A lively social history of popular wartime songs and how they helped America's home front morale.

After Pearl Harbor, Tin Pan Alley songwriters rushed to write the Great American War Song—an "Over There" for World War II. The most popular songs, however, continued to be romantic ballads, escapist tunes, or novelty songs. To remedy the situation, the federal government created the National Wartime Music Committee, an advisory group of the Office of War Information (OWI), which outlined "proper" war songs, along with tips on how and what to write. The music business also formed its own Music War Committee to promote war songs. Neither group succeeded. The OWI hoped that Tin Pan Alley could be converted from manufacturing love songs to manufacturing war songs just as automobile plants had retooled to assemble planes and tanks. But the OWI failed to comprehend the large extent by which the war effort would be defined by advertisers and merchandisers. Selling merchandise was the first priority of Tin Pan Alley, and the OWI never swayed them from this course. Kathleen E.R. Smith concludes the government's fears of faltering morale did not materialize. Americans did not need such war songs as "Goodbye, Mama, I'm Off To Yokohama", "There Are No Wings On a Foxhole", or even "The Sun Will Soon Be Setting On The Land Of The Rising Sun" to convince them to support the war. The crusade for a "proper" war song was misguided from the beginning, and the music business, then and now, continues to make huge profits selling love—not war—songs.

The story of Ray Pettit is the story of America. a country of decent and generous people, a country with a heritage and system of government based on liberty and the rights of individuals, a country where opportunity has no bounds. Encouraged by his mill-worker parents, who were lacking in formal education but not in intelligence, character, and love for their children, he used his natural ability in mathematics and high-level academic achievement as a springboard to great accomplishments in engineering, some of which contributed to the development of today's modem cellphone technology .Mill-Village Boy begins with the story of a barefoot boy in overalls, in the small town of Canton, Georgia, during the depression years of the 1930s. Unconditionally loved by his parents, Ray Pettit went from Class Valedictorian to graduation from Georgia Tech with a degree in Electrical Engineering. This was followed by Masters and Doctor of Philosophy degrees, and outstanding achievements in industry and academia. Mill-Village Boy has elements of intrigue and danger, love and adventure, comedy and sadness, loyalty and betrayal. . . a fascinating description of an exciting and rewarding life!

One young man’s story of combat in the air, constant battles for survival, and the development of radar technology for use against the Luftwaffe. This is the story of how an eighteen-year-old miner shoveling ore from deep in the ground in Utah suddenly found himself, only two years later, 30,000 feet in the air over Nazi Germany, piloting a Flying Fortress in the first wave of America’s air counteroffensive in Europe. Like thousands of other young Americans, Ray Brim was plucked out by the US Army to be a combat flyer, and was quickly pitted against the hardened veterans of the Luftwaffe. Brim turned out to have a natural knack for flying, however, and was assigned to the select squadron developing lead pathfinder techniques, while experimenting with radar. He was among the first to test the teeth of the Luftwaffe’s defenses, and once those techniques had been honed, thousands of other bomber crews would follow into the maelstrom—from which 80,000 never returned. This book gives us vivid insights into the genesis of the American air campaign, told with the humor, attention to detail, and humility that captures the heart and soul of our “Greatest Generation.” Brim was one of the first Pathfinder pilots to fly both day and night missions, leading bomb groups of six-hundred-plus bombers to their targets. At the onset of his missions in the spring of 1943, B-17 crews were given a fifty-fifty chance of returning. All his raids were nerve-wracking forays into the unknown, struggles to survive the damage to his plane caused by flak and German fighter attacks and bring his ten-man crew home, often wounded—but still alive.

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