WW2 Carrier Footage in Color

This is fantastic stuff.

This is stunning

This video shows the winner of "Ukraine’s Got Talent", Kseniya Simonova, 24, drawing a series of pictures on an illuminated sand table showing how ordinary people were affected by the German invasion during World War II. Her talent, which admittedly is a strange one, is mesmeric to watch.

The images, projected onto a large screen, moved many in the audience to tears and she won the top prize of about £75,000. 

She begins by creating a scene showing a couple sitting holding hands on a bench under a starry sky, but then warplanes appear and the happy scene is obliterated. 

It is replaced by a woman’s face crying, but then a baby arrives and the woman smiles again. Once again war returns and Miss Simonova throws the sand into chaos from which a young woman’s face appears. 

She quickly becomes an old widow, her face wrinkled and sad, before the image turns into a monument to an Unknown Soldier. 

This outdoor scene becomes framed by a window as if the viewer is looking out on the monument from within a house. 

In the final scene, a mother and child appear inside and a man standing outside, with his hands pressed against the glass, saying goodbye. 

The Great Patriotic War, as it is called in Ukraine , resulted in one in four of the population being killed with eight to 11 million deaths out of a population of 42 million. 

Kseniya Simonova says: 

"I find it difficult enough to create art using paper and pencils or paintbrushes, but using sand and fingers is beyond me. The art, especially when the war is used as the subject matter, even brings some audience members to tears. And there’s surely no bigger compliment."

While I'm on a WW2 roll.....

My father passed away much too young and my family was devastated by it; I think it hit me particularly hard because, like so many boys, my father was the indestructible hero of my childhood, a retired USAF pilot, a veteran of Vietnam, the family provider who never failed to clothe and feed us, the smartest man I ever knew even if I didn't recognize that until my late 20's. A few years later my mother decided to remarry; she married a man who I didn't warm up to, he seem to be the used car or insurance salesman type, overly enthusiastic, pushy, obnoxious and who knows what else. His marriage to my mother took place as I was going through a separation and eventual divorce and he decided that he'd give me the benefit of his experience. That didn't go real well for either of us, words were said. Over the years I began to appreciate that he was good for my mother and since that's all that matters he and I began to warm up a bit. One Easter he mentioned his service in the USN, as a signalman 2nd on an LST in the WW2 Pacific. Like many veterans of any war, he hadn't talked about the war much. I managed to get him to tell me the "name" of his ship; it didn't have a name just a number LST-221. I had pressed him to tell me about it but he was reluctant, he did share a story with me that I'll try to reconstruct here.

I can remember one day I was on the bridge and we were carrying a load of bombs. We were unrepping those bombs to the USS Hancock. It was a beautiful day and I remarked to the Captain how beautiful the clouds were. The Captain turn to me and said "Goddammit Covert those are war clouds! Don't you ever call them beautiful again". 

That story stuck with me. For the next Christmas I decided to see if I could find about about LST-221. I searched the internet and what I found was this picture, a picture of that day in the Pacific taken from the deck of the USS Hancock.

I also found this picture was in a book about LST's. I gave Jim that book as a Christmas gift and when he opened the package I told him to turn to the page with the picture. Then I said "do you remember telling me about that day?", the look on his face told me that our relationship would be different from that day on.

Thanks for your service Jim!

Here is another pic of LST-221 loading men and equipment during a practice landing in New Guinea.

The Pacific

Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg are following up their hit Band of Brothers with another HBO miniseries The Pacific. This will tell the tale of the First Marines island hopping campaign in the war against Japan. You can see the trailers here:

http://www.hbo.com/events/pacific/video.html

This is a must see in my opinion, Band of Brothers was an awesome accomplishment; a tribute to the men who fought the long and nasty campaign in Europe, I expect that The Pacific will do the same for those men who fought their way up the beaches and through the jungles of island after island in the Pacific.

The first episode of The Pacific is scheduled to air on March 14, 2010

disclaimer: Dear FTC morons, HBO didn't pay me for this go away.

Gray Eagles

I'm an aviation enthusiast, I grew up watching my father roar into the air in a B-47 in the 50's and 60's; I was an aircrew man in the USN.  I've always admired the fighter pilot who strapped on his aircraft and went out and faced single combat; pitting their training, skill and luck against an enemy just as determined to perform his duty.
 
As the "greatest generation" of WW2 veterans slips away from us it's heartwarming to see us return to their extraordinary lives and take one last look at the trials they faced as young men and women. This film is visually stunning and emotionally wrenching; I haven't the words to express how much this moved me.

Here we have a short film showing a WW2 Mustang pilot reunited with his aircraft after 60 years. I can't embed it, you'll have to go here to watch it. I recommend full screen if your pc can handle it.

http://www.asb.tv/videos/view.php?v=1bf99434&br=500