Articles from 1943
A photograph, profile and statistical information concerning the Vultee Vengeance A-31 – which was a W.W. II American dive bomber, built by Vultee Aircraft Corporation. The Vengeance was not used in combat by any US units, however it was deployed by the British and Commonwealth Air Forces in Southeast Asia as well as the Southwestern Pacific Theaters.
From the pages of a 1943 issue of America’s Alertman was this page that presented some information about the German JU 88 twin engine bomber, which was the primary offensive aircraft in the Luftwaffe’s arsenal during the Second World War. It was the successor to the Ju-87 and saw service as a night fighter and torpedo bomber in addition to serving as reconnaissance aircraft. The earliest prototype first flew in December of 1936 with a civilian registration of D-AQEN; it managed a top speed of 360 mph. Throughout the course of the war there were 15,000 JU 88’s constructed.
The attached article from 1943 goes into greater detail and can easily be printed.
This article page from a 1943 YANK MAGAZINE concerns the American A-36 fighter-bomber of World War II. The article is accompanied by photographs and testimonial accounts as to how well the fighter aircraft performed in combat over North Africa and Sicily.
Built by North American Aviation, this ship is a dive-bomber version of that company’s P-51 Mustang fighter. The A-36 can climb at the rate of nearly half a mile a minute, with a ceiling of 30,000 feet. Powered by a 12-cylinder Allison engine, it has a flying speed in excess of 400 miles an hour…
Who was it who deprived men of their suit vests and trouser cuffs? Who banned silk stockings? Who outlawed the flow in flowing skirts? Why, it was the War Production Board of course – click the title link if you want a name and a face…
We are not sure how wide-spread boxing exercises were among all the U.S. Army infantry training camps during W.W. II, but the attached photo-essay will cue you in to the fact that it was mighty important at Camp Butner in 1943.
The attached article tells the story of an organization that was formed by the German Foreign Office in order to steal the treasures of the occupied European nations. It was called the Nazi Art Corps and it was divided into four battalions of SS men; they stole manuscripts, sculpture, paintings, jewels etc, etc, etc. They answered to the Reich Minister of Foreign Affairs, Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893 – 1946).
Click here to read about the inmate rebellions that took place at Auschwitz, Sobibor and Triblinka.
Here is a 1943 article that was cabled from Stockholm, Sweden, relaying assorted eyewitness accounts of the Allied bombing campaign over the German city of Hamburg in 1943:
The people of Germany have now learned, through the terror-filled hours of sleepless nights and days, that air mastery, the annihilating blitz weapon of the Nazis in 1939 and 1940, has been taken over by by the Allies…The most terrible of these punches has been the flood of nitroglycerin and phosphorus that in five days and nights destroyed Hamburg.
Click here to read about the bombing of Japan.
It was an Englishman nick-named Bomber Harris who planned and organized the nightly raids over Nazi Germany: click here to read about him.
The British have struck heavily at the Mareth Line in what both sides call the opening blow of the long-awaited big battle of Tunisia.
(The Mareth Line was a system of bunkers built by France in southern Tunisia during the late Thirties. The line was intended to protect Tunisia against an Italian invasion from its colony in Libya.)
General Lunsford Errett Oliver (1889 – 1978) wrote this article about his experiences commanding the American Army in Tunisia. As many of you may know, the American efforts in North Africa were fraught with many difficulties, the least of them were the Germans. The biggest one referred to by the general was the total lack of air cover for his advancing army.
Click here to read about the retreat of the Africa Corps.
A Click Magazine photo-essay about the hard-charging WAACS of the Motor Transport School in glamorous Daytona Beach, Florida. Trained to operate and maintain two-ton trucks, the American women of the WAACs were mobilized to run the vast convoy system within the U.S. in order to free-up their male counterparts for more dangerous work in hostile regions.
Click here to read about the most famous woman truck driver in all of World War II…
