WAR, PEACE, AND ALL THAT JAZZ Billy Mitchell was right: air power changed war. In World War Il more people were killed by bombs or pieces of shells (called “shrap- nel”) than by bullets. In World War Il cities were bombed; huge civilian populations were massacred, ‘There was something else about alr war: it made killing a mechanical act. Imagine being in i a the infantry. You see the enemy eye to eye; It se ci euler reoneepen mer voumnann negra Norfolk, Vieginia. human, Officers know that some soldiers are never able to pull their triggers. They are never able to murder—even to save themselves, But a bomber pilot docsn't see his victims. A bomb can't tell the difference between an enemy sok dier and a child on her way to school. It will kill them both. An enormous number of bombs were dropped—by both sides— during World War Il. Billy Mitchell thought air power would elimt- nate the need for foot soldiers. He was wrong about that. There was still plenty of old-fashioned infantry fighting Look at the world map on page 137. World War Il was truly a world war. Here are just a few of the places where American troops fought; see if you can find them in an atlas. | Sailors load machine- France, Germany, Tunisia, Sicily, aly, Morocco, Burma, Guam, Malaysia, Philippine Islands, Wake Island Now imagine you are a general and you are One officer mans the per ‘scope in the control room of a US. submarine, about 1942, The United States drafted black men, but segregated them—and often assignod them to service jobs in- stead of combat units. ‘These Negro Seabees were membors of the Navy’s con- struction battalions, volun- ters chosen for their skill in building or engineering. They are shown here in training near Norfolk, Virginia, practicing landing | tacties, around 1942. 139Above left: parachutes tilt the sky as waves of para- troopers land in Holland during operations by the tst Allied Airborne in Septembor 1944, Right: one method of getting soldiers—along with their trucks and all their ammunition and supplios— across a river is with a kind of barge. This one in Burma is powered by ordinary out- board motors. U-boat is the abbrevi- ation for the German word Unterseeboot— “undersea boat.” A torpedois like a giant bullet with a propeller that travels through water and can sink a ship, 140 planning a battle on a Pacific island. Suppose you want to get 15,000 men onto the island and surprise the enemy. How are you going to do it? A parachute drop? Maybe, but remember, parachutes make great targets. You'd be better off bringing them in by boat. Many of those islands don’t have deep harbors, though. Big ships can’t come in close. Can the soldiers swin in? Not with their guns and artillery and trucks and tanks and food and ammunition and medical supplies. We're going to have to invent and develop new kinds of landing equipment and war gear. And we're going to have to do it very fast. We'll design huge landing craft that have big rooms~called “holds*— that can be flooded to form miniature lakes so that boats can zoom out. Welll design other landing ships that will carry tanks and trucks as well as men. We'll design amphibious (am-FIB-ee-us) vehicles that will go on land or water. One of the most useful—a truck that swims— will be called a “duck.” Another new, tough vehicle—which can han- dle rough roads, mountain passes, and rutted fields—we'll calla “jeep.” We'll design superb submarines that can stay under water for months at a time, Then we'll design torpedoes and depth charges to. destroy submarines. The Axis nations will be doing the same thing. Submarine warfare will be very important in this war. German subs are called “U-boats,” and the Atlantic Ocean is full of them. We're going to do amazing things in medical science so that dis- case and infection will no longer be the major causes of wartime deaths. The lives of many badly wounded men will be saved. All through the war we will keep improving our weapons, planes, tanks, andl armored vehicles. ‘The Germans and Japanese have a headWAR, PEACE, AND ALL THAT JAZZ start on us. They have fine scientists and technicians. ‘This war will become a race to see who can produce the best weapons fastest. The Germans are working on. rockets—called V-Is and V-2s—that are devastating. Luckily, it will take most of the war to get them perfect ed, When they start shooting rockets at England there will be many, many deaths. (The V-2 rockets are being de- signed to hit the United States.) We are behind on rocket development. Alter the war, German rocket engineers will tell us they got many of their ideas by studying the work of our rocket expert Robert Goddard. a We know something that they don't suspect we know. They think they are smarter than we are. ‘They are wrong. We have learned to read their most difficult codes. That will prove more valuable than almost anything else we do. Have you ever tried writing in code? It’s easy. Just put numbers in place of letters and you have a code. Armies have always needed codes. Suppose a general wants to tell a faraway commander to at- tack, He sends a messenger. But he wants his orders in code in case the messenger is caught, He certainly doesn't want the enemy to know his plans, In George Washington's day, a screen was sometimes put over a piece of paper. There were holes in the screen. The secret message was the words that showed through the holes, Everything else was there to fool you During World War Il, both sides moved huge armies and navies and tried to do It secretly, Most orders were sent by telegraph. Getting from A to B. Top left: lowering a jeep from a Coast Guard assault trans- port into a landing craft. Top right: each of these tiny cars carries a real bomb. Above: an aerial photo of U.S. troops wading ashore {rom landing craft onto Moro- tai Island, between New Guinea and the Philippines, 141Anyone could listen. So codes were vital, They be- came very complicated. The Germans and Japanese thought no oné could possibly figure out their com, plex codes. We cracked the Japanese secret code even before the War began, Solving the German military code was much harder. German coded messages were sent and received on special machines. Then a German tank was captured in Poland, It had a code machine inside. The mac! smuggled out of Poland to England, When it gt to England no one could figure out how to work it. The English called i the code machine Enigma." An argma isa puzzle. They put Some of thelr best scientific and mathematical minds on ~ © the job of solving the puzzle. It was incredibly difficult. H_.How they di itis a fascin feveral books have ‘A V-2 rocket propared. for launching. Nazi Germany's V-t and V-2 rockets wore the first long-range missiles— deadly and torrifying. ig the Axis powe ing to do. Now we Allies had to pretend that we didn't now some things, We didn't want the codes to be changed Germany's cca | f Policies have caused many of Its best scien- tists to flee the country, igure That helps the Allies and cause It happened to be a slows Germany's real language, spoken by real people, who were progress, faster than any of the fancy machines, Tit tanguage was Navajo, and it was spoken by 420 marines who called: themselves ‘ When American | Dinonthe People. in westom movies, lane aoe naval forces capture a usually known for their silence. These Native f ] German submarine off Americans dl plenty of talking. They made up their EANWe | trecoast of West Africa, | own code using thelr own words: Hitler wec they find a newly devel- Daghallchiih (mustache smoller), bombers wors Oped torpedo and a se- Jaysho (buzzards), and bombs, ayeshi (eggs) Stet radio code on board, | Navajos landed on every inajor island hoary They pretend they have Major Howard Conner said; “Without the sunk the sub, so the Navajos the marines would never have taken ino Germans won't change | _ dima." They were a sectet weapon in the Paoihe. cee Two Navajo’ code breakers at work az oe (arrears ncemarecictecmeneeneee