Subject: WWII-L Digest - 14 Apr 1995 to 15 Apr 1995

From: Automatic digest processor <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 16 Apr 1995 00:00:54 -0400

There are 21 messages totalling 1841 lines in this issue.

Topics of the day:

  1. Fishy sub names
  2. Execution of Marine for Cleaning Accident
  3. INF: USN Chronology 04-15-95
  4. Raid on Cabanatuan # 19
  5. YAMATO ET.AL
  6. Catholicism and Fascism a (7)
  7. Diplomacy in WW2 (was: Ireland in WW2)
  8. USS KARA (SS-369) ???
  9. Monty and Market-Garden
 10. Women's WWII Literature
 11. Women Airforce Service Pilots and TWU
 12. [INF] USAAF 15 APR 45
 13. [INF] USAAF 16 APR 45
 14. [INF] USAAF 17 APR 45
 15. <No subject given>

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

Date:    Fri, 14 Apr 1995 23:59:25 -0400
From:    Jodi Berls <[email-masked]>
Subject: Fishy sub names

I'm somewhat hampered by not having a Latin dictionary on hand, but I've got
a Webster's Unabridged and a big fish encyclopedia. So here goes:

477             CONGER -- a large, edible saltwater eel.
478             CUTLASS -- a long, thin fish; also cutlass fish.
479             DIABLO -- not listed in anything I've got.
480             MEDREGAL -- same as bonito; comes in cans and tastes like
tuna.
481             REQUIN -- a shark, especially a man-eating shark.
482             IREX -- not listed.
483             SEA LEOPARD -- an animal of the seal family.
484             ODAX -- a genus of small labroid fishes.
485             SIRAGO -- not listed.
486             POMODON -- not listed.
487             REMORA -- small marine percoid fishes.
488             SARDA -- Latin for sardine (I took a wild guess and looked
under sardine.)
489             SPINAX -- not listed.
490             VOLADOR -- a Californian flying fish.

Enough of these are turning out to be legit that I suspect the rest are, too,
if someone has more resources to draw on than I've got readily at hand. Good
thing they didn't take this much farther, or we'd have ended up with subs
with names like Symphysodon or Otocinclus.

Jodi Berls
[email-masked]

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 02:06:38 -0500
From:    "Louis R. Coatney" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Execution of Marine for Cleaning Accident

> Despite all the nonsense posted about this matter, I have read no citations,
> dates, or names. I'd say that this story is a fairy tale. Ben Frank
>

Alan Wild,

     I meant to thank you and "Scarecrow" -- and, what the heck,
even "Murray the K" -- for their feedback from VWAR-L on this.

     My memory of this is strong -- I was struck by the post --
and it wasn't an accidental firing of a tank gun, but an M-16
cleaning/carelessness incident.

Ben Frank (Marine Corps historian),

     I'm willing to leave it at "fairy tale" status, but only because
I don't want to spend the time going through VWAR-L logs to find it
-- and really *wouldn't* enjoy rubbing your nose in it.

     In any case, I've always believed there is no such thing as an
"accident," and have little compunction about a perpetrator being
executed for permanently maiming a barracksmate.

     Also, it's a Vietnam matter, and we now return to our regularly
scheduled programming.

Lou Coatney/"Masked Man"
  [email-masked]

... and now, back to TAXES ...  :-I

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 04:00:14 PST
From:    "Keller, Theron P." <[email-masked]>
Subject: INF: USN Chronology 04-15-95

UNITED STATES NAVY CHRONOLOGY
from:
//byrd.mu.wvnet.edu/pub/history/military/wwii/naval_chronology/chr4(4,5).txt

1945
04/15 Sun. Aircraft of fast carrier task force (Vice Adm. M. A.
           Mitscher)attack airfields and aircraft on the ground in
           southern Kyushu,
           Japan; strike is repeated on 16 April.
           Army troops land on Carabao Island at the entrance to Manila
           Bay, Luzon, P. I.; landing is preceded by cruiser and
destroyer
           bombardment and air attack.
           Submarine CHARR (SS-328) lays mines off the Malay Peninsula.
            United States naval vessels damaged, Okinawa area:
             Destroyer WILSON (DD-408), by suicide plane,
              26 d. 03'N., 127 d. 20'E.
             Destroyer LAFFEY (DD-724), by suicide plane,
              27 d. 16'N., 127 d. 50'E.
             Oiler TALUGA (AO-61), by suicide plane,
              26 d. 03'N., 127 d. 26'E.
             Motor minesweeper YMS-331, by suicide boat,
              26 d. 15'N., 127 d. 36'E.
            Japanese naval vessels sunk:
             Submarine RO-64, by mine, Japanese waters,
              34 d. 14'N., 132 d. 16'E.
             Submarine RO-67, by mine, Japanese waters,
              34 d. 00'N., 133 d. 00'E.
             Frigate MOKUTO, by mine, Japanese waters,
              33 d. 53' N., 131 d. 03'E.
04216 Mon. Army forces covered by naval gunfire and carrier aircraft
land
           on Ie Shima, Ryukyu Islands.
           Carrier BOXER (CV-21), is commissioned at Newport News, Va.,
            United States naval vessels sunk:
             Destroyer PRINGLE (DD-477), by suicide plane,
              Okinawa area,
              27 d. 26'N., 126 d. 59'E.
             Submarine KARA (SS-369), Pacific Ocean area,
              reported as presumed lost.
            United States naval vessels damaged, Okinawa area:
             Carrier INTREPID (CV-11), by suicide plane,
              27 d. 37' N., 131 d. 14'E.
             Battleship MISSOURI (BB-63), by suicide plane,
              26 d. 00'N., 130 d. 00'E.
             Destroyer BRYANT (DD-665), by suicide plane,
              27 d. 05'N., 128 d. 13'E.
             Destroyer MCDERMUT (DD-677), accidentally by United
              States naval gunfire,
              27 d. 30'N., 130 d. 20'E.
             Destroyer escort BOWERS (DE-637), by suicide plane,
              26 d. 52'N., 127 d. 52'E.
             High-speed minesweeper HOBSON (DMS-26), by suicide plane,
              27 d. 26'N., 126 d. 59'E.
             High-speed minesweeper HARDING (DMS-28), by suicide plane,
              26 d. 42'N., 127 d. 25'E.
             Minesweeper CHAMPION (AM-314), by horizontal bomber,
              26 d. 00'N., 128 d. 00'E.
            Japanese naval vessel sunk:
             Coast defense vessel NO. 73, by submarine SUNFISH (SS-281),
              off Honshu, Japan,
              39 d. 36'N., 142 d. 05'E.
            German submarines sunk:
             U-880, by destroyer escorts FROST (DE-144) and STANTON
              (DE-247), North Atlantic area,
              47 d. 53'N., 30 d. 26'W.
             U-1235, by destroyer escorts FROST (DE-144) and STANTON
              (DE-247), North Atlantic area,
              47 d. 54'N., 30 d. 25'W.

Information compiled by U.S. Navy Historians.  For more information,
contact the Naval Historical Center at (202) 433-3940.
Archived by: "Larry W. Jewell" <[email-masked]>
Posted by:
Theron P. Keller
Logicon, Inc.
Dahlgren, VA  22448 USA
[email-masked]

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 01:34:52 -0700
From:    James Wilson <[email-masked]>
Subject: Raid on Cabanatuan # 19

INSTALLMENT NINETEEN IN A SERIES
Raid on Cabanatuan
a scenario of the published book
"Raid on Cabanatuan"
by Forrest Bryant Johnson
(C) 1988 A Thousand Autumns Press
all rights reserved
REPRODUCED ELECTRONICALLY WITH PERMISSION
4/15/95

January 30, 1945:

8:00 P.M.
----------

Not far away from those battles, the "Black Widow" night fighter plane
catches a Japanese convoy on another road entering Cabanatuan
City.  After several passes, the plane destroys all vehicles and
practically all Japanese soldiers in the convoy.

8:00 P.M.
----------
The Japanese inside the POW camp rally after the shock of the surprise
raid and manager to fire three mortar shells at the road. Several
American Rangers and Scouts are  wounded, including their doctor,
Captain Fisher.

As the Americans begin to withdraw to the river with their rescued
POW's and wounded comrades, another Ranger, caught in a cross fire
near the perimeter of the camp, is hit by rifle fire and falls dead into
a creek bed and into the arms of his waiting buddies.

--- TO BE CONTINUED ---
(For info on obtaining a copy of the Book and/or scenario,  and or
missed List episodes, E-Mail:  Jim Wilson :  [email-masked])

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 02:08:08 -0700
From:    James Wilson <[email-masked]>
Subject: YAMATO ET.AL

FROM "CAMPAIGNS OF WORLD WAR II"

"Death of a Behemoth"

The Yamato, the greatest battleship ever built, also the shortest
active career of any capital ship in the Second World War.

Intended originally to be the first of a 'super' battle fleet, she
was the foundation of Japanese naval hopes of defeating the Americans
at sea. She was believed to be superior in guns, speed, and armour to
any other capital as indeed she was but without air cover these great assets were
of  no avail. The pointless loss of this ship in a 'special' attack on the Okinawa
landings emphasizes the straits to which the Japanese navy was reduced.

New Subject:
--------------

"Oriental Blitzkreig"

Amid all the optimism born of success, the Japanese planners had somewhere lost
sight of the reality of the war to which they were now committed.  In not
destroying those two Americans carriers at Pearl Harbor or in fleet actions soon
after, and in extending their conquests far beyond their ability to resist
concentrated attack, they had in fact planted the seeds of their own destruction.

In naval aviation alone, America still had a counter-offensive capability equal to
that of Japan and in the fleet actions that were soon to follow this
overconfidence would be dramatically and fatally illustrated.

"The Oriental Blitzkrieg" was indeed an astonishing military victory, but with its
completion, the Japanese empire in the Pacific and South East  Asia had reached
its limit.

Jim Wilson
Wilson Productions
Las Vegas, NV 89193-6784

[email-masked]

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:43:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Catholicism and Fascism a

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  6/6
                        (Concluded from 5/6)

The War Crimes Commission set to work, with surprising results.  The
massacre of Jews at Auschwitz was practically ignored.  The
indictment issued right after the war reveals that those in charge
knew nothing of the real drama of Auschwitz.  Only a few years ago,
one of the leading American figures in the Nuremberg trials, Telford
Taylor, admitted that he, himself, had known nothing of Auschwitz.
He added that he believed that none of his associates -- many of them
Jews -- knew either.  Yet this group had the official mission of
gathering as much evidence as possible against the Nazi chiefs.  They
had access to intelligence sources, not available to others.  Their
intelligence advisers did not serve them very well.  We find a
document of the Office of Strategic Services, forerunner of the
Central Intelligence Agency, (Research & Analysis, No. 3114) dated
August 13, 1945, and headed, "Nazi plans for dominating Germany and
Europe.  The criminal conspiracy against the Jews.  Draft for the War
Crimes Staff."  The incriminating evidence on Jews consisted of
excerpts from speeches of Hitler and Goebbels. There was no mention
of concentration camps and nothing about Auschwitz.  The authors got
their materials from the New York Times and the Institute of Jewish
Affairs.

At the same time, the U.S. propaganda services were not keen on
circulating, for home or foreign consumption, information that could
possibly be construed as "atrocity stories."  This lesson came home
in the case of the above-mentioned Auschwitz Protocol.  The U.S. War
Refugee Board readied the text for publication in full in November,
1944.  Before it could be published, the Board was exhorted, or
pressured, not to release it.  Elmer Davis, head of the Office of War
Information (OWI), claimed that its publication would damage the
credibility of his services.  The document was released nevertheless
and even appeared in the New York Times, but summarized in an
emasculated form depriving it of its legitimate significance.

Turning to the press in the United States we look in vain for
satisfactory identification of the Auschwitz camp and its dead.  The
New York Times did indeed publish reports from neutral newspapers,
but it did not vouch for them.  The New York Times never offered
editorials on Auschwitz.

Once, in the beginning of 1944, Arthur Koestler wrote in the New York
Times Magazine a lament over the refusal of the public (American or
British) to understand the tragedy of European Jewry.  Yet he, so
knowledgeable, revealed in the article how little he himself really
knew of Auschwitz and of the gas chambers.  Be it added that in those
days Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt was writing a syndicated column entitled,
"My Day."  These features have recently been gathered in book form.
There we find no mention of Auschwitz, or anything near it.  Were
other columnists of the time (George Sokolsky, Walter Lippmann, Max
Lerner) any more explicit or knowledgeable?

As for the Jewish community itself, confusion and ambiguity reigned.
Is it possible that even the top level knew nothing of Auschwitz?
While emphatic in their expressions of doom, allusions to Auschwitz
and to extermination camps were noteworthy for their vagueness.  The
only outspoken Jewish group of activists was a maverick Emergency
Conference to Save the Jewish People of Europe, which was in conflict
with the more prudent mainline Jewish organizations.

The attitude of many American Jews was akin to that of Justice
Frankfurter who told the Polish Emissary, Jan Karski, that he could
not believe him.  This may help to explain why Raul Hilberg, in the
second edition of his Destruction of European Jewry, held that the
Jews, especially in America, had no common intelligence system by
which they could coordinate their information.  In other words, the
Jewish community never succeeded in understanding the real meaning of
what they heard from their own people in Eastern Europe.

The foregoing is simply a sketch to show how little the world of 1944
really knew about the drama of the Jews at Auschwitz in that year.
Further details could be added.  It is all the more astounding in
that only today can we understand better, with the help of the
passage of time, what the ambiguous signals were telling us.  Few
even knowledgeable people, in the government, in the press, in the
Jewish leadership, gave evidence of knowing what was
transpiring.

What person of normal, decent sentiment could accept, comprehend,
believe, a situation so unprecedented in history and so contrary to
accepted standards even in wartime?  We have lost perspective,
especially in relation to the attitude of Pope Pius XII.  Isn't it
time to recognize this and call a halt to the intemperate and often
cruel attacks on a venerable religious figure, one of the few friends
of the Jews in the heart of Europe working consistently to be the
good Samaritan to the afflicted traveller on the road to Jericho?

The last word, therefore, should go to one of those older statesman,
the Israeli diplomat Pinchas Lapide, who actually lived through the
nightmare of World War II and who also lost relatives in the
Holocaust.  In his 1967 work, Three Popes and the Jews, Lapide
wrote:  "When an armed force ruled well-nigh omnipotent, and morality
was at its lowest ebb, Pius XII commanded none of the former and
could only appeal to the latter, in confronting, with bare hands, the
full might of evil ..."

The dilemma must have been sheer agony for Pius XII, for whatever
course he chose, horrible consequences were inevitable.  Unable to
cure the sickness of an entire civilization and unwilling to bear the
brunt of Hitler's fury, the pope, unlike many far mightier than he,
alleviated, relieved, retrieved, appealed petitioned -- and saved as
best he could by his own lights ...

"If this is true -- and it is as true as that most Jewish of tenets,
the sanctity of human life -- then Pius deserves that forest in the
Judean hills which kindly people in Israel proposed for him in
October 1958.  A memorial forest ... with 860,000 trees" -- one tree
for every life he saved.

                             - FIN -

I've posted this information before.  I don't really expect it to
change the way that anti-Catholic bigots distort the truth about
that Pope, but I *do* hope that more even-minded people will bear
this in mind when confronting such bigotry in the future.  Thank
you for your attention ...
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:39:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Catholicism and Fascism a

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  3/6
                       (Continued from 2/6)

But, as The New York Times pointed out in 1941, even Pius XII's
statements of general moral principles were remarkable, given the
situation he was in.

"The Pontiff emphasized principles of international morality with
which most men of good-will agree," the Times said.  "He uttered the
ideas a spiritual leader would be expected to express in time of
war.  Yet his words sound strange and bold in the Europe of today,
and we comprehend the complete submergence and enslavement of great
nations, the very sources of our civilization, as we realize that he
is about the only ruler left on the Continent of Europe who dares to
raise his voice at all."

All this has gone on over a period of more than a quarter-century.
Has it even become "ancient history"?  We need to draw some
conclusions.  As can be imagined, various misconceptions have arisen
about the *real* conduct of Pope Pius XII during World War II.

False or highly tendentious interpretations have insinuated
themselves into the controversy.  Some images, quite unfaithful to
the reality, have taken shape in popular imagination.  A few of the
misconceptions, of these misleading images, can be briefly reviewed.

MISCONCEPTION NO. 1:  That Pope Pius XII was 'mute' from 1939 on.

This would be laughable were it not taken so seriously by the
uniformed, or by those who do not want to know.  Pius XII devoted
himself to the Apostolate of the Word, and to good effect, in a world
plunged into doubt, confusion and suffering.  His public addresses on
world problems were frequent, and many of them were printed in their
entirety in, for example, The New York Times.  His Christmas talks
were especially treasured.  The Allies in the West understood his
language perfectly.  As for the Nazis, the Pope's addresses were
ignored, by order of Propaganda Chief, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, who could
not expect anything he could welcome or be thankful for.

Nevertheless, the accusation that Pius XXII's self-appointed
prosecutors levy against him is that, as the head of the most
powerful moral force on Earth, he committed a grave sin of omission
by not issuing a formal statement condemning the Nazi atrocities.
Moreover, Pius' critics say, his silence was motivated by such base
considerations as economic self-interest -- every Catholic church,
hospital and university in Axis-occupied Europe could be confiscated
outright by the Nazis.

MISCONCEPTION NO. 2:  That the Pope was 'neutral,' standoffish.

Of course, the Holy See was not a belligerent.  But it is to misread
the record grievously to insinuate by this phrase that Pius XII had a
sort of "plague-on-both-your-houses" policy.  He was as neutral
towards the Axis as President Roosevelt, who kept the U.S. Embassy in
Berlin open as long as he could before Pearl Harbor.  In early 1940,
it was Pius XII who took the extremely risky and very un-neutral step
of acting as intermediary between the anti-Hitler conspirators and
the British.  Was he mad to have done this?  What could have been the
consequences, if Hitler, soon triumphant everywhere on the Continent,
had discovered the "treason?"  It was a conspiracy he learned of only
in 1944 when the Pope was beyond his reach.

Of course, all Pius XII's public statements on the war left no doubt,
in the minds of either the Allies or the Axis powers, as to just
whose side he stood on in actuality.  He had vigorously denounced, on
numerous occasions, virtually everything for which the Fascists
stood.  Pius, who spent the 1920s in Germany as a papal nuncio and
spoke fluent German, knew and despised the Nazi ideology.  In 1935,
while still just a priest, he told a crowd of 250,000 pilgrims at
Lourdes that the Nazis are "in reality only miserable plagiarists who
dress up old errors with new tinsel.  It does not make any difference
whether they flock to the banners of the social revolution, whether
they are guided by a false conception of the world and of life, or
whether they are possessed by the superstition of a race and blood
cult."

Again, as The New York Times put it, this time in 1942:  "When a
leader bound impartially to nations on both sides condemns as heresy
the new form of national state which subordinates everything to
itself; when he declares that whoever wants peace must protect
against 'arbitrary attacks' the 'judicial safety of individuals';
when he assails violent occupation of territory, the exile and
persecution of human beings for no reason other than race or
political opinion ... The 'impartial judgment' is like a verdict in a
high court of justice."

Historians have long known that Pius XII agonized over precisely
whether or not he should publicly and formally condemn the Nazis.  It
was a question debated throughout the war by Church officials.
Historians have also long known that the reason for the pope's
"silence" was the same reason the Red Cross kept silent:  The real
fear that to say anything would have only jeopardized secret rescue
efforts then under way and made things far, far worse for the Nazis'
victims.  In this regard, it must be remembered that Pius XII's
"silence" extended to Catholic victims and organizations, not just
the Jews.  More than 3,000 Catholic priests, for instance, were
murdered by the Nazis in Germany, Austria, Poland, France and other
nations.

MISCONCEPTION No. 3:  That the Pope was pro-Nazi.

This is based solely on the fact that Pius XII had spent many years
in Germany  and was an admirer of many of the qualities of the German
people.  That is, he was able and willing to see a difference between
the Germans and their Nazi government.  Was he wrong?  It was a
distinction that many in America were not ready to make during the
war.  We have changed our mind.  The  Federal Republic of Germany is
one of the pillars of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).
Evidently, there are, and were, "good Germans" as well as "bad"
Germans.  Pius XII never had any doubt and acted accordingly.

 MISCONCEPTION No. 4:  That the Pope was "silent' about the
                       extermination  of the Jews

This was the burden of Hochhuth's play.  To put this charge in
perspective, it is important to insist that all during the war Pius
XII was extending his help to victims of Hitler's anti-Semitism.
Both individual harried Jews and world rescue organizations appealed
regularly to the Pope for assistance, when his intervention offered
some chances of success in an increasingly distressing situation.  In
the first years, the help turned on ways of assisting these Jews to
emigrate.

In the second phase, that of deportation, the help consisted in
pressure put upon satellite governments, puppets of Hitler, who still
had some freedom of action.  For instance, in the spring of 1942,
timely appeals to the Slovak government in Bratislava led to the
suspension at least partial, of planned deportations.  At least, so
the Jewish organizations believed and they did not hesitate to
acknowledge it.

         (Continued in "The Pope and the Holocaust" 4/6)
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:41:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Catholicism and Fascism a

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  5/6
                       (Continued from 4/6)

It was not overt callousness on the part of either the American Jews
or Christians, but the same kind of preoccupied apathy that allowed
the United States to stand idly by while the Cambodian Communist
Khmer Rouge murdered 2 million of their own people in the late
1970s.  Jewish writer Walter Lacqueur's earlier work, "The Terrible
Secret", is a similar study of the refusal of most American Jews, as
well as the Allied governments, to take seriously the sporadic
accounts during the war of mass murder in Eastern Europe.

Many Catholic intellectuals, caught up in the same kind of
embarrassed self-consciousness many Jewish intellectuals used to
complain about, are willfully blind to the outrageous lies routinely
voiced by some critics, both Jewish and non-Jewish, in many major
American publications.

There is a kind of liberal Catholic intellectual who, eager to show
his or her sensitivity to Jewish concerns, will believe anything said
about the Church -- no matter how malicious or absurd.  These people
often don't know a thing about Judaism or Jewish history, don't know
a single word of Hebrew, yet they presume to speak for the entire
Catholic Church in publicly expiating the alleged sins of Pius XII
against the Jews during the second World War.

My advice to all those willing and eager to condemn the pope, both
Catholics and non-Catholics, is to take the time to read a little
history of the period.  They may be surprised that the accounts
written by eyewitnesses differ substantially from those of today's
editors at The New Republic and The Nation, for whom knee-jerk
anti-Catholicism is as rampant and unquestioned as anti-Semitism once
was.

After more than a generation of unprecedented publicity -- debates,
trials, memoirs, researches, documentaries, novels, and poetry, etc. -
- we certainly know a lot more about what is variously called the
Holocaust, Shoah, genocide, or simple the destruction or extinction
of European Jews under Hitler.  How much was really known -- or
understood -- in the crucial years, say 1942-44 , in Eastern Europe?
The data are by no means satisfactory.  The signs at hand are
ambiguous, contradictory, and perplexing.  What did the Allied
governments know, or believe?  How much were the world Jewish leaders
themselves informed, or convinced?  How much did the Vatican know, or
believe?

As far as the Vatican is concerned, one key is found in the audience
that Pope Pius XII had with his old friend Don Pirro Scavizzi, a
parish priest of Rome, war veteran, and chaplain on the hospital
train sent by the Order of Malta to pick up wounded Italian soldiers
on the Eastern front in 1942.  The priest was able to tell the Pope
about the mass slaughter of Jews by the Nazi police.  This no doubt
helped to establish in the Pope's mind the inhuman character of the
Nazi occupation of Russia.  But Don Pirro did not visit concentration
camps and did not return to the East after 1943.

The nuncio in Berlin reported that the "most macabre stories"
circulated in the German capital about the fate of the Jewish
deportees.  Did the nuncio, Archbishop Cesare Orsenigo, know anything
more?  Was he perhaps afraid to commit to paper, vulnerable to
interceptions, what was a State Secret?  But already, in March 1942,
the papal representative, a charge d'affaires, Msgr. Joseph Burzio,
in Bratislava (Slovakia), reporting with indignation the planned
deportation of Jews, said the departure meant "certain death" for
many.

Was he referring to the conditions of the expulsions of so many old
and sick persons and little children?  Or did he know of the gas
chambers that awaited them?  The most disquieting sign, in this dark
passage, was the total disappearance of the deportees.  This aroused
the greatest foreboding, without being definite.  In the end of 1942,
a French Capuchin priest, in close contact with community leaders,
brought back their own description of what had happened in France.
The French Jews did not know that their co-religionists had already
been gassed.  They only asked for "information."

In these years much information about the Germans in Poland came to
the Vatican from the Polish ambassador to the Holy See, Casimir
Papee.  The diplomat, informed from London, referred constantly to
the dire plight of the Jews.  But, again, in the light of what we
learned later about Auschwitz, he told little.  In March 1944, the
Nazis took military control of their ally, Hungary.  With this a half-
million Jews who had hitherto enjoyed liberty and relative immunity
fell into the Nazi maw.

At this time the above-mentioned Burzio, charge d'affaires in
Slovakia, forwarded to Rome the famous "Auschwitz Protocol."  This
was put together by two young Slovak Jews who had escaped from the
camp and had made their way back to their homeland.  There they
encountered at first disbelief and then acquiescence in the face of
the facts.  The first thing was to warn the Hungarians.  The camp
guards had been overheard saying, "Soon we shall have fat Hungarian
sausages."  The gas chambers were being enlarged and improved.  As we
know, soon 400,000 Jews, unwarned, were to perish in a shockingly
brief space of time.  Adolf Eichmann had done his work.

Under date of June 26, 1944, Pius XII sent an open, that is a normal
telegram to Admiral Horthy, Regent of Hungary.  Reports had gotten
out of the deportation "to an unknown destination" of Hungarian
Jews.  The Pope implored the Regent to give ear to the prayers of the
unfortunates.  The Pope's appeal was the first to reach Horthy, to be
followed by like messages from the King of Sweden, and the
International Red Cross.  Horthy, using what limited authority he
still held -- and with the timely assistance of an Allied bombardment
of the city -- suspended the deportations.

On what information did the Pope act?  For a long time it was
naturally supposed that the Auschwitz Protocol had occasioned the
more.  In fact, the diplomatic pouch containing the report of Msgr.
Burzio was blocked en route, probably because of the Allied
liberation of Rome in June, with the consequent interruption of air
contacts with Switzerland and Spain.  The document reached the
Vatican only in late October.  In this same month  of October the gas
chambers at Auschwitz were blown up.  The Russians entered the camp
in January 1945.

 Did the Pope "know" of the Auschwitz drama?  He did not know more
than the Jews themselves, in America or Britain.  But he knew as much
as the government.  If that is any answer.  The signs reaching the
"outside" world were ambivalent.  The official government propaganda
was generic on this subject.  In December 1942, the six of seven
exile governments in London issued a protest against Nazi war
crimes.  But the crimes in question were not the deportation and
extermination of Jews.  No other declaration of this kind was issued
later.  In October 1943, the Allied Foreign Ministers met in Moscow
and there issued a statement on war crimes and their future
punishment.  Nothing was said of the extermination of the Jews, or
about Jews in general.

         (Concluded in "The Pope and the Holocaust" 6/6)
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:36:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Catholicism and Fascism a

 WWID> WID> Considering the neutrality, or active sympathy, toward war
 WWID> fascism by such Catholic nations as Italy, Spain, Ireland,
 WWID> Argentina, and France, I must ask a question:

 WWID> To what extent was fascism condoned by the Catholic Church?
 WWID> The Pope's "blind eye" to the Jewish Holocaust has been
 WWID> chronicled on the stage -- "The Deputy" -- as well as in
 WWID> histories.

 WWID> Granted, the Church correctly saw Bolshevism as a mortal
 WWID> threat to Western civilization, as well as to the Church
 WWID> itself, but giving itself to the Devil's protection
 WWID> would seem a bit ... dogmatic?

 WWID> Lou Coatney, [email-masked]

The above canard *forces* me to post an extensive correction.
This will be covered in SIX consecutive messages.

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  1/6

                                Preface

There are two topics regarding Catholic history which are brought up
time-and-time again -- the Inquisition and the Holocaust.  What part
did the Church play in each?  The following information will be taken
largely from two sources:

(1) A national weekly news magazine, "Catholic Twin Circle", issue of
November 5, 1989.  The article, entitled "Anatomy of a Lie:  Pope
Pius XII and the Holocaust" is by Robert J. Hutchinson.
(2) The second source is a lecture entitled "Pius XII:  Years of
Praise,  Years of Blame", delivered at Theological College, The
Catholic University of America, on October 10, 1989, by Rev. Robert
A. Graham S.J., under the auspices of the Catholic League for
Religious and Civil Rights.  He had spent much of the previous 17
years searching and assembling files containing documents of the
Vatican Secretariat of State during World War II

Over one-third of a century has passed since the death, in 1958, of
Pope Pius XII.  That a Roman Pontiff so long dead should continue to
arouse not merely interest but even continuing controversy is
surprising.  Perhaps general interest in World War II and its
accompanying issues has much to do the this.  In any event, the
Vatican -- The Holy See, the Papacy -- and its wartime incumbent,
Pius XII, have been "discovered."  Evidently, what the Pope of Rome
says, or does not say,  does or does not do, can have significance
even outside the circle of his own faithful.

There were years, when Pius XII, born Eugenio Pacelli, pope since
1939, enjoyed a good press, as we say today, and others in which he
had a bad press.  His election on the eve of war was hailed with
satisfaction by the Western democracies.  He was in close contact
with President Roosevelt.  His pronouncements on the war were widely
and positively publicized.  When Rome was finally liberated in June
1944, officers and soldiers of all faiths crowded into the Vatican
halls for a treasured papal audience.  Jewish leaders, likewise, in
visits to the Vatican, expressed their appreciation for all the the
Holy Father had done for their afflicted people during the harrowing
years of the war.  At his death in 1958, world opinion -- not
excepting Jewish leaders in Israel and out of it -- was lavish with
expressions of admiration.

The most remarkable aspect to the ongoing controversy over what Pope
Pius XII did, or should have done to aid the 11 million Jews and non-
Jews murdered by the Nazis, is the vast difference between the
opinions of those who actually lived through the conflict and those
of modern commentators today, many of whom were not even born when
World War II ended.

Jewish writers and statesmen of the 1950s had only praise for the
pope's effort on behalf of Jewish and other persecuted minorities
during the war.  Many of them had seen firsthand the burnt-out
cities, the piles of bodies, the entire continent of Europe left a
desolate wasteland.  They knew the terrifying, indeed, satanic fury
of the Nazi onslaught, and were amazed that the fragile and largely
powerless pope, literally surrounded by Nazi tanks and facing the
like possibility of being taken hostage by the Gestapo, had summoned
the courage to say and do the things he did.

After the war, Rabbi Isaac Herzog, Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem, sent a
"special blessing" to the pope for his "lifesaving efforts on behalf
of the Jews during the Nazi occupation of Italy."

Rabbi Elio Toaff, for a time Chief Rabbi of Rome, said after the
death of Pope Pius XII that "more than anyone else, we have had the
opportunity to appreciate the great kindness, filled with compassion
and magnanimity, that the pope displayed during the terrible years of
persecution and terror, when it seemed that there was no hope left
for us"

Dr. Nahum Goldmann, then-president of the World Jewish Congress,
wrote at the time of Pius' death that "with special gratitude we
remember all he has done for the persecuted Jews during one of the
darkest periods in their entire history."

Former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir, who lost relatives to the
death camps, even eulogized this much-maligned pope on the floor of
the United Nations.  "During the 10 years of the Nazi terror, " the
Israeli prime minister said, "when our people went through the
horrors of martyrdom, the pope raised his voice to condemn the
persecutors and to commiserate with their victims."

All of this must be contrasted with the vituperative bigotry that has
been displayed against the Catholic Church in general and Pius XII in
particular in the years since the late 1960s, most of it in the US
press.  For reasons that have little to do with the historical record
of the Church and the Jews, many commentators, mostly liberals but
also one or two anti-Catholic conservatives such as George Will, have
felt free to express any malicious lie or innuendo against the
Church, no matter how ridiculous or unsubstantiated.

Why do they do this?  Because the Church stands as one of the few
pillars of opposition to many of the most cherished dogmas of both
"progressive" liberalism and laissez-faire capitalism -- dogmas such
as abortion, divorce, state versus family authority and so on.  This
has caused both liberal and neo-conservative elites, many but not all
of them Jewish, to unleash a furious assault of calumny on the
Church.  And always, Pius XII is the convenient first strike in this
general assault.

In February 1987, for example, the liberal weekly The Nation, run by
the Jewish editor Victor Navasky, reported that "it is of course
true: that "the Holy See was one of the patrons of Nazism" and that
"fascism was essentially a Roman Catholic movement."

Not to be outdone in mindless hatred of the Church, the equally high-
minded New Republic -- which unlike the more balanced Israeli
newspapers, Davar, Ma'ariv and Yediot ha-Achranot, seldom misses an
opportunity to vilify the Church -- stated that, as far as peace in
the Middle East is concerned, "the Vatican has just about the same
moral authority as the Kremlin."

Despite Pope John Paul II's "mawkish words about the sufferings of
the children of Abraham," the editors of The New Republic sneered,
"He and his Church have not quite been able to bring themselves to
accept the fact of a reconstituted Jewish commonwealth in the Holy
Land."

Why did the New Republic make such an obviously biased statement?
The reason, The New Republic explained, is that "however much they
[Catholics] may deny it," this reluctance stems from the "historical
hatred of the Church for the Jews."

         (Continued in "The Pope and the Holocaust" 2/6)

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:40:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Catholicism and Fascism a

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  4/6
                       (continued from 3/6)

The record shows countless cases of similar interventions, some of
which were unsuccessful, and others consoling in their happy
outcome.  The famous telegram of the Pope to Admiral Horthy of
Hungary, sent by ordinary channels in June 1944 was the first of the
appeals that arrived from neutrals, resulting in Horthy's suspension
of deportations.  The pressure of Pius XII in 1943 on Fascist
dictator Benito Mussolini, who had 70,000 foreign Jews in his power
is another example.  Himmler and Ribbentrop were pressing the Duce to
turn them over to the Nazis.  Among the factors that led Mussolini to
refuse, surprisingly, was the Vatican's pressure.  All of this
passed, by the way, in "silence."  A public protest by the pope would
almost certainly have precipitated the worst.

These and a myriad of other papal interventions for Jews, undertaken
either on appeals from the world Jewish rescue agencies -- some of
which now are among his detractors -- or on the Pope's own
initiative, are found in four of the 11 volumes on the war published
by the Vatican some years ago laying out the record of papal work as
the Good Samaritan, doing good without distinction of race, religion,
or any other category.  The Pope chose the secret way in preference
to the supposedly "prophetic" way of public condemnation, of more
than dubious probable effect.

"I have often considered excommunication [of Hitler]," this much-
maligned pontiff said at one point.  "But after much praying and many
tears, I realize that my condemnation would not only fail to help the
Jews, it might even worsen their situation ... No doubt a protest
would have gained me the praise and respect of the civilized world,
but it would have submitted the poor Jews to an even worse
persecution."

Despite what Pius XII's many critics claim, the pope was undoubtedly
correct in this assessment.  A senior Nazi diplomat to Italy, Baron
Albert von Kessel, stated after the war that "a violent protest by
the pope against the persecution of the Jews would have certainly put
the pope in great personal danger, and it would not have saved the
life of a single Jew."

This opinion was shared by both the German ambassador to the Vatican,
Ernst von Weizsacker, and many Jewish refugees who came to Rome.
Weizsacker wrote after the war:  "It was precisely because they
wanted to help the Jews that these organizations [the International
Red Cross and the Catholic Church] refrained from making any general
and public appeals; for they were afraid that they would injure
rather than help the Jews thereby."  One Jewish couple who fled to
Rome, the Wolfssons, said after the war:  "None of us wanted the pope
to take an open stand.  We were all fugitives, and fugitives do not
wish to be pointed at.  The Gestapo would have become more excited
and would have intensified its inquisitions."

There also was the problem of impartiality.  What people today rarely
realize is that there were accusations of unimaginable atrocities
levied against *both* *sides* during World War II.  And what's worse,
the accusations of Allied atrocities -- basically, that the Soviets
under Stalin committed mass murder in Eastern Europe, as well as the
fire-bombing of a non-military target, Dresden -- turned out to be
true.

The German government had a conscientious and largely accurate
propaganda division dedicated to documenting and broadcasting reports
of massacres of civilians by the Red Army in Eastern Europe.  As a
result, during the height of the bloodiest war in human history,
accusations of war crimes by both sides were commonplace.

Was the pope supposed to take sides in the heat of war?  To condemn
German atrocities but say nothing of Allied massacres?  Or, as he
did, should he have remained neutral and called for all parties in
the conflict to respect basic standards of morality and cease the
slaughter of innocent civilians?

Pope Pius XII had an actual historic precedent by which to judge the
effectiveness of public denunciations of the Nazis.  In 1942, the
Dutch bishops did what some critics say Pius XII should have done --
publicly condemned the Nazis by name -- and, as a result, all Jews,
both "baptized" and unbaptized were arrested in retaliation and sent
to death camps.  This was why St. Edith Stein, a Catholic
philosopher, nun and convert from Judaism was rounded up while in
Holland, and sent to her death by gas at Auschwitz.

The German Reichskommisar had told the leaders of both the Catholic
and Dutch Reformed Churches in Holland that if the churches agreed to
remain silent about the Jewish deportations, the Nazis would continue
to make exceptions in their persecutions for *baptized* Jews.

The Dutch Reformed Church agreed.  But the Dutch Catholic bishops
refused, issuing a pastoral letter in the summer that fiercely
condemned the Nazi persecutions of the Jews.  The Nazi reaction was
swift, efficient and brutal:  All the Jews of Holland, except for the
baptized Dutch Reform Jews, were sent to their deaths.

As a result of this experience, in April 1943, Pius XII wrote to
Bishop von Preysing of Berlin that "in spite of good reasons for Our
open intervention, there are other equally good reasons for avoiding
greater evils by not interfering.  Our experience in 1942 [with the
Dutch Church], when We allowed the free publication of certain
pontifical documents addressed to the Faithful, justifies this
attitude."

 MISCONCEPTION No. 5:  That the Pope had an "obsession" with the
                      Communist danger.

This allegation was a favorite with those steeped in the literature
of left-wing Marxist writers.  Usually it represents the only thing
they know, or think they know, about Catholicism.  Was he tormented
so much with the threat from the East that he wanted the United
States to join with Hitler in 1945 in a war against the Soviet
Union?  This is an absurdity without the slightest foundation in
fact.  Equally unfounded is the allegation that he considered Nazism
-- paganized and persecuting as it was -- to be an indispensable
"bulwark" against Communism.

Hitler disdained to ask the Vatican's moral support in his so-called
"crusade" of 1941 against Soviet Russia.  The Pope instead took
certain steps in 1941 to enable President Roosevelt to overcome
Isolationist objections to the extension of Lend-Lease military and
economic aid to the Soviet Union.  This gesture was hardly a sign of
an anti-Soviet obsession.  It is true that the Pope was concerned
about the extension of Soviet power in Europe, for instance into
Poland, and he warned the Americans, in the last months of the war,
of the danger.  In the end, with NATO, the United States had to avow
that the Pope had been right.

Finally, despite what Jewish critics and other detractors who were
not even born then claim, no one really understood what the Nazis
were actually doing until *after* the war, or at least until its
final stages.  The disturbing evidence of David S. Wyman's 1984 work,
"The Abandonment of the Jews:  America and the Holocaust", shows
that, contrary to what many people believe today, American Jews as a
whole, like their gentile American counterparts, did very little to
rescue their co-religionists in Europe -- far less, in fact, than did
Pius XII and Vatican diplomats, who were busy organizing rescue
efforts and underground railroads throughout Europe.

         (Continued in "The Pope and the Holocaust" 5/6)
___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 05:38:00 -0500
From:    Frank Scheidt <[email-masked]>
Subject: Catholicism and Fascism a

                    The Pope and the Holocaust:  2/6
                       (continued from 1/6)

The editors did not, of course, cite any of this "incontrovertible
documentation," and for one, very good reason:  It doesn't exist.
Rather, reputable historians who have researched the period --
including Joseph L. Lichten of the Anti-defamation League of B'nai
B'rith -- have found out that just the opposite is the case.  Rather
than exhibiting "indifference" to the plight of the Jews, impartial
researchers on the Holocaust not acknowledge that Pius XII and the
Catholic community in Europe saved more Jewish lives than any other
power on Earth -- more than Jewish relief organizations, the secret
Palestine resistance movement, the Allied Armies or even the
International Red Cross.

According to the Israeli diplomat and historian, Pinchas Lapide, for
instance, the Holy See and the various papal nuncios "saved more
Jewish lives during the war than all the other churches, religious
institutions and rescue organizations put together ... Some 860,000
Jews [were saved by the Church] from certain death".

Lapide based this assertion on data he collected on the number of
Jews and other refugees saved from deportation to the Nazi death
camps by the direct intervention of papal nuncios and other secret
Catholic efforts, as well as on the number saved by such rescue
organizations as the International Red Cross.

The source of much criticism of Pius XII's handling of the tragedy of
Nazi persecution of Jews and other religious minorities is the 1963
German play, Der Stellvertreter ("The Deputy"), written by the then-
young playwright Rolf Hochhuth -- anxious, like many young Germans,
to spread the guilt of the Nazi atrocities to as many parties as
possible.

This caused the world-wide benevolence toward Pope Pius XII to
evaporate.  Hochhuth was a disciple of Erwin Piscator, founder of the
drama school called the "Political Theatre," whose method was to put
living politicians, or others recently deceased, on the stage, for
either pillorying or praise.  Rolf Hochhuth turned his guns on Pius
XII.  He painted the wartime Pope in the most unflattering light,
describing him as inspired by the most unworthy motives.  He did
admit that, on the plane of *action*, the Pope had aided the Jews but
faulted him for not having publicly flayed the Nazis.  Pius XII, said
Hochhuth, was a "war criminal" because of his "silence."

This was strong medicine and provoked strong reactions pro and con.
Surprisingly -- or perhaps not surprisingly -- the ripple spread
beyond Berlin and soon hit the farthest shores, especially the United
States.  Pius XII became a villain overnight.  You are right to ask
why this complete about-face, triggered by a play of no particular
literary merit, apart from its provocative language.  Nothing new
had been discovered in archives, in the historical record, justifying
any revision.  One must search for psychological reasons, rather than
historical grounds.

One can suggest several hypotheses.  The most important is the
timing.  The first session of the historic Second Vatican Council had
terminated just a few months previously.  A new vision dawned not
only on the Catholic Church, but also on world opinion.  This was
also the time when America was deeply troubled in conscience, by the
drama, the tragedy, of the Vietnam war.  Also just two years
previously had taken place the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the organizer
of the Hitlerian program for the extermination of Jews in Nazi power.

The surprise above all, was that suddenly all that Jewish leaders had
said in tribute to Pius XII, during and immediately after the war,
and at his death less than five years before the production of this
play, was relegated to the ashbin, consigned to oblivion.  The
gratitude of the world Jewish leaders, for deeds to which their own
archives are witness was transformed after 1963 into totally negative
commentary.  The well-intentioned, informed witness of leaders of the
world Jewish community was downgraded to "disgraceful testimonials of
a few Jews" (New York Times Sept. 27, 1989, Letters).

But soon there were other developments in the opposite sense, equally
surprising and equally unpredictable.  Faced with the realization;
that the Vatican's attitude had a genuine international dimension
beyond confessional or sectarian concerns, world leaders and world
opinion paid more attention to this hitherto ignored world force.  By
1963, Pope John XXIII, the "papa buono," the "good Pope," was
succeeded by Paul VI, who had been the close collaborator of his
master, Pius XII.  In the fall of 1965, he was invited by the United
Nations Secretary General, U Thant, to address the UN General
Assembly in New York.

The spectacle of this frail white-clad figure at the UN rostrum,
preaching peace to representatives of the world powers, was something
that could not have been dreamed of in the time of the League of
Nations, so systematically was the Holy See excluded from the world
assizes.  Something had changed; even the Soviet chief delegate
Andrei Gromyko pressed forward to greet the Pope.  Some years later,
as we know, the U.S. Senate confirmed with hardly a dissenting voice
the nomination of an American ambassador to the Holy See.  This, too,
was inconceivable before.  In 1951, President Truman tried in vain to
name General Mark Clark to the same post, to enormous protests.
Today on Massachusetts Avenue in the Capital city, the quondam
"Apostolic Delegation" is now officially designated the "Vatican
Embassy"

The purely fictional play, "The Deputy" is an impassioned, bigoted
denunciation of Pope Pius XII for "failing" to "speak out" against
the Nazi persecution of the Jews.  The central thesis of the play is
that Pius XII was callously indifferent to the plight of the Jews
and, more importantly, that, had the Vatican issued a direct
condemnation of Hitler and the Nazis early in the war, the Holocaust
would never have happened.  Therefore, the playwright Rolf Hochhuth
tried to convince his audience, Pope Pius XII bore as much blame for
the Holocaust as Hitler.

No serious scholar, of course, has ever believed this nonsense about
the pope.  Even The New York Times, a frequent critic of the Church,
editorialized in 1941 that Pius XII "is about the only ruler left on
the continent of Europe who dares to raise his voice at all" against
"Hitlerism."

Indeed the next year, on Christmas 1942, when Rome was about to be
sandwiched between Kesselring's Third Panzergrenadier Division and
the fierce Second Parachute Division at Anzio, Pius XII read his
famous Christmas radio broadcast -- which said, "Humanity should help
The Jews who for reasons of their faith are marked for death."  So
much for the "silence" of Pius XII!

What *is* true is the the pope did not directly condemn Hitler or the
Nazis by name.  Neither, of course, did any other "neutral" party in
the war -- the International Red Cross, for example, or the World
Council of Churches.  Pius XII, as John Paul does today, spoke only
of moral principles and not of specific political conflicts.  It
might be noted that even in American movies of the late 1930s which
criticized the Nazis, they were never addressed *directly*.  One knew
whom they were referring to by the villains' German accent, their
flags which always had some distorted version of a "crooked-cross",
and their names which were the equivalent of Helmut Schneider,  Hans
Schwartz, etc.

         (Continued in "The Pope and the Holocaust" 3/6)

___ Blue Wave/QWK v2.12

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 09:31:17 -0400
From:    Joe Barone <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Diplomacy in WW2 (was: Ireland in WW2)

John Riegsecker <[email-masked]> writes:
>>        I recall reading that Goebbels had used Roosevelt's death as
>>grist for his Ministry.  Did Germany send any condolences to the US?
>>Last Sunday's local newspaper featured an article on FDR and it mentioned
>>that Japan sent a very eloquent message to the US which surprised a great
>>many people.
>
> I never heard that, and must admit I'm very surprised that the Japanese
> would have sent any kind of message.  I would be interested in hearing more
> about that.

In the April 9, 1995 issue of the Providence Journal is an article entitled,
"FDR", written by Rick Hampson of the Associated Press.  "Tributes came from
unexpected sources.  Radio Tokyo quotes Premier Kantaro Suzuki saying, 'I can
easily understand the great loss his [FDR's] passing means to the American
people, and my profound sympathy goes out to them.'"
--
Joe Barone
[email-masked]
It's a Mark 6!  And we got her by the ass!

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 09:08:04 -0500
From:    Terrence Lindell <[email-masked]>
Subject: USS KARA (SS-369) ???

The USN Chronology for 15 April 1945 lists a USS KARA (SS-369) overdue
and presumed lost in the Pacific.  I am not able to find any reference
to a submarine named KARA, but the KETE, bearing the same hull number,
was lost in March 1945.

According to _"On Eternal Patrol"_, a work published by the Pacific Fleet
Memorial Association, the KETE was on her second war patrol and in the
area of Okinawa.  On March 19 she started for Pearl Harbor.  A weather
report she sent while en route was her last known transmission.  American
destroyers sank several Japanese submarines in the area and it is believed
that one of them may have sunk the KETE.

Terry Lindell
Department of History
Wartburg College
Waverly, Iowa  50677
[email-masked]

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 10:34:32 GMT-6
From:    "Robert T. Moore" <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Monty and Market-Garden

Hello, Alan!

Keep in mind though that it was Chester B. Hansen who ghost wrote
General Bradley's first book A Soldier's Story.

Just thought I would point that out.

Terry

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 12:39:22 -0700
From:    Sidney Allinson <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Women's WWII Literature

Mary...
        Meant to also mention...

                THE WOMENS ARMY CORPS, in the series

                        THE US ARMY IN WORLD WAR II

Washington, DC, 1954

                AND KEEP YOUR POWDER DRY

                        by Margaret Meade,
                                Murrow, Quill, NY 1942 & 1962

                WARTIME WOMEN: Sex Roles & Family Relationships During WWII

                        by Kaen Anderson,
                        by Karen Anderson
                                Greenwood Press, Conn., 1976

                THOSE WONDERFUL WOWMEN IN THEIR FLYING MACHINES

                        by Sally Keil
                                Rawson Wade, NY, 1979

                DO9ES KHAKI BECOME YOU? : The Militarism Of Womens' Lives
                                by Cynthia Enloe,
                                        South End press, Boston, 1983

A pint of midnight oil with each book....

Regards -- Sidney.

--

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:33:08 -0400
From:    Richard Cameron <[email-masked]>
Subject: Re: Catholicism and Fascism a

Would you be so kind as to re-post part 1 of 6.  Part 1 was "lost".

Thank you.

Rich Cameron

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:21:10 CST
From:    Joe Natale <[email-masked]>
Subject: Women Airforce Service Pilots and TWU

                    WORLD WAR II COMES HOME

When called to serve their country, they answered. When asked to
fill a gap, they gave. Recognized decades after they answered the
call, the Women Airforce Service Pilots (WASP) of World War II
ferried airplanes cross-country and trained on Texas fields (and
other places) from 1942 to 1944. The WASPs, who continue to meet
throughout the United States and share their stories, will visit
Texas Woman's University on Thursday, April 20, as a group for a
special dedication and other activities.

"The WASP will donate a life-size bronze statue of a woman pilot to
the TWU library, where the Woman's Collection became the official
archives for the WASP organization in 1992," said Elizabeth Snapp,
Library Director. "The Woman's Collection has been steadily
receiving the records and memorabilia of the WASP organization and
individual women pilots ever since that time."

The dedication, scheduled for 2 PM on the library's grounds, will
give students, faculty, staff and members of the community an
opportunity to attend the statue's unveiling and to meet the first
women who were assigned to fly government planes. The Pfeifer Estes
statue was commissioned by the WASP organization from a bequest
left by Ziggy Hunter of Dallas, Texas, who worked briefly as a
civilian pilot instructor for the WASP. The figure of the woman
pilot, sculpted by WASP pilot trainee and Dallas resident Jewel
Pfeifer Estes, will stand on a granite base on the second floor of
the Mary Evelyn Blagg-Huey Library, near the Woman's Collection and
the rotunda. Noted local sculptor Mike Cunningham, spouse of TWU
faculty member Dr. Donna Cunningham (Education and Human Ecology
Dept.), constructed the statue's base.

Approximately 50 to 75 former WASP members plan to attend the
ceremony, and they also will join the campus community at the
complimentary picnic hosted by the TWU National Alumnae
Association, following Honors Convocation. During the statue
dedication, Dr. Carol Surles, TWU President, will accept the gift
on behalf of the university. Dr. John Flohr (Performing Arts, Music
Dept.) will play "Taps," and a group of women veterans from TWU led
by Alice Curtis will serve as color guard. For more information,
contact Special Colllections Librarian Dawn Letson at (817)898-3742
or [email-masked] by e-mail.

In 1942, when U.S. planes and pilots were shipped to Europe and the
Pacific, a program began that was designed to help alleviate an
acute shortage of pilots. The purpose of the program was to train
pilots who could ferry airplanes from factories to the coast within
the continental U.S.  A call went out for women, ages 21 to 35, who
held a private pilot's license; 25 of the most experienced pilots
immediately joined the WAFS (Women Air Ferrying Squadron) with
little training. Another 1,176 progressed through classes during a
six-month training program over the next two years.

The WAFS and the women's pilot training program then merged and
became the Women Airforce Service Pilots, under the direction of
famed aviatrixes Jacqueline Cochran and Nancy Harkness Love. Toward
the end of the war, when large numbers of pilots returned from
Europe, the WASP program was disbanded in December 1944. During the
program's brief history, women aviators proved themselves capable
pilots of the U.S. Army's squadrons of airplanes.
-----------------------------

Please direct all inquiries to:

Dawn Letson
Special Collections Librarian
Texas Woman's University Libraries
P. O. Box 23715
Denton, Texas 76204-1715

(817) 898-3742 voice
(817) 898-3764 fax

[email-masked]

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 20:34:00 EDT
From:    mc killop <[email-masked]>
Subject: [INF] USAAF 15 APR 45

COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
SUNDAY, 15 APRIL 1945
FTP SITES
  1. ftp.rutgers.edu in directory pub/wwii/usaf
  2. byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (129.71.32.152) in pub/history/military/airforce/
     wwii_chronology

AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT:
  A-20, Douglas Havoc
  A-26, Douglas Invader
  B-17, Boeing Flying Fortress
  B-24, Consolidated Liberator
  B-25, North American Mitchell
  B-26, Martin Marauder
  B-29, Boeing Superfortress
  F-5, Lockheed Lightning
  L-5, Stinson Sentinel
  P-38, Lockheed Lightning
  P-47, Republic Thunderbolt
  P-51, North American Mustang

NOTE: A number in parenthesis after a target name indicates the number of
bombers attacking.

AMERICAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS

  ALASKA (Eleventh Air Force): A B-24 flies a weather reconnaissance mission.

CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER

  CHINA THEATER (Fourteenth Air Force): In China, 3 B-25s knock out the Pa-
Ching pontoon bridge, 7 pound a storage depot at Fang-cheng, 4 bomb
Tunganhsien, and 3 hit Paoching; 1 B-24 bombs the Canton docks; almost 200
fighter bombers ranging over all of S China and up into the N China plain hit
numerous targets including bridges, river shipping, town areas, trucks,
railroad traffic, gun positions, storage areas, and general targets of
opportunity; the Paoching, Hengyang, Yungfengshih, and Hsihhsiassuchi areas
are especially hard hit.

  INDIA-BURMA THEATER (Tenth Air Force): In Burma, 62 P-38s and P-47s attack
troop concentrations and supply areas at Loi-Mwe, Lawksawk, Thongdan, and
near Laihka; 312 transport sorties are flown to forward areas.

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 3 missions are flown.
  Mission 951: 1,348 unescorted bombers are dispatched to visually attack
strongpoints on the French Atlantic coast; the first two forces below make
the sole operational employment of napalm bomb by the Eighth AF against
German ground installations (pillboxes, gunpits, tank trenches, and heavy gun
emplacements); the results are negligible and HQ recommends its
discontinuance against this type of target:
  1. 492 of 529 B-17s hit four strongpoints and flak batteries in the Royan
area; 5 B-17s are damaged.
  2. 341 of 359 B-24s hit six strongpoints and flak batteries in the Royan
area; 1 B-24 is damaged beyond repair and 3 damaged; 2 airmen are KIA.
  3. 442 of 457 B-17s hit 9 strongpoints and flak batteries in the Bordeaux/
Royan, Pointe Grave and Pointe Courbre area without loss.
  4. 3 B-17s and 20 P-51s fly scouting missions.
  5. 107 of 109 P-51s support Ninth AF B-26s; 1 is lost (pilot MIA).
  6. 6 of 7 P-51s escort 6 F-5s on photo reconnaissance missions over Royan
and Germany.
  Mission 952: 1 Mosquito and 9 B-24s abort a mission to Lechfeld Airfield
during the night.
  Mission 953: 10 of 11 B-24s drop leaflets in France, the Netherlands and
Germany during the night.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Ninth Air Force): In Germany, 258 B-26s and A-26s bomb
marshalling yards at Gunzburg and Ulm (primary targets) and several other
targets including 3 marshalling yards; fighters escort the bombers, fly
patrols and armed reconnaissance, and support the US 3d Armored Division near
Dessau and across the Mulde River near Torten, the 9th Armored Division along
the Mulde NW of Borna, the VIII Corps along Weisse Elster River between Gera
and Plauen, the XX Corps astride the Mulde NE of Chemnitz (where the 6th
Armored Division awaits Red Army forces), and the 2d Armored Division on the
Elbe River near Magdeburg. Unit moves in Germany: HQ 363d Tactical
Reconnaissance Group from Venlo, the Netherlands to Gutersloh; HQ 368th
Fighter Group and 395th and 396th Fighter Squadrons from Metz, France to
Frankfurt-am-Main with P-47s; HQ 406th Fighter Group and 512th, 513th and
514th Fighter Squadrons from Assche, Belgium to Handorf with P-47s; 72d
Liaison Squadron, Ninth AF (attached to Sixth Army Group) from Darmstadt to
Kitzingen with L-5s; 153d Liaison Squadron, IX Tactical Air Command (attached
to Twelfth Army Group) from Marburg to Bad Wildungen with L-5s.

MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (MTO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): In Italy, 830 B-17s and B-24s,
in support of the US Fifth Army, blast gun positions, supply dumps, troop
concentrations, maintenance installations, and German HQ along highways
leading from Bologna; 145 P-38s furnish escort; another force of 312 B-17s
and B-24s bomb rail diversion bridges at Nervesa della Battaglia, Ponte di
Piave, and Casarsa della Delizia, and an ammunition factory and stores at
Ghedi; 191 P-51s provide escort. 36 P-38s and 36 P-51s strafe rail
communications in the area bounded by Munich, Germany, Salzburg and Linz,
Austria, Plzen, Czechoslovakia, and Regensburg, Germany; 12 of the P-38s
skipbomb rail targets in the Salzburg-Linz, Austria area, including
the Vocklabruck marshalling yard; 8 P-38s furnish top cover for the strafing
missions. 128 P-51s provide uneventful escort for MATAF bombers on 3 missions
to N Italy. Other P-38s and P-51s carry out reconnaissance and reconnaissance
escort operations. Today's effort is the largest of World War II by the
Fifteenth AF (most fighters and bombers dispatched and attacking, and the
largest bomb tonnage dropped) during a 24-hour period; 1,142 heavy bombers
bomb targets.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force): In Italy during the night of 14/15
Apr, A-20s and A-26s concentrate on communications targets in the Po Valley,
particularly the Po River crossings; during the day medium bombers and
fighter bombers concentrate on direct support of the US Fifth and British
Eighth Army drives, hitting troop concentrations, guns, strongpoints, and
a variety of targets in areas S of Bologna, around Medicina and Sasso Marconi
and at other points in battle areas.

PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (POA)

  HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): 2 missions are flown during the night of
15/16 Apr.
  Mission 68: 194 B-29s bomb the Kawasaki urban area; 8 others hit targets of
opportunity; 12 B-29s are lost.
  Mission 69: 109 B-29s hit the urban area of Tokyo; 1 B-29 is lost.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA [SWPA, Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: On Formosa B-24s
bomb Toyohara, Shinchiku, and Shinshoshi Airfields and B-25s hit the Shoka
rail yards. On Luzon Island, B-24s and fighter bombers bomb island
fortifications in Manila Bay, fighter bombers hit bivouacs and other targets
in N Luzon and support ground forces E of Manila and on Carabao Island.
Fighter bombers and B-24s fly support missions for ground forces on Negros
and Cebu Islands. On Mindanao Island, B-24s bomb the Davao area and B-25s
join US Marine aircraft in hitting highways and vehicles. The 4th Fighter
Squadron (Commando), 3d Air Commando Group, moves from Mangaldan to Laoag,
Luzon with P-51s.

SOURCES:
AIR FORCE COMBAT UNITS OF WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force History,
  Headquarters USAF, 1961, ISBN 0-912799-02-1
COMBAT SQUADRONS OF THE AIR FORCE, WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force
  History, Headquarters USAF 1982
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II: COMBAT CHRONOLOGY, 1941-1945 by the
  Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1973
THE MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY by Roger A. Freeman, ISBN 1-85409-071-2
WORLD WAR II IN THE NORTH PACIFIC by Kevin D. Hutchinson, 1994,
  ISBN-0-313-29130-6

Jack McKillop
USAF (Airways and Air Communications Service)
1955-59

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Jack McKillop         |  Those who have long enjoyed such      |
|  Bellcore              |  privileges as we enjoy forget in      |
|  Piscataway, NJ USA    |  time that men have died to win them.  |
|  [email-masked]  |                       FDR              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------

16/0032Z APR

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 20:43:00 EDT
From:    mc killop <[email-masked]>
Subject: [INF] USAAF 16 APR 45

COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
MONDAY, 16 APRIL 1945
FTP SITES
  1. ftp.rutgers.edu in directory pub/wwii/usaf
  2. byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (129.71.32.152) in pub/history/military/airforce/
     wwii_chronology

AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT:
  A-20, Douglas Havoc
  A-26, Douglas Invader
  B-17, Boeing Flying Fortress
  B-24, Consolidated Liberator
  B-25, North American Mitchell
  B-26, Martin Marauder
  B-29, Boeing Superfortress
  F-5, Lockheed Lightning
  F-6, North American Mustang
  P-38, Lockheed Lightning
  P-47, Republic Thunderbolt
  P-51, North American Mustang
  P-61, Northrop Black Widow

NOTE: A number in parenthesis after a target name indicates the number of
bombers attacking.

AMERICAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS

  ALASKA (Eleventh Air Force): In the Kurile Islands, B-25s abort a mission
to bomb Hayakegawa because of weather front; 6 B-24s radarbomb the Kataoka
naval base on Shimushu Island; another B-24 flies a radar-ferret sortie.

CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER

  CHINA THEATER (Fourteenth Air Force): In China, 18 B-24s pound a storage
area at Linfen; 3 bomb targets of opportunity in the Bakli Bay, Hainan Island
and Canton areas; 10 B-25s bomb Yungfengshih, Kweilin, and Shanhsien,
knocking out 1 bridge and hitting buildings, river shipping, and rail
traffic. About 120 fighter bombers over S and E China hit river, road, and
rail traffic, town areas, troops, and general targets of opportunity at many
scattered locations; the 490th Bombardment Squadron (Medium), 341st
Bombardment Group (Medium), based at Hanchung sends a detachment to operate
from Hsian with B-25s.

  INDIA-BURMA THEATER (Tenth Air Force): In Burma, 22 fighter bombers pound
troop concentrations in the Ke-hsi Mansam vicinity; 19 others attack road
bridges behind enemy lines, claiming 1 bridge destroyed; air transport
operations to forward areas continue on steady basis.

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 3 missions are flown.
  Mission 954: In the afternoon, 1,252 bombers and 913 fighters are
dispatched to attack rail targets in Germany; they claim 727-0-373 Luftwaffe
aircraft; 1 B-24 and 31 fighters are lost.
  1. 273 of 306 B-24s bomb the marshalling yard at Landshut; 1 B-24 is lost,
2 damaged beyond repair and 8 damaged; 7 airmen are MIA. Escorting are 299
P-47s and P-51s; they claim 228-0-109 aircraft on the ground; 1 P-47 and 16
P-51s are lost (pilots MIA).
  2. 454 B-17s are sent to hit the marshallling yard (148), East rail bridge
(72) and West rail bridge (74) at Regensburg, the Platting marshalling yard
(77) and rail bridge at Straubing (76); 2 B-17s are damaged. The escort is
240 of 262 P-51s; they claim 2-0-0 aircraft in the air and 86-0-66 on the
ground; 3 P-51s are lost (pilots MIA).
  3. 286 of 298 P-51s fly a freelance mission in support of the bombers
attacking 40+ landing grounds in Germany and Czechoslovakia; they claim 1-0-1
aircraft in the air and 410-0-198 on the ground; 9 P-51s are lost (pilots
MIA).
  4. 19 of 22 P-51s fly a scouting mission.
  5. 16 P-51s escort 10 F-5s on photo reconnaissance missions over Germany; 2
P-51s are lost (pilots MIA).
  Mission 955: During the morning, 485 of 489 B-17s bomb the tank ditch
defense line at Pointe de Grave on the S side of the Gironde estuary in the
Bordeaux area in support of the ground assault in that area; 14 B-17s are
damaged.
  Mission 956: During the night, 11 of 12 B-24s drop leaflets in France, the
Netherlands and Germany.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS
    First Tactical Air Force (Provisional): The 526th Fighter Squadron, 86th
Fighter Group, moves from Tantonville, France to Braunschardt, Germany with
P-47s.
    Ninth Air Force: In Germany, about 450 A-20s, A-26s and B-26s bomb the
Zerbst communications center, Gunzenhausen marshalling yard, Kempten ordnance
depot, and Wittenberg marshalling yard and gun positions; the IX Tactical Air
Command's fighters claim 25 air victories during the day as they escort the
bombers, fly patrols, area cover, and armed reconnaissance, attack airfields
and other targets, and support the US 3rd Armored Division SW of Dessau, the
9th Armored Division in the Bennewitz-Colditz area along the Mulde River, the
XX Corps which remains at the Zwickauer Mulde River bridgehead NE of
Chemnitz, the VIII Corps crossing the Weisse Elster River between Gera and
Plauen, the 2d Armored Division on the Elbe River near Magdeburg, the XIX
Corps E of Barby, and the V Corps near Leipzig; the 354th Fighter Group (the
pioneer P-51 group of the Ninth AF) claims its 900th air victory. Unit moves:
HQ 391st Bombardment Group (Medium) and 572d Bombardment Squadron (Medium)
from Amy Airfield, Roye, France to Assche, Belgium with B-26s; 33d
Photographic Reconnaissance Squadron, 363d Tactical Reconnaissance Group,
from Venlo, the Netherlands to Gutersloh, Germany with F-5s; the 160th and
161st Tactical Reconnaissance Squadrons, 363d Tactical Reconnaissance Group,
from Venlo, the Netherlands to Gutersloh, Germany with F-6s; the 397th
Fighter Squadron, 368th Fighter Group, form Metz, France to Frankfurt-am-
Main, Germany with P-47s.

MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (MTO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): 98 B-24s, escorted by 102
P-51s, bomb positions SW of Bologna, Italy; almost 700 B-24s and B-17s abort
due to bad weather. 36 P-51s sweep areas S of Munich, Germany, Plzen,
Czechoslovakia, and Linz, Austria and 4 strafe an airfield E of Munich,
Germany.  Other P-51s and P-38s fly escort and reconnaissance missions.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force): In Italy during the night of 15/16
Apr, A-20s and A-26s hit Po River crossings, the towns of Vignola, Zoeca, and
Sassuolo, and several targets of opportunity in the Po Valley; during the day
medium bombers bomb bridges on the Reno River near Bologna, blast troop
reserve areas SE of Portomaggiore on the British Eighth Army front, and
attack troop concentrations S of Portomaggiore; fighters and fighter bombers
concentrate most of their effort on close support targets in the US Fifth
Army battle area S and SW of Bologna.

PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (POA)

  AAFPOA
    Seventh Air Force: 18 Guam Island-based B-24s pound Marcus Island in the
N Pacific. 2 P-61s from Saipan Island bomb and strafe Pagan Island.
    VII Fighter Command: Mission 3: In the first very long range fighter
operation from Iwo Jima Island, P-51s with Twentieth AF B-29 navigational
escort, strafe and bomb targets at Kanoya Airfield on Kyushu Island, Japan; 4
P-51s are lost; B-25s continue to furnish navigational escort in all
subsequent VII Fighter Command strikes (through 14 Aug) on Japan from Iwo
Jima.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA [SWPA, Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: On Formosa, B-25s
hit Taien Airfield, while B-24s and P-51s bomb Giran and Matsuyama Airfields
and nearby areas. Fighter bombers hit N Luzon Island bivouacs and other
targets and support strikes and sweeps are flown over Cebu, Negros, and
Mindanao Islands with B-25s hitting highways on Mindanao Island and B-24s hit
defenses on Carabao Island. P-38s pound Lingkas Tank Farm and other targets
at Tarakan, Borneo. During the night of 15/16 Apr B-24s bomb Taihoku,
Formosa. The 387th Bombardment Squadron (Light), 312th Bombardment Group
(Light) moves from Mangaldan to Floridablanca, Luzon with A-20s.

SOURCES:
AIR FORCE COMBAT UNITS OF WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force History,
  Headquarters USAF, 1961, ISBN 0-912799-02-1
COMBAT SQUADRONS OF THE AIR FORCE, WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force
  History, Headquarters USAF 1982
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II: COMBAT CHRONOLOGY, 1941-1945 by the
  Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1973
THE MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY by Roger A. Freeman, ISBN 1-85409-071-2
WORLD WAR II IN THE NORTH PACIFIC by Kevin D. Hutchinson, 1994,
  ISBN-0-313-29130-6

Jack McKillop
USAF (Airways and Air Communications Service)
1955-59

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Jack McKillop         |  Those who have long enjoyed such      |
|  Bellcore              |  privileges as we enjoy forget in      |
|  Piscataway, NJ USA    |  time that men have died to win them.  |
|  [email-masked]  |                       FDR              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------

16/0041Z APR

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 20:53:00 EDT
From:    mc killop <[email-masked]>
Subject: [INF] USAAF 17 APR 45

COMBAT CHRONOLOGY OF THE US ARMY AIR FORCES
TUESDAY, 17 APRIL 1945
FTP SITES
  1. ftp.rutgers.edu in directory pub/wwii/usaf
  2. byrd.mu.wvnet.edu (129.71.32.152) in pub/history/military/airforce/
     wwii_chronology

AIRCRAFT MENTIONED IN THIS REPORT:
  A-20, Douglas Havoc
  A-26, Douglas Invader
  B-17, Boeing Flying Fortress
  B-24, Consolidated Liberator
  B-25, North American Mitchell
  B-29, Boeing Superfortress
  Beaufighter, Bristol
  F-5, Lockheed Lightning
  F-6, North American Mustang
  L-5, Stinson Sentinel
  P-38, Lockheed Lightning
  P-40, Curtiss
  P-47, Republic Thunderbolt
  P-51, North American Mustang

NOTE: A number in parenthesis after a target name indicates the number of
bombers attacking.

CHINA-BURMA-INDIA THEATER

  CHINA THEATER (Fourteenth Air Force): In China, 4 B-25s and 4 P-51s blast
river shipping S of Yiyang; 6 B-25s bomb the area around Kwangsi University
at Liang-feng; 2 B-24s bomb the Bakli Bay dock area on Hainan Island; 70+
P-51s and P-40s hit troops, town areas, road traffic, river shipping, and
general targets of opportunity at several locations in S and E China
including Changsha, Sinning, Sinhwa, Yiyang, Tungting Lake, Paoching,
Yungfengshih, Shanhsien, Lingling, Pingsiang, Tsinkong, and Hochih.

  INDIA-BURMA THEATER (Tenth Air Force): In Burma, 18 fighter bombers hit
troops and supplies near Mong Kung and Wan Hpun; 12 others attack vehicles
and other targets of opportunity along roads S of the bomb line; 489
transport sorties are completed to forward areas throughout the day.

EUROPEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (ETO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Eighth Air Force): 2 missions are flown.
  Mission 957: 1,054 bombers and 816 fighters are dispatched to hit rail
targets in E Germany and W Czechoslovakia; 50 Luftwaffe fighters are
encountered, mostly jets and the AAF claims a total of 300-0-119 aircraft
destroyed on the ground and in the air (including 4 jets); 8 bombers and 17
fighters are lost.
  1. 450 B-17s are dispatched to hit the rail center (152) and marshalling
yard (276) at Dresden; they claim 1-0-1 aircraft; 6 B-17s are lost, 1 damaged
beyond repair and 130 damaged; 6 airmen are WIA and 50 MIA. Escorting are 230
of 257 P-51s; they claim 2-0-3 aircraft in the air and 91-0-37 on the ground;
2 P-51s are lost (pilots MIA).
  2. 410 B-17s are sent to the Dresden area (76), rail junction and station
at Aussig (86), and oil depot and marshalling yard at Roundnice (115); 86 hit
the secondary target, the marshalling yard at Dresden; 2 B-17s are lost and
47 damaged; 1 airman is WIA and 18 MIA. 265 of 276 P-51s escort claiming
11-0-2 aircraft in the air and 142-0-47 on the ground; 14 P-51s are lost; 2
pilots are WIA and 14 MIA.
  3. 194 B-24s are sent to hit the rail center and junction at Fischern (55),
the rail junction and industry at Kladno (36), rail junction and bridge at
Falkenau (37) and railroad, rail industry and marshalling yard at Beroun
(61) without loss. The escort is 228 P-47s and P-51s; they claim 53-0-29
aircraft on the ground; 1 P-51 is lost (pilot MIA).
  4. 24 of 25 P-51s fly scouting missions.
  5. 9 P-51s escort 10 F-5s on photo reconnaissance missions over Germany.
  Mission 958: During the night of 17/18 Apr, 10 B-24s drop leaflets in
France, the Netherlands and Germany and 19 of 20 B-24s fly CARPETBAGGER
missions.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS
    First Tactical Air Force (Provisional): Unit moves in Germany: the 415th
Night Fighter Squadron, 64th Fighter Wing, from St Dizier, France to
Braunstadt with Beaufighters; the 527th Fighter Squadron, 86th Fighter Group,
from Tantonville, France to Braunschardt with P-47s.
    Ninth Air Force: In Germany, the 9th Bombardment Division attacks the
defended city of Magdeburg (including numerous gun positions in the area),
marshalling yard and ordnance depot at Aalen, marshalling yard and ordnance
depot at Tubingen, and ordnance depot at Ravensburg; fighters fly escort to
the bombers, fly patrols, area cover, and armed reconnaissance, hit airfields
at Marianske Lazne and Michalovy Hory, and support the US 3d Armored Division
mopping up S of the Elbe River and W of the Mulde River near Dessau, the 9th
Armored Division along the Mulde E of Leipzig, the VIII Corps in the Greiz-
Zwickau area, the XX Corps SW of Chemnitz, the 5th Armored Division at the
Knesebeck Forest, S of Wittingen, and the 2d Armored Division opening an
assault on Magdeburg. Unit moves in Germany: HQ 48th Fighter Group and 493d
and 494th Fighter Squadrons from Kelz to Kassel with P-47s; the 15th Tactical
Reconnaissance Squadron, 10th Tactical Reconnaissance Group, from Ober Olm to
Erfurt with F-6s; the 158th Liaison Squadron, Ninth AF (attached to Twelfth
Army Group), from Celles, Belgium to Ahrweiler with L-5s.

MEDITERRANEAN THEATER OF OPERATIONS (MTO)

  STRATEGIC OPERATIONS (Fifteenth Air Force): In Italy, 751 B-24s and B-17s,
in support of the US Fifth Army, hit troop concentrations, supply dumps, gun
positions, and HQ immediately S and SW of Bologna; 143 P-51s provide escort.
147 P-38s divebomb railroad bridges at Seefeld and Mariahof, Austria. 14
P-51s, with 10 flying top cover, strafe targets of opportunity in the Munich,
Germany, Plzen, Czechoslovakia, and Linz, Austria areas. 61 P-51s escort
MATAF supply missions to N Italy and bombing raids on bridges in W Austria.
Other P-38s and P-51s fly reconnaissance and reconnaissance escort.

  TACTICAL OPERATIONS (Twelfth Air Force): In Italy during the night of 16/17
Apr, A-20s and A-26s hit Po River crossings and several towns W and SW of
Bologna; during the day B-25s of the 57th Bombardment Wing successfully
attack 4 Reno River bridges near Bologna and close support targets on the
British Eighth Army front to the SW, and extensively damage 4 bridges in N
Italy and Austria on the Brenner rail line; XXII Tactical Air Command
fighters and fighter bombers concentrate on close support of the US Fifth
Army S and W of Bologna.

PACIFIC OCEAN AREA (POA)

  AAFPOA (VII Fighter Command): 18 P-51s flying two strikes from Iwo Jima
Island, attack vessels in Futamiko in the Bonin Islands.

  HQ AAF (Twentieth Air Force): Missions 70 to 75: 118 B-29s bomb airfields
at Tachiarai, Kokubu, Izumi, Nittagahara, and 2 at Kanoya, Japan; 5 others
attack targets of opportunity; beginning on this date and continuing through
11 May, XXI Bomber Command devotes about 75 per cent of its combat effort to
support of the Okinawa campaign; during this period the B-29s fly more than
2,100 sorties against 17 airfields on Kyushu and Shikoku Islands which are
dispatching air attacks (including Kamikaze raids) against US Navy and Marine
Corps forces.

SOUTHWEST PACIFIC AREA [SWPA, Far East Air Force (FEAF)]: On Formosa, B-24s
bomb Taichu, Shinshoshi, Toyohara, and Okayama Airfields and B-25s hit the
airfield at Taito. Numerous sweeps and sorties are flown in support of ground
forces over Luzon, Cebu, Negros, and Mindanao Islands and the Sulu
Archipelago. B-24s over Mindanao bomb Cotabato and Kabacan. The 69th and
311th Fighter Squadrons, 58th Fighter Group, move from Mangaldan to Porac,
Luzon with P-47s.

SOURCES:
AIR FORCE COMBAT UNITS OF WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force History,
  Headquarters USAF, 1961, ISBN 0-912799-02-1
COMBAT SQUADRONS OF THE AIR FORCE, WORLD WAR II, Office of Air Force
  History, Headquarters USAF 1982
THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD WAR II: COMBAT CHRONOLOGY, 1941-1945 by the
  Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF, 1973
THE MIGHTY EIGHTH WAR DIARY by Roger A. Freeman, ISBN 1-85409-071-2
WORLD WAR II IN THE NORTH PACIFIC by Kevin D. Hutchinson, 1994,
  ISBN-0-313-29130-6

Jack McKillop
USAF (Airways and Air Communications Service)
1955-59

-------------------------------------------------------------------
|  Jack McKillop         |  Those who have long enjoyed such      |
|  Bellcore              |  privileges as we enjoy forget in      |
|  Piscataway, NJ USA    |  time that men have died to win them.  |
|  [email-masked]  |                       FDR              |
-------------------------------------------------------------------

16/0050Z APR

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

Date:    Sat, 15 Apr 1995 17:24:42 -0400
From:    Daniel Mocanu <[email-masked]>
Subject: <No subject given>

                        Hi to you !
                We are two students from Romania and we are going to
        present you our situation.
                We are students at the "Politehnica" University in Bucharest
        Romania (Eastern Europe), the Computer Science Department.
                Our common hobby is the computer programming and we are
        here asking for your help.
                We work very late : the situation here for us is critical;
        the computers we work on are some IBM PS/2 (80286) that doesn't have
        any hard disk (believe it-we have to live with it!).
                To compile a C++ program we have to wait minutes ! I don't
        want to mention Windows ! There are a lot of nights we have spent
        in one of our University rooms. ( I am scared to think how many)
        and this is because we can't have a computer of our own!
                Now look why we are asking for your help:
        in your country computers like 80286 or 80386 are out of use for
        long time now , but we cannot afford such things here.
                If you have such a computer and you want to give it away
        or you know somebody who have such a computer (please contact him!)
        and want to get rid of it we are asking desperately for your help!
                The way we are communicating with you is a real miracle:
        we have here a machine with access in Internet and for a year
        we had tried to get an account.
                Please respond us (whatever your response is) to:
                        [email-masked]
                                or
                        [email-masked]
                                Yours,

Daniel Mocanu                           Lica Laurentiu
Energiei Str.,No.34,Sc.D,Ap.11          Eroilor Str.,No.32
Bacau 5500 , ROMANIA                    Curtea de Arges 0450,ROMANIA
______________________________________________________________________________

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

End of WWII-L Digest - 14 Apr 1995 to 15 Apr 1995
*************************************************