’s
“MacArthur’s Spies: The Soldier, the Singer and the Spymaster Who Defied the
Japanese in World War II” we learn about the guerrillas and spies, with an
emphasis on three of them.
As History.com notes, on this day in 1945 Ernie Pyle, America's most popular WWII war correspondent, was killed in combat by Japanese machine-gun fire on the island of le Shima in the Pacific.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
Note: I'm a huge admirer of Ernie Pyle. I have the collection of all of his columns in my library.
Someone once wrote that his columns read like short stories. I agree.
Actor Burgess Meredith portrayed Ernie Pyle in the movie The Story G.I. Joe, which also starred Robert Mitchum. Good film about a good man and the good men he covered during the war.
Paul Jablow offers a review of Max Hasting's The Secret War: Spies, Ciphers, and Guerrillas for the Philadelphia Inquirer. At first glance, Joseph Rochefort was about as unlikely as a war hero gets. A mediocre (at best) naval officer, he narrowly escaped court martial when a destroyer on which he was the duty officer dragged its anchor in San Francisco bay amid six destroyers. He was transferred to cryptoanalysis when fellow officers noted his penchant for crossword puzzles and bridge. It was Rochefort who played the key role in cracking the Japanese codes that allowed the smaller U.S. fleet to anticipate a June 1942 attack on Midway island, sink four carriers and a cruiser, and turn the tide of war in the Pacific. Yet Rochefort was unlikely only if one sees espionage as a glamorous job. As Max Hasting points out in this magisterial work, it is often a slow, frustrating search for a flash of light in a corner of an enormous, dark room. Even when leaders note the light, they often ignore it when it fails to match their preconceptions. You can read the rest of the review via the below link: http://www.philly.com/inquirer/entertainment/20160731__The_Secret_War___Masterful_history_of_the_wasteful_art_of_espionage.html Note: Max Hasting calls intelligence-gathering "wasteful," but that is not say, in my view, that intelligence-gathering is useless. For every intelligence failure there are many, many successful operations that saved lives and strengthened our national defense. The 9/11 attack came as a surprise, but one should be thankful that the various intelligence agencies thwarted more than a dozen or more follow-up attacks. You can read Joseph C. Goulden's Washington Times review of The Secret War via the below link: http://www.pauldavisoncrime.com/2016/05/the-secret-war-spies-ciphers-and.html
As History.com notes, on this day in 1945 the USS Indianapolis was bombed by the Japanese.
On this day in 1945, the USS Indianapolis is torpedoed by a Japanese submarine and sinks within minutes in shark-infested waters. Only 317 of the 1,196 men on board survived. However, the Indianapolis had already completed its major mission: the delivery of key components of the atomic bomb that would be dropped a week later at Hiroshima to Tinian Island in the South Pacific.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review of Stephen Harding's The Castaway's War: One Man's Batlle Against Imperial Japan for the Washington Times.
Of all the combat veterans I have encountered in almost half a century of writing, not a single person has claimed the accolade “hero,” regardless of the number of ribbons he wears. I recall vividly the reaction of a much-decorated veteran of the Korean War when I suggested his actions earned him such a designation.
He uttered a terse curse word, then grinned. “Let the historians sort out that kind of stuff,” he growled.
One person who surely deserved the honor is a Navy lieutenant named Hugh Barr Miller Jr., who was 34 years old in 1943 when a Japanese torpedo sank his destroyer, the USS Strong, off the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. His remarkable story is told by Stephen Harding, a Virginian who edits Military History magazine.
... As he slowly recovered — but by no means back to normal — Miller made a decision. He regularly saw barges laden with Japanese soldiers in the strait separating the islands. He decided that “as long as he remained on the island, it was his duty to do whatever he could to gather useful information on the Japanese forces operating in the vicinity. Any details he could amass — the designations and strengths of units, the locations of heavy weapons and strong points, the timing of patrols — would be of immense operational value” to planners of the eventual invasion of Arundel.
Miller reasoned it would be easier to interdict the barges than it would be to fight the Japanese ashore. He fashioned a “look out position” a few yards from paths taken by Japanese controls and took notes.
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:
The U.S. Navy history website offers a look at General Eisenhower's message to the troops before the invasion of Normandy.
Today, June 6, marks the 72nd anniversary of D-Day when Allied forces landed troops on Normandy beaches for the largest amphibious landing in history, Operation Overlord, beginning the march eastward to defeat Germany.
The below order was issued by Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to encourage Allied Soldiers, Sailors and Airmen taking part in the D-day invasion of June 6, 1944.
You can read more about the message via the below link:
Veteran journalist and author Joseph C. Goulden offers a good review in the Washington Times of Robert P. Watson's The Nazi Titanic.
Surely the phrase “friendly fire” ranks among the most sobering words in the military lexicon. In the fog of battle, an artillery spotter plots the wrong target. A rifleman mistakes a friend for an enemy. A fast-flying plane drops bombs prematurely. The result is that a comrade dies unnecessarily.
Military history teems with such horrors. In July 1944 alone, during the battle of Normandy, errant bombs killed not only a three-star general, Leslie J. McNair, but 111 other American soldiers.
But perhaps the most tragic of such episodes was the accidental sinking, by British Royal Air Force bombers, of a ship off the coast of Northern Germany carrying 4,500 persons who the Nazis had evacuated from a concentration camp. Only 350 of them survived. The deaths were all the more horrific because those killed had undergone years of brutal captivity, truly “innocent victims.”
Why these persons died is the subject of a gripping — and disturbing — book by Robert P. Watson, a historian who has authored 36 books. History has pretty much overlooked the tragedy, Mr. Watson writes, because it was “sandwiched halfway between Hitler’s suicide and victory in Europe.” He drew heavily on archives in the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
What turned out to be the death ship was a one-time luxury German passenger liner, the Cap Ancona, which in the pre-war years carried 1,325 affluent passengers to South America per voyage. Owners called it “The German Titanic.” When the war began, it was converted into a “floating military barracks” and naval training platform.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
Victor Davis Hanson offers a piece at National Review Online that asks why the president is visiting Hiroshima and not Pearl Harbor.
This year marks the 75th anniversary of the December 7, 1941, Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor that killed more than 2,400 Americans. President Obama is visiting Hiroshima this week, the site of the August 6, 1945, dropping of the atomic bomb that helped end World War II in the Pacific Theater. But strangely, he has so far announced no plans to visit Pearl Harbor on the anniversary of the attack. The president, who spent much of his childhood in Hawaii, should do so — given that many Americans have forgotten why the Japanese attacked the United States and why they falsely assumed that they could defeat the world’s largest economic power. Imperial Japan was not, as often claimed, forced into a corner by a U.S. oil embargo, which came only after years of horrific Japanese atrocities in China and Southeast Asia. Instead, an opportunistic and aggressive fascist Japan gambled that the geostrategy of late 1941 had made America uniquely vulnerable to a surprise attack.
... The road to Hiroshima and the massive loss of life in the Pacific was paved by unprovoked Japanese aggression at Pearl Harbor. Americans and their president should remember the lessons of that surprise attack 75 years ago this year.
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
My review of Michael E. Haskew's Aircraft Carriers: The Illustrated History of the World's Most Important Warships appeared today in the Washington Times.
The initial response of every U.S. president since Harry Truman to a world crisis has been to ask, “Where are the carriers?”
In Michael E. Haskew’s look back at the history and development of the aircraft carrier, he notes that it was soon after the Wright Brothers’ historic flight at Kitty Hawk, N.C., in 1903 that some naval officers and civilians began exploring and developing the airplane’s military capabilities. The first successful launch of a plane from the deck of a ship occurred in 1910.
On Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese aircraft launched from six aircraft carriers stationed 230 miles off Hawaii flew into Pearl Harbor and destroyed the U.S. Pacific Fleet and other U.S. military installations.
Four American battleships were sunk and four others were heavily damaged. American cruisers, destroyers and other ships and aircraft were also destroyed or heavily damaged — 2,403 Americans died in the attack while the Japanese military lost 29 aircraft, a fleet submarine, five midget submarines and 185 men. Thankfully, the American carriers were at sea at the time of the attack.
“When it was over, no doubt remained: The aircraft carrier was ascendant in naval warfare, eclipsing the dreadnaught battleship as the primary offensive weapon on the world’s oceans,” Mr. Haskew writes. “World War II in the Pacific, prosecuted across thousands of miles of open sea, was won and lost with the deployment of carrier air power.”
Mr. Haskew’s coffee-table book offers a concise history of the carrier from the Wright Brothers to Pearl Harbor, and on into the Korean, Vietnam and Middle East wars.
You can read the rest of the review via the below link:
Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime. He has written extensively about organized crime, cybercrime, street crime, white collar crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. His 'On Crime' column appears in the Washington Times and his 'Crime Beat' column appears here. He is also a regular contributor to Counterterrorism magazine and writes their online 'Threatcon' column. Paul Davis' crime fiction appears in American Crime Magazine. His work has also appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News, Philadelphia Weekly and other publications. As a writer, he has attended police academy training, gone out on patrol with police officers, accompanied detectives as they worked cases, accompanied narcotics officers on drug raids, observed criminal court proceedings, visited jails and prisons, and covered street riots, mob wars and murder investigations. He has interviewed police commissioners and chiefs, FBI, DEA, HSI and other federal special agents, prosecutors, public officials, WWII UDT frogmen, Navy SEALs, Army Delta operators, Israeli commandos, military intelligence officers, Scotland Yard detectives, CIA officers, former KGB officers, film and TV actors, writers and producers, journalists, novelists and true crime authors, gamblers, outlaw bikers, and Cosa Nostra organized crime bosses. Paul Davis has been a student of crime since he was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 in 1970. He served aboard the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War and he later served two years aboard the Navy harbor tugboat U.S.S. Saugus at the U.S. floating nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. He went on to do security work as a Defense Department civilian while working part-time as a freelance writer. From 1991 to 2005 he was a producer and on-air host of "Inside Government," a public affairs interview radio program that aired Sundays on WPEN AM and WMGK FM in the Philadelphia area. You can read Paul Davis' crime columns, crime fiction, book reviews and news and feature articles on this website. You can read his full bio by clicking on the above photo. And you can contact Paul Davis at pauldavisoncrime@aol.com
