Subject: WWII-L Digest - 29 Jan 1994 to 30 Jan 1994

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 1994 00:00:29 -0500

There are 12 messages totalling 408 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. U.S. Lieut. killing bad guards (2)
  2. War criminals
  3. Destination Tokyo (2)
  4. Re[2]: Destination Tokyo
  5. Re[2]: U.S. Lieut. killing bad guards
  6. Midway Survivor Recovered
  7. Midway Survivor Recovered Pt.II
  8. Bombing bombers by air launched weapons
  9. OTHER LOSSES (2)

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Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 00:53:26 CST
From:    Sly <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: U.S. Lieut. killing bad guards

        This is my first time posting to such a group, so please inform me if
I make any errors with a degree of kindness please.
        In the case of the American Lieutenant who killed the "bad" guards at
the concentration camp, I would simply say that he was wrong.  I have two
main reasons for this.
        First, at the moment he did the killings, the marine had to take the
word of a bunch of angry, mad, and hostile concentration camp members that
had no idea of what was going on behind the scenes, and were likely to have
been predjudiced.  What if some of the guards that were hated were simply
strict?  I realize that this may seem unlikely with all of the Holocaust
stories floating around, but it is possible that some of the guards were
simply doing their job.  This could still make them hated by the inmates,
even if the guards weren't being malicious.  As well, what if some of the
guards were doing their best to help?  The inmates wouldn't know it.  It's
not like the guard can walk up to the inmates and say, "Yeah, I'm trying to
help all of you, so don't tell anyone."  Not if he wanted to stay alive
anyway.
        If this first argument seems weak, I think one should also think
about the fact that because the post-war prosecution system didn't work all
that well doesn't mean you should scrap the system and murder people on a
personal basis.  It simply means the system should have been fixed.
Individual killings of that nature can only be taken to a certain point when
they become something like the mass slaughter of the Germans by the Soviets.

 "What is called the spirit of the void is where there is nothing.  It is
 not included in man's knowledge.  Of course the void is nothingness.  By
 knowing things that exist, you can know that which does not exist.  That
 is the void."   -Shinmen Musashi    *Sly ([email-masked])*

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Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 08:07:03 +22311624
From:    Monte Turner <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: War criminals

Ryan,
        Again I disagree with what you said.  American
armies are a part of our democratic system, and are unlike those of other
countries.  (On that subject have you read T Harry Williams _The History
of American Wars_ or another book called the _The American Way of War_
though I forget the author.)  A central part of our society is (or should
be) the dislike of vigilante actions.  When the American liberated the
prison camps there was no pressing hurry to deal with the German guards.
There was no reason other than a desire for revenge that made the American
shoot the guards.  There are many basic reasons that vigilantiism is a
horrid thing.  The argument might be different if the American were
incapable of keeping all the guards prisoners (Say during a hasty
retreat.)  An instant where prisoners were executed for a reason occurred
with Richard Lion Heart on the Third Crusade.  One argument says that he
executed his 2000 prisoners collected at Acre because he was in a hurry to
carry on his campaign to the South and because Saladin was late in
ransoming the prisoners Richard had no choice.  He couldn't exactly take
them with him.  The Americans were in no such position.

                                        Monte Turner

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Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 11:16:21 -0500
From:    GEORGE BAUER <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: U.S. Lieut. killing bad guards

That argument that "some guards were merely doing their jobs" is one of the
most absurd I have ever heard.  A concentration camp guard is merely doing
his job???

The world is full of apologists for evil.  We don't need another one.

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 11:25:00 -0500
From:    GEORGE BAUER <[email-masked]>
Subject: Destination Tokyo

Can someone comment on the authenticity of the movie Destination Tokyo.
Also, I think there was a movie called Thirty Seconds over Tokyo but I
can't remember if it was the Dolittle raid or the B-29 raid

Thanks for refreshing my memory and the comments on DT.

george bauer

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 12:20:10 -0600
From:    "Robert J. Granvin" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Destination Tokyo

In message World War II Discussion List writes:
> Can someone comment on the authenticity of the movie Destination Tokyo.
> Also, I think there was a movie called Thirty Seconds over Tokyo but I
> can't remember if it was the Dolittle raid or the B-29 raid
>
> Thanks for refreshing my memory and the comments on DT.

Destination Tokyo is pure fiction.  It was produced at a time when a couple
of things were needed on the homefront:  Continued positive morale building
home-front movies and something that gave the Navy an even larger role in the
Tokyo Raid (sorry, Navy... :-).

The Navy was, of course, critically important, but the movie made it look
like the Navy did everything but fly the B-25s (Sorry again... :-)

Personally, I like the movie because it is a wonderful look into the
Hollywood work during the war.  It is filled with pro-west anti-Japanese
propaganda (some of it is horribly blatant -- like the dialogue of how the
Japanese parents don't care for their children like we do and that they
train them from the day they can hold a knife to do nothing but kill
Americans).  It is also filled with a number of amusing "liberties" or
technical errors.  It was fairly obvious that they raided a western movie
prop box when they issued lever-action rifles to the landing party, rather
than the weapons a Navy team would carry... :-)  They also didn't have a lot
of stock footage or didn't care, when you saw the B-25s taking off from the
carrier (and the close-in shots show Marauder (?) cockpits.  The guy who
stuck his head out the window and waved a joyous wave back to the deck crew
got a roar out of some of our B-25 pilots... :-)  The movie also showed the
Raiders arriving en-masse over a single target, when the B-25s each hit
individual targets all over Tokyo and other parts of Japan.

Some things hold up with time... Some things don't.  It is, however, good
drama and a very enjoyable movie.

Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (the book) was written by Ted Lawson, the pilot
of Plane #7, of the Tokyo Raid.  It is an accurate eyewitness account of
the mission, albeit from the point of view of more or less one person.
However, every one of the Raiders supports it as entirely accurate and factual.

The movie was also praised by Doolittle himself, although he commented that
the actor who played him made him look a little less fun-loving (and a little
bit taller :-) than he thought he really was.  :-)

Thirty Seconds should be considered a fairly definitive and accurate account
of the Raid (though the movie should be kept in mind it's still a Hollywood
adaptation of a book).  Destination Tokyo should be considered reasonably
good (though one-sided) fictional drama of the time.

(In defense of the Navy, however, the submarine Thresher was ordered from
its station near Midway to enter enemy waters.  Her mission there was not
necessarily to engage the enemy, but to take regular weather readings and
report them along with Japanese naval action in the area that might
threaten the mission and possible detection.)

--
Robert J. Granvin                                             [email-masked]
University of Minnesota, School of Statistics
         "I'm my father?  I'm my mother?  I'm chipped beef on toast?"

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 14:16:34 EST
From:    Chuck McCormick <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: Destination Tokyo

Robert Granvin writes:

>Thirty Seconds over Tokyo (the book) was written by Ted Lawson, the pilot
>of Plane #7, of the Tokyo Raid.  It is an accurate eyewitness account of
>the mission, albeit from the point of view of more or less one person.
>However, every one of the Raiders supports it as entirely accurate and factual.
>
>The movie was also praised by Doolittle himself, although he commented that
>the actor who played him made him look a little less fun-loving (and a little
>bit taller :-) than he thought he really was.  :-)

I *think* Spencer Tracy played him and Doolittle said the bad thing about his
portrayal was that "Spencer Tracy made me out to be a hard guy and I always
thought I was a pussy-cat [or something of that sort]".

Chuck McCormick
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 14:25:58 EST
From:    Chuck McCormick <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re[2]: U.S. Lieut. killing bad guards

BAUER WRITES:

>That argument that "some guards were merely doing their jobs" is one of the
>most absurd I have ever heard.  A concentration camp guard is merely doing
>his job???
>
>The world is full of apologists for evil.  We don't need another one.

Okay folks, let me jump in here before Larry does.  First, in the charter for
this list we are supposed to refrain from Pearl Harbor and Holocaust
discussions.  This rule has been relaxed a bit because we have been so
well-behaved but if we stop behaving and start mailing off Holocaust flames I
should not be suprised to see the rule enforced.

Second, if you have been following this discussion (which is generally a good
idea if you are going to post a reply to the discussion) the "bad lieutenant"
liberated a POW camp filled with (I believe) British airmen.  It was not a
concentration camp.  The fact that the original poster said the British POWs
looked on with horror as the guards were executed implies that the "baby-faced"
lieutenant made a childish decision; he chose instant gratification instead of
relying on a system of justice which we would each desire if anyone ever accused
us of being "bad guards".

ObWWII: The survivors of Luft-Stalag 12(?) (the camp that the Great Escape
originated from) have included the camp commandant and some of the guards in
their re-union parties.

Chuck McCormick
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 14:58:41 CST
From:    Steve Alvin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Midway Survivor Recovered

The following is typed by me with out permission from the Associated
Press article by Bill Kaczor:

"Pensacola, Fla.--A bullet-riddled dive bomber flown by the Navy and
Marine Corps during historic battles in the South Pacific has been
pulled from Lake Michigan where it crashed on a training mission
50 years ago.

"Since its recovery off Chicago in early January, officials at the
National Museum of Naval Aviation have learned the Douglas SBD-2
Dauntless participated in the Battle of Midway and sank a Japanese
warship during an earlier engagement.

"`We knew it had a historic significance when we pulled it up, but
we weren't really quite sure how historic,' museum director Robert
Rasmussen said.  `This is probably one to the more significant airplanes
that we or any other museum in this country has been able to stick
together.'

"Rasmussen pointed to a spot that had been cleaned off to reveal
MIDWAY painted on the engine cowling.  It was based on Midway and
flown by Marine pilots in 1942.

"only a handful of combat-flown planes of any kind from World War II
still exsist [Note:  among those is B-17D #40-3097, later known as
"Alexander the Swoose" or just "The Swoose", which flew combat missions
in the Phillipines and Java in 1941-42.  It is stored by the National
Air and Space Musuem] and no others from Midway, Rasmussen said.  It
is among about 20 planes the museum  has recovered from the lake in
recent years.

"The DAuntless, complete with three machine guns, arrived at the
Pensacola museum Jan. 22 for refurbishing and eventual display.

Museum officials have located the pilot who won a Navy Cross for
sinking a light cruiser on March 10, 1942 while flying the plane,
Bureau No. 2106, from the aircraft carrier Lexington.

"Retired Navy Capt. Mark Twain Whitter said in a telephone interview
from his home in Carmel CA, that he had no idea what had become of the
plane until museum officals notified him of its recovery.

"His log book confirmed he had flown on numerous missions, but the
most memorable was the bombing of about a dozen enemy ships at New
Guinea.

"`We caught them still in the harbor,'  Whittier recalled.  "It
was like dropping a pickle in a barrel."

"However, he was unable to see the damage his 1,000 pound bomb had
caused.

"`The guys behind me said they saw it hit right after the funnel
and the ship came out of the water so they could see the propellers,'
Whitter said. `It rolled over and sank."  [Note
Note: the ship was probably the armed merchant cruiser Kongo Maru]

"Whitter, meanwhile, was having problems of his own.  The prolonged
dive had locked his hydraulic system.  His dive flaps would not retract,
causing the plane to slow to near stalling speed.  He dropped his wheels,
also hydraulically operated, hoping to release pressure in the
plumbing.

"`It was a shot in the dark, and it worked,' Whitter said.

To be continued

--
Steve Alvin
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 15:12:35 CST
From:    Steve Alvin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Midway Survivor Recovered Pt.II

Continuing the Associated Press article by Bill Kaczor.  Copied
with out permission

"The plane was transfered to a Marine squadron and shipped to
Midway before the Lexington was sunk at the Battle of Coral Sea.

"Of the 16 SBD's that took off from Midway on June 4, 1942, to
engage an enemy fleet, eight were shot down and two others so
badly damaged they could not be flown again.

"Marine 1st Lt. Daniel Iverson landed 2106 on one wheel with that
pesky hydraulic system shot away.  The plane had 219 bullet holes.
Museum officials are unsure what became of Iverson or his gunner,
Pfc. Wallace J. Reid.

Iverson had been chased by four Zero fighters that took turns
trying to knock 2106 out of the sky, according to the book "A
Glorious Page in Our History."  While the Marines failed to
inflict any damage, Navy Dauntlesses from aircraft carriers
sank three Japanese carriers [Note:  and of course, the 4th
carrier was also sunk latted by SBD's].

"The plane crasehed into Lake Michigan on June 11, 1943, while
attempting to land on an aircraft carrier."

End article

Any typos are mine.

--
Steve Alvin
[email-masked]

------------------------------

Date:    Mon, 31 Jan 1994 01:12:38 +0100
From:    Emmanuel Gustin <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Bombing bombers by air launched weapons

On Sat, 29 Jan 1994, Gudmundur Helgason wrote:

>         Does anyone know anything about if the axis (or the allied) ever
> used somekind of air dropped bombs to kill bombers/fighters?

I've seen it mentioned that they did, both the Germans and the British,
but never any details, I think.

>         A 10.000 pound time-fused bomb could have terrible impact on,
> say B-17 formation, if delievered properly.

Sounds too risky to me. Maybe with a proximity fuse, yes. But I don't
think that the use of such heavy bombs was ever considered -- how would
you get them above the enemy formation in time?

> Any info would be great

I'll look...

Emmanuel

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 19:29:05 -0600
From:    [email-masked]
Subject: OTHER LOSSES

Sid, Con,

     Thanks for the critique of OTHER LOSSES.

     Sid, is this fellow Quebecois?

     Gabriel Kolko is another provocateur.  He had questioned
Soviet guilt for Katyn in his apologetica -- I forget the title.
He refused me an interview, while animatedly maintaining Katyn
was insignificant.  Quite a character, but getting published
gives him -- like Bacque -- inherent credibility.

     (Some folks believe anything they read/find in a library,
believe me.)

     (Which net was this on?)

Lou Coatney, WIU

------------------------------

Date:    Sun, 30 Jan 1994 18:02:01 PST
From:    Sidney Allinson <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: OTHER LOSSES

Re-writing history to reflect spurious discredit on prominent Allied
soldiers is a growth industry. As you put it so well, the very publication
of such slanderous garbage seems to give the lies instant "credibility".
Such revisionist books have a particularly strong base in Canada, for
reasons which escape me. James Bacque's nonsense about Eisenhower's
deliberate condoning of "staving millions of PWs to death" is just one
example we have endured up here of late.
A particularly annoying incident has been the production and airing of
a series of wildly inaccurate military "documentaries", which re-wrote
the Second World War, based on a preposterous book, whose title and
author I shall not bother to mention. The TV series was so nastily
critical of the Royal Canadian Air Force in particular, that a large
group of veterans actually launched a class-action suite. Their action
was dismissed in court, on technical legal grounds, but they made their
point.
I must admit, this trend to re-writing WW2 irritates me a good deal,
even though I know there's little that can be done to stem the tide
of pop "history" that's being spawned.

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End of WWII-L Digest - 29 Jan 1994 to 30 Jan 1994
*************************************************