Yank Magazine – Page 11 – Old Magazine Articles

The GIs Hear About the Death of President Roosevelt (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Gathered from all the various battlefronts around the globe, the attached article serves as a archive of spontaneous reactions uttered by a smattering of stunned GIs when they heard that President Roosevelt had died:

Pvt. Howard McWaters of Nevada City, California, just released from the hospital and waiting to go back to the Americal Division, shook his head slowly. ‘Roosevelt made a lot of mistakes,’ he said. ‘But I think he did the best he could, and when he made mistakes he usually admitted it. Nobody could compare with him as President.’

Click here to read about President Harry Truman…

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An Interview with a Kamikaze Pilot (Yank Magazine, 1945)

With the fall of imperial Japan, YANK correspondent Robert MacMillan was
one of the very first journalists to interview the Japanese Kamikaze pilot Norio Okamoto, which allowed his readers to gain some understanding as
to how the Kamikaze Corps operated:

Okomoto’s story took all the wind -the Divine Wind – out of the Kamikaze sails. Even the interpreter, a Japanese civilian, was surprised. He had worked for radio Tokyo and while he knew a lot of the propaganda stories were ridiculous, he had believed the Kamikaze legend.

Click here to read articles about post-war Japan.

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The VT Radio Fuse (Yank Magazine, 1945)

Its been said that World War Two was the first high-tech war, and a passing look at many of the military tools used between 1939 and 1945 will bare that out to be true. It was not only th the first war in which jet engines and atomic bombs were used, but also the first war to deploy walkie-talkie radios, rockets, and radar. This article concerns what the U.S. Department of War classified as a weapons system just as revolutionary as the atomic bomb: the VT fuse artillery shell (a.k.a. the time proximity fuse). It was used with great success in various theaters: anti-Kamikaze in the Pacific, anti-personnel in the Ardennes and anti V-1 in defense of Britain.

This is a short article that goes into greater detail outlining the successes listed above and explains how the system worked; it also is accompanied by a diagram of the shell.

Click here to learn about the timing fuses designed for W.W. I shrapnel shells.

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The American 4.5 Multiple Rocket Launcher (Yank Magazine, 1945)

To the American G.I.s serving along the Italian Front, the presence of rockets was like a page out of a Buck Rogers comic book. They had grown accustomed to seeing them mounted on the wings of quickly speeding American fighter aircraft, but to see and hear them up close and personal when fixed to the turret of a Sherman tank (pictured) seemed altogether too bizarre. This article, Rockets in Italy, will allow you to learn about the use and deployment of the U.S. Army’s ground rocket-gun and how it amazed all the men who ever came near enough to see one.

Click here to read about one of the greatest innovations by 20th Century chemists: plastic.

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With the Brazilians in Italy (Newsweek & Yank Magazines, 1944)

The attached YANK MAGAZINE article was written from the perspective of the American G.I.; it lays out a few peculiar facts about life in the World War Two Brazilian Army: