Vintage

I have mentioned a fondness for the past. I really was born in the wrong era. I love the Dark Ages, the medival period, and just about anything to do with WWII. I watch old movie (LOVE Van Johnson, and actually have his autographed picture, signed to me). I love especially the old "Keep up the morale" movies that were made during WWII. Probably my favourite is Thirty Seconds over Tokyo, which concerns the Doolittle raid. This raid was done with my favourite kind of plane (The B-25 Mitchell) and starred (in the movie) Van Johnson. Doesn't get much better than that! It is about a particular crew on the raid, the crew of the Ruptured Duck, captained by Ted Lawson (Van's character). I have read Lawson's biographical account, which was incredible, and is on my Amazon.com WishList. Not much online information is availiable about the Doolittle raid, though it was the first air raid on Japan. The Doolittle raid trained B-25 pilots to take off from a carrier, which had never been done before. They took off from the USS Hornet, and flew straight to Japan. Coincidentially, the men who spied on Japan in preparation for this attack have also been imortalised in the movie Run Silent, Run Deep (Cary Grant).

For more stuff on WWII planes, try this link:

http://www.freeweb.org/varie/ww2planes/mainpage.htm

Also, for some incredible information on the USS Indianapolis, go here (USS Indianapolis was sunk by a Japanese torpedo. She sank in 12 minutes, and of the 1196 men onboard, only 900 made it into the water. The men were stranded in the water for five days, without food or water, in the burning heat of day, and the freezing chill of night. To make this hell worse, they were slowly being picked off by sharks. (Sadly, the Navy later discovered that its "Shark repellant" was actually an attractant. Only 317 survived the five days in the water. This is an incredible online museum, with a survivors account, and even some email addys of survivors who don't mind chatting. (And I will definitely be asking questions!) http://www.ussindianapolis.org/story.htm

Another incredible story from WWII is that of the Lady Be Good, and B24 Liberator who crashed in the desert.  She was not found until the 1950s… until then, the family of the crew had no idea what had happened.  Modern survival techniques are derived from what we learned about the Lady afterwards… her men spent nine days in the desert surviving with little to no food or water. *They eventually all died, but we have learned a great deal from their efforts. This is a truly sad and heroic story, and I recommend you check it out sometime…

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