Pearl Harbor Anniversary

I'm writing this on the seventieth anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, and America's sudden entry into the bloodiest and most widespread conflict the world has ever known. I hope that humanity never forgets the harm that evil intentions can precipitate. I was told that co-pilot of my father's crew, Lt.(jg) Robert J. Berens was on the Iowa that morning. Several other airmen of VPB-118 were there, as well. By contributing to a secure and just America and a secure and just world we honor their memory, and we honor all veterans.

Google Maps

If you haven't looked at the maps page on this site, it's worth a visit. I have links to maps of major airfields that VPB-118 spent varying lengths of time at. Google has enhanced their maps to link to photos taken on the ground. You can now get a much better idea of what some of these locations look like currently. Some of the locations, like Iwo Jima and Tinian, have preservation areas which are largely maintained as they were back in 1945. You can see the gooney birds on Midway Island and rusting guns where they were abandoned. Open each map in a new window using the link below the map and explore!

Adding Chronology of VPB-118 To Site

I started a chronology of the squadron a few days ago. I am only adding a paragraph or two a day because I have to synopsize the book which involves a little editing and writing on my part. Please check back to see how it's going. I plan to continue through until the end of the book and then to link from the crew pages to the chronology so that the text is not duplicated.

By the way, the complete roster of the squadron is now up on the site. An advantage of this is that when relatives try to find their veteran on the internet by using a search engine, everyone is there on one page, with the links to the rest of the site. When I first tried to find my Dad's squadron, this was not possible. Now it is.

Happy Independence Day

Happy Independence Day, anyone who might be reading this. I'll be scanning some stuff today and if things go quickly may even post new stuff to the VPB-118 site.

Sunday update: I finished scanning the scrapbooks of John Hanan. There are some remarkable images in it. He was co-pilot of Mike Keiser's plane, and as such had great opportunity to snap some memorable shots. He seemed to be somewhat of a shutterbug as well, so it was a fortunate combination. I made some formatting corrections to the website but did not have time to make any new pages with the new images. Here's a sample; I'm not sure what airfield this is. I think it may be a Japanese airfield because photographing an American airfield might be a security risk. But I really am not sure whether that's even true.

VPB-119

I'm trying to tear myself away but this was an interesting find and I didn't want to lose the link.

Two new pages

Here are two new pages and as promised they are shots of two ships under attack, one a coastal trawler and the other a "fox tare charlie" which is naval nomenclature for a 4,000 gross ton freighter transport. These ships were used for transport from mainland Asia (via Korea) to Japan. The idea was to starve Japan's island industrial economy to weaken its war machine. The PBY4-2 was ideally configured for this kind of search and destroy mission.

Rogers Fiedler

Yesterday we got word from the Fiedler family that Rogers Fiedler of the Rinehart Crew has passed away. I should think that anyone who met Rogers would have enjoyed his genial, friendly attitude. He and his family hosted the reunion in Saint Charles, Missouri in 2004, much to the enjoyment of all that attended. Rogers will sure be missed. Here's the obituary.

I'm going to work on some scans this weekend; I should be posting some on the actual website later on. I'll dedicate this weekend's work to Rogers.

Hello, World!

On Memorial Day, 2009 I am setting up this blog as an adjunct to the VPB-118 site at hypercontinuum.com which also can be accessed via (logically enough) vpb118.com. I confess that I feel that I have been late in creating this blog, by which I hope that the crew and family of VPB-118 may interact, but as they say, “Better late than never.”

Persons stumbling across this blog may wonder what a VPB-118 is. Please feel free to visit the site to find out more.

I will be scanning some new images and posting them on the site in the coming weeks, barring unforseen problems. I will comment on my progress as I do so.

In addition to the new images, I plan on updating the look of the site with my newly-learned CSS knowledge. The current site was created in 2002 over a the course of few weeks and has not been significantly upgraded since then! I'm looking forward to the challenge.