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Mission Update! October 2015
National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force
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Stay Connected
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Let the Mighty 8th be a part of your Legacy
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For more information about Planned Gifts and the Mighty Eighth Foundation, please contact Pam Vining
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National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force Legacy of Honor program
Please help us keep admission free for World War II Veterans by donating $10 to the "Legacy of Honor Program" Follow the link below to make your donation.
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Purchase a 2016 Calendar Today!
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Bringing Masters of the Air to Life!
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Donald L. Miller, From Page to Screen: Bringing "Masters of the Air" to Life Wednesday, October 7, 2015 6:00 pm Reception; 7:00 pm Program Location: Atlanta History Center
Donald Miller discusses his book "Masters of the Air" and the process of bringing its contents to the television screen for a ten-part series on HBO. Produced by Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, the series depicts the heroism and courage of young Americans in the Eighth Air Force in their struggle to defeat Hitler's Germany.
"Masters of the Air" is the deeply personal story of the American bomber boys in World War II who brought the war to Hitler's doorstep. With the narrative power of fiction, Donald Miller takes you on a harrowing ride through the fire-filled skies over Berlin, Hanover, and Dresden and describes the terrible cost of bombing for the German people.
Flying at 25,000 feet in thin, freezing air that no warriors had ever encountered before, bomber crews battled new types of assaults on body and mind. Air combat was deadly, but intermittent - periods of inactivity and anxiety were followed by short bursts of fire and fear. Unlike infantrymen, bomber boys slept on clean sheets, drank beer in local pubs, and danced to the swing music of Glenn Miller's Air Force band, which toured U.S. air bases in England. But they had a much greater chance of dying than ground soldiers. Drawn from recent interviews, oral histories, and American, British, German, and other archives, "Masters of the Air" is an authoritative, deeply moving account of the world's first and only bomber war.
This lecture is held in partnership with the Atlanta History Center; price discounts refer to AHC Members.
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This year you get to Choose Your Mission!
We're hosting both a 5K (3.1 mile) and an 8K (4.9 mile). The courses will run through the campus of JCB, Inc., starting and finishing at the museum.
The morning will kick off with a Kids Fun Run and afterwards, our British Pub will be offering a pint to all runners over 21 years old. Runners receive free entry to the museum all day!
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Win a Youth Bomber Jacket!
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Fall has arrived and we're so excited! We have so many new items!
Check out our vests, ladies fleece jackets, long sleeve t-shirts and much, much more to keep you warm this fall.
Our reversible jackets will be arriving any day now. You can choose from navy/khaki or black/charcoal. 2016 Calendars arriving soon.
It's not too early to think about holiday gift giving. We have the bomber jackets and flight jackets for the boys. We have added an adorable flight jacket for the girls in pink.
Purchase a raffle ticket for a genuine children's leather jacket. Drawing will be December 10th, just in time for Christmas giving. Tickets are $5 for 1 or $20 for 5.
The Museum Gift Store has so many unique items - propellers, airplane desk top clocks, WWII victory mugs, 1000 piece puzzles, and models for young and young at heart. And we have so much more!
Shop now and enjoy the season.
Thank you for your continued support.
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Character Counts Conference
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by Heather Thies
On September 18 the museum's education department hosted the 4th Annual Character Counts! Conference. It was our largest and most successful conference yet! The conference featured a welcome from the Savannah Chatham County Public School System's superintendent Dr. Thomas Lockamy The Georgia Teacher of the Year, Ernie Lee, who teaches here in Savannah opened the conference with a presentation called "It's All About Building Relationships" inspiring our attendees to go beyond lectures and inspire their students. We had four different session rotations featuring topic choices such as igniting the Passion for Learning, Bullying, Ethics with Technology, Students with ADHD and What is Character Counts? Chatham County District Attorney Meg Heap opened the afternoon sessions speaking about positive strategies to help students make good choices. Our closing speaker Diane McLeod spoke strongly about the legal aspects of bullying. We are very encouraged and are already busy planning for next fall.
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Russ Sciandra: Remembered
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By Heather Thies
Russ Sciandra was a volunteer greeter when I started working here at the museum in 2007. Russ cheerfully greeted every visitor as they walked in the door and chatted with them about themselves and their family's history. On special occasions and holidays he wore his WWII uniform to volunteer. It still fit! If asked, he discussed his WWII service in the 8thAF and what it was like back then but he also downplayed his role. He stated humbly that he wasn't in a plane and then would start talking about the airmen instead. He really admired the men who flew those terrible missions. I would agree with him about their dangerous missions but also reminded him that he deserved recognition because without his doing what needed to be done behind the scenes those missions could not be flown. That would always get a smile out of him. Russ had a magnificent smile. And then in traditional humble style, he went back to talking about the airmen again. About a year later Russ moved away but he continued to visit the museum occasionally with his wife Reggie. Unfortunately in August 2014 Russ passed away when he was 91 years young. This summer Reggie came to visit the museum again and thoughtfully donated Russ's WWII uniform to the education department to use as a tool to bring WWII to life for our students. With this wonderful donation to the education department student tours can see, feel and understand better the daily life of a WWII soldier and I can talk about my friend Russ's contribution to the war.
Pictured: Wife Reggie, and daughter Joanne Sciandra
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Microwave Early Warning (MEW) Radar and the 8th Fighter Control Center
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by Perry R. Nuhn, Colonel USAF (ret)
Museum Volunteer
Former Director Information Systems,
Command, Control, Communications & Intelligence (C3I) ASD
Office of the Secretary of Defense
Radio Detection and Ranging (Radar) was one of the significant developments during the Second World War, both for the Allies and the adversaries, Germany and Japan. This is especially true of the Microwave Early Warning (MEW) radar which proved invaluable for the United States Army Air Forces in Europe beginning in early 1944 into May 1945.
In September 1939 both England and Germany had functioning radar systems. The English system was integrated with their national air defense system and proved invaluable during the Battle of Britain. The Germans, not realizing the value of existing radar did little to incorporate radar in their air operations. That would change later. These early systems were large, cumbersome, had low power and operated in the VHF and UHF frequency spectrums.
It was well recognized at the time that if radar could be developed to operate in higher frequency spectrums, then greater power could be achieved and the size of radar systems could be reduced and functional capabilities increased. In February 1940, the British overcame the low frequency spectrum barrier with the invention of a resonant-cavity magnetron capable of producing microwave power in the kilowatt range. This opened a path to second-generation radar systems, as well as even more higher power for eventual use in systems such as future airborne and gun laying radars.
The newly developed magnetron and other technological secrets of the British were demonstrated to Americans at RCA, Bell Labs and others in the summer of 1940 when the Tizzard Mission visited the United States. The Tizzard Mission exchange was directed by Winston Churchill when he directed that British secrets be shared to achieve needed war-time capabilities. The demonstrated magnetron was 100 times more powerful than the Americans had seen. Shortly, Bell Labs was able to duplicate the British findings. This resulted in the creation of the Radiation Laboratory in MIT with the purpose of developing microwave radars.
By the spring of 1944, the Radiation Laboratory with assistance from industrial units completed six pre-production models of the MEW, AN/CPS-1A radar. It was a high power, ground based radar system capable of detecting aircraft at long ranges. Two were shipped to Europe, one to 9th Air Force and the other to 8th Air Force for operational testing. Personnel to operate these radars were selected from each Air Force.
(As a side note: The 9th Air Force MEW which supported Tactical Control Operations, is out of scope for this article. In essence, a Tactical Control System with supporting communication, approvals and procedures was created. In my view, it provided required fighter command and control for tactical air operations and served as a model for future Air Force Tactical Air Control in Korea and thereafter. For example, when an Air-Ground Coordination Party sent in a request for immediate air support, that request went directly to a Combined Operations Center functioning between the TAC and the Army. There, the Army S2 and G-3 and the TAC A-2 and A-3 evaluated the request. Assuming it was considered legitimate, the Army G-3 and Air A-3 would each approve it, and the Air A-3 would relay it to the Tactical Control Center with a recommended course of action. Typically, the TCC would relay the request to airborne fighter-bombers, and a geographically appropriate Forward Director Post would furnish precise radar guidance and navigation information from the MEW and SCR-584 radars to the strike flight, vectoring them to the target area. Once in the target area, the strike flight leader would communicate with the Air-Ground Coordination Party that had sent in the request for final details. For its part, the Air-Ground Coordination Party would arrange for artillery to mark the target with colored smoke and also, if possible, to undertake suppressive artillery fire against known enemy antiaircraft defenses. Radar was also used for so-called blind bombing in conditions of reduced visibility. SCR-584 control eventually enabled blind bombing strikes with accuracies on the order of 400-yards from the predetermined aiming point, notably during the Battle of the Bulge in winter 1944-45.)
In the spring of 1944, VIII Fighter Command had been given authority to establish a Fighter Director Station. And, in April, VIII Fighter Command was informed that a MEW radar was in transit and would soon arrive. Permission was granted to take over a RAF site in Dunwich, Suffork which had been unused since 1942.
On the left is the antenna and transmitting/receiving system and on the right is the height finder to detect the altitude of enemy and allied aircraft. The Main Control Room included a horizontal display scope used by the Major in charge of the Control Room.
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| Miss Sophie's: Cornbread Options for Fall |
Since I was brave enough to write about biscuits last time, I thought I would really put myself out there and write about the South's second most popular bread, cornbread. There are more cornbread recipes out there than you can shake your Southern rolling pin at, and everybody's grandma had the best recipe. Use yellow cornmeal or white cornmeal? Add sugar or no sugar? With buttermilk or milk? How is one to discern what is right? Damon Fowler, our resident Southern food historian, in his cookbook "Essentials of Southern Cooking" writes this about traditional Southern cornbread, "What set it apart and made it 'Southern' was the fact it never contained flour or sugar." About the only thing all cooks can agree upon is that it should be cooked in a well-seasoned cast iron frying pan. I grew up on cornbread cooked on top of the stove, not in the oven. We referred to it as lacy edge cornbread, some call it a hoecake. Mama's cornbread was paper thin with a crunchy edge and about the size of a small pancake. She fried it in very hot oil in a non-stick frying pan (not cast iron) and we gobbled it up as fast as she could fry it. Of course she never had a recipe so when I asked her how to make it and she said "just mix a little flour in your cornmeal and add enough water to make it soupy." I am ashamed of how many times I tried and failed with those instructions. Then, one day I discovered that her "cornmeal" was actually a self-rising cornbread mix - not self-rising cornmeal. It still took me a while to get the portions right, but I finally put it in recipe form for future generations. Many would call Mama's cornbread a hoecake. Hoecakes also have a myriad of different ways to make them. Some hoecakes are light and puffy while others are thin and crunchy. Some even contain corn kernels. One of my staff members, Linda, said her grandmother's hoecakes were more like thin biscuits. I knew what she was talking about, but I had always known it as flour bread. I spent a couple of summers on a farm in rural North Carolina with some distant family members. "Grandma" cooked a really big lunch every day and she always had what she called flour bread with the meal. I lost touch with Grandma because of "an unfortunate parting of the ways" in that branch of the family. Death has a way of mending family partings, and that's what brought us together again some 35 years later. After we caught up, I finally got to ask her how she made flour bread. She replied "Oh honey, just make your dough like you were making biscuits and fry it in a frying pan." Really? The bread of my childhood memories was a fried biscuit? History tells us Depression-era cooks didn't have the luxury of purchasing flour and cornmeal. They had to use what they had on hand. So they improvised and used flour to make their hoecakes. This stove-top bread had many names: biscuit bread, skillet bread, hoecake or in my case, flour bread. So, I'm not going to step out on a limb and tell you how to make the perfect cornbread. I am going to share with you some recipes from the ways my family and friends made cornbread. If you don't have your grandmother's recipe, maybe you can adopt one of these as your own. Just please, share the recipe with your family. Don't make them dream of the long lost taste of grandma's cornbread. Teach them how to make it! Teri Bell is co-owner of Miss Sophie's Marketplace at the Mighty Eighth in Pooler.
Mama's Lacy Edge Cornbread 1 cup of self- rising cornbread mix (not Jiffy) ½ cup self-rising flour 1 cups plus 2 tablespoons of water Vegetable oil for frying In a medium size bowl, stir flour and cornmeal mix together. Stir in water. The batter should be very thin so that the edges will be crispy. Using a medium non-stick pan, add enough vegetable oil to cover the bottom of the pan. Heat oil over medium high heat almost to the smoking point. Using a large serving spoon, spoon batter into the pan. Cook for approximately 1 minute then turn and cook for 1 minute more. Remove to a cooling rack or a paper towel lined plate. Repeat until all batter is used, add more oil as needed.
North Carolina Flour Bread 2 cups self-rising flour 1/3 cup lard or shortening ¾ cup milk Vegetable oil or bacon grease for frying In a large mixing bowl, work lard into flour with your hands or a pastry cutter. Stir in milk with a wooden spoon. Flour your hands and a flat surface well. Turn dough out on the floured surface and press and shape dough into a disk the size of your pan. Don't make try to make it a smooth disk, handle it as little as possible, adding more flour to your hands as needed. In a well-seasoned 10 or 12 inch iron skillet or a non-stick frying pan, heat approximately 2 tablespoons of lard or shortening on medium high heat. Lift bread into the pan with a spatula or your hands. Cook bread until it is brown on one side and seems to be firming up on the sides. Turn and cook until a tooth pick inserted in the middle comes out clean. Turn out onto a plate and enjoy!
Southern Cornbread 2 cups yellow or white cornmeal (not cornmeal mix) 1 ½ teaspoons baking powder 1 teaspoon salt ½ teaspoon baking soda 2 large eggs 1½ buttermilk or milk 5 tablespoons bacon grease, lard or shortening Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Place a well-seasoned, ungreased, 9 or 10 inch cast-iron skillet or cornstick pan in oven to heat up. In a large bowl, with a whisk, combine cornmeal, baking powder, salt and baking soda. In a separate bowl, whisk together eggs and milk and stir into dry ingredients stirring only long enough to combine. Remove pan from oven, add bacon grease to pan or brush each well of the cornstick pan. Add batter to pan. It should sizzle when it hits the pan. Bake 20-25 minutes (12-15 minutes for cornsticks) or until a toothpick inserted in the middle comes out clean.
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Tell us what you think!
You are very important to us. Your comments and suggestions are welcome and encouraged.
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National Museum of the Mighty Eighth Air Force | 912.748.8888 | m8afnews@mightyeighth.org | http://www.mightyeighth.org
175 Bourne Avenue
(I-95 at Exit 102)
Pooler, GA 31322
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