Transcripts For CSPAN3 Disappearance Of World War II Bomber Crew 20160124

Center. He experience a talented writer. Gregs project is ambitious. As he spent a quarter of a century reconstructing the life and times of 10 airmen aboard the between four liberator which disappeared over austria on october 1. As we will hear, he has a personal connection to this story and he has traced the lives of the fallen servicemen, situated them within a larger andy of combat in europe has reflected on his own personal journeys to the village in southern austria where the man disappeared. Willis the research we hear about today and it will inform his forthcoming book on the subject. Greg jones has been a Foreign Correspondent and investigative journalist for more than 30 years. He is the author of honor in the dust. Received stand, which a marine corps green junior award and red revolution which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Foras been a staff writer the los angeles times, dallas morning news, and the atlantic journal and constitution. He is covered the philippines as a freelance Foreign Correspondent. He reported from pakistan following 9 11. Hes also traveling widely in afghanistan covering the fall of the teleban, the fur search for Osama Bin Laden and the beginning of the ongoing u. S. War. Hes currently the Black Mountain fellow at the center theing on his book about multijake multigenerational legacy of a lost bomber from world war ii. We decided to conduct it as a conversation. Welcome, sir. Thank you. This story has a very personal connection for you. Lets start at the beginning and talk about what that personal connection is and how you came to be aware of this episode with these 10 men. Answer, there are several people that i want to thank. I want to thank this center, the veterans history project. Patrick and megan harris. They do great work in preserving the stories of our nations veterans. Megan has been very helpful in my research as well. Also, the center has been my home for the last three plus months. This is really an extraordinary place. I come from the journalism side of the world and that tends to be a shabbier side of the street. To walk into this magnificent building every day for the last three months has been a sublime pleasure. It has been made an even greater pleasure by the environment that has been created here at the center. Lu, think robert and mary bottom havep to made this and marvelous place to do good work. , anso want to thank katie intern who has been an invaluable partner and an important piece of my research on ambiguous loss and frozen grief. Thei want to thank scholars, the fellows with whom i have shared this space the last few months. A really amazing and warm smarting intimidatingly but incredibly Generous Group of people. I will never forget you all. One quick correction. As much as i wish that my book had been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize it was my journalism work that was a finalist. But i will certainly take that. Is and iuestion am going to try, i have some images that i will share. This may not be entirely seamless, but i think these are worth sharing. The personalis connection how this has been woven into my life, i grew up image, this at this photograph that you see there. And much kept a small less crisp print of this on her bedroom dresser when i was growing up and my earliest was probably when i was 12 or 13. I remember looking at it and asking her about it. My mother did not have a lot of facts about this photograph. She did know that her brother is in the photograph. Hes the man in the lower lefthand corner. His name is white. He was a Technical Sergeant and a radio up her on this bomber crew. She knew that the crew had disappeared over austria during a Mission October 1. And beyond that, she did not know a lot. There were questions as to whether or not any of the men had been found. But there was one other twist to it. There was a survivor and my mother did not know much about it. But it obviously begged the question of how was there one survivor and how was it the other men were not found or did not come back. That photograph was really an entry point for me. I was very interested in history and curious in reading a lot of history. That really brought world war ii ally for me, but also there was this saga that was obviously tinged with sadness and mystery. The other episode that really started me on this journey was when i was 15 years old, my mother mentioned that she had a box of my uncles personal effects. This box had been left to my grandfather, man by the name of floyd white. When he passed away in 1967 he left that box to my mother and i took that box, i found it in the back of my mothers closet and i remember that it was a winter night. Boxt on the floor with this and i took each item out piece by piece. It was a leather flight suit, cap, jacket and pants boots and gloves. Binoculars camera, radio repair manual. A sheaf of official correspondence. Warletters that the department and the Army Air Force had written to my grandfather, to lhs father and a cigar box inside the larger box. Severalhat were letters. The final letters to my uncle had written to his father. And there were letters that my grandfather had written to lh. Each one had been stamped return to sender, missing in action. They had been returned and had never been opened. So, i opened those letters and read them and there is nothing especially profound. My grandfather was not an educated man. Sort of prosaic descriptions he was a small fiber and a livestock operator. Falllking about the harvest and what was going on with my mother and her next oldest sister, they were the two youngest children still at home. In the final letter that he wrote that at that point he had the missing in action telegram which arrived about a month after the crew disappeared and the anguish he was trying to be upbeat but at the same time there was this anguish and despair and concern that just effect andkable really i was gripped with the saga at that point, even as a 15yearold it was an experience that i will never forget. It started me on this journey. As a High School Senior you wrote a novella about this mission. When i was a 10th grader i did a history fair project on flownew and the crew had these men were assigned to a b 24 Liberator Group and it was part of the eight air force. The 93rd bomb group which was part of the second Arrow Division which was within the eighth air force. Wordhe b 24 liberators that utility players of the eighth air force. So they were based in england but they were sent down to north africa on temporary duty assignments on three occasions. So, the crew had actually flown the famous oilfield mission of august 1. They were foot flying from airbases around benghazi, libya actuallysert and i have this is this would have been what it looked like for the cruise. They were literally flying in it smokestack level on this raid extraordinary casualty rate. 177 aircraft took off from north africa and about one third of them did not return. So i did this project that feature the crew and told the story of the raid. School, ir in high wrote a fictionalized account of what had happened, of what i imagined had happened to the crew. That was really my first attempt to try to start understanding and telling the story. So that led to a larger investigation so that led to a larger investigation. How did that unfold . I became a journalist and my love of history is what led me to journalism. I had been a freelance Foreign Correspondent in Southeast Asia and mexico. I had come back from six years overseas. Myearly 1990, i was visiting parents in our hometown in southeast missouri. I went to my mothers closet and boxed my uncles personal effects out. Just like that night, it was 15 years after the night i had first gone through it. I went through this box item by item. I was taking notes this time and going through the sheaf of documents. The documents were documents like this. This was a letter that the Squadron Commander and much beloved men by the name of joseph tate had written my grandfather in december of 1943. The crew had been missing about six weeks at that point. Two days after, joseph tate wrote this letter he disappeared. He was shot down over germany. I can read the first sentence. You have been notified that your on is missing in action october 1, 1943. I am sorry that other than this we have received no further information. If we do, you can be sure we will notify you immediately within the bounds of censorship. First paragraph. In this box, there were again, like this but, there was such a dearth of details. One. That was in there in list of to this was a addresses. We may be locked up, so hopefully that will come. But the 1943 addresses what they they would list all the crew members, list the next of kin and send that to the families so that they could correspond with one another and keep each others spirits up in the absence of information. List had been circulated to all of the families and they began corresponding with one another. Theyve stayed in close contact for a number of years and parents had died in many cases and family strict apart. Decidedund this and i that i would try to track down the families. I started writing to hometown newspapers. Internet ll the Internet Access was still a few years away. Which dates me. Your best way to find somebody was to write a hometown newspaper. So i wrote query letters to the editor and explained why i was looking for them and described this crew that went down over austria in october 21 and i am looking for the airman from this hometown. I wrote all the hometown newspapers. The top gunner and Flight Engineer was from los angeles. But i noticed that his name was armenian so i figured it would be hard to find somebody by writing the newspaper newspaper in los angeles so i wrote Armenian Orthodox Church publications. I started filing freedom of information act requests with the pentagon and the National Personnel records center. I also started writing newspapers and austria. Time, i joined a group of veterans as an associate member i joined a Second Air Division association. And got the membership list and started sending out hundreds of flowns to the men who had with the 93rd bomb group, the 44th and the 389. Those are the groups that were flying on these missions on temporary duty in north africa. So all of these letters started to arrive. Actually heard from people . Absolutely. Within days i started hearing from the first family members. And rapidly and exponentially, my knowledge of who these men combatd their time in was really greatly enhanced. Is i will show you the couple other photographs here. These were the guys in training. So i started to learn more. I wanted to understand what they went through and how they became a crusoe i started going to the National Archives and this was in the days when that world war ii records were still downtown in maryland. Before that magnificent College Park Facility was opened. So i was pulling sortie reports. I was finding anything i could to piece together. I also went to the air force Historical Research center at Maxwell Air Force base in montgomery, alabama and i learned a lot about the training the extraordinary pressure that there was to turn out bomber crews. A really astonishing fact is deaths in were 15,000 training accidents of airman during world war two. 15,000 in the u. S. That number of astonished me. I read these documents, i started to understand why they had young green pilots and a shortage of aviation octane fuel. Lets talk a little bit about the crew . Where were they from. , ift was a crosssection you set aside segregation, so they were all white or hispanic of really covered the gamut city boys and country boys, wealthys the son of a new york city manhattan businessman who had gone to columbia university. There were a number of immigrants in the group. My uncle was in the back of the far right there. Next to him was jack s berrien. The son of armenian immigrants. Then phil bedwell, the third from the right was from marion, indiana. These other men in this photograph were on the crew but the crew still had a lot before they went overseas. With men going awol and having too much to drink and things like that. Were here andmen then they were gone. The plane. I did want to mention this. Something that threw me from that crew photo which you may have seen, the numerous were baby on the plane. It was actually not the plane they were flying in and i was puzzled for a long time why they posed in front of that. The aircraft were baby what was known as an assembly ship. Its typically a wornout aircraft that would take off and becomeart rotating and the rallying point for the other aircraft that would take off on a mission. Usually they would be painted garish colors and things so they could be distinguished. Offother planes would take in a fallen formation. My uncles crew pilot was a guy by the name of william stein, the son of lithuanian immigrants. A Brown University economics graduate. I will point them out when i shift to the crew photo but this should tell you something about this aircraft. They inherited a storied aircraft. This is a beautiful photograph taken in england. The name is distinctive and im sure youre scratching your head as to how we got this odd sounding name. The jerk was a nickname for the pilot and this was a reference to a soda jerk. Soda shops were popular at the time to dispense the carbonated water you had this lever that you would jerk and create carbonated drinks. Shakes and things like that. So john was the pilot who first piloted this aircraft and his nickname was the jerk. Was 23 7eleven. 23711. Role. A fortuitous it was a natural, hence, jerks natural. This was the aircraft, my uncles crew was part of the first wave of replacement crews it had gone to england in may of 1943. So the plane had a racing a lot of action by that time. One quick anecdote or side fact, you mentioned when we talked last week that, was it treadwell . One of the guys was a character clowning around. Quickly try to find those photographs. Was bear with me. He was hes in these photographs, and he was a marvelous character. He had flaming red hair from indiana. He wore his flight cap and he would turn the bill up and he painted hoosier on the cap. Proverbial life of the party. He loved to play drums. He had a sister. I have to mention her because she still alive. Around 90 years of age and barbara has been an extraordinary partner with me in this. If the first, one of the first people to get in touch. They had this magnificent collection of photographs. Barbara and phils mother and father, grant and in the bedwell , this corn fed, indiana small ava was known and by the nickname and she doted on phil. He was mischief this, mischievous, but very thoughtful and sensitive. But always doing wacky things as you can see. They had all these photographs and a lot of letter sent things that greatly aided me in my search. Lets talk about the context in which this is happening. 1943, there is some discussion about what the strategy would be. And the risks associated with that, european strategies versus american strategies. How can that factor in . That i wantomething to scroll back here i have a photograph of henry have arnold, the air force commander in chief on the right. On the left who commanded the eighth air force from december 1942 to december 1943. Aker was a longtime subordinate and had coauthored a couple books with have arnold before the war on military if you asian. World war ii on military aviation. World war ii was seen as a huge opportunity to finally proof that they were worthy of being an independent service, a service that could have escaped the tyranny of the navy and the army which always given short shrift in the budgeting time. In the 20s and 30s, all of these disciples of Billy Mitchell who was the fodder father of american air power who started to develop the doctrine of bombing as a decisive form of warfare. The bombing emerged in the 30s. Arnold became a proponent of it. Aker and several other were collectively known as the bomber mafia. They wanted to prove that daylight bombing would work. The british, when the americans entered the war or not warned hap arnold and the americans that you could not do it. The british had tried daytime bombing and had given up. Which is essentially that you fly over a city and drop bombs. By british could justify it saying that you have more factory workers there so war there so we are hitting military targets. The american precision daylight bombing would be more accurate and more humane. There were also some parochial interests that come into play. That fascinated me because it gets into the exercise of power. Not just the convictions of the bomber mafia, but this could be done, this sense that this is our opportunity to create the independent air force. Arnold was determined to keep pushing deeper raids into europe in 1943, into germany. Even another did not have the Critical Mass in terms of the numbers of bombers needed. One of the great failings is they had not developed longrange fighter escorts that could escort the bombers into germany. Arnold and the bomber mafia had a saying, the bomber will always get through. They were convinced that mass bombers at that point with 10 machine guns on each aircraft could fend off any german fighters. The germans changed tactics and started bringing down large numbers of bombers. Kept pressuring taker that you need to fuel more and larger missions keep pushing them deeper into germany. This ultimately led to a lot of deaths, casualties soared through the summer of and fall of 1943 and my uncles cruz was one of those crews shut down as the result of the prosecution of this without longrange fighters. Lets talk about this summer and the fall of 1943. Your uncles crew was first involved in the play risky raid ploesti raid. Extraordinary thing. It was a terrifying event. Nearly zerog at altitude. The pilot slid into the copilot seat. Their copilot had fallen ill in the desert caps so stein desert camps, so stein flew as copilot and hickman from Northern California flew the aircraft. They flew in over the target with the other aircraft in the 93rd bomb group. Their small group of aircraft was led by a gentleman by the name of ramsey pots. Was a long time after the war washington, d. C. Lawyer and a very prominent man. And and a cobbler stte pilot and College Athlete before the war. So my uncles crew actually survived this raid but they were shot up over the target. They were losing fuel and had two engines damaged. Going to make it back to the base in benghazi in the desert of north africa. So they made an emergency keynote at paccino, sicily. Invasion had just happened. They landed where a british spitfire unit had taken over. They had been on the plane for 10 to 12 hours. They had seen planes with men that they knew blowing up around them. Men jumping out of planes at low altitude on fire. Unspeakable carnage. This beautiful sulfur from open, california, a guy by the name of john anna i hope to talk more about him later. John climbed out of the aircraft and was physically ill hanging on the nose wheel for the better part of an hour. Because of one of the crew members on that raid with the crude left the crew shortly afterward and two other men also left the crew. They were so traumatized by it that they took themselves off flying status. This one eyewitness who described this to me continued on flying status. Something thats really hard to imagine. What it was like and how dramatic it wouldve been. So they survived that dangerous raid. You told me that they have a chance to go to england for a little bit and enjoy themselves, maybe a little bit of reprieve in august 1943, but then they were back at it again flying more missions in the fall. Maybe you can now tell us about the fateful mission. They had flown a few missions after ploesti. The b 20 groups were shifted back to england. The men got leave and went to london for r r. They flew a couple of missions out of england in Early September and in the middle of , in the middle of world war ii, the landing on the italian mainland which happened midseptember. The beachhead was imperiled immediately and there was concern germans would overrun it so they rushed from the east air route back down to africa, this time to tanisha. By the time they got there, the beachhead had been secured and the allied Landing Forces had broken out. The crews started flying missions against targets further up the italian mainland, hitting trailheads and that sort of thing. They flew those missions without incident and there was one final mission there going to flight which was a very long mission to austria. Was the factory that source of the secondmost important factory that was manufacturing luftwaffes frontline fighter plane. This is about 30 miles south of vienna. Off early on the , 1943. Of october 1 they flew across the ,editerranean, across italy that a jury yugoslavia and returned north. Across italy, hungary, yugoslavia and returned north. And they fell out of formation and that was the last they were seen by the other crews in the 93rd bomb group. The 93rd that was the only aircraft they lost that day they got hit very hard by german fighters. There was this mystery as to what happened to the stein crew. What was conveyed to the families in the immediate aftermath of this disappearance . It took about three to four weeks before the disappearance in this crew worked its way up through the echelons in the armed forces. So the mia telegrams were sent out november 3 and november 4 1943. At that point, the families were getting the essential information that they were on this raid and disappeared over austria. Within a week, one of the families received a telegram notifying them that their son had been confirmed as a prisoner of with the germans. This was the navigator. William, warren sykes from eastern pennsylvania. He is the second from the right. He was the navigator. No details were provided. Just that one man was a pow. In that situation, all of the families were hoping for the best and the fact that one was a pow gave great hope. It was something they could hang onto or cling to. Out then probably the others got out. The familys started writing each other and exchanging bits of information but there was no official information. That letter from the Squadron Commander which came six weeks notedin late december that there was no additional information. The families went to this long period of hoping for the best. Hope that perhaps they were and they were getting a lot of publicity in andican papers at the time southern austria was very close and titos partisans were operating in southern austria. Hope thatthis great they were going to come home still. I mentioned the wealthy manhattan businessman. He was working all those contacts red cross and officials that he knew in washington and he had a friend who was a ham Radio Operator which was popular at the time. Monitor german shortwave broadcasts to try to hear pow listings. They would be announced. At one point in early 1944, this gentleman in new york, mr. Stats wrote my grandfather, telling might grandfather that his friend had heard my uncles name red on a german shortwave broadcast and that he had been listed as a prisoner of. Hopes can imagine that that the family had. They waited and waited for official confirmation and no confirmation ever came. In the 15 minutes we have left, we can shift to the aftermath. Your interaction with the families and the closing of some of these missing pieces of information. I think you said that it was 1949 or so that they actually found some remains in austria. Maybe you can talk about that . Absolutely. More information came out. This was 1945. So the survivor came home. He was held at the famous pow camp where the great escape happened in the spring of 1944. Inwrote this statement november of 1945 and the family members had all called, written and some had even gone to his house to get additional information. There was never much that he had to say other than the fact that they had lost a couple engines that had fallen out of formation and had been ambushed by three german fighters. He had parachuted out and later in the day when on the ground, some austrian farmers had shown him some watches and rings that he recognized as those of his crewmates. That was all the information that he had. So, the families were writing, the War Department was writing the Army Air Force is asking in the men were declared presumptive and killed in action one year and a day after they went missing. That was the law at the time. Presumptive k. I. A. Finding. There was no information so the familys essentially disregarded that. Then finally, in 1949, the and ans were notified unidentified set of remains that had been exhumed in austria had been identified as those of your son and eight comrades. There was no detail. No excavation. No explanation as to how the finding was made or where the remains had been covered in that sort of thing. So it was extraordinary how Little Information was given to the families. In the a telegram a few weeks later saying, theres going to on march 15, 1950. The families showed up at Jefferson Barracks and this photograph was actually the first load of remains coming back from europe in 1947. There was this great effort to find all of these isolated grades around the world and identify them and bring home the remains. From 1947oing on until you have these group identifications. Whenis what the family saw they showed up at Jefferson Barracks National Cemetery on march 13. There was no explanation. Shock to therrible puzzled,that they were they were angry. Almost to a person, they were convinced that the men had not really been found. That the government had just done this to get them off their backs or to close the books on this case. Funeral which should have been something that gave the culmination of this suspended grieving process for the families, it did not do that at all. It raised more questions in the minds of the families. It was a painful capstone to this ordeal. How you interacted with them, interview them, as part of your research that pieces altogether. What i started hearing from the families was that it was an extraordinary thing to reestablish that contact that andexisted 50 years earlier had been severed. Iwas immediately struck and really was very interested in seeing all the families had gone through some thing very similar. , what happens to families who have been missing, a scholar or researcher by the name of poly involves in the 1970 started looking at the cases of mias and the unique process the suspended grieving process that families were missing go through and she came up with the term ambiguous loss. Frozen grief. That described perfectly what i found when i learned about my mother and her siblings. And these other families as well. I could not get past that for a long time. It was sort of the tragic aspect of it. The shattering aspects of it. Thatsort of miss the fact the stories of this beautiful amazing strength, so much fell on the sisters in these families. The mothers in those cases were quite devastated. Well, but itere as was just amazing to me what they were juggling. Many of them were married and had children and yet there are helping keep the families together. Tothe same time, they tend try to deal with this situation that they found themselves in of, do we give up hope . Do we grieve . Wait . All that these families had gone it was this really terrible process and a have these Unanswered Questions and for me that in one of the most fulfilling things of this whole journey. As i was doing research and finding out things and getting things from the freedom of information act requests from going to austria and the village and doing interviews with people there and finding eyewitnesses who actually saw the aircraft as it was attempting an emergency landing, to be able to share that with the families and to be about two answer their questions of, had they possibly lived . There are all these fantasies that are common to families missing. Whether it is to that victims are mia in wartime. They had a head injury and had amnesia. All of these things to push off the idea that they are really gone. Its just been a really beautiful process. For me to be able to share that information before many of these to answersed away and any of the questions that they had which had haunted them for so many years. We only have a few minutes left by did want to briefly touch on your visits to austria. You actually went to the site for the plane had come down. In the fall of 1991, i sent all these letters and an envelope arrived in the mail and i immediately saw it was not the sort of manila envelope that we use in the u. S. Just sensed what it was and what was in it and there was this extraordinary photograph which was sent to me by this young man in the photograph who by this time was an older man who was an engineer with the siemens in germany. Been the police chief in a town about 10 miles away and this was a huge event. When this aircraft had come down in the midst. He had attempted this landing had crashed during the landing. So his father had brought him over. People were coming from miles around and with the last roll of film his father had he took this photograph of the wreckage of this aircraft. It was one of so many powerful experiences i have had because to actually hold that photograph in my hand and then to visit that spot to go to that place to talk to and young man who was nearly struck high the plane when coming in. It was painful as well because they came so close. They had got the plane back under control and were flying low. This was the else, the peaks in the alpine foothills that were about 2500 feet. It was an extraordinary feat of piloting to get an aircraft that had lost two engines in the same side under control. To get it leveled off and i interviewed a number between 24 pilots who described a difficult that would be. They nearly made it, which was a heartbreaking thing. But the people in the village ire amazingly helpful and forged beautiful relationships in 1996 by that time i had found all but one of the families. We were corresponding and collectively came together to put up a memorial at the crash site. Ceremony. S the in 1996. This was the memorial. The lady on the right is Barbara Bedwell who is the sister of film and well who has again just been such an extraordinary partner with me in this journey. Spot. A beautiful i have been there and hiked the hills and walked the train all over. It is an incredibly powerful experience. I do want to allow any audience burst and ask a question. But before we do that you have been working and thinking about this for almost your entire life. Is it now. What is the library of congress enabling you to do . What holes are you feeling in now that you didnt have yet already accumulated or pieced together. Im sad to say that im getting in my car driving away tomorrow. It has been an amazing experience. It is allowed me to add depth from the Historical Context and really a greater understanding of so many facets. My uncles life from learning about what it was like to be a cotton farmer, a small, poor, cotton farmer in the early 1930s. Learning more about the Historical Context in austria and the tortured soul, the conflicted soul of that country and the chance to go through Henry Arnolds personal papers. Which i spent my final days doing which is fascinating to understand the exercise of power in these lifeanddeath decisions which incidentally did not affect henry arnold very much. Its jarring. To see the way that a Senior Commander can separate themselves from the loss of a man like that. Hownnot say enough about being able to think about this to immersebasis and myself in so many different aspects of it. As enriched as it is in ways that i cannot begin to explain. With that, we have time for a couple of questions from the audience. Anyone have any classroom from great but the project. At his work, we would be happy to take them. I believe we have the microphone. Hello. Did you find out more information about the surviving for member who parachuted and why others did not. Veryw that the b 24s has cramped quarters and is hard to get on a parachute when things go down. Jump ort other people maybe they were attempting right as they were landing. Or did he were you ever able to contact him and get more information from him . I found him in the final years of his life. He was in the early stages of parkinsons, but i was writing to his wife and the answers coming back were spot on. It was remarkable. These things that he knew, he remembered that the pilot was a Brown University graduate. I did not get any more information than that statement which he wrote in 1945. He got his parachute on, dropped through the nose will hatch which was probably the easiest place on a b 24 to get out. The pilots did not press the bailout. He did not give the order to bail out. That. Re is , i think because the order had not been given, the explanation of the survivor was that the plane went into a spin and the implication was that they could not get out. As my reporting on the ground in fact they had tried to land at another spot i have a Police Report from that other area where they tried to land and circled back and tried to land in the meadow where the crash occurred. They were falling under control at that point. Without a navigator . Did that have an impact . That is a question i have always had and i will never know. [inaudible] correct. He passed away in the mid90s. I got to know his wife and im still in touch with his son. Ive talked with his son. They are a lovely family and he he left the air force and went back in and flew in korea and vietnam and retired around 1970 from the air force. . Ther questions this is wonderful to hear. I cannot wait to read the book. It is such a fascinating story. One thing it calls to mind is a couple days ago, because it was the anniversary of pearl harbor, there was an anniversary about the uss oklahoma where a number of servicemen had been entombed within the ship and the remains were dug up around the same time. 1946 or 1947 . But similarly to your story, they were kind of jumbled together and returned to a resting place in this really unsatisfactory way. Forensicrecently people have begun using the technology now available to identify the remains. Im wondering if anything like that has happened or if there has been any Subsequent Development with that . That is a great question. Document that used the term combing over the remains shared by the families. The process was never explained. I have tried to go deeply into this. There was a central identification point created in europe and strasburg france. So as graves were exhumed in that process, the postwar. From the postwar. Period. My theory is that there was such pressure, budgetary, the cold by the late 1940s, they were a year behind schedule. The pressure was on to wrap it up. Aircrews i do not mean to be callous about the men doing this work. But i think that offered an easy out. Nine ore can eliminate 10 mias right there. So they brought them back and most of those were buried at Jefferson Barracks because it was such a Central Location but theres no doubt in my mind after the reporting that ive thatthat this was a crew was the crash site that i found. There could have been much more shared with the families that could have spoken to all of those questions that haunted the parents to their dying days and the surviving siblings. As well. I think that we have time for one more question. Thank you for that and the research. A number of deaths during training. And he didnt focus very much on the stats on the likelihood of returning from daytime bombing runs. I imagine the stats would be pretty depressing. I wonder if in talking to relatives and those who whether you got a sense of their expectations for survival. How far away from Suicide Missions were these bomber runs . A good question. Were43 the casualty rates high and rising. Arnold, during the fall of 1943, when there started to be some pushback on the schedule to the rates he actually made a comment to reporters that were prepared to take up the 25 casualty rates that did not exactly fly very well with ira aker who was a very obedient commander and did not challenge arnold very often. He wrote arnold and said, this is not helpful for you to say that. In reading the letters, and i all thedreds from the families and men, they tried to be very up beat. That the very kind families were following things in the papers and right after grade, phil sent a telegram to his family saying, i just what to let you know i am well. He could not say why but he assumed that they were following the papers and saw between a four liberators and that they knew. But because of the censorship, the letters would be censored if they talk about military things will stop you could not get that sense of the men. But certainly, there was a despondency and in that period of fall 1943, the chance of coming back was not very good. Men when i wase interviewing airmen who said, i never doubted that i would come back, but others were very fatalistic and said, i just got into the plane and whatever happened happened. I may, for vividly remember a world war veteran that i interviewed years ago who told me he was in the Army Air Force and told me his Commanding Officer told he and two other guys to step out of line and said look to the right of you or. O the left of you two of the three of you are not coming back. We are running a time. Book is thee of the legacy of this bomber crew so thought,a concluding your reflections of what the legacy of these men is. I want to try to flash to this photograph as i do that of this was Bombardier John mcdonough who is this beautiful soul. He was a writer and had attended cal berkeley. Such tremendous promise. A young death. Its one of the saddest things and wartime is something that always gripped me about this. See themately i came to inspiring story of the resilience of the human spirit and the strength of the family members left behind. Not all of them. Some of them were damaged and the waysovered, but that they have honored and to this day continued to honor the ,emory of these men photographs, remembering them on memorial day, comments on websites or things like that is a powerful thing. As heartbreaking and tragic as this was for all of the families beautiful justng to see the strength of the human spirit. I think for me that is what ultimately prevails. We will have to stop there. Please join me in thanking greg jones. [applause] you are watching American History tv. 48 hours of programming every weekend on cspan3. Follow us on twitter for information on our schedule and to keep up with the latest history news. Each week until the 2016 election, wrote to the white house rewind brings archival coverage of president ial politics. 1980weekend, a look at the campaign with interviews with the top four republican candidates in the race. They were recorded in winstonsalem. Could you pick out the three most effective leaders in history and why you selected these leaders . I tell you, you had me right between the eyes with that. I suppose that it would take a lot of reflection. Obviously, i think of men like general washington who took the ragged, tattered band of men at a time when one great historian Douglas Freeman said in the black year of the revolution there were less than 500 people in the colonies willing to pledge their lives and fortunes and sacred honor for the cause of the republic. He took that little remnant and made it into a force capable of defeating the better financed, better equipped, better trained British Expeditionary force. Clearly he was a leader. Not only in a military sense but he was a man who had the kind of magnificent concept of freedom that enabled him to serve as the first president of this republic. Next, i think of lincoln who served during the most difficult. Of our history next to that revolutionary hero who was able, despite all of the divisiveness of that civil war to win the war and to espouse the kind of principles of charity and humanity that enabled us to bind up the wounds after the war and remain a united country. So lincoln clearly because of his noble expression, his limitless power of expression served as a great leader. , thirdly, in our century Frank Delano Roosevelt was a great leader. He was not a member of my party but i can admire the ability that he had to fulfill that requisite of leadership of which i spoke a moment ago. The ability to inspire confidence in a weary nation that had almost lost faith in itself. He came along it said we had nothing to fear but fear itself in then went on to recommend a dramatic way a series of policies that enabled us to overcome the policies and some of the effects of the depression. You could go to european and World History and pick out other great World Leaders but those are three Great American leaders that i would admire. Entire interview and others with ronald reagan, George Herbert walker bush and others this sunday on the road to the right road to the white house rewind on cspan3s American History tv. I have been watching the campaign, it is far more interesting to look at the republicans than the democrat side. That may have some thing to do with why there is more interest in these candidates and their books. Carlosay night on q a, discusses books written by the 2016 president ial candidates. Everyone does have interesting stories in their lives and politicians are more singleminded in this pursuit of power and ideology, but could have particularly trysting ones. Interesting ones. But when they put up his memoirs, they are sanitized. They are vetted and there for minimum controversy. The of wisconsin madison professor Jennifer Rosen hagan. Talks about anabel and reality. She talks about authors herman margo and work products of 19th century moral code. Her class is a little over an hour. Thank you and welcome to our lecture. Nature as we know her is no saint. Trial and to molt in melvilles america