Battle of Britain ace Wallace Cunningham passes away at 94
Wallace Cunningham was among Churchill's famous "few" who took part in the Battle of Britain. During the summer of 1940 he shot down five Luftwaffe aircraft and was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross. In 1941 his Spitfire was shot down and he crash landed on Rotterdam beach in the Netherlands, spending three and a half years as a POW.
(bbc.co.uk)
Surviving Hitler's War: Family Life in Germany, 1939-48 by Hester Vaizey
18 million German men left their families from 1939 to serve in the armed forces. 5 million never came back and 11 million were held in POW camps after 1945. Forced to be self-reliant, did German wives enjoy opportunity to claim, then build on, a new sense of empowerment? Hester Vaizey will have none of it. She argues that because conditions were so extremely burdensome for the wives, one way of keeping their strength up was to dream of one day giving up every one of the new responsibilities they had been forced to take on.
(independent.co.uk)
Bill Moule recalls how his entire family ended up - and survived - in WWII Japanese concentration camp
Bill Moule's father replanted his family from Grass Valley to a mining operation in the Philippines in 1940, just as war clouds were building in Asia. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines on Dec. 8, 1941, the family would start an 18-month cat-and-mouse game with the Japanese Imperial Army in the mountains. It lasted until malaria took its toll on their health and they were captured. The family spent the next 18 months under Japanese guard – either behind barbed wire at a compound near the mountain city of Baguio or, later, in a converted Manila prison.
(auburnjournal.com)
Restoration starts on rusting WW2 submarine HMS Alliance in Gosport, UK (video)
The £6.5 million overhaul of HMS Alliance, the only World War II submarine open to the public in Britain, has been launched at the Royal Navy Submarine Museum in Gosport. The rusting icon, which was built in 1945, was given a £3.4 million Heritage Lottery Fund boost amid fears its corroded outer structure might fall into the sea.
(bbc.co.uk)
Military orders survey for explosives at World War II wrecks off Newfoundland, Canada
The military has ordered a detailed survey of two WWII shipwrecks off Newfoundland for fear divers might trigger leftover explosives. The two wrecks are among four sunk by torpedoes fired from Nazi U-boats prowling the waters off Bell Island, N.L., in 1942. The iron-ore transports SS Saganaga and P.L.M. 27 each carried arms to counter such attacks as they travelled to and from the steel mills in Cape Breton. Since the sinkings 69 years ago, divers have flocked to the two well-preserved wreck sites, located in relatively shallow waters. A previous survey in 2005 suggested the ships may still have live ammunition scattered on the decks.
(winnipegfreepress.com)
Sanford H. Winston, wounded in the hand and both knees, grasped an automatic rifle and charged the enemy
Sanford H. "Sandy" Winston, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who was a highly decorated WWII hero and later served as a spokesman for the old Department of Health, Education and Welfare, has passed away at 90. On May 12, 1945, Col. Winston - then 1st Lt. Sanford Weinstein - was ordered to lead two rifle platoons in a frontal assault on a fortified hill on a formation known as Skyline Ridge. Japanese forces opened fire at close range with mortars, rifles and machine guns. Despite being wounded in the hand and both knees, Winston threw aside his carbine and "grasped an automatic rifle from one of the dead and dashed forward through intense hostile fire to close with the enemy. Firing from the hip as he ran, he reached a point 25 yards from the attackers and, standing upright despite the withering enemy fire which tore his helmet from his head and cut his canteen from his belt, killed at least ten of the enemy including the crew of a machine gun which he destroyed with a grenade."
(washingtonpost.com)
