Today marks the 70th anniversary of Operation Tidal Wave. The 1 August 1943 bombing raid on the oil fields at Ploesti, Romania was one of the costliest air missions in the European Theater. On what would become known as “Black Sunday,” 660 airmen lost their lives. Five Medals of Honor were awarded as a result of actions that day.
One participant in the raid was Thomas Laskowski. He was the radio operator on the B-24 Flak Alley. Read more on Flak Alley from the 44th Bomb Group Veterans Association.
Just a year prior, Laskowski’s previous crew on the B-17 “My Gal Sal” survived an emergency landing on an icecap in Greenland. By sawing off propellor tips which had been stuck in the ice, the crew managed to restart My Gal Sal’s engines and radio. Laskowski transmitted an SOS, which led to their rescue after 10 days. The plane remained on the ice for more than fifty years before being recovered and restored. My Gal Sal hangs here at the Museum in the US Freedom Pavilion: Boeing Center.
Post by Curators Kimberly Guise and Larry Decuers.
The first flight into the eye of a hurricane was made 70 years ago today, on 27 June 1943, by flight instructor Joe Duckworth from Bryan Air Field in south central Texas (near the current site of Texas A & M) . Colonel Duckworth was in the process of helping to standardize the instruction of instument flying in the Air Corps. Egged on by British pilots training at Bryan Field, Duckworth flew a single-engine AT-6 trainer into the small hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston, Texas.
Without weather radar or satellites to rely on, the hurricane was first detected only a day prior to Duckworth’s flight. Ship and weather reports were subject to censorship, delaying crucial public warnings. The storm, dubbed the 1943 Surprise Hurricane, was responsible for nineteen deaths. It also destroyed two important oil refineries in Texas.
Weather prediction, charts and climate studies are critical intelligence components when planning strategic military movements. Duckworth’s flight in 1943 showed that hurricane reconnaisance flights were feasible. In 1944, the 3rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron was activated, tracking weather in the North Atlantic between North America and Europe. The squadron was redesignated the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron in 1945, and the term “Hurricane Hunters” first used in 1946. The 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron is still active; based at Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, they train and organize aerial weather reconnaissance activities and according to the Hurricane Hunters Association, they are “the only Department of Defense organization still flying into tropical storms and hurricanes.”
The Museum’s collection includes papers of legendary New Orleans meteorolgist Nash Roberts, Jr., who served in 1945 as navigator and meteorologist aboard Admiral Chester Nimitz’s aircraft carrier, from which he would become the first meteorologist to fly into the eye of a typhoon and chart its course.
Photograph. “6 Oct 44. Austin (photographer). Bette Davis and group watching village fighting demonstration at Fort Benning, Georgia. 168-L-44-16376.” Army Signal Corps photograph. Photographer: Austin. 6 October 1944.”
Major Newton Cole was captured on 19 June 1944, D+13 near St. Lô. On 4 July 1944, he wrote his wife, Marion, back in Medford, Massachusetts, telling of his capture.
Gift of The Men of Oflag 64, 2006.130
Cole became one of 1,500 prisoners at Oflag 64, a POW camp for American officers near Szubin, Poland.
Our special exhibit, Guests of the Third Reich (a title taken from Cole’s POW journal) is in its last days; it closes on 7 July. In honor of Independence Day, visit our gallery or Guests of the Third Reich: American POWs in Europe to learn more about Newton Cole and to read his Wartime Log in its entirety.
The World War II years challenged civilians from the Home Front to war-torn Europe to do without many things for the sake of victory. The war also encouraged creativity to fill the gaps left by rationing and the ravages of war. These wedding dresses are a testament to the inventiveness of women tying the knot during the lean war years, and are beautifully made with materials such as parachute silk and mosquito netting.
Myrtille Delassus’ Parachute Silk Wedding Gown:
Myrtille Delassus was seventeen when the Germans invaded her hometown of Merville, France. She spent four long years waiting in ration lines, cold and perpetually hungry. She could hear the Allied invasion of Normandy and, like many others, welcomed British and American soldiers when they arrived in Merville.
GIs were generous with their surplus supplies, and one soldier, Sgt. Joseph Bilodeau of Corinth, New York, often gave items to Madame Cocque, the owner of a dress shop across the street from where he was stationed. One evening, Madame Cocque invited Sgt. Bilodeau to dinner to thank him. Since it would appear inappropriate for her to dine alone with him, she invited Myrtille, who worked in her shop. Myrtille and Joseph enjoyed each other’s company and started dating. They were married six months later on October 15, 1945, at the church in Merville.
Myrtille’s wedding dress was made from a silk parachute by the women in Madame Coque’s dress shop. It features a classic silhouette with a double-rouched bodice and medium length train.
Joyce Adney’s Parachute Silk Wedding Gown:
Joyce Adney and Adrien Reynolds met at a dance at Utah State University, where Joyce was head of the student USO and Adrien was training to be a radar operator. The newly minted marine made quite an impression on Joyce. She later recalled, “After we had gone through the receiving line and had punch, we went into the hall and we danced together all evening. He walked me home and I went in and told my roommate I had met the man I was going to marry.”
Adrien and his detachment shipped out with the 4th Marine Division to invade the island of Saipan on June 15, 1944. Once combat ended nearly a month later, Adrien and his fellow marines found several unused Japanese cargo parachutes while clearing caves. He sent one of the parachutes to Joyce for safekeeping.
Adrien was discharged shortly after his participation in the bloody Battle of Okinawa. After stopping home in New Orleans, he immediately went to see Joyce, who was working towards her master’s degree in Detroit. “I went out to the airport, and it had been almost three years since I had seen him. He was the last one off the plane wearing his dress blues, and he melted my heart into a little puddle.” Little did Joyce know that in the pocket of those dress blues was her engagement ring.
Due to the continuation of rationing, Joyce opted to have her wedding gown made from the Japanese parachute silk Adrien had sent home. Joyce’s mother, living in Utah, made the gown by hand. Joyce would wrap strings around herself to measure her waist and bust, and then send the strings to her mother, who would then lay the strings out and sew the fabric accordingly. Adrien’s father contributed as well, making heart-shaped tins for their five-tier cake. The couple was married March 27, 1946, and remained so for the rest of their lives.
Dinner with a Curator
Toni Kiser presents “War Time Weddings”
Tuesday, June 25, 2013
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm
The Stage Door Canteen at The National WWII Museum
June has been a traditional month for weddings since the Middle Ages. This June, Toni Kiser, Assistant Director of Collections & Exhibits/Registrar, will talk about WWII-era weddings. Learn how many brides still managed to have gorgeous gowns and delicious cakes, despite the rationing of silk and sugar. Hear a few stories of love that kept men and women going through the war, and see the artifacts related to these love stories and weddings.
Large crowd in Piccadilly Circus in London, England on V-E Day. Policemen, soldiers and women dancing in street at Rainbow Corner. 8 May 1945, 2008.537.063
Dinner with a Curator – Tom Czekanski presents “Fighting Fit: Restoring the Collection”
May 14, 2013, 6:30 – 8:30 pm
US Freedom Pavilion: The Boeing Center
Utilizing staff, volunteers and outside contractors, the Museum has undertaken a substantial number of restoration projects since opening in 2000. Restorations include several airplanes, two boats, three armored vehicles and numerous other vehicles and artillery pieces. Director of Collections and Exhibits, Tom Czekanski, will share the unique story of each of these pieces – complete with challenges and triumphs.
Dinner with a Curator is a seasonal series where Museum staff and guests discuss a featured topic related to World War II while enjoying a delicious three-course dinner. All dinners catered by Chef John Besh at the Museum’s American Sector restaurant. Space is limited. Reservations are required.
Seventy years ago, on 27 March 1943, Delta Shipbuilding Co. in New Orleans launched the SS Samuel Dexter. In this photo you can see the unfinished gun mounts indicating the wartime workflow. Her service was short-lived because the Liberty ship sunk on 21 January 1944 in the North Atlantic. The likely cause was hull failure, when welded hulls simply split or cracked. No lives were lost aboard the Samuel Dexter. It is estimated that 127 of the 4,694 Liberty ships and T2 tankers suffered from major hull fatigue or failure. Potential causes cited have been the high sulfuric content of wartime steel in cold temperatures, poor ship design, and workmanship.
Seventy years ago today, on 27 February 1943, the Saturday Evening Post featured Freedom of Worship, the second in their installment of the Norman Rockwell-illustated series, The Four Freedoms.
Gift of Dr. Frank B. Arian, 2009.451.434
Rockwell’s painting was accompanied by an essay by writer Will Durant in which he stated:
When we yield our sons to war, it is in the trust that their sacrifice will bring to us and our allies no inch of alien soil, no selfish monopoly of the world’s resources of trade, but only the privilege of winning for all peoples the most precious gifts in the orbit of life–freedom of body and soul, of movement and enterprise, of thought and utterance, of faith and worship, of hope and charity, of a humane fellowship with all men.
The standard workweek has fluctuated over time. The 40-hour, 5-day workweek was codified first in 1938 with the passage of the Fair Labor Standards Act. On 9 February 1943, President Roosevelt declared a mandatory wartime 48-hour workweek for industry within 32 certain vital areas, including Seattle where Boeing was located. In effect, Roosevelt’s measure, Executive Order 9301, added eight hours of mandatory overtime, with the purpose of increasing production for the war effort.
Dorothy Adelaide “Dot” DuBois Lingle worked for the Boeing Corporation near Seattle in aircraft assembly. From 5-19 November 1943, she was paid $43.70. Included among her hours were 4 bonus hours.See the fruit of Dorothy Lingle’s labor in our new building, US Freedom Pavilion: the Boeing Center.
Gift in Memory of Adelaide and Jack Lingle, 2012.194
