WWII Eccentric Heroes

[Naphtali]

Kelly's Heroes? I'm sure Max would thank you for the compliment.

Not nearly so elaborate or planned, according to Max. More akin to seeing Tiffany's front door off its hinges during a riot. . . . And you just happen to have the means to blow the vault.

As Jack Lemmon said in How To Murder Your Wife, "No one would ever know, Harold. Push the button."

 

[dhermann1]

WSC!

I can't believe nobody has mentioned my main man, Winston Spencer Churchill! God knows he was a hero, and God knows he was eccentric.

 

[Smithy]

I can't believe nobody has mentioned my main man, Winston Spencer Churchill! God knows he was a hero, and God knows he was eccentric.

Good call and one of my heroes. If you haven't seen it, get hold of "The Gathering Storm", Albert Finney gives an unbelievably good performance as Winnie, you'd swear it was him.

 

[dhermann1]

Of course I've seen it. I loved Robert Hardy in "The Wilderness Years", too.
Thought Vanessa Redgrave was great as Clemmie. You'd have to make a hundred movies to do justice to his life, tho. I wish I could be a fly on the wall on just any average evening, after dinner, with brandy and cigars, when Winston got himself cranked up for his usual all night disquisition on the state of world affairs. If you're a Churchill fan I recommend "On the Fringes of Power" by Sir John Colville. Jock Colville was Churchill's private secretary for most of his premiership, and his diaries are just brimming with insights and anecdotes. He also wrote "Action This Day", which I haven't read yet. There's not a single tiny detail of WSC's life that isn't both instructive and immensely entertaining.
Oh, and of course, don't fail to read "My Early Life". The ultimate adventurer!

 

[Diamondback]

As far as Churchill, he truly was "larger than life"--but then again, would you expect anything less from some of the same roots as MacArthur?

(Mac, FDR, and Churchill were distant cousins--sixth cousins, IIRC--their common ancestor was a Sarah Belcher of Massachusetts.)

 

[dhermann1]

Really???

I'm glad you brought that up (get it? Belcher? Brought up??? . . . . uhhh . . . . . sorry. . . never mind.)

 

[Diamondback]

Ohh, OUCH! Who died and made you the new Punisher?

lol

 

[anselmo1]

Here is my favorite of WWII, General Curtis LeMay!

 

[Story]

Here is my favorite of WWII, General Curtis LeMay!

[Ralph Kramden voice] POW, TO THE STONE AGE! [/Ralph Kramden voice]

 

[eniksleestack]

What about William J. "Wild Bill" Donovan? Creator of the OSS (which later became the CIA) and the 1st person to be awarded all four of the highest US medals (Medal of Honor, Distinguished Service Cross, Distinguished Service Medal, and the National Security Medal.

 

[plain old dave]

John Cantius Garand.

For the uninitiated, inventor of the US Rifle, Caliber .30 M1.

Eccentricities:

-Was told the M1 couldn't be mass-produced, so he proceeded to invent ALL the tools and dies, etc. to do JUST that.

-Had an ice-skating rink in his home.

 

[Zemke Fan]

Interesting photo...

... of LeMay. Notice that the bottom THREE rows on his ribbon rack are all foreign medals, including the RAF DFC.

 

[Edward]

I wouldn't exactly call Hess a 'hero'. I'd call him a personality...a deranged one, at that.

Is anyone else getting tired with how easily people throw around the term 'hero'? Heros are people who do something truly heroic. Autie Murphy was a hero. Joe Foss was a hero. Guys like my grandpa, who was a B.A.R. gunner in the 69th infantry division, was just another honorable guy doing his job. He didn't do anything heroic.

Hess.... it's culturally, politically and in no small way morally difficult for us, I think, given what the Nazis represented to cast them. I can have a certain level of respect for what Hess tried to do when he parachuted right into the enemy heartland in what was an attempt to bring peace. That at least took balls, deranged as he might have been! I do tend to think of the guys who carried out the attempted assassination of Hitler in 44 as having taken a heroic risk, though I don't really know anything much about them at all.

To me, though, every one of those guys who went out into the field, wherever they were from and whoever they fought for, deserves some level of respect - so many of them believed that they were taking their life in their hands in order to protect their country, their ideals, their culture, their family, as they saw it. For some reason, the ones that always stick in my head are the guys who were the gunners on the bombers. Sitting a glass bubble with nothing but, effectively, a goldfishbowl and a big mother of a machine gun between you and the bullets.... like a sitting target. I'm sure plenty of guys were equally vulnerable, just seems in my mind that the glass bowl around those gunners exaggerates how exposed they were somehow. Just donig their job, maybe..... but quite honestly, there's no way you'd have gotten me up in one of those. Took more balls than ever I'd have.

More strictly on topic, Bader was the first I thought of.

 

[Smithy]

Bader

Edward, I'm not that sure that Bader really was so eccentric. Apart from the fact he flew with prosthetic legs (and he wasn't the only aircrew to do so), he was a largely conservative figure, and if you agree with Al Deere's and Johnnie Johnson's views on Bader, far too conservative and old fashioned in his views on air warfare tactics. More controversial I would personally think than terribly eccentric.

 

[MikeBravo]

Oh that's a good one .
If you have read Robert Johnson's Thunderbolt Book, you get a REALLY good idea of how crazy they were and how they wanted to destroy the enemy without regard to their own life even.

Jerome

I heard it once said the main difference between the British pilots and the Polish pilots was that the British wanted to shoot down planes, the Poles wanted to kill Germans.

The flew in all sorts of weather to get a kill when most pilots would have stayed on the ground. Sounds eccentric to me

 

[dostacos]

He was a great one too!

How about Douglas Bader? Old and a double amputee, but that didn't stop him from making ace, or escaping from POW camps repeatedly.

-Jake

and the only pilot with a confirmed "scared" When he was flying bomber escort as soon as the German fighters saw the spitfires they would turn tail and head for home. Each after action report he would list the number of German pilots they scared away from the bombers [he wanted to fight but they would hi tail out of the area and since he had to protect the bombers he could not chase.] His superiors got rather MIFFED at him and told him to stop that type of reporting or they would ground him. The next day they were jumped and he got into a climbing contest with the German and blacked out for a moment, when he looked around the German was no where around.

When he landed all of his squadron mates congratulated him on the great shot he made and the pilot bailed out. He then showed his squadron that the tape [indicating the guns are loaded] was still covering all his machine guns, he had NOT FIRED a single shot.

He reported one CONFIRMED scared, and both he and the superiors dropped the subject lol as a prosthetist, I gotta be impressed. He tried to escape so many times the Germans would take his legs away from him, eventually he did escape and returned to England which is when the above happened.

 

[Smithy]

and the only pilot with a confirmed "scared" When he was flying bomber escort as soon as the German fighters saw the spitfires they would turn tail and head for home. Each after action report he would list the number of German pilots they scared away from the bombers [he wanted to fight but they would hi tail out of the area and since he had to protect the bombers he could not chase.] His superiors got rather MIFFED at him and told him to stop that type of reporting or they would ground him. The next day they were jumped and he got into a climbing contest with the German and blacked out for a moment, when he looked around the German was no where around.

When he landed all of his squadron mates congratulated him on the great shot he made and the pilot bailed out. He then showed his squadron that the tape [indicating the guns are loaded] was still covering all his machine guns, he had NOT FIRED a single shot.

He reported one CONFIRMED scared, and both he and the superiors dropped the subject lol as a prosthetist, I gotta be impressed. He tried to escape so many times the Germans would take his legs away from him, eventually he did escape and returned to England which is when the above happened.

Sorry dostacos, but there are a lot of factual errors with what you have said about Bader. For starters Bader never escaped from Colditz, he was released on the 14th April 1945 when the prison was liberated. After being released Bader never again saw action, as after rest and recuperation he was posted to Tangmere to command the Fighter Leaders' School and the war in Europe had ended.

As for your recount of "one confirmed scared" I am a little confused by what you mean. I have just looked through the list of all of Bader's victories in Ken Wynn's "Men of the Battle of Britain" and there is no record of any 109 downed in such a way, either probable or confirmed. Also if you are assuming that Bader (if indeed he did) was the only RAF pilot to down an enemy aircraft without firing then this is incorrect. There were several such examples during the war.

As I have mentioned before in relation to Bader there is a tendency to call Bader eccentric because of his lack of legs. I personally think this is the wrong way to look at the man, and indeed I believe Bader himself would not have been happy to be given that moniker because of his condition. Bader after the war was a great champion of changing the perception of the disabled and to stop the generally perceived idea of their difference.

IMO, Bader was controversial rather than eccentric. His views on the Big Wing and his ideas regarding airfighting were and still are controversial. His role in the sacking of Dowding and Park after the Battle of Britain is still a very hot topic and elicits strong criticism from many historians.

Sorry to go on a bit, but the Battle of Britain is a great interest and passion of mine, and especially the men who fought it. There are many myths and untruths floating around on the internet concerning The Few and they do no credit to the real actions, courage and bravery of these men.

 

[dostacos]

Sorry dostacos, but there are a lot of factual errors with what you have said about Bader. For starters Bader never escaped from Colditz, he was released on the 14th April 1945 when the prison was liberated. After being released Bader never again saw action, as after rest and recuperation he was posted to Tangmere to command the Fighter Leaders' School and the war in Europe had ended.

As for your recount of "one confirmed scared" I am a little confused by what you mean. I have just looked through the list of all of Bader's victories in Ken Wynn's "Men of the Battle of Britain" and there is no record of any 109 downed in such a way, either probable or confirmed. Also if you are assuming that Bader (if indeed he did) was the only RAF pilot to down an enemy aircraft without firing then this is incorrect. There were several such examples during the war.

As I have mentioned before in relation to Bader there is a tendency to call Bader eccentric because of his lack of legs. I personally think this is the wrong way to look at the man, and indeed I believe Bader himself would not have been happy to be given that moniker because of his condition. Bader after the war was a great champion of changing the perception of the disabled and to stop the generally perceived idea of their difference.

IMO, Bader was controversial rather than eccentric. His views on the Big Wing and his ideas regarding airfighting were and still are controversial. His role in the sacking of Dowding and Park after the Battle of Britain is still a very hot topic and elicits strong criticism from many historians.

Sorry to go on a bit, but the Battle of Britain is a great interest and passion of mine, and especially the men who fought it. There are many myths and untruths floating around on the internet concerning The Few and they do no credit to the real actions, courage and bravery of these men.

poor memory, I knew he got out, just did not remember how, the account was from his book, after the Battle of Britain when he was doing bomber escort duty, that would make since that he would have been shot down during this part of his tour of duty the book describes how one of his feet hung up on the canopy and the strap broke leaving him with only one leg. The German doctor was surprised at the amputation, then looked at the other leg finding it also a healed amputation

 

[dhermann1]

Bader

My favorite,and most inspiring, story from that book is when he was in the hospital after his terrible accident in 1932. He was only 23 at the time. He had lost both legs, one above the knee, the other below the knee. As he lay in the bed, he felt the pain starting to subside. Then he heard a nurse in the hall say "Hush, there's a boy in there dying." When he heard that, he started thrashing and kicking and moving about till he felt the pain come back. He knew then that he had stopped his body from shutting down and giving up the ghost. Michael Caine said that when they were filming "The Battle of Britain", Bader was a technical consultant. He kept telling them "Make sure you tell them that we won! Make sure everyone knows we won!" Just a wonderful, colorful super-heroic human being.

 

[Smithy]

Just a small thing dhermann1 but Bader crashed his Bulldog in 1931.

Bader stirred strong emotions in all those who met him. He was usually loved or loathed by fellow aircrew and members of the RAF. A Battle of Britain historian I know and who knew Bader had less than flattering things to say of the man but also said there was no doubting the man's tenacity.

Perhaps not so strangely another technically advisor on The Battle of Britain film stirred much the same strong feelings in others - Adolf Galland.