ePub Faith after the Holocaust by Eliezer Berkovits in History

Description

On the morning of June 19; 1944; as U.S. troops were battling Japanese forces on Saipan in the Mariana Islands in the Pacific; American pilots based on aircraft carriers offshore rushed to their planes to protect their fleet from an enemy attack from the air. Calling the mission a once-in-a-lifetime fighter pilot's dream when he spotted a large mass of enemy planes bearing down on the U.S. ships; one navy pilot from Indiana; Alex Vraciu; flying a Hellcat fighter from the USS Lexington; pounced on the Japanese and shot down six dive bombers in just eight minutes. Written by award-winning biographer Ray E. Boomhower; Fighter Pilot: The World War II Career of Alex Vraciu; the sixth volume in the Indiana Historical Society Press's youth biography series; examines the daring exploits of the Hoosier flier during his wartime career. A graduate of DePauw University; Vraciu learned to fly during his college years through a government program and joined the navy before America was thrust into the war following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7; 1941. Possessed with keen eyesight; quick reflexes; excellent shooting instincts; and a knack for finding his opponent's weak spot; Vraciu became skilled in the deadly game of destroying the enemy in the skies over the Pacific Ocean. For a period of four months in 1944; Vraciu stood as the leading ace in the U.S. Navy. He shot down nineteen enemy airplanes in the air; destroyed an additional twenty-one on the ground; and sank a large Japanese merchant ship with a well-placed bomb hit. Vraciu's luck; however; finally ran out on December 14; 1944; during a strafing run against a Japanese airfield before the American invasion to retake the Philippines. Luckily he was almost immediately rushed to safety by a small group of U.S. Army in the Far East guerrillas; who had been battling the Japanese in the area for the past few years. The navy pilot spent the next five weeks with the guerrillas; receiving the honorary rank of brevet major while with them. Vraci finally marched into an American camp carrying with him a captured Japanese Luger pistol and sword.