Kirjahaku

Langdon Harve' Wilson, from Abbeville, South Carolina, wanted to be a fighter pilot after flight training, but like many fellow pilots never expected to end up in a heavy bomber. By no means a hero-type, the unassuming Lt. Wilson flew as a co-pilot and later as a first pilot on the B-24 Liberator with the Fifteenth Air Force. As a member of one of the first organized American bomb groups to operate out of North Africa and Southern Italy, his crew's bomber--nicknamed the "Flame McGoon" (from the "Lil Abner" comic strip)--became the iconic, redoubtable, lucky aircraft of his Squadron. His and other first person accounts from the 513th Squadron, 376th "Liberandos" are here painstakingly overlapped with the official mission reports to give the clearest possible depiction of air combat over Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe in the most critical stage of the 15th Air Force's bombing campaign. Then, we see Wilson postwar, returning to active duty for the Cold War but dealing with undocumented (but evident) issues related to his service. Third non-fiction title by this author in a focus on ordinary South Carolina veterans of World War II.]

Finalist, 2016 Next Generation Indie Book Awards (Category: Military)] Finalist, 2016 National Indie Excellence Awards (Category: Military Non-Fiction)]South Carolina servicemen made an exceptional and early contribution in WW II, when in February 1942 a group of them, all products of the state's four pre-war ROTC programs, were assigned to the 32nd "Red Arrow" Infantry Division (Michigan-Wisconsin National Guard). In this odd and expedient pairing, and in one of the earliest Infantry units to be ordered overseas after the Pearl Harbor attack, they participated in the first offensive waged in the Pacific Theater under General Douglas MacArthur's command. In victory, the Red Arrows suffered over 90% casualties there at Buna, Papua New Guinea. Those who emerged from that first tragic and defining battle stayed on to form the Division's core of leadership for the remainder of the war, and in doing so amassed some of the highest total hours in combat in U.S. Army history. The title "32 Answered" alludes not only to the Division's nomenclature but also to the thirty-two total documented South Carolina reservists discovered in the course of this research, who stepped up to answer the call to duty soon after the war emergency's onset.