I know that Romania was a minor Axis member but I'm still a bit surprised the US had fighter planes over there on D-Day. I found this... I wonder where he took off from, landed and refueled. Ploesti is a long way from Italy.
ploesti is only about 2/3 as far from bari as berlin is from england. note also that fighter cover didn't always go all the way with the bombers and it says he was on his way to ploesti; the romanian border is no farther than the ruhrgebiet from london. the ploesti airfields were a big target for bombers, probably the most important outside of germany. the first raids actually left from libya (w/o fighter support); a lot of raids left from the USSR (or landed there afterwards) after the red army had cleared out the crimea and ukraine. from there a lot of fighters could probably reach ploesti and the P38 very certainly. with drop tanks it could fly more than 3000 km.
The famous raids on Ploesti took off from, and returned to, Benghazi-- but they were in 1943 IIRC. In June 1944 the US tried dive bombing missions against Ploesti, using P-38s as the dive bombers. The Lightnings were met by substantial numbers of Me109s and Romanian-built fighters, and took substantial losses but scored some kills themselves. I'm guessing his was one of these. (The Air Corps was trying to find a role for the P-38 in the ETO, as it was not much of a match for the front-line German fighters despite its great success in the Pacific.)
well, its great range was useful in the broad blue pacific, and theoretically would have been for bomber escort, but for dogfighting it was very naturally an absolute pig. not a prohibitive defect for the booming and zooming used in the pacific (as long as japan had any experienced pilots left, getting into a turnfest with a bad idea for any american fighter) but when you need to stay stuck in to protect bombers... nor could it throw the weight of metal the thundebolt could, so it was second choice at best for ground attack. sure was purty though.
OK, this is just trivial, but in honor of Opening Day.... President Benjamin Harrison is the first president to attend a baseball game (1892) and President William Taft is the first president to throw out an Opening Day pitch (1910). Throwing out the first pitch becomes an instant tradition for presidents, but it is not until 1993 and President Clinton that a president actually reaches the catcher with his toss....
Didn't all of them before that throw the ball out of their seat in the stands? Your statement is misleading.
You should look at casualty figures from the 30-years-war or both World Wars to put these numbers into some kind of perspective.
Why? This research and reassessment of Civil War casualties wasn't undertaken to score points in some sort of war-casualty pissing match.
Apples to oranges - nobody is saying that those wars weren't horrific. Mostly this seems to be a better attempt to calculate the death toll for the war that had a major impact on US history, and still resonates today.
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BH7m1_eedCE&feature=related"]Robert Wuhl's Assume the Position 101 & 201 - YouTube[/ame]
Did you know that Ben Franklin, just for the hell of it, came up with a list of over 200 synonymns for "drunk." Some are dated, but some really should make a come back. http://www.mentalfloss.com/blogs/archives/113876 My two favorites: "His Head is full of Bees," and "he's seen a flock of moons."
i used to collect different expressions for hurling, and my two favorites were "technicolor yawn" and "having a word with shanks".
Did you know that the face of the most popular CPR doll in the world is based on the deathmask of a 19th century drowning victim called 'l'inconnue de la Seine'?
Did you know the Hindenburg made 17 round trips between Germany and the U.S. before it crashed 75 years ago yesterday? Because I didn't - all I knew was that "Oh, the humanity" broadcast. Anyway, the photographs are amazing.