Interview with Ira L. Simpson, Army Air Forces veteran (566th Bomb Squadron, 389th Bomb Group, 8th Air Force), concerning his experiences as a B-24 navigator in the European Theater during World War II; also his experiences as a prisoner-of-war in Germany. Enlistment in the Aviation Cadet Program, 1942; basic training, Miami Beach, Florida, 1943; pre-flight training, Santa Ana, California, 1943; his selection for navigator training, Santa Ana; aerial gunnery training, Las Vegas, Nevada, 1943; advanced navigation training, Hondo, Texas, 1943-44; combat crew training, Charleston, South Carolina, 1944; his description of the flight characteristics of the B-24; the flight to England and assignment to the 339th Bomb Group at Hethel, 1944; his first mission, October 1, 1944, to Hanau, Germany; base living conditions; off-base social activities; German fighters and flak; Ardennes Offensive and the Battle of the Bulge, December, 1944-January, 1945; forced landing due to flak damage on a mission to Magdeburg, Germany, January 3, 1945; his plane being shot down and his capture, February 14, 1945; interrogation; train trip from Holland to Germany; solitary confinement and further interrogation at Dulag Luft, Frankfurt, Germany; processing at Wetzlar, Germany; incarceration at Stalag Luft XIII-D in Nürnberg, Germany; his description of the physical layout of the POW camp; POW camp life; his bouts with mental depression; internal camp organization among the POWs; Red Cross parcels; relationship between POWs and German guards; forced march from Nürnberg to Stalag VII-A at Moosburg, Germany, April, 1945; living conditions at Stalag VII-A; liberation on April 29, 1945; his postwar career in the U.S. Air Force.

Zusammenfassung: Audiovisual testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Includes pre-war, wartime, and post-war experiences

Military commanders turn tactics into strategic victory by means of "operational art," the knowledge and creative imagination commanders and staff employ in designing, synchronizing, and conducting battles and major operations to achieve strategic goals. Until now, historians of military theory have generally agreed that modern operational art developed between the first and second world wars, not in the United States but in Germany and the Soviet Union, whose armies were supposedly the innovators and greatest practitioners of operational art. Some have even claimed that U.S. forces struggled in World War II because their commanders had no systematic understanding of operational art. Michael R. Matheny believes previous studies have not appreciated the evolution of U.S. military thinking at the operational level. Although they may rightly point to the U.S. Army's failure to modernize or develop a sophisticated combined arms doctrine during the interwar years, they focus too much on technology or tactical doctrine. In his revealing account, Matheny shows that it was at the operational level, particularly in mounting joint and combined operations, that senior American commanders excelled—and laid a foundation for their country's victory in World War II. Matheny draws on archival materials from military educational institutions, planning documents, and operational records of World War II campaigns. Examining in detail the development of American operational art as land, sea, and air power matured in the twentieth century, he shows that, contrary to conventional wisdom, U.S. war colleges educated and trained commanders during the interwar years specifically for the operational art they employed in World War II. After 1945, in the face of nuclear warfare, the American military largely abandoned operational art. But since the Vietnam War, U.S. commanders have found operational art increasingly important as they pursue modern global and expeditionary warfare requiring coordination among multiple service branches and the forces of allied countries.

Zusammenfassung: Audiovisual testimony of a Holocaust survivor. Includes pre-war, wartime, and post-war experiences

Promoted to brigadier general at the start of World War II, Davis headed a special section that monitored black military units at home and overseas, investigated an increasing number of racial disturbances, and bolstered the black soldier's morale. He was largely responsible for persuading the Army to try a limited form of integration. The success of that effort led to a federal mandate for the integration of the entire American armed forces."--