In 1943, several U.S. airmen went on a suicide mission. Two men on the mission were awarded a Medal of Honor - the only time in WWII that two men received the same award for the same engagement. Interestingly, their careers didn't start out well.
Jay Zeamer, Jr. got his wings in 1941 at Langley Field. All his classmates became pilots and got their own planes and crews, but not Zeamer. Although he could fly and had a passion for it, he just didn't have what it took to be a pilot.
Still, he could fly, so when America entered the war, they made him a co-pilot. In March 1942, they sent him to Australia where he again tried to become a pilot but again failed. They sent him to the Solomon Islands - the same thing. Zeamer was to spend WWII as a co-pilot, navigator, gunner, and anything else; just not a pilot.
Joseph Raymond Sarnoski met Zeamer at Langley. Sarnoski got his wings, but they made him a bombing instructor, something he wasn't happy about. In 1942, they sent him to Australia where he became a Technical Sergeant, but he wasn't happy about that, either.
He wanted to see combat, so they let him fly a few missions, promoted him to Master Sergeant then sent him to the Solomon Islands to train others. Despondent, he turned to the one person who couldn't fly a plane.
As to what happened next, you must understand what was happening on the islands.
After bombing Pearl Harbor, Japan occupied territories in the South Pacific, including the Philippines which had been American property. The island of Rabaul was, therefore, Japan's key to the region.
America's priority, however, was on Europe. Since it couldn't ignore Japan, the original plan was to contain them until Hitler and Mussolini were out of the way.
General Douglas MacArthur fired the air chief in early 1942 and replaced him with General George Kenney's Fifth Air Force.
The Fifth began calling themselves "Ken's Men" and began receiving awards, including several Medal of Honors. Even Sarnoski earned a Silver Star for earlier engagements. And Zeamer? The Intelligence Section in Port Moresby.
The Japanese at Rabaul were stepping up their activities to retake the rest of the Solomons and Papua New Guinea, but US reconnaissance flights were impossible because the island's volcano kept spewing smoke. Zeamer volunteered for the job, flew below the smoke, and got his photos while the crew fought off the enemy.
He still wasn't an official pilot, but he had flown so well they stopped caring. On January 16, 1943, he sank an 8000-ton ship and was awarded a Silver Star. That should have earned him a plane and crew, but they had none to give him.
Their eye fell on old 666 a B-17E 41-2666 which was assigned to the United States' 43rd Bomb Group. By 1943, Old 666, tail number 41-2666, had suffered heavy battle damage and had gained a reputation as a cursed bomber, often coming back from missions with heavy damage.
Grounded at Port Moresby Airport, it was parked at the end of the runway where other aircrews could cannibalize it for needed parts. A military photographer told Zeamer, "I know where there's a bomber, but no one will fly it anymore because every time it goes out it gets shot to hell!"
Still, it flew and was more heavily armed than other Flying Fortresses because they'd rebuilt it almost from scratch. They increased the number of machine guns from 13 to 19, replaced the waist gunners' standard single guns with twin guns, replaced all .30 cal machine guns with the larger and more powerful .50 cal, and added a fixed-position gun that could be fired from the pilot's station. Zeamer's crew put guns where they did not even need them and left spare machine guns on the aircraft's catwalk; if a gun jammed at a critical moment, they could dump it and quickly replace it. They also mounted a gun behind the ball turret near the waist.
The group volunteered for missions no one wanted and were called the Eager Beaver - always taking the most dangerous jobs but always making it back alive. All received Silver Stars while Sarnoski got an Air Medal and became a Second Lieutenant.
By March, skirmishes against the Japanese were increasing, culminating in the Battle of the Bismarck Sea. The Japanese defeat gave MacArthur the plan to take the Philippines back. Called Operation Cartwheel, it meant attacking their bases at Bougainville, Buka, and Rabaul. If those fell, the Americans could take the other islands until they reached the Philippines.
But a raid against such heavily defended positions would be suicide unless they knew what they were up against. No one volunteered, so MacArthur settled on a reconnaissance flight over Bougainville. The Eager Beavers stepped forward. Two caught malaria and Sarnoski was ordered back to the US to teach, but he couldn't let the rest go without him.
Just before their 4 am takeoff on June 15th, however, Zeamer was ordered to make an additional reconnaissance flight over Buka. He was determined to ignore it. Bougainville was dangerous enough, and he wanted all the Eager Beavers back alive.
They reached Bougainville too early, however, still too dark for picture-taking, so Zeamer flew to Buka. It was worse than they thought. There were 400 new enemy fighters, and 17 were revving up to meet them. The Old 666 zoomed to 25,000 feet and flew toward Bougainville.
Japanese Chief Flight Petty Officer Yoshio Uki of the 241st Kokutai was among the recent arrivals, so he couldn't wait to take out the Americans with his A6M Zero. As they took to the skies, however, the Fortress took neither evasive maneuvers nor sped up. It was as if the Americans didn't see them.
They did, but to get proper pictures, they had to fly steadily for 20 minutes. To buy time, Sergeant "Pudgy" Pugh shot at the Japanese from the tail, while Technical Sergeant Forrest Dillman shot from the waist.
Sarnoski manned the guns at the nose, waiting for them to attack from the front. He didn't have to wait long. Uki and five others had flown ahead and were turning back to hit the Fortress from its most vulnerable point - the front.
It took them over 15 minutes to complete their maneuver. By 8 am, the two sides were on a collision course at over 500 mph over Empress Augusta Bay. Zeamer needed only one more minute before he could break off, but it was too late.
The Japanese opened fire with 20mm cannons and 7.7 machine guns. Zeamer fired back from his nose gun, hitting Uki's wings, but not before Uki's 20mm cannon smashed the Plexiglas, hit Sarnoski, cut open his side, sent him flying back into the catwalk beneath, and shredding Zeamer's legs and feet with shrapnel.
Second Lt. Ruby Johnston, the navigator, ran to help Sarnoski, but the latter waved him off and dragged himself back to his guns. He took out a Dinah and a Zero, but not before the Zero's cannon hit the cockpit, taking out their instruments and oxygen supply. More bullets found Zeamer's arms and feet, but he managed to dive down to 2,000 feet so they could breathe. Then they crashed into the sea.
Or so the Japanese official report claimed. Despite blacking out several times, Zeamer got them back to base, but Sarnoski never got up from his machine gun. He had died firing his machine gun, the only men Zeamer failed to return.
Upon landing, the co-pilot told the ground crews to get Zeamer first, but the ground crew said, "He's gone!" Zeamer, however, was not dead,
Thanks to their mission, however, the Allies knew exactly how to avenge Sarnoski at Buka and Bougainville. For completing a vitally important mission, both Sarnoski and Zeamer each were awarded the Medal of Honor, every other member of the crew was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross.
Jay Zeamer died on March 22, 2007, at St. Andrews Village in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. He was 88.
Old 666 was returned to the United States in February 1944 and was salvaged at Albuquerque in August 1945.
To view an 8-minute video on the Old 666, go to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niqS1OgWmco
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The Battle of Kunduz took place from April to October 2015 for control of the city of Kunduz, located in northern Afghanistan, with Taliban fighters attempting to displace Afghan security forces. On September 28, 2015, the Taliban forces suddenly overran the city, with government forces retreating outside the city. The capture marked the first time since 2001 that the Taliban had taken control of a major city in Afghanistan. The Afghan government claimed to have largely recaptured Kunduz by October 1, 2015, in a counterattack, although local sources in the city disputed the claim made by government officials.
Twelve hospital staff of Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) and ten patients, including three children, were killed on October 3rd by a prolonged series of U.S. airstrikes on Kunduz Trauma Centre, an emergency trauma hospital run by the agency. Thirty-seven people were injured including nineteen staff members
Initial Attack
The Taliban launched its attacks on Kunduz on April 24th, targeting four outlying districts around the city. Four days later, they largely controlled the suburb of Gortepa, while in the Imam Sahib District Taliban fighters surrounded an Afghan National Army base and Afghan Local Police forces in the area were forced to retreat on several fronts. In response to the attacks, the Afghan government dispatched several thousand army troops to the region, and President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani convened an emergency meeting with military officials. U.S. fighter jets were deployed under the authority of the Resolute Support Mission, although they did not fire on the Taliban.
Sustained Fighting
After a week-long standoff following the initial assault, government troops began an offensive on May 7th against Taliban fighters, which had largely grouped to the south of Kunduz in the Gul Tepa district. By late May, about 3,000 Afghan troops had arrived in the area, with Taliban strength estimated at 2,000 fighters, including militants from the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan. The surge of government troops forced the Taliban fighters to about 15 kilometers (9.3 mi) from Kunduz, back from their closest approach about 2 kilometers (1.2 mi) from the city earlier in the offensive.
A Taliban counteroffensive in June brought insurgent fighters into the Char Dara District, several miles from Kunduz. On June 21st, a Taliban spokesman said that it had taken complete control of the district and had captured local police officers. A spokesman for the Kunduz District police force disputed the claim, saying that while there had indeed been fighting in the district, the Taliban only controlled about half of it and had not captured any police.
Throughout July, the Taliban continued to make gains, capturing towns outside Kunduz and in the Khan Abad District to the southeast. According to the commander of a local militia allied with the government, about 2,000 local militia members and government troops had been forced to retreat, as the Afghan government had failed to dispatch reinforcements and supplies.
Capture
On the morning of September 28th, a rapid advance by the Taliban forces from three directions displaced the government troops in Kunduz city, who after several hours retreated to the outlying airport, leaving the Taliban in complete control of the city. According to a government security official, the Taliban had been vastly outnumbered, with only an estimated 500 fighters remaining against about 7,000 government troops and allied militia members. However, local politicians from Kunduz said that the government had failed to provide leadership and support to its fighters in the area.
On September 29th, Afghan forces began a counterattack from the airport towards the city, supported by American airstrikes throughout the day in the area and U.S. Army Special Forces personnel, many of whom had been deployed that morning. However, by the end of the day government forces had failed to make headway, as the Taliban forced them back to and surrounded the airport. The government also dispatched additional troops by both air and land, though reinforcements traveling via road were delayed by Taliban ambushes.
By September 30th it was being claimed that anti-Taliban militias led by warlords were also joining the battle.
Government Counter-Offensive
Afghan and American ground forces began a ground offensive from the airport to Kunduz late on September 30th, and by daybreak on October 1 had captured several police facilities and the city prison from the Taliban. Late in the day, Afghan reinforcements arrived in the city, but American troops remained, as the Afghan forces planned to abandon their positions if the U.S. soldiers retreated as they had intended. Afghan forces also claimed to have taken back Imam Sahib, although the wider Imam Sahib District remained under Taliban control. According to the Afghan defense ministry, about 150 Taliban fighters were killed in the day's offensive.
On October 4th, Taliban fighters claimed to have recaptured the majority of Kunduz. The following day, Afghan troops mounted a counter-offensive that pushed the Taliban back out of much of the city, with the national flag raised over the governor's residence for the first time since the beginning of the battle. According to a police spokesperson, while the Taliban still threatened, their primary battle line had been broken.
On October 6th, the Taliban renewed their attacks, apparently recapturing substantial portions of Kunduz, including the central Chowk Square and the northern part of the city.
On October 13th, Taliban fighters withdrew from Kunduz after several days of heavy fighting with Afghan troops, who were supported by United States special forces and airstrikes. According to a statement published on a Taliban-associated website, the retreat was due to the prospect of additional casualties and ammunition expenditure in continued fighting.
MSF Hospital Airstrike
A U.S. AC-130 airstrike hit a hospital run by Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF -Doctors Without Borders), killing at least 42 people, in a series of bombing raids that lasted from 2:08 am local time until 3:15 am on October 3rd, MSF said that the trauma center "was hit several times during sustained bombing and was very badly damaged," while there were 105 patients and 80 medical staff inside. The aid group said that it had warned U.S. and Afghan authorities of the hospital's location ahead of time, but bombing continued for more than 30 minutes after it notified military officials it was under attack.
Effects
Within the first weeks of fighting, some estimated tens of thousands of people had been displaced. In response, the World Food Program sent aid packages for about 500 families in early May. By late May, some 100,000 people had been displaced, though some began returning as the Taliban were pushed back from the city proper.
By September 30th, several Afghan parliamentarians began calling for the resignation of President Ashraf Ghani and CEO Abdullah Abdullah. In response, Ghani's office replied that he had ordered an investigation into how Kunduz City fell so quickly.
Casualties
At least 30 people, mostly civilians, had been killed in the fighting by Wednesday, September 30, 2015, according to a health ministry spokesman. He also said hospitals in Kunduz had treated about 340 wounded. By October 5th, the government's casualty estimates were of 55 dead and 600 injured. According to a U.N. report, at least 848 civilians were killed or wounded following the Taliban attack.
Sniper Charles "Chuck" Mawhinney, may not have the name recognition of Marine sniper Sgt. Carlos Hathcock, but military records show Mawhinney has 103 confirmed kills - 10 more than Hathcock - and 216 probable kills during the Vietnam War; making him the deadliest sniper in Marine Corps history.
To him, his job wasn't all about taking lives, it was about saving them. Every person he killed was not only one less person to kill a fellow Marine, but he was also sapping the enemies will to fight. Always at the forefront of his mind was to keep his fellow Marines safe - even when he was becoming disillusioned with America's presence in Vietnam, he extended his tour twice to keep his Marines safe.
One of Mawhinney greatest engagements came when a large North Vietnamese Army force was spotted moving its way south on Valentine's Day to attack an American base near Da Nang. But a monsoon shut down air support. So Mawhinney volunteered to cover a river crossing where the force was expected to march.
Mawhinney left his sniper rifle at the base and moved forward with an M14 semiautomatic rifle and a Starlight scope, an early night vision device.
The sniper and his spotter positioned themselves overlooking the shallowest river crossing. A few hours later, a single scout approached the river first, but Mawhinney waited. When the rest of the NVA began to cross the river, Mawhinney kept waiting. It wasn't until the men were deep into the river that Mawhinney began firing, nailing one man after the other through the head. As he describes it, in 30 seconds "I shot dropped 16 NVA soldiers with 16 headshots."
He engaged the enemy at ranges from 25 to 75 meters, nailing one man after the other through the head. As he describes it, in 30 seconds "I shot dropped 16 NVA soldiers with 16 headshots."
The two Marines then hastily fell back as the NVA tried to hit them with small arms and machine gun fire.
"I just did what I was trained to do," he says in a tone that is neither defensive nor boastful. "I was in-country a long time in a very hot area. I didn't do anything special."
The numbers suggest otherwise.
By all accounts other than his own, Mawhinney is a master of one of the most dangerous, deadly and misunderstood roles in the military. Yet for more than two decades after he left the Marine Corps in 1970, nobody except for a few fellow Marines knew of his assignment.
Other snipers have written books or had books written about them. Mawhinney always figured war stories were for wannabes and bores. At home in Oregon, he never told even his closest friends about what he did in Vietnam.
But a tell-all paperback by Joseph War, a friend, and fellow Marine sniper, finally flushed him out. The book was �??Dear Mom: A Sniper's Vietnam.'
At first, embarrassed and annoyed at losing his privacy, Mawhinney reluctantly decided to tell a cold tale of killing in service to country and is now in heavy demand within military circles to describe his techniques, his emotions, his assessment of what he accomplished from ambush.
So, what changed his mind about never rehashing Vietnam?
First, because anonymity was no longer an option, he decided he could help change the public image of snipers as bloodthirsty assassins. A good sniper, Mawhinney said, saves more lives than he takes because he undercuts the enemy's will or ability to fight.
Second, going public offered a chance to say something that might help some other scared servicemen stay alive someday.
"Once I had a Charlie in my scope, it was my job to kill him before he killed me," said Mawhinney, now 69 and retired from a desk job with the U.S. Forest Service.
Even in an age of million-dollar, computer-driven missiles, the ability of one man to kill another with a 20-cent bullet is a much-prized skill among military forces. In the ugliness of war-making, the sniper is assigned to harass, intimidate and demoralize the enemy, make him afraid to venture into the open and deny him the chance to rest and regroup.
"It was the ultimate hunting trip: a man hunting another man who was hunting me," he said. "Don't talk to me about hunting lions or elephants; they don't fight back with rifles and scopes. I just loved it."
One memory that sticks with Mawhinney the most is the "one that got away." Having just returned to Vietnam from leave, Mawhinney was getting his rifle back from the armorer, who assured him they didn't make any changes to his rifle. Trusting the armorer, Mawhinney went out with his sniper team to support an infantry squad that was in the field.
From a concealed location hundreds of yards away from where the engagement was expected to occur, his team was charged with picking off any stragglers or North Vietnamese Army or Viet Cong reinforcements attempting the join the fight or thinking the area was safe from the fight.
From about 300 yards away Mawhinney spotted an armed enemy combatant in a rice paddy dike. He took the shot and missed. As a routinely deadly shot at that range, Mawhinney knew someone at the armory had done something to his scope. He took several more shots while trying to compensate for his altered scope, but couldn't hit the target, and the enemy got away.
It's one of the few things that still bother him about Vietnam. Mawhinney wonders how many people that man could have killed, how many of his friends, of his fellow Marines. He will never truly know, but it haunts him to this day.
He was invited to talk to snipers in training at the Marines' Camp Pendleton and the Army's Ft. Carson in Colorado.
"I give them Chuck Mawhinney's three rules of becoming a good sniper: Practice, practice and more practice," he said.
On the wall of the Marine sniper school at Camp Pendleton is a Chinese proverb: Kill one man, terrorize a thousand.
On another wall is a framed picture of Mawhinney as a teenage sniper in Vietnam, stripped to the waist in a mock-macho pose with the government-issued Remington M700 bolt-action rifle that he considered "my baby."
"It's good for the young Marines to see someone like Chuck who had the intangibles that you need to be a good sniper: heart, backbone, desire, and discipline," said Gunnery Sgt. William Skiles, who runs the 30-student sniper school.
When training rookie snipers, he would make sure they understood that. Their job was to kill the enemy and missing a shot or having second thoughts on taking the shot could get them or a fellow Marine killed.
Mawhinney has been a guest of honor at various marksmanship competitions around the country attended by military personnel and police SWAT snipers. He is also the spokesman for Strider Knives, which produces a knife with his signature on the blade. One of these knives is presented to the top graduate of each USMC Scout Sniper School in Camp Pendleton, California.
Other Vietnam snipers with high killing rate records include Carlos Hathcock, Eric R. England, and Adelbert F. Waldron. Their impressive records - including Mawhinney's - stood for many years until Navy SEAL Christopher Scott Kyle was officially confirmed more than 160 kills during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
Florence Finch was an atypical hometown hero. For nearly 50 years after World War II, virtually no one outside of her family knew that she was a highly decorated Coast Guard veteran and a former prisoner of war whose exploits had been buried in time.
"Women don't tell war stories like men do," her daughter, Betty Murphy, of Ithaca, N.Y., said.
And even on those rare occasions when she recalled her heroics in the Philippines- supplying fuel to the Filipino underground, sabotaging supplies destined for the Japanese occupiers, smuggling food to starving American prisoners and surviving torture after she was captured-Florence Finch did so with the utmost modesty.
"I feel very humble," she said, "because my activities in the war effort were trivial compared with those of the people who gave their lives for their country."
It was perhaps reflective of that modesty that when she died on Dec. 8, 2016, at the age of 101 in an Ithaca nursing home, the news did not travel widely. Newspapers in central New York carried a brief obituary, but her death went unreported virtually everywhere else.
It was only after the announcement by the Coast Guard that she would be buried with full military honors on Apr. 29, 2017, at Pleasant Grove Cemetery in Cayuga Heights, N.Y., that word of her death spread nationwide.
Indeed, the almost five-month delay in her memorial owed something to her solicitous nature. Near death, she had made it clear that she did not want her funeral to disrupt her relatives' Christmas holidays or to make mourners travel during a dark and icy Southern Tier winter-besides, she relished the annual resurgence wrought by spring. So, the funeral was put off.
The funeral was held in Ithaca, with the military honors coming afterward, a ceremony befitting this Philippine-born daughter of an American father and Filipino mother-one who, in 1947, received the Medal of Freedom-the forerunner of today's Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest award to a civilian.
When the Japanese occupied the Philippines from 1942 to 1945, Florence Finch posed as a Filipino, but she became a United States citizen after the war. "Because she was over 18, she could have chosen to be American or Filipino," her daughter Ms. Murphy said. "When the Japanese landed, she chose to be mum, but in her heart, she had chosen to be an American."
Florence was born Loring May Ebersole on Oct. 11, 1915, in Santiago, on Luzon Island in the northern Philippines. Her father, Charles, had fought in the Philippines for the Army during the Spanish-American War and remained there after it was over. Her mother was the former Maria Hermosa.
Betty, as she was known all her life, graduated from high school and was hired as a stenographer at Army Intelligence headquarters in Manila under Maj. E. C. Engelhart. While working there, she met Charles E. Smith, a Navy chief electrician's mate. They married in August 1941, a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, on Dec. 7th.
When the war did begin, Charles Smith reported to his PT boat. He died on Feb. 8, 1942, trying to resupply American and Filipino troops trapped on Corregidor Island and the Bataan Peninsula.
Five weeks earlier, Manila had fallen to the Japanese.
Florence (then Mrs. Smith) convinced the occupying forces that she was Filipino and, armed with superior penmanship, wangled a job writing gas rationing vouchers for the now Japanese-run Philippine Liquid Fuel Distributing Union.
Unbeknown to her employer, however, she was collaborating with the Philippine resistance movement. Her job enabled her to divert precious fuel supplies to the underground and help sabotage shipments to the Japanese. After she learned of her husband's death, her efforts became even more vigorous.
Meanwhile, Maj. E.C. Englehart managed to get word to her that he had been captured and that he and fellow war prisoners were being maltreated. She helped smuggle food, medicine, soap, and clothing to them in a prison until she was caught.
Confined to a two-by-four-foot cell, she was interrogated and then tortured, enduring repeated shocks from electrical clamps on her fingers. She never talked. She was tried and sentenced to three years' hard labor at the Women's Correctional Institution in Mandaluyong, just outside Manila.
When she was finally freed by American troops on Feb. 10, 1945, she weighed 80 pounds.
Rather than remain in her native country, she moved to Buffalo, New York, where her father's sister lived. She joined the Coast Guard Women's Reserve, or the SPARs (a contraction of the Coast Guard motto "Semper Paratus" - Always Ready). She enlisted, she said, to avenge her husband.
When her superiors learned of her wartime exploits, she was awarded the Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Ribbon; the Coast Guard described her as the first woman to receive the decoration. The Medal of Freedom was bestowed for meritorious service.
After the war ended, she was discharged as a seaman second class in 1946 and enrolled in secretarial school in New York City, where she met and married an Army veteran, Robert Finch. A chemist, he was hired by Agway, the supplier of the agricultural products, and moved the family to Ithaca. Robert died in 1968, leaving behind his wife Florence and daughter Betty and son Bob.
As she was rearing her children and working as a secretary at Cornell University, her neighbors never suspected that they were in the presence of a war hero.
In the early 1990s, though, she was rediscovered by the military after she completed a government questionnaire that she had received in conjunction with plans to erect the Women in Military Service for America Memorial in Washington. The Coast Guard named a building on Sand Island in Hawaii in her honor in 1995.
Betty decided to alert the news media about the building dedication, noting that her mother would be in attendance.
"It was the first anyone knew," Betty said. "I figured it was time. And when she came home, and people met her at the bus station, she was flabbergasted."
Florence Finch is survived by her daughter Betty and son Bob; a sister Olive Keats; six grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
It's fascinating to look at how history can be changed from a single incident, or in this case, accident. That is what happened during the Battle of Britain that impacted the outcome of not only the battle but the war itself.
In the summer of 1940, the United Kingdom stood almost alone again the might of Nazi Germany. German armies had rolled through Western Europe. Britain's closest ally, France, had been knocked out of the war by the German blitzkrieg in a matter of weeks. British troops stationed in France had managed to barely escape capture or death by evacuations at Dunkirk.
Now the British waited for an invasion. The assault began in August with German Luftwaffe attacks on British airfields, bases, and industrial production facilities. Despite being outnumbered, the Royal Air Force resisted.
In command of the German air force was Hermann Goering, a Nazi and loyal to Adolf Hitler. Goering's plan was simple, destroy the RAF and leave the island open for invasion. The British fought hard but Goering intensified attacks.
The British air command was wearing down. German attacks were continuous and heavy, leaving little time to repair damaged airfields, factories, and planes. The British were running dangerously low on airplanes and pilots.
Hitler reportedly still held out hope that Britain would ask for a peace agreement with Germany, effectively ending the war in Western Europe. To encourage this, he instructed that British targets for bombing remain military only.
Then the incident happened. By most accounts, the bombing on August 24 was an accident. German bombers, that were supposed to hit military targets outside of London, flew past and struck part of the capital itself, causing some damage and civilian deaths.
After London was attacked, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill ordered a revenge attack on Berlin. It was the first bombing raid on the German capital in the war. The raid on August 25th was small and mostly symbolic. It caused little damage to the city itself. No one was killed, but it outraged Hitler and Goering. In fact, months earlier, Goring had promised that Allied bombers would never penetrate that far into German territory.
Furious over the aggressive British action, Hitler and Goering decided on a new tactic. Using the might of their Air Force, they would concentrate on the heavy bombing of London in retaliation for the attack on Berlin.
On September 7th, in what became known as the Blitz, it began. For 57 consecutive nights, London was bombed mercilessly. Every night, air raid sirens went off, sending residents into subway stations and other underground shelters. In return, Britain managed to send more bombing raids on to Berlin and other German cities.
To increase the pressure on the population, Hitler expanded the bombing raids to other British cities such as Birmingham, Coventry, and Liverpool. Damage on the ground was severe. Toward the end of 1940, over 15,000 civilians had been killed. The plan was to terrorize the British people into submission.
Yet there was one positive result for the British as their cities were being attacked. While civilians took the brunt of the assault, military bases and factories were being left alone. Airfields were repaired. Planes were rebuilt, and new fighter pilots had time to train.
In vicious aerial battles, the RAF was also able to inflict increasing casualties on German bombers and fighters. 
The previous Luftwaffe air superiority balanced out and became a war of attrition, with both sides taking heavy losses.
With the air war turning against him, Hitler had to postpone the invasion of Britain. Instead, he turned his attention east toward Russia, which he would invade in the summer of 1941. Britain was saved, and Germany was once again fighting a war on two fronts, from which they would never recover.
No one knows what the outcome would have been had the Luftwaffe continued attacks on British military targets instead of civilians. But one accidental bombing of London helped turned the tide of the battle of Britain and of World War Two.
Brutal Battles of Vietnam 1965-1972 is VFW's contribution to the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War. This 480-page book covering some 100 military actions is an outgrowth of VFW's award-winning magazine series called Vietnam's Deadliest Battles. Running over seven years, its excellence was organized with 13 national magazine awards.
It provides the most comprehensive battle history of the war yet published in a single volume. Brimming with compelling stories, the book focuses exclusively on the perspective of the fighting man. 
The high drama of the battlefield is felt through words and 700 pictures, many rarely seen before.
Stirring first-person accounts reveal the raw emotions of the men at the tip of the spear. Actual participants tell what it was like to be in life-and-death situations. Readers will learn about both elite and regular units far too often forgotten. Famous battles such as Khe Sanh and Hue and other numerous firefights that are long overdue recognition.
Unlike many histories that treat the war, Brutal Battles present a complete picture of the fighting to the bitter end. Special features, fascinating sidebars, helpful maps, numerous charts, a listing of the war's most highly decorated veterans, splendid illustrations and the most in-depth combat chronology ever compliment the riveting chapters.
In all, this book contains a treasure trove of information backed by extensive research, making it a collector's reference for every home library.
Editorial Review
The narratives do not get into the politics of the war nor do they spend time describing the events on the home front. The stories are down in the dirt, sweaty, smelly, and sometimes terrifying accounts of the conduct of the war on the major battlefields of Vietnam.
This work is about the "trigger pullers" who faced the enemy in deadly contests day in and day out from the Mekong Delta to the Demilitarized Zone. First-person accounts describe the life-and-death struggles faced on a daily basis - the heroism of many, the hardships of duty in the field and the determination shown in hard-fought battles.
Make no mistake about it. This book is not a puff piece attempting to give equal credit to all. It recognizes those few of the many who know battle and faced the most trying days of their lives. It gives much-deserved full credit to the fighting soldier. It is a valuable resource not only to veterans but also to their families. It is filled with facts that will help tell the true history of the Vietnam War for generations to come.
Editor
Richard K. Kolb: Publisher and editor-in-chief of VFW magazine for 27 years (1989-2016), Kolb worked on this project over 10 years with input from hundreds of veterans. He partially authored and edited Faces of Victory (a two-volume history of WWII), Battles of the Korean War: Americans Engage in Deadly Combat, 1950-1953, Cold War Clashes: Confronting Communism, 1945-1991, and Combat Action: Cambodia to the Balkans, 1975-1991. Kolb served in Vietnam with the 4th Infantry and 101st Airborne divisions during 1970-71 in the Central Highlands and I Corps as a radio operator attached to the artillery.
The book is available for $29.95 on Amazon.com and the VFW Store.