July 1st, 1944. Halandia Air Base, New Guinea. 4 P38. Lightning’s touchdown after 6 and 1/2 hours over enemy territory. Three pilots climb out with fuel gauges reading nearly empty. Maybe 50 gallons left in their tanks. The fourth aircraft flown by a 42-year-old civilian still shows 210 gall remaining. Same mission, same weather, same…
On July 5th, 1954, a 19-year-old truck driver walked into a small Memphis studio with no plan to change music forever. The session was going nowhere. The songs weren’t working. Frustrated and tired of trying, he stopped taking it seriously. During a break, he picked up an old blues song just to pass the time….
October 16th, 1954. Inside a crowded radio auditorium in Shrefport, Louisiana, a young man steps up to a microphone and the world, though it doesn’t know it yet, is about to [music] change forever. Tonight’s video isn’t just about the recording that started it all or Elvis Presley’s first live performance on the Louisiana Hayride….
At 7:30 a.m. on May 8th, 1942, Lieutenant Junior Grade Stanley Vatasa strapped into his Douglas SBD Dauntless dive bomber on the flight deck of USS Yorktown, watching radar operators track incoming Japanese aircraft 70 m to the northwest. 27 years old, 5 months of combat flying, zero air-to-air kills. The Japanese had launched 69…
December 24th, 1944. 0200 hours. Third Army headquarters, Luxembourg. The operations room hummed with controlled chaos. Staff officers hunched over maps tracking German positions in the Arden. Radio operators relayed coordinates through static-filled headsets. Then, Lieutenant General George S. Patton Jr. walked in and issued an order that would obliterate 70 years of military protocol….
A German general stands in the ruins of a destroyed city. His uniform is torn and covered in dust. His men are starving, out of ammunition, completely surrounded. American tanks are closing in from every direction. The war is lost. Everyone knows it. But when George S. Patton’s messenger arrives with a demand for immediate…
An American armored column rolled slowly down the cobblestone streets of a small, quiet German town. It was April 1945. The war was in its final weeks. From almost every window in the town, white bed sheets hung limply in the spring breeze. The white flags were a universal symbol of surrender. The local mayor…
October 23rd, 1944. 5:31 a.m. Palawan Passage, South China Sea. A torpedo leaves its tube at 46 knots. It has 11 seconds to travel 980 yd. 11 seconds to end an empire. Boom. The explosion rips through 8 in of hardened steel like paper. Fire erupts 200 f feet into the black morning sky. Men…
The Paramount Theater in Brooklyn smelled like cigarette smoke and spilled beer. And Elvis Presley stood in a hallway backstage trying to remember the last time he’d felt this nervous. It was November 1956. He was 21 years old. He had already appeared on national television. He had already caused scandals and sold records and…
in the first months of 1945 Japan was on the Run the Americans had fought their way across the Pacific us submarines and aircraft had destroyed Japan’s Merchant Fleet and Naval airpower the main Japanese home Islands had been cut off from vital supplies of fuel and raw materials the Japanese were facing defeat yet…
End of content
End of content