Douglas A-1 Skyraider Once Carried a Toilet as an Aerial Bomb During the Vietnam War

October 1965, CDR Clarence W. Stoddard, Jr., Executive Officer of VA-25 “Fist of the Fleet”, flying an A-1H Skyraider, NE/572 “Paper Tiger II” from Carrier Air Wing Two aboard USS Midway carried a special bomb to the North Vietnamese in commemoration of the 6-millionth pound of ordnance dropped. This bomb was unique because of the type... It was a toilet!

The flight was a Dixie Station strike (South Vietnam) going to the Delta. When they arrived in the target area and CDR Stoddard was reading the ordnance list to the FAC, he ended with “and one code name Sani-Flush”. The FAC couldn’t believe it and joined up to see it. It was dropped in a dive with LCDR Bacon flying tight wing position to film the drop. When it came off, it turned hole to the wind and almost struck his airplane. It made a great ready room movie. The FAC said that it whistled all the way down.

The story of the toilet drop was told by Captain Clint Johnson, the pilot of another VA-25 A-1 Skyraider. The toilet was a damaged toilet, which was going to be thrown overboard. But one of the plane captains rescued it and the ordnance crew made a rack, tailfins and nose fuse for it. Some checkers maintained a position to block the view of the air boss and the Captain while the aircraft was taxiing forward. Just as it was being shot off, Johnson said, “we got a 1MC message from the bridge, ‘What the hell was on 572’s right wing?’ There were a lot of jokes with air intelligence about germ warfare. I wish that we had saved the movie film.” CDR Stoddard was later killed while flying 572 in October 1966. He was hit by three SAMs over Vinh.

The Douglas A-1 Skyraider (formerly AD Skyraider) is an American single-seat attack aircraft that saw service between the late 1940s and early 1980s. The Skyraider had a remarkably long and successful career; it became a piston-powered, propeller-driven anachronism in the jet age, and was nicknamed “Spad”, after the French World War I fighter.

On September 14, 1966, while Commanding Officer of Attack Squadron 25 (VA25) embarked in the USS Coral Sea (CVA 43), CDR Stoddard was leading a two-plane bombing mission over North Vietnam searching for enemy truck convoys. Near the village of Nghi Thiet, his radar detection system warned him of enemy missile activity. Taking evasive action, he withdrew over the Gulf of Tonkin before his aircraft, a single engine, propeller driven, A-1 Skyraider, was struck by enemy surface-to-air missiles. CDR Stoddard was initially listed as Missing In Action. His status was changed in 1973 to Killed In Action.

(via Sierra Hotel Aeronautics)

Historic Photos of Hungarians Gathered in the Streets During Revolution Against Soviet-Backed Regime in November, 1956

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956, or the Hungarian Uprising, was a nationwide revolution against the Hungarian People’s Republic and its Soviet-imposed policies, lasting from October 23 until November 10, 1956. Thousands were killed and wounded and nearly a quarter-million Hungarians fled the country.

The revolt began as a student protest, which attracted thousands as they marched through central Budapest to the Hungarian Parliament building, calling out on the streets using a van with loudspeakers. A student delegation, entering the radio building to try to broadcast the students’ demands, was detained. When the delegation’s release was demanded by the protesters outside, they were fired upon from within the building by the State Security Police. Multiple students died and one was wrapped in a flag and held above the crowd. This was the start of the next phase of the revolution. As the news spread, disorder and violence erupted throughout the capital.

The revolt spread quickly and the government collapsed. Thousands organized themselves into militias, battling the State Security Police and Soviet troops. During the revolt there were violent incidents; some local leaders and State Security Police members were lynched or captured, while former political prisoners were released and armed. Radical impromptu workers’ councils wrested municipal control from the ruling Hungarian Working People’s Party and demanded political change. The new government of Imre Nagy formally disbanded the State Security Police, declared its intention to withdraw from the Warsaw Pact and pledged to re-establish free elections. By the end of October, fighting had almost stopped, and the days of normality began to return. Some workers continued fighting in opposition to both the Stalinist regime and the appearances of "bourgeois" parties in its wake.

Initially appearing open to negotiating a withdrawal of Soviet forces, the Politburo changed its mind and moved to crush the revolution. On November 4, a large Soviet force invaded Budapest and other regions of the country. The Hungarian resistance continued until November 10. Over 2,500 Hungarians and 700 Soviet troops were killed in the conflict, and 200,000 Hungarians fled as refugees. Mass arrests and denunciations continued for months thereafter. By January 1957, the new Soviet-installed government had suppressed all public opposition. These Soviet actions, while strengthening control over the Eastern Bloc, alienated many Western Marxists, leading to splits and/or considerable losses of membership for communist parties in capitalist states.

Hungarian Freedom Fighters during revolution against Soviet backed communist government.

Hungarian patriot grimacing during revolution against Soviet-backed regime.

Hopeful Hungarian rebel demonstrators during revolution against Soviet-backed regime.

Hungarian women during the revolution.

Hungarian Freedom Fighters during revolution against Soviet-backed regime.

Budapest rebel demonstrators, during revolution against Soviet-backed Hungarian regime.

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Lee Miller and David Scherman: The Photographers Who Took a Bath in Hitler’s Apartment

On April 30, 1945, photojournalists David E. Scherman and Lee Miller produced one of the most controversial photographic series of the twentieth century; while documenting Hitler’s apartment on the day of his suicide, they photographed each other bathing in the Führer’s tub.

Contact sheet, “Lee Miller in Hitler’s Bathtub, Munich, Germany 1945” © Lee Miller Archives

The contact print reveals that Miller had Scherman take seven shots in all. The sequence of shots suggests that Miller had something very specific in mind, as her head and her gaze are only slightly adjusted for each pose. Each image appears carefully calibrated, and the ostensible pleasure of bathing is nowhere in evidence. The photos reveal nothing of what Scherman retrospectively described as her “leisurely, overdue bath.”

But in the best known she is looking up and away, toward a distant point, pensive and beautiful, scrubbing her shoulder with a wash cloth while Hitler looks on. She has turned her gaze away from him. As Miller would put it years later, “I washed the dirt of Dachau off in his tub.”

The washcloth appears to serve more as a prop than a functional accessory for the task at hand. Scherman’s photographs are much more animated. He mugs for the camera as he vigorously washes his hair, completely altering the tone of the scene. While Hitler’s image remains present, it has been moved so that it is partially behind a soap dish—a minor detail, to be sure, but it does seem to compromise the presence that is so striking in Miller’s photographs. Scherman’s boots, in contrast to Miller’s, are pointed away from the tub, clearly a better position for exiting the tub rather than entering.

The simplest interpretations argue that Miller enters the bath and washes away the dirt, still visible on her boots, from Dachau. Lee signaled the end of the Reich in a more subtle way, both symbolic and playful, by being photographed by Scherman washing off the war—in Hitler’s own bath. The boots on the bath mat had walked through the horror of the Dachau death camp earlier in the same day.

The residual dirt from Dachau was of course invisible to readers, who were not privy to the fact that the photograph followed Miller’s presence at the newly liberated camp earlier that day. Even so, it is doubtful that Miller imagined she could wash off even part of the war in the wake of what she had witnessed, leaving aside the question of whether she wanted to do so. After all, forgetting would betray her whole purpose.

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Rare Vintage Color Photos of North Vietnam in 1967

In 1967, American photojournalist Lee Lockwood made a trip to North Vietnam and spent a month traveling around the nation during the Vietnam war, making him the first Western journalist to visit the country in almost a decade. Below are 18 photographs capturing the people and their life during the war:

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“The Day When Daddy Came Home” – 15 October, 1945

Gunner Hector Murdoch arrives home (at his new prefabricated house in Tulse Hill, London) on his birthday, greeted by is wife Rosina and his son John. He has been away for four and a half years, three and a half years of which he was a prisoner of war.

Hector had nearly died of cholera in Singapore. For 18 months, Rosina had no idea if he was alive or dead.

(Photo by Harry Todd/Getty Images)

Pictures of Veronica Foster – Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl and the Beautiful Woman War Worker of Canada in World War II

Veronica Foster (January 2, 1922 – May 4, 2000), popularly known as “Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl”, was a Canadian icon representing nearly one million Canadian women who worked in the manufacturing plants that produced munitions and matériel during World War II. Her natural beauty made her the perfect model for a national propaganda poster campaign.

Foster worked for John Inglis Co. Ltd producing Bren light machine guns on a production line on Strachan Avenue in Toronto, Ontario. She can be seen as the Canadian precursor to the American cultural icon Rosie the Riveter.

She became popular after a series of propaganda posters were produced; most images featured her working for the war effort, but others depicted more casual settings like Foster dancing the jitterbug or attending a dinner party. In her most famous photograph, Ronnie sports curve-hugging overalls while effortlessly exhaling smoke from her cigarette as she admires her recently assembled Bren gun.

As the perfect blend of femininity and female liberation, Ronnie became the subject of public infatuation, so much so that the United States decided to create its own female war icon. And so Ronnie’s head scarf and can-do attitude was transferred to the well-known American propaganda image of “Rosie the Riveter.”

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36 Amazing LIFE Magazine Covers of the Vietnam War During the 1960s and Early 1970s

One of the most important stories that LIFE Magazine would ever cover was the Vietnam War. From sending photographers to the trenches to covering the stories of draft dodgers and deserters, LIFE Magazines during the 1960s explored every aspect of the most highly televised conflict in history. LIFE Magazine would do it’s part to shape the story, as well.

The Vietnam War was a long, costly and divisive conflict that pitted the communist government of North Vietnam against South Vietnam and its principal ally, the United States. The conflict was intensified by the ongoing Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. More than 3 million people (including over 58,000 Americans) were killed in the Vietnam War, and more than half of the dead were Vietnamese civilians.

Opposition to the war in the United States bitterly divided Americans, even after President Richard Nixon ordered the withdrawal of U.S. forces in 1973. Communist forces ended the war by seizing control of South Vietnam in 1975, and the country was unified as the Socialist Republic of Vietnam the following year.

Life Magazine (October 27, 1961) Advisers in Vietnam, mans eye

Life Magazine (January 25, 1963) Mekong Delta

Life Magazine (November 15, 1963) South Vietnam soldiers

Life Magazine (March 20, 1964) Henry Cabot Lodge in Vietnam

Life Magazine (June 12, 1964) Patrol in Vietnam

Life Magazine (August 21, 1964) South Vietnam’s General Khanh

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Women Testing the Guns They Made for World War II at the Inglis Munitions Plant in Ontario, Canada, 1944

Ten pretty girls, all workers at the John Inglis Co. plant, line up with 10 Bren guns built with their own hands, 1944. These little guns are going to Allied forces all over the world-but Brens cost a lot of money, Canadian money. One $100 bond will buy approximately three Bren guns; at their present cost. It takes a lot of bonds to keep the Inglis plant making Brens.

(Photo: Toronto Star Archives)

John Inglis and Company was a Canadian manufacturing firm which made weapons for the United Kingdom and British Commonwealth military forces during the World War II era, then later became a major appliance manufacturer. Whirlpool Corporation acquired control of Inglis in 1987 and changed the company's name to Whirlpool Canada in 2001.

The Inglis name has a proud heritage in Canada. In 1859, armed with metalworking and pattern-making skills learned in England and Scotland, John Inglis moved to Guelph, Ontario and started Mair, Inglis and Evatt which built machinery for grist and flour mills.

In 1881, operating under the name John Inglis and Sons, the company moved to facilities on Strachan Avenue in Toronto. But in 1898, with the enterprise growing madly, John Inglis died. William, one of John’s five sons, assumed leadership of the business. In 1902, he led the company into the manufacture of marine steam engines and waterworks pumping engines, and he discontinued production of its previous product line.

When William Inglis died in 1935, the new Toronto Island Ferry was named after him in appreciation of his significant contribution to the city’s industrial and cultural progress.

Veronica Foster, an employee of John Inglis Co. Ltd. and known as “Ronnie, the Bren Gun Girl” posing with a finished Bren gun in the John Inglis Co. Ltd. Bren gun plant, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, 1941.

Two years later, an American named Major J.E. Hahn, purchased the company and made significant changes to its operations. Under Major Hahn’s leadership, the company assisted in the World War II effort by manufacturing guns for the Canadian and British governments. More than 17,800 people were employed at this time creating the need for expansion at the Strachan Avenue plant.

When the war ended in 1946, the company began to manufacture consumer products for the first time. Fishing tackle, house trailers, oil burner pumps and domestic heaters and stoves were among the diverse products offered.

Rare Photographs of Marilyn Monroe Wooing Soldiers in the Aftermath of the Korean War

Rarely seen photos of Marilyn Monroe wooing the American troops during the Korean War, with the blonde bombshell meeting, greeting and performing for the soldiers who were nearing the end of their time in combat.

The photographs were taken by a professional military photographer as he had close access to Marilyn Monroe at various stages of her trip.

The collection boasts some images of her wearing pants, shirt, and combat boots, other images of her wearing her houndstooth dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes and another images of her wearing her sparkly cocktail dress as she sings on stage.

Monroe interrupted her honeymoon in Japan with baseball star Joe DiMaggio in 1954 to visit American troops who had been fighting on the front line. The whirlwind tour saw the her perform 10 shows over four days to more than 100,000 soldiers and marines who were celebrating the end of three years of combat.

The visit was the only time the blonde bombshell entertained troops in her career as a singer and movie star.

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37 Amazing Snapshots Capture Everyday Life of American Soldiers During Vietnam War

More than 2.5 million American men served in Vietnam during the war. Some of these men were career military officers. But many others were poor or working-class teenagers who enlisted or were drafted into the military right out of high school.

A large proportion of the U.S. troops consisted of African American men from the inner cities, the sons of immigrants from factory towns, and boys from rural farming communities.

Upon arriving in Vietnam, American soldiers found themselves in a strange land of watery fields and dense jungles. This unfamiliar environment made their jobs more difficult and unpleasant. Their feelings of vulnerability were increased by strained relations with Vietnam's rural communities.

In the early years of the war, some U.S. soldiers expected the South Vietnamese people to greet them as heroes. Instead, the local farmers and villagers usually viewed the Americans with distrust or even hostility.

The tense atmosphere and frustrating nature of the war eventually caused a significant decline in the motivation and performance of American forces in Vietnam. Some American soldiers reacted to their situation by lashing out violently against the Vietnamese, while others took out their anger on U.S. military leaders. Some used drugs or alcohol to help them cope with their experiences.

A set of amazing snapshots from EspressoBuzz that shows everyday life of a group of American soldiers during Vietnam War.

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