Dress Rehearsal for D-Day

“It was a disaster which lay hidden before the World for 40 years…an official U.S. Army cover-up.”

What would prompt such strong words from several news outlets including the BBC? The story goes back to the early morning hours April 28^th, 1944.

Earlier that previous day, an assault force of the U.S. 4^th Infantry Division had gone ashore at Slapton Sands, a beach in southern England. That location was chosen because it closely resembled a beach on the French coast of Normandy, code named “Utah.” The exercise was a dress rehearsal for The Big Show on June 6^th.

Assault conditions were made as realistic as possible to accustom the troops to true combat conditions that they would face on D-Day, including live firing from naval guns and on-board artillery. Individual soldiers also had live ammunition in their weapons.

Shortly after midnight, eight LSTs (Landing Ship, Tanks) arrived, ferrying combat engineers and quartermaster personnel. Accompanying them were heavy trucks, jeeps and heavy engineering equipment, which were to be off loaded shortly after the initial “assault.”

Nine German Schnellboots (torpedo boats, similar to U.S. PT boats), on routine patrol, picked up unusual heavy radio traffic emanating from the Slapton Sands area. Curious, they decided to investigate. They were amazed to see a small flotilla of what they thought were destroyers. The commander of the Schnellboot squadron ordered an immediate attack.

Germen torpedoes hit three of the LSTs. One had most of its stern blown off, but was able to limp into port and safety. Another exploded in huge fireball, fed by the large gasoline supply on board. The third keeled over and sank in six minutes.

There was no time to launch lifeboats. Trapped below decks, hundreds of sailors and soldiers went down with their ship. Others leapt into the sea, but soon drowned weighted down with waterlogged overcoats. Many men died of hypothermia in the chilly 60-degree water.

The toll of the dead and missing was 198 sailors and 551 soldiers. It was the costliest training disaster involving U.S. forces in WWII.

Not only were Allied commanders dismayed at the loss of life, but the loss of two LSTs meant there were none available as a reserve for D-Day. Additionally, they were concerned that one or more soldiers that may have been captured by the Germans who knew secrets about the coming invasion would be forced to “spill the beans.” There were about ten officers in the flotilla that were intimately involved in invasion planning and knew the assigned Normandy beach locations. A good night’s sleep was hard to come by for the brass until these men could be accounted for. It was soon learned that all of them had drowned.

An official investigation was launched. It was revealed there were two factors that may have contributed to the tragedy: Only one ship was available for flotilla escort duty, a British corvette, and an error in radio frequencies.

Due to typographical error, the LSTs were on a different radio frequency than British naval headquarters ashore. A British ship spotted the German torpedo boats and that information was transmitted to the corvette, but not the LSTs. The captain of the corvette assumed the information was transmitted to the LSTs so he made no effort to contact them.

Whether or not these factors would have had any measurable effect on the outcome is impossible to say.

Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force (SHAEF), for fear that the Germans would learn of the debacle, ordered a lockdown on any information until after D-Day. A press release was issued in July 1944 by SHEAF to Stars and Stripes newspaper describing the incident.

Ten years after D-Day, a monument was unveiled at Slapton Sands honoring the people of the area “who generously left their homes and their lands to provide a battle practice area for the successful assault in Normandy in June 1944.”

The incident was almost forgotten until 1968 when a policeman retired to the Slapton Sands area. He noticed the monument, but on walks on the beach, he began to find unexpended cartridges, fragments of uniforms and uniform buttons. He thought, “There’s a monument to the people here but not to the soldiers.” He learned from a fisherman that that a Sherman tank lay in the offshore waters. He smelled a cover-up. His story reached the news media and accusations of an official cover-up took off. The fact that the U.S. government didn’t erect a monument to the soldiers and sailors added to the rumors.

What was forgotten was the press release to the Stars and Stripes newspaper in 1944 fully describing the incident. It became the cover-up that wasn’t.

Thanks to Jerry F., Seattle, Washington for his input.

The Battle of Okinawa was the largest amphibious assault in the Pacific War in WWII and the bloodiest.

Called Okinawa Shima, the island was strategic to the U.S. war effort since it sported two airfields and was only 325 miles south of the Japanese home island of Kyushu. At that range, even medium range bombers could hit the home islands and cut off supply lines to the resource-hungry Empire. It was to be the staging area for the expected invasion of mainland Japan

It was a big island comparatively, sixty miles long and eight miles wide.

Admiral Chester W. Nimitz’s Central Pacific Island hopping drive and General Douglas MacArthur’s Southwest Pacific thrust converged on the torn rag shaped island.

In late March 1945, 1457 Allied vessels ferrying 182112 Army GIs and Marines assembled off Okinawa. Four divisions of the U.S. 10^th Army (7^th, 27^th, 77^th, and 96^th) and two divisions of Marines (1^stand 6^th) prepared to hit the beach. The 2^nd Marines was held in reserve.

Every man would be needed. Lt. General Mitsuru Ushijima’s 32^nd Army, 110,000 strong, patiently waited in hidden bunkers and fortified ridges for the Americans to land. His strategy was similar to Gen. Tadamichi Kuribayashi on Iwo Jima. That is, avoid massive banzai charges and a stop-them-in-the-water tactics. Instead, lure the attackers ashore unmolested, and just when they think it’s going to be a walk-through, hit them with kou no kaze (“steel wind”) where they cannot receive naval and air support.

The General knew the war was lost, but he wanted to give the home islands time to prepare for eventual invasion, so he intended to inflict as many casualties on the enemy as possible. Simultaneously, an all out kamikaze attack on the fleet would bring the fighting directly to the Navy’s door and cut off the supply chain to the GIs and Marines.

On Easter Sunday, April 1^st, the Americans stormed ashore. They hit the island simultaneously from the west side at a narrow point just north of the capital city of Naha (see map). They expected fierce fighting and were surprised when they encountered no opposition. By day’s end 75,000 troops had established a beachhead nine miles wide and three miles deep.

Once a beachhead was established, the plan was for the GIs of the 96^th and 7^thto wheel south and the two Marine divisions head north. The greatest April Fool’s joke was about to be played.

A ridge that rises to 1500 feet in the wild, mountainous north bisects the island. The southern portion contains most of the civilian population. It was there General Ushijima massed most of his forces.

The Japanese considered Okinawa part of their home islands and had a presence on the island for years. Most of their forces were located in the southern third of the island. Of central importance to defense of the island were three east-west ridges crossing the southern part if the island. These ridges formed natural defensive barriers to the American forces. Every gully, every ravine, every crossroads was triangulated by artillery, mortar and machine gun fire.

As the Army units moved south, artillery and mortars they couldn’t see hammered them. The guns were located in an elaborate network of cave connected by tunnels. An artillery piece would be rolled out on railroad tracks, bang away, and when the GIs thought they knew where the shelling was coming from, it would back into the cave out of sight. Mortar and machine gun fire came from heavily camouflaged positions. American artillery combined with naval guns inundated the Japanese positions, but they were mostly ineffectual. Casualties began to mount.

Meanwhile, in the north, the Marines were having only slightly better luck. Less heavily defended than in the south, the entrenched Japanese nevertheless battled furiously for every foot of advance by the attackers.

The fight degenerated into a dirty, gritty, primal, sometimes hand-to-hand combat, from cave to cave, pillbox to pillbox while staving off fierce counter attacks. Ammo and supplies began to run low. When they had run out of grenades or bullets, Marines and GIs would crawl to the bodies of their dead to retrieve whatever ammo they could find.

The incessant shelling from both sides, combined with torrential rains that commenced in May, turned the terrain into muck, sucking at boots, stalling even four-wheel drive vehicles. The constant rain disguised the Japanese positions even more. Bodies of fallen Marines and GIs had to be left where they lay, since retrieving them only exposed more men to Japanese guns. Decaying forms of Japanese, Marines and GIs, teeming with maggots slowly rotted in the muck. Every crater was half full of water and many held a dead Marine or soldier. They lay where they had been killed, still clutching their weapons. Swarms of flies crawled over their bodies.

For almost three months, Army and Marines bravely fought the tenacious Japanese. When the last shot had been fired, more men had fallen than at any other Pacific battleground. It was the greatest air-naval-land battle in history.

More than 100,000 Japanese died. A large number of civilians, perhaps as many as 25,000, also perished. It’s estimated tens of thousands were wounded. The U.S. Army suffered 4,600 KIA and 18,000 wounded. The Marines lost 3200 KIA and 13,700 wounded. The Navy, who fought off attack after attack of kamikazes, lost 5,000 KIA and 4,900 wounded.

The large toll of casualties shocked military strategists back in Washington. What would happen when American forces stepped on Japanese home soil? General MacArthur estimated that U.S. forces would suffer about one million casualties in an assault on the home island.

Ironically, the horrendous price the GIs and Marines paid for Okinawa swept aside opposition in high government and military levels for the use of the atomic bomb to end the war. Okinawa was the last land battle in the Pacific theatre.

Monte Cassino, a Benedictine Abby eighty miles southeast of Rome, is perched high on a peak overlooking the town of Cassino and the surrounding valleys. St. Benedict of Nursia founded it in 524 AD. In early 1944, it was the site of four of the costliest, bloodiest battles of WWII.

In 1943, Field Marshall Albert Kesselring was hand picked by Hitler to command Axis forces in Italy. Anticipating an attack by the Allies after their landing in Salerno, he built a series of defensive lines across “the boot” of Italy to stop the Allied advance north.

The Abby anchored the “Gustave Line,” located in the mountainous area halfway between Anzio and Naples. It was thought to be an observation post for the German Army. Kesselring informed the Allies and the Vatican that he would not occupy the Abby.

Austrian Colonel Julius Schkegel warned the Abby’s abbot about the high probability of the Abby being bombed by the Allies in the coming months. It was arraigned that dozens of works of art be removed to the Vatican to avoid destruction.

On January 17, 1944, the 56th and 5th Divisions of the British X Corps got things started with an assault on enemy forces in the town of Cassino in the valley near the Abby. They fought hard, but were turned back by a tenacious German defense and suffered 4000 casualties.

Three days later, the U.S. 36th Division assaulted. They had to cross areas that were heavily mined and booby-trapped and had no armored support. They ran into the well dug-in 15th Panzer Grenadiers who inflicted 2100 casualties on the 36th.

On February 11th, the U.S. 34th Division gave it a try. The flooding of a nearby river slowed their progress and they had no better luck than the 36th even though they fought fiercely. After two weeks of torrid combat, they were withdrawn, enduring 2200 casualties.

On February 15, 1944, the Allies evidently forgetting Kesselring’s comment that he would not occupy the Abby, dropped 1400 tons of bombs on the structure, virtually destroying it. At the time it was occupied only by a small group of civilians, six monks and their 79-year-old abbot, Gregorio Diamare. They survived by retreating to the deep vaults in the abbey. After the initial bombing, the old abbot led the survivors into the valley, reciting the rosary.

After the air assault, elite members of the German 1st Paratroop Division moved into the rubble and fiercely defended the monastery. The rubble caused by the bombing provided excellent defensive cover.

Over the next several months, further assaults and counter-assaults took place. The town of Cassino and surrounding areas was reduced to rubble. The only part of the Abby to survive the fighting was the crypt of St. Benedict.

By mid-May the Germans had had enough, and withdrew to a defensive position north of the Abby.

Ironically, the commanding officer of the German forces at Cassino was Generallieutant (Maj. Gen.) Frido von Senger und Etterlin. He was a lay member of the Benedictine Order.

The cost of victory to Allies was horrendous. They suffered some 55000 casualties.

Pope Pius XII later issued a statement stating that the bombing was “a colossal blunder…a piece of gross stupidity.”

The Battle of The Philippine Sea

On June 15^th, 1944, the new Commander of the Japanese Combined Fleet, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, green lighted Operation A-Go. This was the perhaps the last roll of the dice for the Imperial Japanese Navy, since failure meant their ability to conduct large scale carrier ops in the Pacific would be at an end.

On June 19th, the Japanese Navy launched their aerial fleet of 440 fighters, dive-bombers and torpedo planes into an all-out assault against the more than 900 planes of the air arm of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which was supporting the U.S. amphibious invasion of the Mariana Islands. Half of the U.S. planes were the Grumman F6F Hellcats, possibly the best fighter in the air at that time. It would the most lopsided air battle of the war —- a crushing blow from which the Japanese forces never recovered.

It was called a “turkey shoot” due to the disproportional loss ratio inflicted on the Japanese aircraft by U.S. Navy and Marine pilots and anti-aircraft fire.

Japan was hampered in the three-day battle by a severe shortage of qualified pilots. Japan’s pre-war pilot training had focused on turning out a relatively small number of highly qualified fliers. Most of those pilots were killed in the 1942 battles of the Coral Sea and Midway. Few Japanese pilots in “the Shoot” had no more than six months training, some as little as two months.

Vice Admiral Marc A. “Pete” Mitscher led U.S. Task Force 58. He was a “pilot’s admiral” having been a pilot since 1915. The pilots described the leathery weathered little man as looking like a “cherubic hickory nut.” The Task Force’s primary mission was the protection of the Saipan invasion forces.

Admiral Toyoda hoped to catch Task Force doing just that and trap it into a defensive protective position to offset 58’s numerical superiority. It would become a carrier-vs-carrier fight.

On day one, June 19^th, radar on the USS Cabot picked up a flight of several hundred Japanese aircraft approaching from 100 miles out. General quarters sounded. Everything and everyone who could fly got into the air. Pilots of VF-31 scrambled and tangled with the approaching air armada.

At the end of the day, the score was 395 Japanese shot down with 20 U.S. losses. When all aircraft were recovered the Task Force set out to find the Japanese fleet, which was some 800 miles distant.

On the afternoon of Day two, June 20^th, the Japanese fleet was located about 400 miles due west. Admiral Mitscher decided on a late evening raid rather than waiting for sunrise the next day. 204 aircraft would make the assault at 1600. Then, when all aircraft were aloft, the Task Force headed for the enemy fleet at full speed to close the gap for the returning planes.

At 1845 the U.S. planes made contact. Passing over the smaller ships in the Japanese fleet, they hammered the carriers and other larger ships. Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa, the Japanese Task Force commander, expected support from Mariana-based planes, but in a surprise attack by 200 Task Force 58 planes left the Japanese airfields strewn with the flaming wreckage of 154 planes.

On the way to the target, the fliers had a tailwind, which assisted them, but on the way home, headwinds made for greater fuel consumption.

The first group returned at 2030. The Task Force had been running dark since Japanese submarines were reported to be in the area. The pilots attempted to make landings in the dark. Many crashed on the deck, slowing down recovery. Mitscher realized that if he didn’t turn on the lights, most of the retuning planes would have to ditch in the sea in the dark. He ordered all of the carriers to turn on their lights and for the pilots to land on the first carrier they could. Some of the fliers reported to be down to their last three gallons of fuel.

Of the 204 aircraft launched, 70 had to ditch among the task force. All told, 80 planes were lost and 49 pilots and crew did not return, but many pilots and crew were rescued in the following days.

Mitscher’s brave decision to break the rules and turn on his lights in submarine infested waters was a huge gamble that paid off in saving pilot’s lives.

On day three, June 21^st, due to the losses of planes that had to ditch the night before, all fighters would join the dive and torpedo bombers to finish off the Japanese fleet. It was discovered that the enemy was 100 miles further away than expected, so the fighters were loaded with auxiliary fuel tanks.

After an hour in the air, a flight of Japanese bombers was spotted approaching the U.S. fleet. They were engaged and shot down. A flight of enemy fighters were engaged, most of which were shot down; the survivors limped back to their carriers.

After three days of intense aerial combat, the Battle of the Philippine Sea was over.

The box score was 550-645 aircraft lost, three fleet carriers and two oilers sunk on the Japanese side. Task Force 58 lost 123 aircraft and one battleship was damaged.

One of the ironies of the battle was that the pilot that coined the expression “Turkey Shoot,” Lt. Commander Paul Buie, had not one victory to call his own.

***

Thanks to Jerry F., Seattle, Washington for this contribution.

The Cagoulards (the Cowl or hood) was the nickname of an ultra-right, nationalist, violent, anti-communist, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic French fascist group called the Comite Secret d’Action Revolutionnaire (CSAR) that was active in the 1930s.

Founded in 1935, it was bankrolled by L’Oreal cosmetics founder Eugene Schueller and heads of major companies such as Michelin and Lesieur Oil. It had some support within the French armed forces.

CSAR leadership included former naval and army officers, engineers, doctors and industrialists. They supported Generalissimo Francisco Franco in Spain, “Il Duce” Benito Mussolini in Italy and Marshall Philippe Petain’s reactionary Vichy France. They favored violence and planned a paramilitary coup to establish a dictatorship in preparation for the return of the French monarchy.

Initiation into the Cagoulards involved a secret ritual whereby the initiate dresses in black with a hood covering their head. They would stand in front of a table draped with the French tri-color on which swords and torches would be placed. They would swear an oath, Ad Majorem Galliae Gloriam (“for the greater glory of France”). Violation of the oath would be punishable by death.

La Cagoule was organized into cells along military lines of from eight to twelve men, all heavily armed. Three cells were a unit, three units a battalion, three battalions a regiment and so on. Written communication was avoided whenever possible so as to leave no “paper trails.”

They assassinated several prominent liberals, sabotaged airplanes supplied by France to the anti-Franco forces, blew up buildings owned by unions and incited public riots. They accumulated weapons supplied by Germany and Italy destined to be used in their coup. They infiltrated the left-leaning International Brigades to assassinate communist sympathizers.

With the outbreak of WW II, the Cagoulards split into pro-Nazi and anti-Nazi factions. The pros conducted various Nazi actions in France. They destroyed seven synagogues in Paris and aided in the deportation of Jews to the death camps. Several took oaths of loyalty to Hitler and joined the Waffen SS.

Many sided with the antis and fought in the French Resistance, believing that de Gaulle would not re-establish the Republic.

Time magazine called the group “The French Ku Klux Klan.” Their influence petered out after the war.

None too soon.

Hedy Lamar

On November 9th, 1913, the Kiesler family welcomed the birth of Hedwig Eva Marie Kiesler into their family. The Kieslers were a prosperous Viennese Jewish couple. Her mother had converted to Catholicism. Her father was secular. Their daughter, as she grew older, always kept her Jewish heritage secret.

Her favorite parent, father Emil, was a successful banker with a mind of a mechanical engineer and an enthusiasm for technology. Little “Hedi” cherished the walks they would take in the nearby park of the Wienerwald — the Vienna Woods. He would explain to her how various mechanisms worked. Emil’s interest in inventions kindled in her a natural inquisitiveness in inventions that would remain with her all of her life.

An only child, she entertained herself with her dolls and dreamed of becoming a movie star. She acted out little fairy tales for her parents. “I acted all the time. I copied my mother. I copied her mannerisms. I copied people in the streets. I copied the servants. I wrote people down on me.”

When she was 15, Hedi met theatre director and impresario Max Reinhardt. He was impressed by her and encouraged her to pursue her dream of becoming a famous actress.

She skipped school, scoured the theatres and movie studios all over Vienna. She found an opening for a script girl at a large motion picture studio. Despite not knowing anything about what script girls do, she talked the director into the job. A day later a small part became available for a girl in the picture currently in production. She auditioned for it and secured the role. There was no going back.

She had to tell her parents her decision. She intended to drop out of school and become a professional actress. She told several versions of the story later in life:

“Well, it wasn’t too bad. They were bewildered but not surprised. They were never surprised at anything I did…my dear father laughed and said, ‘You’ve been an actress ever since you were a baby!’…. they were willing to give me this great wish for my heart.”

Another version was that she persuaded the director to give her the part, but her parents “were much more difficult to persuade than [the director], because it meant my dropping school. But at last they agreed. My father… reasoned that I would soon enough quit of my own accord and go back to school.”

Bigger and better roles followed. Reinhardt cast her in a number of plays that gave her exposure, developed her expertise and built her confidence.

It was at this time, Reinhardt claims, to have given Hedi her life long first name, Hedy. He told reporters “Hedy Kiesler is the most beautiful girl in the world.” That description was to follow Hedy for the rest of her life.

Berlin was the center of filmmaking at that time. She traveled there, looking for work. “As soon as I was acting in a studio, I wanted to be starring in a studio.”

She starred in a number of films. A leading role became available. She was offered the lead in a Czech film, “Ekstase” (Ecstasy). She jumped at the chance and moved to Prague. It was a career changer.

Ekstase was a love story about a young woman, married to an older fussbudgety man. On a trip to a wooded area, she stops to swim au natural in a pond. A virile young man happens by, sees her and falls in love with her. Back home, she struggles with strong feelings for him. They agree to meet in his cabin for a night of love. During the lovemaking, without nudity, Hedy delivers an erotic close-up of a woman having an orgasm. She was the first woman to appear naked in film. It created a sensation and a new star. She was 18 years old.

She returned to the stage in a musical comedy in Vienna. In the audience was the industrialist Friedrich “Fritz” Mandl. Thirty-three years old, he was a stocky, short, assertive man and the third richest man in Austria. He had a reputation as a womanizer and social climber. Called “The Cartridge King,” he managed his family business, Hirtenberger Patronen-Fabrick, an ammunition and arms factory.

He was smitten and began an aggressive courting campaign to win fair Hedy. Great baskets of flowers with personal notes were delivered to her, all of which were returned. He called her every day, imploring her for a dinner date. Her indifference seemed to beguile him. He doubled his efforts. Slowly the ice began to thaw.

“He was so powerful, so influential, so rich, that he had been able to arrange everything in his life just as he wished it….”

Hedy found there was much to be attracted to in Mandl. “I began to feel attracted to the brain of this man, by his tremendous power, by his charm…I love strength. I love it.”

Shortly thereafter they were engaged. “I was in love. I was happy….I was proud of him…..he had the most amazing brain. There was nothing he did not know…”

They were married on August 10th, 1933.

Ensconced in a luxurious ten-room apartment, with servants attending to her every need, Hedy lived in opulence and extravagance. The early years of the marriage were happy ones for her. “I felt like Cinderella.”

Initially indulgent and attentive, Mandl gradually came to dominate everything in her life and eventually forbade her to pursue her acting career. She realized she had become a “trophy wife.” She was just another one of his many possessions. The independent Hedy rebelled. Frequent and violent arguments ensued. She was locked in a “prison of gold.” The question was, how could she get out?

Since the 1920s, Mandl had begun to cultivate contacts in right-wing Austrian politics. His business acumen told him that the winds of National Socialism were blowing and he perceived windstorms were on the horizon.

He was convinced that this would be good for business and advance his social standing. With an heir to the defunct Austro-Hungarian throne, he formed a paramilitary movement and supplied them with arms. Ostensibly to root out clandestine Socialist weapon caches, his militia fought in a series of bloody fights. After these clashes, Nazi partisans, with promises of law and order, grew in number and power.

Mandl began to woo industrialists who had Nazi sympathies. There were regular lavish dinner parties at the Mandl mansion. “We entertained….diplomats and men of high political position, makers and breakers of dynasties, financiers who manipulate the stock exchanges of the world,” Hedy said.

There were many inventors, industrialists and engineers who visited the Mandl mansion during those years. They talked openly about developing German military technology. Mandl’s beautiful wife smiled, listened and paid close attention, particularly when the discussion turned to torpedoes.

Impressed by her beauty and pleased by her deferential questions, they were forthcoming with a good deal of technical information. They didn’t suspect this glamorous house frau was intently focused on their remarks. “Any girl can be glamorous,” she famously said later in life. “All you have to do is stand still and look stupid.” The knowledge she gleaned by looking “stupid” would be her capital as she planned her escape from the “prison of gold.”

In the 1920s, a young American composer was writing avant-garde music in Paris. He had not been able to find an audience for his music in the U.S., but Europe was responsive. He was trying to create a distinctive American music. Strangely, he did not find inspiration in any forms or composers of American music. He was drawn to the Russian masters. Igor Stravinsky and Arnold Schoenberg were his favorites. As he tried to carve out an audience for his compositions, he made a living as a concert pianist performing classical music.

Child prodigy, high school dropout, concert pianist and avant-garde composer, George Antheil’s compositions drew mostly mixed reviews. They were considered “brilliant” by Aaron Copeland. Another reviewer said they sounded like “a calliope in a circus parade.”

One of the most popular home entertainments at the time was the player piano. They had grown in such popularity they began to outnumber standard pianos. It wasn’t necessary to take piano lessons or years of practice to be able to play. They had internal mechanical workings and the instrument could be played by hand or mechanically.

Music on player pianos was recorded on rolls of tough paper. Technicians cut slots and holes in the paper to correspond to the notations on sheet music. The roll was loaded onto spools in the piano. Pumping pedals near the bottom of the piano scrolled the paper roll over a row of vacuum ducts, one for each piano key. The spooling paper covered the ducts until a slot or hole allowed air to be sucked into the duct. A tube connected the duct to a series of valve chests. The air from the tube flowing into the valve chests activated a sequence of valves and bladders that drove a pushrod that activated the piano key.

Antheil was fascinated by its musical possibilities. He composed several pieces of music for it. When he performed them in Paris, his detractors and admirers were about evenly divided.

In 1926, he premiered his Ballet Mecanique with an orchestra of 85 musicians. Eight grand pianos and eight player pianos, operated by cables, were attached to a master keyboard onstage. The score also required electric bells, saws, hammers and two airplane propellers.

Shortly into the concert, bedlam ensued. Booing, cat-calls and whistling (the highest form of contempt in France) was mixed with shouts of “bravo” and cheering. Antheil grimly continued to play. When it was over, he got an ovation that exceeded the cat-calls.

The dark shadow of National Socialism was drawing across Europe. The post-war liberal, conventions-be-damned atmosphere personified in the popular song of the day, “I Don’t Care, I Don’t Care,” began to disappear. The avant-garde was becoming “decadent.” The chaos of the great European Depression made people long for structure and order. The Nazis provided that and pulled the country out of its depression. The cost? Adherence to “The New Order.”

Antheil, now married, knew it was time for him to return to America. He had heard about employment in Hollywood as a composer for film music. He also heard the climate would help his on-going battles with asthma.

He had become an amateur student of endocrinology over the years. He was fascinated with the possibility of predicting human behavior based on which hormones dominated a person’s physiology. Over time, he devoured every book he could find on the subject.

His knowledge of the burgeoning science of endocrinology brought him to the attention of Arnold Gingrich, the editor of a new magazine, Esquire. Antheil, needing to have another source of income, began submitting article after article.

Hedy told several stories in later years about how she escaped her suffocating life with Fritz:

The most elaborate involved picking out a maid that most resembled her physically, befriended her and drugged her with sleeping pills, dressed in her uniform and slipped out of the house, caught a train to Paris, filed for divorce and moved to London.

The one historians seem to feel is closest to the truth is:

She attended Fritz’s company Christmas party at his factory in Hirtenberg, Austria. Afterward, she spent the winter in St. Moritz. Her husband was away on business. She returned to Vienna determined to revive her acting career. Mandl returned and was staunchly opposed. They fought ferociously. Fritz stormed off to one of his hunting lodges.

Hedy knew this was her chance. She stuffed several suitcases and trunks with all the jewelry and furs she could. She left Vienna that night, veiled and incognito and went to London.

In London at a dinner party, she met Louis B. Mayer, head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. He was on a “talent safari” in Europe for writers and actors.

Again, her story varies: Mayer shows tepid interest. His safari complete, he and his wife, Margaret, set sail for America. Hedy sells some jewelry and buys a ticket on the same ship. During the voyage, begins to “work” Mayer. After many meetings and discussions, he agrees to give her a contract. She must learn English and agree to change her name.

The name change story varies. The one that seems to have the most credence is that Mayer didn’t like the name Kiesler (too German) nor Mandl (possible lawsuits). One of Hollywood’s most famous silent screen actresses, Barbara La Marr had died several years earlier. MGM owned the rights to the name. Mayer said, “We’re going to replace death with life.”

When the ship docked in New York, it was Hedy Lamarr that walked down the gangplank. A new life had begun.

She spent her first few months in Hollywood perfecting her English, getting in top physical shape and attending parties.

Finally, a starring role became available. She appeared opposite Charles Boyer in the film Algiers. It was about a jewel thief, Pepe Le Moko, (Boyer) hiding out in the Casbah, the Arab quarter of the North African city of Algiers. He meets a beautiful French tourist, Gaby (Lamarr) and falls in love with her. Their romance draws him out of hiding to be with his new love. Enraged, his jealous mistress betrays him.

The movie was a huge hit and propelled Hedy to full-fledged stardom. (No, the famous Boyer line, “Come wiz me to ze Casbah” was not uttered in the film, but was in the movie’s trailer).

The film’s success gave Hedy more time on her hands. She occupied much of that inventing. She had an area of her house given over to inventing. While others spent their spare time with card games, reading or playing the piano, Hedy worked on a bouillon-like cube which, when mixed with water, made a Coca-Cola like drink. Or a tissue-box attachment that was utilized to dispose of used tissues. The work challenged and stimulated her in a way card games couldn’t. Her other favorite pastime was hosting small dinner parties with intellectually interesting people.

At one of these soirées, Hedy met Gilbert Adrian, a clothing designer who styled himself as simply “Adrian.” His designs were in demand at several of the major studios and popular among American women.

The Antheils were good friends with Adrian. He invited Antheil to join him at one of Hedy’s dinner parties. Antheil and Hedy were both intelligent, articulate people, both spoke flawless German and both enthusiastically anti-Nazi.

Several stories abound regarding the invitation. The one that is supposedly closest to the truth is that Hedy had heard about Antheil’s endocrinology knowledge. She was concerned that her breasts were too small and wanted to know “……can they be made bigger?” Antheil assured her they could be.

As the story goes, after the party, Hedy wrote her phone number on his windshield with her lipstick as she was leaving. The next day he called her and she invited him to dinner over which they discussed “various glandular extracts” that would enhance her breasts. Later, the conversation drifted to the war, which by 1940, was in full swing, even though the U.S. hadn’t officially entered yet.

Hedy evidently thought her knowledge gleaned from her years rubbing elbows with Mandl’s weapons systems associates would be useful to the government. She naively suggested she quit MGM and make herself available to the National Inventors Council. The NIC was a newly established government clearing house for inventions of possible military and/or national defense uses. “They could just have me around and ask me questions,” she explained. The NIC politely declined.

One of the guests that had attended Mandl’s dinner parties was Hellmuth Walter. Hedy initially met him at the annual company Christmas party at the Hirtenberger factory. He was a mechanical engineer and an expert at torpedo development. He had developed a remote controlled, wire guided torpedo powered by hydrogen peroxide that made no tell-tale wake. At dinner, charmed by the beautiful Frau Kiesler Mandl, he told her about its development and its underlying technology. He had no idea this beautiful young woman who nodded and smiled sweetly was intensely absorbing his ideas. The scientific application of torpedoes had captured her interest.

U.S. Navy torpedoes during the early years of the war were notoriously inefficient. As the war progressed, the Navy learned they had a multiplicity of problems with the weapon. They were running too deep, exploding too soon, or did not explode at all. The firing mechanisms were unreliable. In the early years of the war, 60% were duds.

Naval historian Theodore Roscoe said, “The only reliable feature of the torpedo was its unreliability.” One major flaw was that radio-controlled torpedoes operated on a single frequency signal could easily be jammed. Broadcasting interference at the frequency of the control signal would cause the torpedo to go off course.

Antheil and Hedy developed the idea of a wireless, radio-controlled torpedo-guidance system. It would incorporate a transmitter synchronized with a receiver. The ship firing the torpedo (transmitter) would send command signals to the torpedo (receiver). By changing their tuning simultaneously, quickly hopping randomly from frequency to frequency, the radio signal passing between them could not be jammed.

Antheil’s main contribution was to introduce the use of player piano rolls. Consisting of 88 keys and punched with the identical pattern of random holes, the transmitter and the receiver could be controlled using 88 different, shifting, short-burst frequencies. Hedy called the idea Frequenzsprungverfahren, literally, “frequency hopping process” or simply, “frequency-hopping.”

In late 1940, they made a package of blueprints, directions, and explanations and sent them to the NIC. The Council immediately showed interest in the project and asked for further information which was duly sent. The following June, they filed their patent application. Patent # 2292387, issued on August 11^th, 1942, covered a broader, more fundamental system they called the “Secret Communication System.”

A patent lawyer suggested Hedy and Antheil make future modifications on their patent which would extend its rights. They didn’t take his advice. They never followed through on efforts to extend the “life” of their patent.

Hedy and Antheil offered their invention to the U.S. Navy. Under the circumstances, they had no interest in developing a complicated guidance mechanism. They would be happy to get their old-fashioned unguided torpedoes to hit their targets and explode. Saying “that it was too bulky to be incorporated in the average torpedo,” they decided to pass.

They suggested Hedy could help the war effort more effectively by promoting the sale of war bonds. She did just that, raising nearly $25 million dollars. She sold kisses for $50000. a smack. But she continued to be interested in inventions, particularly those involving torpedoes.

The frequency-hopping concept languished until 1962. The U.S. Navy, during the Cuban missile crisis, implemented it on their ships during the blockade of the island. Why the Navy acquired the patent to a technology it had formerly rejected and kept that technology secret for over 40 years is still a mystery.

Lamarr’s and Antheil’s patent is the foundational patent for modern spread-spectrum communications. Twelve hundred patents refer to it. Bluetooth, COFDM (Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing — used in Wi-Fi connections) employ aspects of that technology.

In 1998, a Canadian wireless technology developer, Wi-LAN Inc., acquired a 49% interest in Hedy’s patent for an undisclosed amount of stock. Otherwise, Hedy and Antheil, who had died in 1959, received no compensation for their groundbreaking invention.

Today spread spectrum devices using micro chips make cell phones, pagers and communication on the internet possible. The technology is used in the U.S. government’s multi-billion dollar Milstar system. Milstar is a network of communications satellites in orbit providing jam resistant communications to the Armed Forces.

Hedy’s later years weren’t kind to her. Good film roles gradually evaporated and the flow of scripts dried up. She found occasional work in television, but mostly as a celebrity guest. She had earned a great deal of money, an estimated $50 million ($372 million today), but six divorces under California’s community property laws, attorney’s fees from a never-ending parade of lawsuits she initiated and lavish lifestyle consumed much of it.

There were charges of petty shoplifting from which she was acquitted.

By the 1980s, she had moved to Florida. Now in her 70s, her health was in decline and her eyesight was failing. She was on a tight budget and becoming reclusive.

On January 19, 2000 Hedy put on her makeup, coiffed her hair, applied perfume, dressed tastefully and lay down on her bed. She passed away sometime during the night. She was 86. At her request, her ashes were scattered in the Wienerwald in Vienna where she had walked with her father and learned about everything from printing presses to streetcars.

“My life was full of colors, full of life and above and below and over and under. But I don’t regret anything…”

Only four months after Pearl Harbor, a squadron of Mitchell B-25 bombers took off from the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Hornet. Destination: the Japanese capital of Tokyo. Lead by General Jimmy Doolittle, the raid served notice on the Japanese that contrary to what their leaders had told them, they weren’t invincible. The raid didn’t cause extensive damage on the capital, but it did wonders for morale in the U.S.

Furious and embarrassed, the Japanese military leadership felt they had to strike the U.S. homeland in retaliation as soon as possible. The continental U.S. was out of bomber range. From the fertile mind of Major General Sueyoshi Kusaba of the 9^th Army Technical Research Laboratory a bizarre plan emerged:

The “Fu-Go” (revenge) weapon.

9,000 hydrogen “fusen bakudan” balloons were constructed from mulberry paper and glued together with a potato flour paste. Production was delayed when it was discovered hungry workers were eating the paste.

The balloons were 33 feet in diameter and carried a payload of 1,000 lbs., consisting of one 15-kilogram anti-personnel bomb and two incendiary devices. They were rigged to fly between 30,000 and 38,000 feet on the high altitude easterly jet stream towards the U.S.

On November 3^rd, 1944, the first balloons were released. They reached the U.S. two days later. Only 285 confirmed sightings were made over a wide area, from the Aleutian Islands to Mexico. Experts believed that about 1,000 actually made landfall somewhere.

The U.S. government muzzled the media about reporting on the balloons. This averted any negative psychological damage at home and gave the Japanese the impression that the attack was a failure.

U.S. air reconnaissance discovered the plants in Japan that were the source of hydrogen production. A B-29 bombing raid effectively destroyed them.

With their production plants out of business, the Japanese ceased production of the balloons.

The Fu-go Weapon became Fu-gone.

The Japanese propaganda broadcasts announced great fires in the U.S. and an American public in a panic, but the bombs actually caused little damage. They caused fires in some areas and a few explosions occurred. The only reported casualties were a group of Sunday school students on a fishing trip in Oregon who were killed when they discovered a grounded balloon in a forest and tried to drag it back to their camp.

Sometimes truth is weirder than fiction.

His name was Doris, but he was built like a pro fullback. He was the first black American hero of WWII.

Born the son of a sharecropper in Waco, Texas, the 19 year old decided he wanted to earn money for the family and see the world. So in late 1939, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy.

After basic training at NAS Norfolk Virginia, he was assigned as a mess attendant 3^rd class to the battleship USS West Virginia, considered to be one of the best vessels in the U.S. Pacific Fleet.

His athletic abilities caught the notice of the ship’s captain who thought sports activities were good for morale. “Dorie,” as his shipmates called him, decided to try boxing. It was a good choice. He shortly became the “Big Weevie’s” heavyweight champion.

Early on a balmy Sunday morning December 7^th, 1941, the ships of The Fleet lay at anchor around Ford Island in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. The anchorage was nicknamed “Battleship Row.” The unsuspecting sailors roused themselves and headed to the mess hall for breakfast and morning colors.

Below decks, Dorie Miller was starting another day of mundane tasks, prescribed duty for blacks in the segregated U.S. Navy at that time.

Suddenly, the sound of explosions shattered the Sunday peace. Over 360 Japanese torpedo bombers, dive-bombers and fighters swept over the island of Oahu and raked the ships, airfields and other military installations. The first wave of torpedo bombers came in low and fast over Battleship Row. Three battleships were struck almost immediately, the California, Oklahoma and West Virginia.

 Hearing the explosions and feeling the ship lurch, Mess man Miller and other sailors scrambled topside to assist on deck. When they arrived, they saw a scene from hell. The “Big Weevie” was burning and severely damaged. Dorie saw ships burning all over the harbor. Men in the burning oil soaked water screamed for help.

Dorie joined fire and rescue parties and carried several of the wounded to safety. Afterwards, he jumped on one of the ship’s 50cal. antiaircraft machine guns. He had never been trained on the weapon, but quickly figured it out and began firing at strafing Japanese planes. “I actually downed four Japanese bombers,” he said later. He fired until he ran out of ammo and was ordered to abandon ship. He swam under water and around burning oil leaking from nearby ships.

His heroism went unnoticed for several months, until Lawrence Reddick, director of the Black Culture Center in New York learned of it. He lobbied the Navy to add Miller’s name to the list of Pearl Harbor heroes.

The black and white press picked up on the story and some referred to him as “Dorie Miller, the first Negro hero.” The War Department sent him on a national tour to promote enlistments among black men. Admiral Chester Nimitz awarded him the Navy Cross and promoted him to ship’s cook third class.

He was reassigned to the USS Liscome Bay, one of the small, fast and lightly armored “jeep carriers” designed to bring aircraft to the battles in the Pacific.

The Liscome headed west for her first operational mission as part of Adm. Raymond Spruance’s U.S. Fifth Fleet.

The jeep carriers of the fleet fought bravely in action in Gilbert Islands. The Japanese, knowing they had lost the fight they had started, fought the fight of the desperate, flinging wave after wave of attacking aircraft on the fleet. On the night of November 23^rd, the fighting was particularly fierce. A recently arrived Japanese submarine sent a spread of torpedoes at the Liscome. One hit the torpedo and bomb storage area and the entire ship exploded. She sank in twenty three minutes.

Only 55 officers and 217 sailors were rescued. Among the 644 who went down with the ship was Dorie Miller.

The news hit the black community like a thunderbolt. Remembering his sacrifice, increasing numbers of black men and women flocked to work in factories manufacturing war material.

1942 started out badly for the United States. It was licking its wounds from the Pearl Harbor assault the previous December. The U.S. Navy was working around the clock to repair the damage inflicted on it by Japan. Morale in the country was below low.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt knew something had to be done. And done quickly. In a meeting with The Joint Chiefs of Staff in late December 1941 he insisted that Japan be bombed as soon as possible. Only retaliation would boost public morale.

The Japanese High Command had told the Japanese people that they were invulnerable to attack from the U.S. An attack on their homeland would create doubt about the reliability of their leadership.

But how?

The U. S. didn’t have a bomber that could reach the Japanese homeland from Hawaii, its most forward base in the Pacific.

Navy Captain Francis Low, assistant Chief of Staff for anti-submarine warfare, had an idea: What if a flight of twin-engine medium bombers could be brought close enough to Japan to successfully inflict damage on that country? He ran the idea by Chief of Naval Operations, the stern, aloof Admiral Ernest J. King.

Instead of chewing Low out for taking his time with such a cockamamie idea, King liked the sheer audacity of striking back at an enemy that had nearly destroyed “his” Navy.

The raid was planned and led by aviation pioneer, flight instructor and test pilot, USAAF Lieutenant Colonel James “Jimmy” Doolittle.

The bombers would have a cruising range of 2400 nautical miles with a 2000 lb. bomb load. Mitchell B-25B bombers would be modified to hold twice their normal fuel reserves, which would double their 1300 nautical mile range. The bombers would have to make the trip without a full compliment of guns and without fighter escort.

Furthermore, it would have to be a one-way trip. The launching carrier couldn’t land the bombers.

A runway was painted with an outline of a carrier deck on an auxiliary airstrip at Elgin Field in the panhandle of Florida. The all-volunteer crews practiced takeoffs, trained for low-altitude bombing and over-water navigation. And practiced. And trained. And practiced. And trained. Absolute secrecy surrounded their efforts. Security was as tight as a drum.

On April Fool’s Day, 1942, sixteen modified bombers, their five man crews and support personnel were loaded aboard the USS Hornet. Each plane carried four 500-pound bombs, three of which were HE (high explosive) and one with incendiaries.

The Hornet got under way the next day, escorted by an additional carrier, the USS Enterprise and a flotilla of cruisers and destroyers. Strict radio silence was maintained. It was pedal-to-the-metal as the task force dashed across the Pacific at 20 knots.

Initially, things went well and according to plan. Then, on the 18^th, while still about 650 nautical miles from the Japanese mainland, they were spotted by an enemy patrol boat. The boat was sunk by Navy gunfire, but not before a warning had been radioed to Japan.

Doolittle and the Hornet’s captain, Captain Marc “Pete” Mitscher decided to launch immediately, 170 miles further from the targets than planned. All planes were stripped of any non-essential equipment and guns.

All aircraft were launched successfully and broke formation to fly singly at wave-top level to avoid detection by Japanese radar.

The aircraft arrived over Japan at noon local time, climbed to 1500 feet and bombed 10 military and industrial targets.

The Japanese were caught completely by surprise. People on the ground thought the planes were theirs and waved and shouted encouragement to the airmen.

After dropping their bombs, the flight crossed over Japan and crossed the E. China Sea toward China. The plan involved landing on the China coast where they would be refueled by Chinese partisans at a place called Zhuzhou. They would then fly to the interior of China to Kuomintang (Nationalist capital) and American ally, Chiang Kai-shek, who would receive the flyers, take the planes as part of U.S. lend-lease and see that the crewmen returned to the U.S.

But night was approaching, the weather was turning bad and fuel was running low. Luckily, a tailwind made it possible for the planes to reach China but not Zhuzhou.

The pilots realized they had two choices: bail out over eastern China or crash land along the coast. All 15 of the planes reached the coast and some took option #1, others #2. The pilot of the 16^th plane, convinced he couldn’t make the coast, veered off and landed in the Soviet Union, where their aircraft was confiscated and the men interred (they languished there for over a year).

Some of the crews, including Doolittle, with the help of Chinese civilians and soldiers managed to eventually return home. Doolittle thought he was going to be court-martialed for losing all of his planes.

Instead, the raid bolstered American morale such that Roosevelt promoted him two ranks, jumping him from lieutenant colonel to brigadier general and awarded him The Medal of Honor.

All 80 raiders received the DSC (Distinguished Flying Cross). All those killed or wounded received a Purple Heart. The Chinese government decorated all Raiders.

Not all made it home. Three were KIA, eight were taken prisoner, of which one died in captivity, the others executed by the Japanese. Twenty-eight stayed and fought on in the China-Burma-India theatre and several died there.

The Japanese were furious about the attack. They scoured the Chinese countryside for the Raiders and killed many Chinese whom they suspected of helping them. Estimates of up to 10000 civilians lost their lives.

The military impact on Japan was little more than a mosquito bite. But American morale soared. The Japanese High Command “lost much face.” They could no longer assure their people they were invulnerable from American attacks.

They hadn’t seen anything…yet.

Bushido (the way of the warrior) was a code of conduct for the samurai (warrior) class in Japan, which has been compared to the medieval chivalric code of Western Europe. It incorporated many of the aspects of chivalry, such as courtesy toward women, strong spirituality and no fear of death. It became the basis for the philosophy of education for Japanese of all classes and formed a large part of the training and discipline of the Japanese Army officer class.

Incorporating the mysticism, asceticism and self-denial of Zen Buddhism, the harsh discipline of Bushido required the absolute loyalty of the soldier, who was trained to fight to the death for the Emperor. A soldier’s duty was to endure death rather than surrender. Surrender was the ultimate shame.

In defeat, they were encouraged to commit “seppuku” (the formal term for hara-kiri), ritual suicide. The ritual never varied. Kneeling down, the soldier would thrust his sword into his abdomen, making ritual cuts to the right then up and down in such a way as to disembowel himself. Opening the stomach would release the soul, which was believed to reside there. A “second” would stand behind him with a drawn sword. He would quickly end the suffering by beheading the soldier.

The code accounts for the fanatic Japanese fighting mentality in the Pacific theatre in WWII. It also accounts for the brutal treatment of 150000 Allied POWs, who were considered moral failures and cowards. The POWs angered their captors by not demonstrating a sufficient sense of shame for surrendering. They were regarded as contemptible and sub-human.

Many Japanese intellectuals felt that the purity of The Bushido Code was perverted during WW II by the group of military extremists who allowed atrocities to be committed on POWs.