Mission Writeup in Saturday Evening Post, 1946, Part 4

 

Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here. 

Part 3 is here.

 

First Lieutenant Tien Sen Shang, who lit the fuses as described, was on the list as member of the second echelon, or second drop - the list from the Zdrojewski Jackal diary we first saw in conjunction with our look at Page 20 of the Photobook. One of those photos is a photo of Tien. Which one?

 

 

Cyr describes Tien as having "sat down with his camera" as the fuses burned and the troop train approached. So it may be that Tien took the photograph we see on the dust jacket of MMB. 

 

Mission Writeup in Saturday Evening Post, 1946, Part 3

 Part 1 is here.

Part 2 is here. 

 

 From an earlier post we bring forward this zoomed-in map of assigned areas near railroad bridges:

 

Northrup designed the P-61 "Black Widow" night fighter for the USAAF. The radar is in the nose of the airplane and the radar operator sits in a viewing area in the tail. Wikipedia has descriptions, schematic, and photos.

 

 

 

Just the Right Issue of the Saturday Evening Post

Major Paul Cyr was in command of Team Jackal in China in 1945.  After the war, he wrote up several missions, including the big one on the night of August 9, for the Saturday Evening Post. He then gave a copy of the article to Frank Mills and to R. Harris Smith.

Copies of the March 23, 1946 issue are available on eBay; mine just came.  If you shop on eBay for your own copy, make sure you are considering a "full copy" of the magazine, not merely a detached cover photo.

Skillful cover art depicts the Windy City.

Notice the font used for the issue date: military-stamp style.
At this point not all our soldiers were home yet.
The whole country, not just the US Armed Forces,
was going through a lengthy demobilization.

It is going to take some time to post the entire article of two entire 11" x14" pages plus parts of four more.  The result will span multiple posts; although I certainly will link them together for reference, some readers might have a better time with the entire article in hand.

And the entire issue is quite interesting.  For ten cents the customer got work by Irving Wallace, H. E. Bates, technically skilled artists, and highly entertaining advertising designers.  The abundant ads are aimed at men and women, country folk and city-dwellers, military and civilians, young and old, dirt farmers, cattlemen, miners, mechanics, homemakers.  Americans were not all just in our information "silos" at that time; we were more aware of each other, of the lives and concerns of our countrymen in various walks of life.