Dwight R Messimer – författare

Patrol Wing Ten was the only U.S. Navy aviation unit to fight the Japanese in the early weeks of World War II, and the daring exploits of its PBY scout-plane pilots offer a dramatic tale of heroism, duty, and controversy. Poorly equipped and dead tired from flying back-to-back patrols with no fighter cover, the men lost sixty-six percent of their aircraft in just eight weeks as they took on an enemy that outnumbered them nearly 1,000 to one. This forceful narrative places the reader right in the midst of their courageous battle. Dwight Messimer's aggressive research on the topic has resulted in a work that provides moving details to their desperate but valiant acts against the seemingly invincible Japanese juggernaut that swept across the southwest Pacific at the opening of the war. By Christmas Day in 1941, Patrol Wing Ten was forced to split into two groups, one fighting an air and sea campaign in Java, the other fighting as infantry on Bataan and Corregidor. Moving back and forth between the two groups, Messimer skillfully interweaves their experiences with the major events of the overall war. He uses material from the fifty survivors he managed to track down and deftly captures their ability to maintain a sense of humour in the face of overwhelming danger.The more than one hundred personal and official documents uncovered during years of research reveal new information relating to technical points about the planes, facts verified by the PBY crews that do not agree with popularly accepted ideas. To those who believe the wing accomplished nothing, and this group includes many pilots, Messimer argues that while attempts to bomb the Japanese fleet proved futile because the PBYs were unsuitable for such a task, the wing's rescue and evacuation missions saved many lives. The airdales themselves were not so lucky. When Corregidor fell, nearly half of them were captured and many died in captivity.

Patrol Wing Ten was the only U.S. Navy aviation unit to fight the Japanese in the early weeks of World War II, and the daring exploits of its PBY scout-plane pilots offer a dramatic tale of heroism, duty, and controversy. Poorly equipped and dead tired from flying back-to-back patrols with no fighter cover, the men lost sixty-six percent of their aircraft in just eight weeks as they took on an enemy that outnumbered them nearly 1,000 to one. This forceful narrative places the reader right in the midst of their courageous battle. Dwight Messimer''s aggressive research on the topic has resulted in a work that provides moving details to their desperate but valiant acts against the seemingly invincible Japanese juggernaut that swept across the southwest Pacific at the opening of the war. By Christmas Day in 1941, Patrol Wing Ten was forced to split into two groups, one fighting an air and sea campaign in Java, the other fighting as infantry on Bataan and Corregidor. Moving back and forth between the two groups, Messimer skillfully interweaves their experiences with the major events of the overall war. He uses material from the fifty survivors he managed to track down and deftly captures their ability to maintain a sense of humor in the face of overwhelming danger. The more than one hundred personal and official documents uncovered during years of research reveal new information relating to technical points about the planes, facts verified by the PBY crews that do not agree with popularly accepted ideas. To those who believe the wing accomplished nothing--and this group includes many pilots--Messimer argues that while attempts to bomb the Japanese fleet proved futile because the PBYs were unsuitable for such a task, the wing''s rescue and evacuation missions saved many lives. The airdales themselves were not so lucky. When Corregidor fell, nearly half of them were captured and many died in captivity.

By the summer of 1915, Germany was faced with two related, but somewhat dissimilar problems; how to break the British blockade and how to stop or seriously disrupt the British supply line across the Atlantic. The solution to breaking the blockade was to find a way over it, through it, or under it. Aircraft in those days were too primitive, underpowered, and short range to accomplish the first and Germany lacked the naval strength to force a passage through the blockade. But if a fleet of cargo U-boats could be built that were large enough to carry meaningful loads and had the range to make a round trip between Germany and the United States without having to refuel, the blockade might be successfully broken. Responsibility for implementing this solution rested with a section of German Navy Intelligence known as the Etappendienst.The Germans also lacked the naval strength to effect the solution to the other problem; cutting Britain''s supply line to America. The German Navy could not defeat the Royal Navy in a slug-fest and there were not enough U-boats to effectively block Britain''s cross-Atlantic sea trade. The answer lay in sabotage--blowing up the munitions factories, the depots, and the ships, and infecting the remounts--horses and mules--with Anthrax and Glanders at the western end of the supply line. Responsibility for carrying out sabotage of all types in the United States rested with a newly established subsection of the German Army Intelligence called the Sektion Politik that sent trained saboteurs to the United States beginning in 1915. German agents, together with American sympathizers, carried out more than fifty successful attacks involving fire and explosion before America''s entry into the war on 6 April 1917, in addition to spreading Anthrax and Glanders on the East Coast.Of the two solutions to those problems, sabotage was incompatible with Germany''s primary diplomatic goal to keep the United States out of the war, while the other, breaking the blockade with a fleet of cargo U-boats, provided the least danger of bringing the United States into the war. The two solutions were widely dissimilar, but the fact that the cargo U-boat project and the sabotage campaign were run by intelligence agencies--the Etappendienst (Navy) and the Geheimdienst (Army), through the agency of one man--Paul Hilken, in one US city--Baltimore, make them inseparable. Those separate solutions created the dichotomy that produced the U-Boat Deutschland and the Baltimore Sabotage Cell.

An Incipient Mutiny traces the creation of the U.S. Army Signal Corps Aeronautical Division in 1907 up to the establishment of the Air Service of the National Army in 1918. It is a shocking account of shortsightedness, mismanagement, criminal fraud, and cover-up that led ultimately to a pilot revolt against the military establishment. Dwight R. Messimer focuses on the personalities of the pilots who initiated the rebellion and on the Signal Corps officers whose mismanagement brought it on.The official air force histories say nothing about the poor construction and design flaws in the airplanes that the Signal Corps used, which were responsible for the deaths of 25 percent of the pilots, a death rate so high that no life insurance company would issue them a policy. At the same time, there were airplanes on the market that were superior in every way to the planes the army was using and less expensive as well. The loss of human life, then, could not have been more senseless.

Eleven Months to Freedom recounts the daring World War I escape of German midshipman Erich Killinger. Falsely accused of bombing a railway station after crashing his plane at sea, he was sentenced to life in the Sakhalin coal mines.

Shipped by rail with several other POWs across Russia, Killinger was determined to return home. In order to do this, though, he needed to jump from the train, cross Siberia, and make it to a German-run escape pipeline in China—all while braving bandits, subzero temperatures, threats of starvation, the risk of capture by Japanese and Russian troops, and possible internment by the Chinese. Once he made it to China, Killinger used money and fake identity papers to survive along the 800 miles to Shanghai. Improbably playing the role of a dashing French blade, Killinger lived the high life on one ship, then later served as a humble deckhand on another. Risking discovery by the British, he made a bold and risky move as his final destination neared.