Meme Scholar with Madness (PhD)

[EndtheMadnessNow]

Finally got a little bit of rain today. Though beneath the thick canopy in my backyard remains dry.




INVASION!!!


More front pages here.


June 6, 1944: while supporting the Normandy landings, the Gleaves-class destroyer USS Corry (DD-463) sank off of Utah Beach after hitting a mine and being struck by German 210 mm artillery fire. The Corry was the only U.S. Navy warship lost on D-Day.




June 6, 1944: with the invasion of Normandy and due to the variety of aircraft involved, Allied planes were painted with "invasion stripes" to help distinguish friend from foe. For the 50th anniversary in 1994, A-6E Intruders from VA-34 nicknamed "Blue Blasters" were painted with stripes as a tribute. Their radio call sign is "Joker" as tribute to their WWII brothers who were young inexperienced pilots who were called "Jokers".


Escort carriers HMS Tracker, HMS Pursuer, and HMS Emperor conducted anti-sub patrols in the western approaches to prevent U-boats from entering the English Channel during the Normandy landings.


USS Texas (BB-35) was used as a temporary camp to hold German, Italian, and French prisoners captured during D-Day. Several of the POWs suffered from seasickness while aboard the battleship. All the prisoners were transferred to an LST (amphibious Landing ship) that took them to England for interrogation. Texas then resumed bombarding enemy positions in Normandy.




THE D-DAY EDITION: Transocean News Service, a propaganda tool of the Nazi regime, was the first to report that Allied parachutes landed in France on June 6, 1944, breaking the story of Operation Overlord and D-Day. The Associated Press picked it up soon afterwards.


J.D. Salinger – yeah, that J.D. Salinger, was among the first wave of troops to hit the Utah beach on D-Day.


Brigadier General Theodore Roosevelt Jr. was the only general on D-Day to land by sea with the first wave of troops. At 56, he was the oldest man in the invasion, and only one whose son also landed that day. Captain Quentin Roosevelt II (Nov 4, 1919 – Dec 21, 1948) in first wave of soldiers at Omaha Beach. 5 weeks after landing at Utah Beach, Roosevelt Jr. died of a heart attack in France. Posthumously awarded Medal of Honor on Sept 21, 1944. Quentin was killed in a plane crash in Hong Kong.



R.I.P. WWII Navy vet Robert Persichitti who passed away last week at the age of 102 while traveling to Normandy. Persichitti served as a radioman on USS Eldorado in the Pacific and witnessed the flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. He was going to France with other WWII vets to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day when he died.


USS Eldorado (AGC-11) was a Mount McKinley-class amphibious force command ship, named after a mountain range in Nevada. Honours and awards for WWII, Korea, Vietnam. Decommissioned in November 1972; sold for scrap in 1976.


"Into the Jaws of Death", Robert F. Sargent’s famous D-Day photo, and the press release with his account of the landing. (Written by Thomas Winship, who went on to become editor of The Boston Globe.)


4-page PDF


The Merchant Marines are veterans too...


Supplying Victory: The History of Merchant Marine in World War II


Poem of the day by John Masefield, and a quote from C.S. Lewis: