The Allied Air Force Begins Mercy Runs
Over Holland, April 29, 1945

n April 29, 1945, the greatest mercy operation of the Second World War began, although initially it had all the marks of a suicide mission, the risks being enormous and likelihood of success scant.

Hatched in London, the idea was to utilize the allied air forces to feed the starving people of Holland. It was the last year of the war, and for five years previously, the Dutch had endured Nazi occupation as well as every deprivation of supplies and food that Germany herself faced as defeat grew inevitable. Those German soldiers occupying the Netherlands had been ordered to defend it to the last, and their measures to do so included mass flooding of agricultural land.

Members of the Veghel Resistance with troops of the United States 101st Airborne Division in Veghel, Netherlands, September 1944

Beyond being allies with the occupied Dutch, the air forces in particular owed them a great debt. Well over fifty percent of allied air crews were shot down during the war, and in Europe, those who managed to escape immediate capture were assisted in returning to England by the indomitable Dutch resistance. Such aid was not without chilling consequences if caught, and many Dutch families paid the ultimate price for the freedom of one downed airman.

Ground crew loading food supplies into slings for hoisting into the bomb bay of an Avro Lancaster for Operation Manna, Cambridgeshire, England

This mercy operation was close to foolhardy in both scale and dependence on the good faith of German soldiers. But with an approximate three and a half million Dutch on the brink of starvation, the plan was authorized. General Eisenhower began tenuous negotiations with German authorities in Holland, assisted by Swiss go-betweens, and the key aspect of their final agreement was that certain corridors would be opened for allied airmen to fly in without being fired upon.

An American B-17 unloads a load of food above the completely destroyed Schiphol Airport in May 1945 as part of Operation Chowhound

For the fleet of bomber crews who had spent their wartime careers in the exact same flight paths, dropping bombs on factories, submarine pens and worker facilities in occupied Europe, these weak agreements amongst enemies were of little comfort.

The raw courage required of these pilots and crews was immense when their orders came. They had to cross once more into enemy airspace—a suspended flak-filled hell in the skies that they knew all too well—and fly at 400 feet over German anti-aircraft guns to gently deposit their parceled provisions from their modified Bombay doors.

Food parcels being collected and sorted near Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, Netherlands, May 1945 as part of Operation Chowhound

On April 29 the first mission was run; radio exchanges of good luck and prayers were sent between pilots as they crossed over. The eerie silence they were met with soon brought relief. The truce agreements were honored, and some allied airmen even observed the casual inaction of their enemies through their bombsights: smoking cigarettes and leaning against their once lethal anti-aircraft guns.

A Lancaster aircraft pulls up again after it has ejected its payload over Ypenburg, Holland

For ten consecutive days, British and American bomber groups ran over 5,500 sorties, dropping an estimated 10,000 tons of food on the starving and grateful Dutch. Their operations were named Manna and Chowhound, respectively.

A banner depicting the food drops over a store front in Amsterdam, Holland, June 1945

For most of the bomber crews, these became their last missions as providentially they coincided with the last days of the war in Europe: VE Day was declared on May 8, the same day that the last drop occurred.

Huge crowds gather in Whitehall to listen to Churchill’s Victory speech on “Victory in Europe Day”, May 8, 1945

Not many soldiers got so kind an epilogue to their war stories. Those who participated in these mercy missions spoke of it as being the most satisfying and healing thing they did in their entire lives. To fly over crowds of grateful citizens, dropping life rather than death for once, was a gentle last page of a very awful story for many of them whose role in the air had required much moral dilution in order to carry out their orders of terror and destruction.

Rotterdam, Holland in 1940 after bombing—an estimated 30,000 civilians were killed

According to many, there was no prettier sight in the world than the grateful messages the Dutch cut into their tulip fields: “thanks boys.”

“MANY…THANKS” spelled out in tulips for the pilots of operations Manna and Chowhound

Image Credits: 1 Dutch Resistance (wikipedia.org) 2 Loading up (wikipedia.org) 3 Aerial drops (wikipedia.org) 4 Sorting parcels (wikipedia.org) 5 Aerial drop (wikipedia.org) 6 Banner depicting drops (wikipedia.org) 7 London, May 8, 1945 (wikipedia.org) 8 Rotterdam (wikipedia.org) 9 “Many thanks” (wikipedia.org)

The Pazzi Conspiracy to Assassinate
the Medici Family, April 26, 1478

n the late 1400s, the country we now call Italy was divided into many states and governed each by their own rulers. In the north, Milan’s form of government was a Duchy and thus they were ruled by a Duke. Seafaring Venice had a Doge, Naples a king and the people of Florence had a republic. Over them all, in matters religious and ever-increasingly secular, was the authority of the Pope in Rome, who, in the beneficence of his own office, had granted unto himself certain lands bordering Florence which he called Papal States.

A map of the spread of the Florentine state in the 14th and 15th centuries

When the supreme head of the church and final authority figure for all earthly matters is your neighbor who cultivates his lands and trades his profits through your own, it is easily assumed there might be friction. And considering with whom you have your complaint, that it would remain unresolved. Such were the relations between the republic of Florence and the Papal States in the year 1478.

Pope Sixtus IV (born Francesco della Rovere; 1414-1484)

That is not to say some in Florence did not court papal favor—the Republic’s two leading families, the Medici and the Pazzi, had both vied to be the Pope’s bankers, with the Pazzi eventually securing that prize. Such success cost the Pazzi’s trust and status in their own country, the republic becoming more and more supportive of their rival, the Medici family.

With the ruling Medicis having recently thwarted an attempt by the Pope to seize more lands in the Romagna, a plot was hatched to remove their pesky influence by the Pazzi family—in league with a disgruntled Cardinal from Pisa and Pope Sixtus’ own nephew—leaving the “Holy Father” plausibly blameless for the ensuing coup.

Florence Duomo or Santa Maria del Fiore (Saint Mary of the Flower), site of the assassinations, as viewed from Michelangelo Hill, Florence, Italy

As is common amongst the agents of greed and envy, the conspirators had no qualms traveling to Florence, enjoying the hospitality of their plotted victims and, in the case of Francesco Pazzi, embracing Lorenzo de Medici before mass to ensure he had not worn armor into the holy place. Lorenzo had not, having in good faith brought his whole family to worship God with his erstwhile opponents in the magnificent cathedral his grandfather had built, right in the heart of Florence.

Lorenzo de’ Medici (1449-1492)

Giuliano de’ Medici (1453-1478)

What occurred that Easter Sunday would become one of the most infamous scenes of Renaissance history. In front of an attendance of 10,000 in the church, the two Medici brothers, Lorenzo and Giuliano, (ages 29 and 24) were set upon with drawn knives by members of the Pazzi family and their mercenaries.

The ensuing grapple was so intense that one conspirator reportedly stabbed himself in the leg during the frenzy. Giuliano de Medici was so throughly assaulted that he died almost instantly, his body poetically fallen in front of the altar. Though himself wounded in the neck and pursued through the church, Lorenzo de Medici escaped his assassins with brave assistance from his mother and young wife who took refuge in the sacristy—a small, adjacent room.

Commemorative medal by Bertoldo di Giovanni, 1478, showing the assassination attempt

The Pazzi’s grand intentions for a public assassination of their rivals to cement their supremacy backfired gravely. Even before news of Lorenzo’s survival spread, the townspeople had furiously pursued the conspirators and detained them. The plot had been twofold: murder the Medici heirs and seize control of the senate. Both attempts were witnessed by the people and thwarted before they could fully succeed. In the case of the conspiring cardinal from Pisa, he was killed in the street where the crowd found him. The rest were summarily hung as traitors to the republic, their bodies flung out the windows of the Town Hall and left dangling there as a grim deterrence to those who might have sympathized with the plot.

1479 drawing by Leonardo da Vinci of hanged Pazzi conspirator Bernardo Bandini dei Baroncelli

Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence, Italy, overlooking the Piazza della Signoria—it was from these windows that the conspirators were hung after the Pazzi Conspiracy

The Republic of Florence harbored little doubt regarding the origins of this conspiracy, knowing the Pazzi would not dare such a thing without papal backing, with the involvement of the Pope’s nephew a further confirmation. This began a two year war between Florence and Rome. Among its many outcomes would be the surprising emergence of a pre-Protestant attitude towards the corruption of earthly magistrates, in the church or otherwise. The Pope misstepped not only in consorting with murderers, but also in excommunicating the entire Republic of Florence for their subsequent and lawful execution of the assassins.

Discovery and mutilation of the body of Jacopo de’ Pazzi, one of the Pazzi conspirators

Lorenzo de Medici’s fearless lead in ignoring papal censure and instead consolidating power amongst the local diocese primed the people of Florence for the firebrand preaching of Reformed forerunner Savonarola. His doctrine was fanatical, later twisted as his own ambitions clouded his gospel, but the meat of his teachings led to an intense change in the mood of Florence. Where once art, commerce and ancient philosophies flourished, bonfires of such “vanities” were held in the town square and condemnation passed on the corruption of the church and government at large.

Monument to Girolamo Savonarola, predecessor to Reformation in Italy

By the time of Lorenzo’s own death in 1492, Savonarola’s radical influence had achieved what the Pope could not: the people of Florence overthrew the rule of the very Medicis who once stood between them and papal damnation.

Image Credits: 1 Florentine State (wikipedia.org) 2 Pope Sixtus IV (wikipedia.org) 3 Florence Duomo (wikipedia.org) 4 Lorenze de’ Medici (wikipedia.org) 5 Giuliano de’ Medici (wikipedia.org) 6 Commemorative Medallion (wikipedia.org) 7 Hanging Conspirator (wikipedia.org) 8 Palazzo Vecchio (wikipedia.org) 9 Body discovered (wikipedia.org) 10 Girolamo Savonarola (wikipedia.org)

“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.”—John 15:13

Remembering the Titanic, April 14, 1912

ne hundred twelve years ago, the luxury ocean liner RMS Titanic struck an iceberg and began to sink. In the three short hours before she was submerged, her enduring legacy of heroism and hubris became cemented in history.

A contemporary painting of the sinking of the Titanic, by Willy Stöwer

On a record-making voyage from England to New York, RMS Titanic carried aboard her some of the most notable figures of the early 20th century, a substantial middle class and also, hundreds of immigrants. When the rescue ship, Carpathia, arrived the next morning at the scene of the wreck and began loading survivors, it was found that over 1,500 souls, including the captain, had gone down into the frigid Atlantic. The sinking of the RMS Titanic remains the deadliest maritime disaster in peacetime.

On April 17, 1912 the New York Times published an early list of survivors while further information continued to trickle in

“The history of the RMS Titanic of the White Star Line, is one of the most tragically short it is possible to conceive. The world had waited expectantly for its launching and again for its sailing; had read accounts of its tremendous size and its unexampled completeness and luxury; had felt it a matter of the greatest satisfaction that such a comfortable and above all such a safe boat had been designed and built—the “unsinkable lifeboat”—and then in a moment to hear that it had gone to the bottom as if it had been the veriest tramp steamer of a few hundred tons; and with it fifteen hundred passengers, some of them known all the world over! The improbability of such a thing ever happening was what staggered humanity.”—Lawrence Beesley, Titanic survivor

Stateroom B 59 aboard the Titanic, displaying the opulence and luxury which was so broadly advertised

J. Bruce Ismay (marked with an X) shown testifying at a U.S. Senate Inquiry into sinking of the RMS Titanic

The inquiry of that following morning began the unveiling of many alarming and unpleasant truths. Subsequently, testimonies emerged of one of history’s most gallant last stands. In a century dawning with suffragettes, booming industrialism, communism and looming world war—all of which had new ideas regarding chivalry’s place in the world—the example of the Titanic would prove the old law of the sea would once again have its day.

A recreation of Titanic’s smoking room

“…There arose before us from the decks below a mass of humanity several lines deep converging on the Boat Deck facing us and completely blocking our passage to the stern. There were women in the crowd as well as men and these seemed to be steerage passengers who had just come up from the decks below. Even among these people there was no hysterical cry, no evidence of panic. Oh the agony of it.”
—Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic survivor

The Port Huron Times reporting on the loss of life aboard the Titanic

A long list of dead published in the New York Times held the names of such millionaire magnates as John Jacob Astor, Benjamin Guggenheim, George Dennick Wick, Isidor Strauss and his wife Ida—all of whom willingly gave up their seats in the limited lifeboats at the call of “women and children first”. Presidential aide and distinguished officer, Archibald Butts, perished while making the same sacrifice; Thomas Andrews, the ship’s architect, as well. Meanwhile Titanic’s mammoth crew continued at their dangerous posts until the last moment, laboring to buy time and keep the ship afloat for rescue at the cost of all chance for personal escape.

Ned Parfett, best known as the “Titanic paperboy”, holding a large newspaper banner advert about the sinking, standing outside the White Star Line offices in London, April 16, 1912

Captain Smith (seated, just right of center) and other officers of the Titanic

During moments of mass tragedy the world narrows, and isolated aboard a sinking marvel in the middle of the Atlantic, an unfolding narrative of contrasts played out, one of self-preservation warring with the Christian ethic of sacrifice.

“What impressed me at the time that my eyes beheld the horrible scene was a thin light-gray smoky vapor that hung like a pall a few feet above the broad expanse of sea that was covered with a mass of tangled wreckage. That it was a tangible vapor, and not a product of my imagination, I feel well-assured. It may have been caused by smoke or steam rising to the surface around the area where the ship had sunk. At any rate it produced a supernatural effect, and the pictures I had seen by Dante and the description I had read in my Virgil of the infernal regions of Charon, and the River Leth, were then uppermost in my thoughts. Add to this, within the area described, which was as far as my eyes could reach, there arose to the sky the most horrible sounds ever heard by mortal man except by those of us who survived this terrible tragedy. The agonizing cries of death from over a thousand throats, the wails and groans of the suffering, the shrieks of the terror-stricken and the awful gaspings for breath of those in the last throes of drowning, none of us will ever forget to our dying day.”
—Colonel Archibald Gracie, Titanic survivor

Archibald Gracie IV (1858-1912) initially survived the sinking and wrote extensively of his experience, but never fully recovered and died a mere 8 months later due to complications from the ordeal

Faced with prospects of unimaginable horror, the men of the Titanic, and even some women, chose to lay down their lives for the weak that night. In the end, duty and gallantry, even at appalling cost, remained the victor. The implication of that still grips us today.

“There was peace and the world had an even tenor to its way. Nothing was revealed in the morning the trend of which was not known the night before. It seems to me that the disaster about to occur was the event that not only made the world rub its eyes and awake but woke it with a start. To my mind the world of today awoke April 15th, 1912.”
—Jack B. Thayer, Titanic survivor

John Borland “Jack” Thayer III (1894-1945) was a 17-year-old first-class passenger traveling with his parents on the Titanic at the time of the sinking. He survived by jumping overboard and climbing onto an overturned lifeboat where he spent the remainder of the night before being rescued.

Image Credits: 1 Sinking (wikipedia.org) 2 NYT Front Page (wikipedia.org) 3 Titanic Stateroom (wikipedia.org) 4 Senate Inquiry (wikipedia.org) 5 Titanic Smoking Room (wikipedia.org) 6 Port Huron Times (wikipedia.org) 7 Paperboy (wikipedia.org) 8 Titanic officers (wikipedia.org) 9 Archibald Gracie (wikipedia.org) 10 Jack Thayer (wikipedia.org)

Winston Churchill Creates the RAF, April 1, 1918

n this day in 1918, Britain’s Royal Air Force was created by Winston Churchill. It is now considered the oldest independent flying force in the world. They were spawned from the existing Royal Naval Air Service which he created as Lord of the Admiralty, and the Royal Flying Corps, which Churchill presided over as Secretary of State for Air. Churchill himself long held a passion for aviation and had begun taking flying lessons as early as 1912, always keen to utilize and familiarize himself with cutting-edge technology. He rightfully considered an Air Force as a critical part of any country’s future armory.

A 1913 recruiting poster for the Royal Flying Corps, one of the precursors to the RAF

World War I was in its final year in 1918, armistice would be announced in November—America’s decisive presence and weaponry helping turn the tide—and Churchill’s own political reputation was in tatters due to disastrous naval decisions. Still, his concept for a amalgamated flying force was adopted but hardly used in the dwindling conflict.

Commander C Samson of the Royal Naval Air Service taking off from HMS Hibernia in his modified Shorts S.38 “hydro-aeroplane”
—the first pilot to take off from a ship underway at sea, May 9, 1912

What could not have been foreseen except by a visionary few, was how crucial the newly-minted RAF would become in a mere twenty years. Inaugurated at the end of the War to End All Wars, the British Air Force’s upkeep and technological competitiveness became sorely neglected in the subsequent years. Depression-era politics in the 1930s required both stringent budget cuts and a “good faith attitude” towards their erstwhile enemies in Europe, which demanded an idyllic policy toward the demilitarization of Great Britain.

A crew member of a British SS ‘Z’ Class airship about to throw a bomb from the rear cockpit of the gondola during WWI

It is now rather famous how little Adolf Hitler, Chancellor of Germany, regarded these displays of good faith. He came up with ingenious ways to build up his own Luftwaffe without much notice or intervention from United Europe, he infamously bought supplies and parts from England, and siphoned plane blueprints from Poland. Both of these countries would lose thousands of civilians when he ordered the targeted bombing of their towns a few years later.

Manfred Richthofen—The Red Baron—in the cockpit of his famous Rotes Flugzeug (“Red Aircraft”) with other members of Jasta 11 of the Luftwaffe, including his brother Lothar (sitting, front), April 23, 1917

The only usable force to stand between England in 1940 and Hitler’s Nazis during the Battle of Britain would be the under-equipped, outdated, outnumbered and yet lionhearted pilots of the RAF. Both Fighter and Bomber Aircraft would prove essential elsewhere, in the battles for Africa, the Pacific, and the eventual dreadful bombing of Germany’s heartland. It has been estimated that 75,446 British airmen were either killed, wounded or taken prisoner during World War II, that being 60% of all operational airmen.

King George VI, Queen Elizabeth, Princess Elizabeth (future Queen Elizabeth II) with members of the RAF, between 1942-1945

Winston Churchill admired these men to a great degree and immortalized them in a speech he gave during the early days of the war, in what he called “Their Finest Hour”—almost twenty-two years to the month after the RAF’s creation:

“Almost a year has passed since the war began, and it is natural for us, I think, to pause on our journey at this milestone and survey the dark, wide field. It is also useful to compare the first year of this second war against German aggression with its forerunner a quarter of a century ago. Although this war is in fact only a continuation of the last, very great differences in its character are apparent. In the last war millions of men fought by hurling enormous masses of steel at one another. “Men and shells” was the cry, and prodigious slaughter was the consequence.”

“In this war nothing of this kind has yet appeared. It is a conflict of strategy, of organisation, of technical apparatus, of science, mechanics, and morale… There is another more obvious difference from 1914. The whole of the warring nations are engaged, not only soldiers, but the entire population, men, women, and children. The fronts are everywhere… All hearts go out to the fighter pilots, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes day after day; but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our bomber squadrons travel far into Germany, find their targets in the darkness by the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, with deliberate careful discrimination, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the technical and war-making structure of the Nazi power…”

A poster immortalizing Churchill’s quote after the Battle of Britain

“The gratitude of every home in our Island, in our Empire, and indeed throughout the world, except in the abodes of the guilty, goes out to the British airmen who, undaunted by odds, unwearied in their constant challenge and mortal danger, are turning the tide of the world war by their prowess and by their devotion. Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few.”

A Spitfire and Hurricane, which both played major roles in the Battle of Britain

Image Credits: 1 Recruiting Poster (wikipedia.org) 2 First Sea Takeoff (wikipedia.org) 3 WWI Bomber (wikipedia.org) 4 The Red Baron and other members of the Luftwaffe (wikipedia.org) 5 Royals with RAF (wikipedia.org) 6 Speech Poster (wikipedia.org) 7 WWII Planes (wikipedia.org)