THE AIR WAR IN EUROPE AND THE “BLOODY 100TH”: SOME OF THE “MASTERS OF THE AIR” FROM EAST TENNESSEE

The story of the air war in Europe during WW II is one of tremendous courage and catastrophic loss.  It is the story of US-made B-17 Flying Fortresses and B-24 Liberators, shuttled across the North Atlantic from Canada into Great Britain where they were readied for perilous bombing missions into northern Europe (Occupied France and […]

The Battle for Iwo Jima

U.S. Marines invaded Iwo Jima on February 19, 1945, after months of naval and air bombardment. The Japanese defenders of the island were dug into bunkers deep within the volcanic rocks. Approximately 70,000 U.S. Marines and 18,000 Japanese soldiers took part in the battle. The Battle for Iwo Jima was an epic military campaign between U.S. […]

The Vietnam Tet Offensive, January 1968

On February 15, 1968, during some of the heaviest fighting of the Tet Offensive, James T. (Tommy) Davis of Meigs County fell to enemy fire as a result of multiple shrapnel wounds. Six other East Tennesseans died during the campaign. Their bios can be found below. On the early morning of January 30, 1968, Viet Cong […]

Battle of Hürtgen Forest

The Battle of Hürtgen Forest (German: Schlacht im Hürtgenwald) was a series of battles fought from 19 September to 16 December 1944, between American and German forces on the Western Front during World War II, in the Hürtgen Forest, a 140 km2 (54 sq mi) area about 5 km (3.1 mi) east of the Belgian–German border.[1] It was the longest […]

Ardennes Offensive (Battle of the Bulge)

The Battle of the Bulge, also known as the Ardennes Offensive, was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. The battle lasted for five weeks from 16 December 1944 to 28 January 1945, towards the end of the war in Europe. It was launched through the densely forested Ardennes region between Belgium and Luxembourg. It overlapped with the Alsace Offensive, subsequently […]

SPC Jeremy Daniel Evans

SPC Jeremy Daniel Evans passed away on October 2, 2023 near Ft Wainwright, Alaska as a result of a training accident. Jeremy, as he was known to many in the area, was born March 31, 2000. Jeremy attended Gibbs High School before enlisting in the U.S. Army as a private. The family will receive friends […]

September 11, 2001 and Afghanistan

Al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington, DC. A fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Close to three thousand people die in the attacks. Although Afghanistan is the base for al-Qaeda, none of the nineteen hijackers are Afghan […]

The Korean War Seventy Years Later (1953-2023)

“The soldier above all others prays for peace, for it is the soldier who must suffer and bear the deepest wounds and scars of war.” —General Douglas MacArthur Of the seven conflicts the ETVMA chronicles and memorializes, one yet remains unresolved with no final peace treaty in place.  More than 36,000 American troops were killed […]

The USS Indianapolis and East Tennessee

The infamous sinking of the USS Indianapolis (CA-35) resulted in the greatest single loss of life in American naval history, with approximately 300 crew members going down with the ship and another 580 dying in the water from dehydration, exposure, saltwater poisoning, and shark attacks. Only 317 of its original crew of 1,196 survived the […]