Didnt you cowrite something . Were you kind of their expert . Towith steve, i contributed two fiction anthologies at his request. Is a marvelous friend and colleague. In 1984 our mutual publisher , sent me a manuscript written by an aviator called for each other. The publisher asked my opinion and i said this book is so good if you dont publish it, i will, and the next year it was published. So steve and i have kept in touch ever since. He came up with the concept of a military contractor that does deny it will work for the u. S. Government all over the world. That was a trilogy that was a fun change of pace for me because i had not done anything in that realm at that time. So that was an education. You are a wonderful writer. Your nonfiction reads with all the polls of fiction. And so you grew up flying airplanes, and where does all this aviation background come from . I am a Eastern Oregon kid that grew up next to a cropdusting strip in my little bitty hometown in oregon. And airplanes were always overhead and that combined with the fact that my dad had been trained as a naval aviator in world war ii and i was there from infancy, i was blessed and i use that word because i was blessed to be able to help restore vintage airplanes and fly them. I guess overall i have had between five and 600 flying Navy Airplanes from the world war ii timeframe, that has been a tremendous benefit both in the history an infection. Im sure that that is that those who read you know you have an encyclopedic knowledge. Im going to Start Talking about dday and the encyclopedia which is an update and probably, if i work this out right to , commemorate the anniversary of the june 6, 1944 dday landings. Thats right, the original book was published for the 60th anniversary and i woke up one morning and realize that oh, my goodness in 12 to 14 months we are going to have the 70th anniversary. So eventually i wound up doing an update. And the main difference between the original and this is bad there are none of the historic figures still living now smack i havent even thought about that. I was going to ask if there was new material that has come not from records release and things that wouldve changed some of the information that you had. I did expand upon a few of the entries and i know one had to do with intelligence from the allied side and a couple of other entries were expanded on the basis of Additional Information and one of them have to do with the british and Canadian Navy and i found Additional Information on that. This has been very well received. As an author its always interesting to me to get feedback from my readers. Two of them who dont know each other said that this is a wonderful book because most of the entries are just the right length for bathroom reading. And started this yesterday i did dip in and out of it. I thought it was fascinating, i was born in 1940 and so i dont have any memory of the war or dday other than playing with my mothers food stamps. But we talked about these figures in the years after the war and reading this was not just a refresher course but all of the personalities revealed things that you dont know when you are living through it. Its different than when you go back. Thats right. Vietnam was my war and now when i read about that, i think, why didnt i know that then. But you cant always tell. One of the things that i thought was interesting is the personalities that you talked about and we had Dwight Eisenhower who is the supreme allied commander and my question would be was he there because he was a great general or because he was great at logistics or just great at politics. He was great at politics. The conventional wisdom for many years after the war was he was the one who held together the alliance and that is certainly an exaggeration. Its not as if the british and the french were going to take this and go home because they didnt like the fact that an american was a commander. The other aspect was since america provided the huge majority of the manpower or the liberation of northwestern europe, it was a given that eisenhower or another senior american would be the overall commander. But in fairness his subordinates were both british and he was the Deputy Commander and then the head of the navy in the air campaigns which were also british. So it was pretty much a balance between the angloamerican. It was certainly Operation Overlord in this sense. How capitalism saved america and you also talked about Jimmy Doolittle who was really an awful lot. I was very fortunate to get to know the general, as he likes to be known as general jimmy. And of course he came back to world prominence and National Prominence within april april 1942 bombing wave of tokyo and five other cities in that area this includes twinengine bombers from an Aircraft Carrier and that aspect of it worked and it turned out that they had to launch a few hundred miles earlier than expected where all the planes except for one ran out of fuel. That brought him up to Brigadier General and he received the medal of honor and he was almost immediately sent to north africa when he learned the general business running the north African Allied air forces. So by the time he came to italy in november of 1943, he was a known quantitive and he was only there two months before eisenhower who called him to britain to take over this air force. He had his problems in the sense that the weather didnt cooperate for dday. You had very low cloud cover and you wrote that the bombers actually ended up being too far back to really protect the people. The airplane and i found shows the normandy coast running mostly east west and the heavy bombers raised in britain 30 miles away were approaching the german occupied beaches at a perpendicular angle north to south. And the navy said we dont want the bombers dropping because it will endanger the ships offshore. Long story short, most of the bombs fell 1. 5 to 3 miles behind the beaches and really didnt have benefit to the landing troops. Sometimes this is a real obstacle and they have a story about as well. There really was no perfect day. Well, it was originally scheduled for june 5 and eisenhower agreed that they would have a 24 hour weather hold and then after that it was all or nothing because the next favorable tides and in phases will be downstream. Isnt that amazing in the same way that oak ridge remained as well with social media and everything, there is no way that this ever could have existed. Find it fascinating and we will get it to this in a minute. He was an individual and even though he had same with something that had nothing to do with naval subjects, he was one born in maine and grew up on the coast and so the salt water was in his veins early on. When world war ii started he basically knocked on the navys door and said here i am, make use of me. And he was given a directive as a Lieutenant Commander and he had visiting privileges almost everywhere. There is a littleknown but superb documentary that was made in and hes wellknown for that june 1942. Documentary. But less well known is the fact that his film crew was aboard navy and coast guard ship off normandy and some of the combat footage that we see with Tv Documentaries were shot by his cameramen. I was fascinated to see that. The person i liked the best is a british person, simon fraser. He is one of those highland warriors. Lucky him if there was actually a war because he was a man born to fight. Was. Solutely he he was a Senior Commander in the British Armed forces. He is a natural born warrior whose life would have been wasted in any other endeavor and even know he was severely wounded during the Normandy Campaign and receive the last rites, told a subordinate later over sothe water is not he got back into combat before the war ended. Charles has always been controversial in french and among the allies. You give him a pretty good rating. And he was a progressive military theorist before world war ii. He spent most of the war as a prisoner of the germans. He became the leading advocate of tank warfare and consequently, his seniority was such that when france fell in june of 1940, he evacuated to britain with tens of thousands of other free french and he became a significant factor in allied planning and i think the most wonderful statement made about him was from Winston Churchill who said the greatest cross i must bear is the products of million. Of the cross of lorraine. Somebody had to be running a french government when the germans were pushed back, they could actually function. And the goal was able to do that. Most of us know enough about and i thought you could there was a lot of medical theories about, have this person or this illness hadnt gone on and would history would have been different. Fdr in your judgment should not have run for a fourth term. He was done. A dying man. If you look at the films especially from the conference about maybe six weeks before he died, that is a dying man and he really should have stepped down, but it was not in him to vacate the presidency. The reason was there was a paralysis when he was so l, but wasnt actually able and read things that said patton could have made it to berlin before the russians, he was unable to because there was basically no american functioning command from january to march when roosevelt died and truman was kept out of things. Harry truman, a person who had training for any of the role did zero an amazing job. Think about some of the things he learned from the treaty of versailles. They did not have a punishing training, all that stuff and roosevelt has such contempt for him he didnt take him into his confidence. It would have been fascinating to be a fly on the wall the day truman was inaugurated, i assume it was general marshall, the chief of staff, said mr. President , theres something you need to know about what is going on in new mexico. And hitler, you give him a great politician. None of us give him points for being a great human being. But a question always wondered and i think the same thing about napoleon, why . Why russia . Why couldnt they just stick to europe . And be happy with that . May be that is not part of a personality like that. It is not. I think the one thing napoleon and hitler had in common was they believed their own pr. They were drinking their own koolaid. And alexander the great. Was the same. The great captains of history typically overreached themselves, theyre a victim of their own success. That is true. We talked about people, you give a lot of space to the various armed forces, land, sea and air , because they take all three on the american, british and german front which i thought was fascinating. You talk about the weaponry, the kinds of planes and the kinds of guns and you give credit to two american gun designers, mr. Browning, i dont remember the other one. He was born a canadian and became a u. S. Citizen and was an employee of the u. S. Army Ordnance Service and he stood about 12 years or so designing what became the m 1 semiautomatic rifle that meant the u. S. Armed forces were the only ones in the Second World War entirely equipped with a semiautomatic rifle. That made a big difference and her that men John Browning made it more genius, utah mormon gunsmiths designed and held the patents on almost every automatic weapon that the United States used in the Second World War from the browning automatic weapon to the light and heavy machine guns, and the fabulous 1911 kissel, which was in Front Line Service for 75 years and is still issued today. He was a true american genius. And also the guy who designed the Landing Craft. Higgins. The higgins boat. I thought that was fascinating. He is another success story. Established a privatelyowned Boat Building Company in new orleans and he anticipated before the navy the need for massproduced Landing Craft in event of not war but the next war. It is generically called the higgins boat. Actually it was the Landing Craft vehicle and personnel, then made it possible Amphibious Operations in every theater of action. You finally cleared up for me various things about the kinds of airplanes that were used. We all know about the beat 47, the workers bomber. But i had not realized the douglas aircraft, the sky train the c 47, became it was , basically a passenger plane that they managed to turn into a personal carrier. That is right. It was the revolutionary douglas dc3 airliner from the late to mid 1930s and the Army Air Corps recognized that this has tremendous potential not only as a transport on a cargo airplane but it can deliver paratroops, and we could not have conducted the Normandy Campaign as we did gliders. 47s and otherwise, you would have to transport everybody by ship. And even though we won the war in the atlantic against overwhelming forces, not like 1943 or something. The turning point in the battle of the atlantic came in may of 1943 when if you look at the chart, the number of sinkings of merchant vessels that were taking supplies to britain, the number fell below the number of german submarines that were being sunk. So essentially the battle of the atlantic was won 13 months before the day. The theme is the germans were better equipped and probably had better strategy, better training, everything else, once they develop the world wide theater because several times in the book you say they were too thin. They didnt have enough so basically, as long as everything didnt fall to them, they would win. They did not have the sustainability allies did. Deception. You have a section about an attempt to convince the germans the landing would not be in normandy, and the other beaches. There was the lengthy, complex plan called bodyguard of lies was the definitive book on the subject. There was a multitiered plan to deceive the germans, and the landings would take place, would you if you look at the map, is the logical crossing point, was 25 miles from calais across the channel. We turned from german intelligence agents and caught them and made them an offer it they cant refuse. Either you feed false information to your masters in withny, or you have a date 12 gentlemen with rifles. And that combined with signals sending false information we knew the germans would intercept and decode and joyce patton was a big part of the deception because he was given command of a nonexistent army. An organization eight or ten divisions, where he was so visible throughout britain in the days leading up so that the germans focused on him, his appearances coincided or so it seemed with the plan landings. You didnt watch the ian flemings three part bio on television earlier this year. Flemings was crazy in many ways. Great jamese wrote bond novels was because of that but he was an extremely effective agent, because of the fiction abilities. He had a plan to actually take a course. I dont think he killed anybody. And dressed in uniform and state information on it about where the landing would be an floated off. Werenever known if that true. [laughter] it isnt in your book. Leave the germans as to where this is landings, a very wonderful concept. They address this corpse, probably a british sailor, in a major marine uniform with a briefcase handcuffed and the spanish recover the wreckage and immediately told the germans. That deceived them as to where the sicilian landings would occur. If youre interested in following this up in fiction, and author named james r. Bent has written some wonderful books about a fugitive shirt tail relative of eisenhower, a boston cop who gets to do stuff. He shows up in all these theaters. And these most recent books, hes in england right before Operation Overlord launches and he writes about the screwups. You talk about slaps in the sand but he said at one point when he exercise andning the british navy got their signals crossed and wiped out a bunch of people. Operation tiger was a dress rehearsal for some of the American Forces that were going to land in normandy. The germans had a class of torpedo boats. And i think two of the german torpedo boats penetrated the practice landing area at night and torpedoed two or three american ships with heavy loss of life, i think about 400 americans were killed and Operation Tiger became classified until the end of the lord. It is interesting to watch the internet revelations because about every 10 to 12 years somebody discovers the coverup and says look what happened. It has been known since the late 40s. Overlord was the name of the overall thing but then there was operation neptune. Was that the naval part . Correct. The full name of the whole operation was neptune overlord. You cant have an amphibious operation without a naval aspect and neptune as i explained in the encyclopedia involved, and ships from about five allied nations, canada with the Third Largest navy in world war ii and from were individual ships free france and poland. It was a multinational endeavour. You achieve the wonderful balance even though you are clearly an aviation junky but theres a lot in here about the navy and the army and you give great space to the Royal Air Force and the planes that it flew and the Royal Canadian air force. Anyway, it is absolutely fascinating. I particularly like the alphabet. You have a chart that lists the u. S. Version, the british version, and the german version. I thought the choice of names was really fun. Same but they were the the german ones for different. The germans were antoine bruno, caesar, and in fact they even had a word that eludes me. There is a new thriller out foxtrot. Iskey tango three of the code words in the british side of it. There is a lot you can learn from this book that i found completely fascinating. I marked a couple things. You have all kinds of extra stuff like dday movies and the dday museum and the fact that they didnt destroy the tapestry even though they might well have because it was headquarters and so forth. The other thing i saved was your entry on john ford which we already talked about which i love. He was promoted to rear admiral naval reserve, a president ial metal of freedom. I can remember, i was reading the New York Times and i have to say this imprint does not make a great bookmark. I have to say the other operation i forgot to mention, operation cobra. That was the overall allied plan to break out from the normandy bridge head, and the it was a highly complex evolution because it were required the americans and british to corvette grand forces and airpower that also was intended to blast a path through the german fortified areas inland from normandy. It met with mixed success, as i explain in the excitement. Bombersentioned heavy did not have well defined aim points. A lot of their bombs fell short and killed several hundred americans. Including Lieutenant General mcnair, the overall commander of Ground Forces in europe. He was the senior American General killed in world war ii by friendly fire. Snafu. Is also a discussions about acronyms, and sanfu certainly applies. When you finish reading this, you wonder how we actually brought it off. [laughter] considering all of the snafus and breaks they went against on both sides. It takes a certain amount of luck. Is a saying in military circles, id rather be lucky than good. I think dday is a good planning accommodation, and realizing at the last minute you still have to make it up. We know that here every date. [laughter] we have to embrace chaos in this work. Anyway, its a fascinating book. I would not call it after reading [laughter] but its the sort of thing you of, andin and dip out really enjoyed. You have done an amazing thing between july 2013 and 2014. The lord of three books. You brought out three books. That is irrevocable or crazy. Or crazy. Ic, [laughter] probably crazy, because extenuating circumstances my publishers had to bring them out early mayeet between and the end of june. Back off a few months, and even certainly appreciate this barbara imagine going cross site trying to proofread going cross eyed trying to proofread three simultaneously. Fortunately i was able to do it. [laughter] i suspect it was easier if you were not infection not in fiction, but you are working in the same universe. You have to remember where your focus is. Yeah, which book is the today . Is much more your love of aviation here. You are focus on the flying leatherneck. One thing we learn in the dday encyclopedia is that marines got a huge amount of worry of the battle of bella woods in world war i. They were known as the devil dogs, a term i applied to my puppy. [laughter] it really created a lot of jealousy and political turmoil with the army. They were not too anxious. They had marines involved in the european theater. That world war generation of armor source army officers, mccarter with example i used to know a general that retired as the general joint chiefs of staff, and he gave a briefing and the pentagon in early 1944 suggesting that marine Fighter Bomber squadrons based on escort carriers in the channel and north sea with a brandnew position were ideal for destroying german buzz bomb sites in northern france. He says he barely got started when he said, that is the end of this briefing. You will never be up as long as i am chief of staff, and he walked out. John wayne made flying leathernecks about specific instead of the atlantic. You underlined the importance of politics in the encyclopedia. Your book recognizes 120 marine corps fighting aces. You explain it what makes an ace . By tradition, a flight or combat aviator. Usually a Fighter Pilot credited with shooting down at least five enemy aircraft. One of the reasons i wrote this book, aside from the fact that it had never been done before and there was a gap in the market, is that in writing so many other books i got to know so many of these colorful characters personally. A longtimehibit was scottsdale resident here. Despite all the hype about the joe was and is the top scoring marine corps pilot of all time. All of his victories were scored as a marine, whereas some of others were claimed with the flying tigers in china and burma. I have this tell a story about jim. The wonderful i have to tell a story about joe. One of the most gracious. Wonderful people ive had the pleasure of knowing. As a christian gentleman. She was an evangelist. He would go anywhere to speak about his faith. Dedicated to a marine corps combat aviator. That meant being highly competitive. Joe used to joke, it was so competitive that she used to have a hard time letting his grandchildren when at go fish. How many of the marine corps aces lived on to fight in korea . And then there was one or more in vietnam as well . There were no marine corps aces in vietnam. One in the current being more war flew akorean regular tour with the marine corps squadron. He is another dedicated warrior that lived for combat. He was selected to flight and Exchange Tour with the air force near the end of the war, and he shut down six communist jet fighters. He is the marine corps only 2 war ace. Marines were obviously great at amphibious assault, but we are talking about flying. Headquarters were in quantico and the san diego for the flying leathernecks . Yes, that was before the war. The marine corps aviation was one east coast, one west coast. Then each of them had its attachments either to the Virgin Islands or others in the caribbean, or out to hawaii. But at the time of pearl harbor, there were only about a dozen marine corps squadrons. The appendix in this book lists all 50 marine corps fighter squadrons that served outside the United States during world war ii. There was tremendous expansion. What did they find . Did they fly . What is the brewster buffalo . The brewster f to a buffalo was a prewar fighter, significant in Naval Aviation history. It went operational in 1939 as navy and marine corps aviations first monoplane fighter, as opposed to a twoweek biplane. Twowing biplane. In junele of midway 1942, fortunately the follow on airplane was the judgment f four f wildcat, which remained the marine corps primary fighter well into 1943. In the overall study about marine corps operations and ward were cut thats world war ii, most is on the guadalcanal campaign. That is what you see the big campaigns start to emerge. They were extremely successful with the wildcats, even though it was technically inferior to the japanese fighters. The u corsair which we became the iconic plane of world war ii. Mentioned briefly, pearl harbor, there was no chance for anybody to act in wake island. The remains the marines repelled the first attempt . Right. Then there was not enough of them to succeed in the same and a second attempt. Midway was the turning point where the japanese had their advance stopped . And as you said, guadalcanal was the long slog. And they moved on to okinawa and the philippines. Based on this book, what is your assessment about your decision to drop the bomb . David save lives . Did it save lives . Yes it did. I was touring the silver spring, maryland restoration facility. There was a group of japanese tourists going through it. Doctor fluents a in english. I got talking to him about the decisions to drop the bombs. He said it was terrible, people died for years thereafter in tooshima and nagasaki ue radiation. But the hurt the invasion planned would have been horrific. In researching a previous book, whirlwind, covert air operations over japan, i found interrogations with Japanese Military and diplomatic officials in the Strategic Bombing survey. Almost unanimous in the statement that millions of japanese would have died trying to repulse an invasion. Not to mention millions of allies. The New York Times commented on a release of papers about emperor hirohito, who was kind of hidden as a puppet in a lot of analysis of the war. In said that he was far more active than is generally thought to be true. And he was the stubborn one after you are shema after hiroshima, when in fact he could have. Hiroshima was completely flattened. Not only did everybody get radiation poisoning, that the city was completely destroyed. Nagasaki is in kind of a canyon. Its like you were in los alamos. When they drop the bomb at nagasaki, and alternate target. Dday, the comment about when the weather was so that. Another city was supposed to be the target, but they defaulted to nagasaki because the cloud cover was so terrible. The radiation poisoning killed people but hardly damaged the city because the geography of nagasaki dispersed the blast. And so it didnt wipe out all of the old historic buildings. Can go visit them. Unless you go, thats not the sort of thing that you would really know. But i found that to be fascinating. Having talked to people in japan, they generally conceive that the loss of life of team would have been so much greater. But they are realizing that if emperor hirohito said we are done, they could have spared the second bombing. He had a opportunity in early march of 1945. Tokyoveled 1 6th of overnight and killed at least 85,000 people. The next night, hirohito got in his limousine, saw what he saw, smelled what he had to smell, and decided no, we arent going to surrender. Imagine if britain or the United States had suffered 85,000 people dead overnight. Would we have still wanted to continue the war . I am not sure. These are questions we cant really answer, right . The dday encyclopedia is byshed book is the forgotten 15th. Does anyone have any questions they like to ask about either of the books weve discussed . Or are you all in a state of complete amazement . [laughter] is there anything you like to ask . At the start, you mentioned doolittle. Beforele raced airplanes world war ii. How popular was he then . He was a rock star in aviation. He won every major aviation ration available. Race available. He also made a tremendous coverage of vision to aviation progress in developing instrument flying. Concert with a gyroscope company. When he left the air court and worked with shell oil, she developed high octane gasoline. He developed high octane gasoline. Thanks. Would youicant consider the Deception Campaign prior to dday, leading to the success of it . It was extremely significant. I dont know that it made the difference between winning and losing, simply because of the huge numerical disparity between the allies and the germans. What it did was caused hitlers and his general staff to hold back the reinforcements that were well inland. They were centrally positioned so that they could reinforce a bridgehead. That uncertainty as to where the landings would occur about the allys extra time once the troops were ashore. Actually, i have 1001. 1000 more. [laughter] talking about aviation, the navy corps. Are there any that got their start on biplanes and then qualified for super fighters in the 1960s . Oh, absolutely. Whatever you make of the conventional wisdom of the greatest generation of americans being world war ii, definitely the greatest generation of aviators was the world war ii period. They started flying in open pitkpit high plains cock biplanes. And those that finished 2025 careers finished flying mach five jets. That type of progress is simply not possible anymore. I think i will hold off on my question. On that note, we will change over to the the forgotten 15th. There is a little overlap with earlier. Something interesting about this book and the theater of war is the whole thing about amateurs doing strategy, professionals doing logistics. Lets start with the beginning of the book. It begins with this absolutely captivating narrative description of the planes moving through the printers pass. Could you describe that . I wanted to set the stage in the prologue showing the readers a typical Bombing Mission flown from italy in the mediterranean theater of operations. Northward either into austria or germany. Factories,ess petroleum targets, transportation targets north of the alps. It, it is ank about richer dilemma. I have always been fascinated about hannibal and he is the amazing effort to get elephants across the alps. This is what, fourth century bc . And contrast that with the ponderous tedious task that must have been urging a herd of terms of narrow Rocky Mountain trails, sometimes breaking trails themselves. Fastforward to the first part of the 20th century, where fleets of hundreds of multiengined bombers five miles high are streaming cottony contrails through the chili upper atmosphere. Chilly upper atmosphere. That contrast appealed to me. I wonder if they had asked patton for directions, since he was the incarnation of hannibal by his own statement. Light itnteresting shed on the war is the aspect of petroleum is one of the central issues of the conflict. You talked about that. Would you like to explore that . A little bit of background the reason the 15th u. S. Army air force was established in thember 1943 was that allied combined sheaves in d. C. Knew chief in that to beat germany, it would be essential to turn off the oil taps. One third of nazi germanys petroleum payment from romania, specifically 1011 refineries 35 miles north of bucharest. If you look at a map of europe and a dry line, you can see from london southeast to this town is about 1300 miles. All of that was over german occupied europe. There is simply no way for british base bombers to reach those targets. Consequently, the 15th air force was established by Jimmy Doolittle in november 1943. And job one on its list of things to do was prevent the romanians and germans from continuing to produce not only raw oil and other petroleum products, but refined theoctane gasoline for luftwaffe. Cost the 15th air force 250 airplanes. But it turned off almost all of the Oil Production there. Later that month the russians invaded and took over the area anyway. Oil was job one. After that was accomplished, the 15th could compass and other missions. Could focus on other missions. Things like synthetic finery is, railroad and other transportation targets. It was a multifaceted Strategic Air campaign conducted and south by the air force band British Air Force and 15th air force base in italy. There are so many amazing little stories in this book. There is no way we can hope to capture them all. Catch them all in the book. I know that you talked about him a little bit, general jimmy, who i believe you got to know personally. He seems like an amazing character. You talked about the raid in tokyo. That he set up the 15th in a twomonth period. He would actually fly combat during the war. Yes he did. He began flying combat with his famous terrier launch rate of 16 army bombers on the tokyo urban area in april 1942. That meant not only a medal of honor, but a double promotion from Lieutenant Colonel to Brigadier General. I was fortunate getting to know him. I was tapped by the Los Angeles Area chamber of commerce to write the program for his 80th birthday in 1976. We just hit it off and established a friendship and kept in touch. Jimmys attitude is that if he were going to command an air force, he damn well was going to learn to fly every airplane in the air force. One of his fighter unit had a british spitfire in north africa. He was caught redhanded by eisenhower climbing out of a spitfire with a Brigadier General star on his shoulder. Eisenhower said, any Second Lieutenant can fly a fighter pain. Do you want to fly fighter planes, or do you want to run my air . The application that you can do one, but not both. I will leaved yes, air, and promptly forgot and fly in the next Bombing Mission. [laughter] this was a divide between the airman mentality and army mentality. This started as a rocky relationship between doolittle and eisenhower. Correct. Doolittle and eisenhower first served in north africa, where eisenhower was then a threestar and led the senior american ground commander in the theater. Wasrstand that eisenhower class of 1950. 1915. He was a left point snob. He did not have the appreciation of a reserve officer who did not wear the west point ring. It is surprising because eisenhower obviously was intelligent and a capable leader and administrator. What was it wonder about his professional military education that led him to denigrate reserve officers . But doolittle wrote to his wife guess i finallyi sold my to general eisenhower because im going to command the 15th air force. Eisenhower did not necessarily have a veto on that position because he was moving up to england to establish the supreme allied headquarters. Demonstratednly his acceptance of doolittle two months after doolittle established the 15th air force and requested him to run the eight air force for the rest of the war. Talk about doolittles replacement, who was another interesting guy. Another guy with an amazing story. Nathan twining was from an old american family. They had an almost unbroken line of service in the u. S. Army or navy dating from the revolution. Fact, i believe he was named for an uncle who was an admiral. His brother was a marine corps general. So the military was in their dna. He had previous combat experience commanding the 13th air force and was tapped by general arnold, the chief of the Army Air Forces in washington to transfer from the pacific to italy and take over the 15th air 44. E in january of she survived six days at sea. He survived six days at sea. They got lost and ran out of fuel. The survived from that ordeal and emerged stronger than ever. Wasnt he on the force that was hunching contra via wast that point in 1916, he still a national guardsman. He went to west point thereafter and was on general pershings punitive expedition into mexico in 1916. Lets return now to the war again. Something that struck me about the book was the steep learning curve and incredibly stiff resistance and high attrition rate that they experienced, especially early, but throughout the war. A short course in prewar Army Air Force doctrine. Airport Tactical School generated plans and doctrines that was disseminated throughout the army in its aviation units. They came up with the concept of the self defending bomber. A four engine High Altitude bomber with heavy machine gun armament that was supposed to be able to fend off enemy interceptors without the use of friendly fighter escorts. An example of the technical tale liking the doctrinal dog. We had no longrange escort fighters. Thats concept of the self defending bomber came up against reality over Northern Europe with the eighth air force in 19421943. The attrition was such that an late 1943 it was statistically impossible for a bomber crew to finish a 25 mission tour. The average attrition permission was 4 . Attrition per mission so the eventual arrival in especially of4, the mustang, the bombers, this was in contrast to the british, who flew almost entirely at night. They showed amazing perseverance. There were some incidents of amazing heroism. Maybe you can describe some of those. Ett both were posthumous, and both involved missions to area in thear one summer of 1944. A bombardier from my home state attended a badly wounded gunner and had to take off his parachute harness in order to apply first aid, and that harness disappeared in the and the airplane was made shot up, so kingsley the conscious decision. He had minutes to think about it. He took off his harness, put it on the wounded sergeant, and pushed him off of the bomb bay ripcoard,d pull the so he did that to death, and if there is not a better definition of being a hero, i do not know what is. And then the was an airplane that was damaged, and there were about three crew members who were either wounded or unwilling to bail out, and he stayed with it, trying to make a crash landing and almost got down ,afely, but a wing got snagged and that was donald, who also got a posthumous medal of honor. Turning to a much lighter note, there is a lot of funny stuff in the book, but one thing i found it was particularly amusing, when the men would get a new bomber, i forget which one, but searching for hidden messages. Perhaps you can talk about that. Barrett we have all heard of rosie the riveter, and they were not limited to building airplanes for you and they were building ships, everything, but they were not limited. O building airplanes they were building ships, everything. They could frequently find insult messages from rosie the name and phone number, give me a call, soldier , and sometimes, they would bra size. Were any permanent hookups remains for investigation. We are running short on time. Talking about the other side of , it was an intense conflict on both sides, and it was very interest in, and i like that you did explore that. Perhaps you can talk about the more endearing characters. , like there are some italian sort of style. Quite fascinating. Barrett real quickly, about the italians, many people do not know that the italians were on both sides, because after mussolini was overthrown in 1943, he was rescued in a raid, and the northern portion of italy remain in the access hands hands. He axis squadrons one or two who decided to side with the allies, and they flew their squadrons into a base and reported for duty, and they were wearing what the military calls uniforms, which would include their white gloves , so what better way to present yourself . Two of my favorite characters on axis side, there was a goldmedal winner for the and by the 15th air force was established, he was commanding the air Defense Sector around the anna, and , and they lost Something Like 300 airplanes or in that vienna area, so one was an extremely capable air commander, and the personal connection i have is that i used to know his friendly rival, who retired from the u. S. Army, and they became friends in berlin during the 1936 olympics, because charlie got the silver , and they sent food and to the family in germany until they could get back on their feet, so my absolute favorite character in the entire book is a fabulous prince. Al, a royalty, one of these rare people who excelled in everything that he did. Movieidol good looks, rockstar charisma, and there is nothing that interested him in which he did not do extremely well. He was with the hockey team, a championstunt pilot, a motorcycle and automobile racer, to him, ariel combat Aerial Combat was a sport. He recognized with the prisoners being held in romania were likely going to be liberated by the soviets, and he did not trust them. Many americans were not released by the soviets. So he stuck an american pow in down tolage and flew the 15th air force headquarters and arranged a massive airlift of bombers up to the bucharest area to take them back to freedom in italy, and he made the mistake of letting an pilot flying is plain, and he wrapped it in a ball. So he needed an american airplane. The only american airplane ilable was ap 51 mustang, was a p51 mustang. He took off and put on a worldclass demonstration and landed and that, i am ready. Lets go. So he was a tremendous character. He was married four times. Divorced himves and married a british gentleman, and their daughter is best known the dallas tv series. It is a remarkable situation. Well, i think that is all we have time for. There are so many more wonderful and fascinating episodes in the book. We have time for a few more questions. We have a few more questions about this . Barbara i know you have one. That to you. I have one. You mentioned you had flown over 500 hours in various military craft and that you have remodeled some and that kind of thing. Did you have a favorite, and if so, why . Barrett yes, mine was one my werend i and my family stored in the 1970s. We acquired it from portland, oregon, who had been using it as plane ford spray mosquito control, and it became operate, and at the time, it was the only example of the scout bomber by douglas in the world, and now i think there are two or three that are airworthy, and i realize that almost nothing had been written about it. It was probably one of the most significant aircraft after pearl harbor, because of midway and guadalcanal. One of my favorite pictures is one that i took of my dad flying that airplane. It is a closeup cockpit shot of him, and it was one of dads favorites, too, and it was over when he died earlier this year, and it remains my sentimental favorite. I see in your book, you lady be good. It was not a b25. It was a b24. Do you know what happened to it . Did they scrap it . Barrett it went down in the north african desert shortly before the 15th was established, but the crew flew hundreds of on the african coast, ran out of fuel, landed in the desert, and the airplane wrecked, and it was found and eventually rot back to the United States for display at an airport museum. And eventually brought back to the United States for display at an airport museum. Barbara thank you. Oming, and all, for c i would like to say that james has written some wonderful books , but there is the go to for various suitors of world war ii, and i cannot remember the name of the book, but he has a brilliant book of romania and the value of the romanian fields. He is in hungary. For anyone whoe wants a broadbased picture. And you can hardly do any better than barrett tillman. We could listen for hours more. Thank you for coming. And if you would like to have your books signed, come on up. Barrett thank you for hosting me. May 24. It is at the paterson museum. Yes, sir . How would you like that in d . Ribed inscribe [captions Copyright National cable satellite corp. 2016] [captioning performed by the national captioning institute, which is responsible for its caption content and accuracy. Visit ncicap. Org] bestncer hear from the every saturday, and you can visit our website, cspan. Org history. Are watching American History tv, all weekend, every weekend, on cspan3. On q a, a biography of george w. Bush. There is the fact that he is a born again christian who brings that ideology into the presidency. He was godshat agent here on earth to fight evil. Bush called the president of france, and during the course of that conversation, he said we are fighting megog and gog. They are creatures in the book of revelation in the new testament. That is the center of the universe for many evangelicals and fundamentalist christians, and bush genuinely believed to that. Believed that he was gods agent here on earth to fight evil. Cspans that is on q a. Weekend, each american artifacts. Next, we visit the alexandria apothecary museum, just outside of washington, d. C. , and we will learn about what an apothecary is an out how it has changed over the years. Gret
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