Growing up in the golden age of the History Channel, I watched just about everything on WWII. Since my birthday falls on D-Day, Iโd always look forward to the movie marathons that day, ending the night with The Longest Day.
Looking back, those films and stories played a big part in my decision to join the Army. During the Q Course, I had the chance to visit the Airborne & Special Operations Museum for a book and documentary release and actually met a veteran who landed with the first wave on D-Day. Iโve watched the movie with my team while deployed, and Iโm pretty sure my wife is tired of it by now. Still, I canโt wait until my boys are old enough to watch The Longest Day with me.
Just the other day, my six-year-old and I had a good talk about the sacrifices of past generations and everything they gave up so we could live in this great country. The key points I always remind my boys are simple:
โข Jesus loves you.
โข Your family loves you.
โข There are people you will never meet who gave up everything so we can be here today.
Freedom isnโt free.
De Oppresso Liber.
Thank you to all who fought and sacrificed in freedoms defense all those years ago. Incredible footage here. Blessed that both my uncles survived and will never forget the over 400,000 who did not come home.
84 years ago today, a pilot running out of fuel made a decision that won the Pacific War. Most Americans have never heard his name.
June 4, 1942. Six months after Pearl Harbor, Japan's navy is undefeated. Four of the carriers that burned Pearl, Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, and Hiryu, are steaming toward Midway to finish off the US Pacific Fleet.
At 7:52 AM, Wade McClusky launches from USS Enterprise leading 32 Dauntless dive bombers. Here's the detail nobody mentions: McClusky is a fighter pilot. He'd been given the air group weeks earlier and had barely flown a dive bomber in combat. Now he's leading every SBD the Enterprise has at the most important target in the Pacific.
9:20 AM. He arrives at the intercept point where the Japanese fleet is supposed to be.
Empty ocean. Nothing for miles.
The Japanese had turned. Nobody knew where. And now McClusky owns the worst math problem in naval aviation: his fuel is bleeding away, and every minute he keeps searching, he condemns more of his own pilots to ditch in open water where nobody will find them.
Doctrine is clear. Turn back.
McClusky keeps going. He works a search pattern, squeezing miles out of dying fuel tanks.
9:55 AM. Far below, a single Japanese destroyer is cutting a white scar across the ocean at flank speed. It's the Arashi, racing to rejoin the fleet after depth-charging the American submarine Nautilus. Think about that. A failed sub attack is about to give away the entire Japanese navy.
McClusky reads the wake like an arrow and follows it.
10:02 AM. The horizon fills with the entire Japanese strike force. Four carriers, their decks crammed with planes being refueled and rearmed. Fuel lines snaking everywhere. Bombs stacked in the open.
And here's the miracle: the sky above them is empty. Minutes earlier, American torpedo squadrons had attacked at sea level and been annihilated. Torpedo 8 lost all 15 planes. One survivor, Ensign George Gay, watched what came next while hiding under his seat cushion in the water. Those doomed pilots dragged every Japanese fighter down to the waves. The door upstairs was wide open.
10:22 AM. McClusky pushes over from 14,500 feet. Both squadrons follow him down onto Kaga. It's actually a mistake, doctrine said split the targets, but Lt. Dick Best catches it mid-dive, pulls out with two wingmen, and goes after Akagi alone. His single bomb pierces the flight deck into the packed hangar. It's enough.
By 10:28, Kaga, Akagi, and Soryu, the third hit simultaneously by Yorktown's bombers, are floating infernos. Six minutes. Three carriers that attacked Pearl Harbor, gone. Hiryu follows them to the bottom that evening.
The cost of McClusky's gamble was real. Many Enterprise bombers never made it home, some shot down, others swallowed by the sea when their tanks ran dry. McClusky himself was jumped by two Zeros on the way out, took five bullets through his shoulder, and still flew his shot-up Dauntless back to the Enterprise.
Admiral Nimitz said McClusky's decision "decided the fate of our carrier task force and our forces at Midway." Japan never won another major battle.
One borrowed pilot. One destroyer's wake. One choice to keep flying when every gauge said go home.
@Keir_Starmer is a royal cunt, and the blood of the British people is on his hands. This twat has allowed the Islamification of a once great nation and will lead it to its ruin. Us Americans may have our differences, but we cannot stand idly by while our kin are handed over to the 3rd world barbarian horde.
Police in the UK impaled a teenager by the throat on a fence. Initially the police cleared the police of any wrongdoing. But the people complained so they opened an investigation and yeah okay nothing came of that either.