Wednesday, July 21, 1943. Stormy Weather.

By some accounts the classic film Stormy Weather was released on this date, and not the one we noted a couple of days ago.

It was in fact a day of stormy weather.

A terrible storm hit Indiana. As the National Weather Service notes:

The Great Wawasee Storm of 1943

Weather.gov > Northern Indiana > The Great Wawasee Storm of 1943

 

The Great Wawasee Storm of 1943

The sun rose into a partly cloudy sky on the 21st day of July in 1943. The atmosphere was muggy...dew clung heavily to the blades of grass in people's green lawns. Stepping out into the morning haze it was easy to tell that this was going to be another hot, humid Indiana summer day...the fourteenth day in a row that the mercury would top 80 degrees...might even make it up to 90 if there was enough sunshine.

Though it had been a warm month, it was not unusually oppressive for July, especially when compared with the searing heat Midwesterners suffered through several years earlier. Also, a good deal of rain had fallen on northeast Indiana over the first half of the warm season. The Weather Bureau Airport Station in Fort Wayne reported one and a third inches of rain falling from the 6th to the 7th of July, and two more inches from the 16th to the 17th. That July would end up being the sixth wettest July on record, and although June had been dry, May 1943 was Fort Wayne's second wettest May on record. As a result, lawns were green and the corn was tall.

The Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette's small weather section that morning called for another warm day, as if anyone needed to be told, with "widely scattered thunderstorms in Ohio this evening". Many residents on the Indiana side of the border hoped a passing thundershower might cool off their day as well.

As morning melted into afternoon, the heat grew. Although skies were partially cloudy, the summer sun was allowed to send the mercury climbing, and by mid-afternoon thermometers in the area were giving readings in the middle and upper 80s. Farmers and city folks alike sought shelter from the beating sun. Restaurants had a brisk business selling iced tea and lemonade, served in tall glasses that one could place against his forehead and let the beads of water on the outside of the glass trickle coolly over his fingers. Squinting out the window into the glare, hopes for a refreshing thundershower diminished.

---

Sergeant Lloyd Burkholder was ready for a break. After 51 bombing missions over Europe and north Africa, the twenty-five-year-old was planning on getting every ounce of relaxation that he could out of his week's furlough. He was on his way from Europe to Salt Lake City, and had decided to spend the week between the two assignments at home in Indiana. He rented a cabin on Ideal Beach at Lake Wawasee, just down the road from his parents' Goshen home.

Lloyd shared the cabin with eleven other people, ranging in age from 9 to 32, although most of them were in their early to middle 20s. They had been having a great time on their summer vacation, spending many happy hours playing games on the beach and taking rides on Lake Wawasee.

Ray Reim, a twenty-seven year old resident of Goshen and one of Lloyd's guests, owned a 17-foot speedboat. He loved to tear across the lake in it, especially when crammed with as many of his friends as possible. Although there had been a few nighttime showers passing through the area that week, the days had all been sunny and warm, and the large group from the Ideal Beach cabin had been taking regular rides on the boat. Wednesday, the twenty-first of July, would be no different.

"Hey, are we going to go out on Wawasee today or not?" Lloyd directed at Ray.

"I dunno. Sounds good to me. Are any of you people ever gonna help me with gas money? Gas ain't free, you know!"

"Yeah, yeah. We'll draw up a collection at the end of the week. So you wanna get everybody together or what?"

"Sure. I heard we might see some storms this afternoon, but it sure looks okay out there to me."

"Oh please. Since when do the weathermen know what they're talking about? Look at that - it's already almost five o'clock and there's just a bunch of harmless fluffy white clouds floating around. If something was going to happen, it would have happened by now."

"Good point. Let's get everybody together."

It took Ray and Lloyd a solid forty-five minutes to assemble their friends. As they were corralling the people, the sun grew dimmer and eventually was blotted out entirely by the thickening overcast.

"Gosh, it looks like it's wanting to rain" cautioned Barbara Castetter. Barbara was one of the three grade school aged students in the group. She was shy, and tended to stick close to Betty Yoder, who was of the same age.

Betty replied "Oh, those aren't rain clouds. Rain clouds are down low and are real dark. Those clouds look too high up in the air."

"Okay. I just would hate to get stuck in the middle of the lake during a rainstorm. I just got over a fever and don't much feel like getting cold and wet."

In fact, a large thunderstorm had blown up over the southwest tip of Michigan as the friends at Wawasee were gathering. The storm's intensity increased rapidly, and when it crossed the border it was angrily rushing across the fields of far northern Indiana. At 6:05pm the storm's winds streamed into Elkhart, ripping trees from the ground and blowing down power lines throughout the city. The people of the town were plunged into darkness, with the exception of the brilliant lightning forking from the sky. A woman caught outside in the sudden storm was struck and knocked to the ground by lightning. A few miles southwest of town large stones of hail were beating down on the cornfields, causing a great loss to the farmers who had just that morning been working amidst the tall, green rows.

The fourteen people at Ideal Beach were talking loudly in their excitement to get out on the water, while Ray readied the boat. Robert Yoder, nine years old, had been watching the sky grow darker in the northwest. He was getting worried, but didn't want to look like a scared little kid to the others, so he kept his mouth shut. He shot a glance at Billie. Billie was the sweetest girl he had ever known. She was friendly, pretty, and always treated him like a regular one of the gang, even though he was eleven years her junior. He looked at Billie, watched her laugh and chatter with her girlfriends, and decided everything would be okay.

Eloise, Ray's wife and Lloyd's sister, had been helping Ray with the boat when she glanced up at the sky. "Gee, Ray. I hadn't noticed how dark it had gotten over there on the horizon. Maybe we shouldn't go out?"

"Where's the sky darkest?"

"Northwest."

"Around here strong storms come out of the southwest. If the northwest sky is the darkest, then it should miss us and go off to our north." Eloise hesitantly went back to her work on the boat.

By 6:10 the leading edge of the storm's winds had traveled the ten miles from Elkhart to Goshen in about ten minutes. Branches and phone lines were felled simultaneously in Goshen and in Middlebury, several miles to the northeast. The brunt of the storm's fury was gathering south of Goshen, where hail the size of hickory nuts was showering to earth. The oat fields were flattened by the wind and torrents as though a huge roller had moved over them. In New Paris, two smokestacks, eighty feet tall and weighing four tons each, were not able to withstand the force of the gusts as they roared into the town. Trees were being felled and hail was coming down in Millersburg and Benton in the eastern parts of Elkhart County, but the storm's worst anger was concentrating in southern sections of the county, and was screaming to the southeast.

"All right everybody, the boat's ready!" shouted Ray. "It's already a quarter after six -- let's get this ride in before it gets dark or that weather to our northwest decides to come down this way."

"It's already dark", thought Robert, but of course he didn't dare say anything.

The 14 people piled onto the boat and shoved off into the lake. The engine leapt to life and they began moving through the water. The air was oppressively humid and warm, and there was an odd, almost tinny odor to it. The sky to the west was working on turning from grey to black, while the southeastern horizon was still bright, giving the lake an odd shimmer as one side of the tiny waves reflected the light to the east and the other side absorbed the pall of the gathering storm clouds in the opposite direction.

At half past six Dorothy Beckerich, who was one of the two people from the next-door cabin and had come up from Indianapolis to spend a few days at the lake, said worriedly "Okay, it's starting to get green in the west. We've got to get back to shore. Come on, Ray, turn this tug around and let's get back to the beach."

Trees were being laid flat to the ground along routes 6 and 13 in the Syracuse area. Hail was stripping the corn stalks in the fields, reducing them to rubble.

Crashing thunder followed a dazzling streak of lightning. "That was really close!" shouted Lloyd. "Let's go! Let's go!"

"All right!" shouted Ray. "Let me turn 'er around!"

At 6:35pm the terrible gust of wind sped across the lake and slammed full force into the boat and its occupants. The people instinctively looked away from the direction of the wind and shielded their faces. As Ray was beginning to turn his boat around the waves on the lake began growing at an alarming rate. The boat was leaping and falling violently upon the waves, prompting the people to hold on as tightly as possible. The women's mouths were open but their screams of terror could barely be heard over the howling gale. Ray felt a pull at his shoulder. "Barbara's overboard!!" screamed Lloyd as close to Ray's ear as possible. Before Ray could respond, a wave six feet tall - the tallest ever seen on Lake Wawasee - crashed broadside into the boat, capsizing it and sending all of the remaining thirteen people into the lake's black turbulent waters.

In the South Shore Inn, a group of guests had gathered behind the large picture windows that viewed the lake. There was a general murmur of conversation: "...my goodness look at that!..." "...I've never seen such waves on Wawasee..." "...you can't even see a hundred feet through the rain..." "...I hope there's nobody on the water..."

Seventeen-year-old Rita Niesse had come up from Indianapolis for vacation, and was talking with sixteen-year-old Jacqueline Casey of Anderson. They had become quick friends over the previous few days, sharing a deep love of swimming. "Wow! Look at that wind! The trees are just about bent all the way over!" said Rita excitedly.

"Yeah - the windows are even starting to shake!" replied Jacqueline with large, stunned eyes.

A tree several feet from the window crashed to earth, narrowly missing the building. The onlookers near the window backed away nervously. "Yikes! That was close!" yelled Rita.

In the lake, behind the curtain of driving rain that prevented them from being seen by the inn guests, the fourteen friends were being pitched violently across the water from one wave to the next. Their bearings were lost, and it was extremely difficult to know which way was up, let alone which direction the nearest shore was. Rain and hail pummeled the lake and its occupants so completely that the demarcation between lake and air was barely detectable. As they gasped for air and struggled to keep the water out of their lungs, the boaters swam as best they could while the wind blew them along. Eventually several of the people managed to get a hold on a sailboat that had been anchored in the lake, while others were swept up onto the shore. Still others were lurching about in the water, getting beaten without mercy by the wind, waves, rain, and hail.

A loud crash startled the folks by the inn window. They looked out to see the terrible storm reach its peak intensity. Trees were being torn down left and right...parts of roofs were flying through the air...shingles were getting stripped from the roof of the inn...piers were collapsing and sending their boards on a quick flight across the property. All of this happened very suddenly and spectacularly, like the finale at a Fourth of July fireworks display.

After a few long minutes, the hail stopped and the winds and rain began to slacken. People started leaving the window, shaking their heads in amazement. Rita, captivated by the weather, and Jacqueline, too terrified by it to turn away, crept closer to the window and continued watching. Soon Rita said, "Hey - what's that out there across the lake? See? Way over there."

Jacqueline said "It looks like a sailboat anchored in the lake."

"Right, but what are those things on the side?"

"I dunno - nets I suppose."

"They can't be nets. It looks like they're - they're waving! They're people!" Without thinking, Rita ran out of the building into the pouring rain. Jacqueline fell in step right behind her.

They ran into the lake and began swimming as hard as they could, fighting the still falling rain and the waves that were yet in the process of calming down. After several minutes of intense work, they reached the sailboat and started helping people across the lake. Several trips had to be made in order to help everyone to safety on the shore outside the inn. About half-way through the rescue, a man in a boat reached the scene to assist the swimmers.

The group stumbled into the inn and fell about the floor. Guests ran for towels and began comforting the boaters. Some were sobbing, others were simply staring at the floor. Barbara, who had fallen out first but managed to stay afloat and reach the anchored sailboat, suddenly looked up and with terror in her eyes shouted "How many of us are here!??" The rest of the party looked up and counted. Eight. Again. Eight. Once more. Eight. Oh no...only eight. "Where are the others??" shrieked Barbara. "Where are they??"

Instantly several men ran out of the room, headed for their boats. The police and ambulance had been called and were on their way. A total of twenty rescue boats were launched onto the lake to search for the remaining six people who had been on Ray Reim's boat half an hour prior.

While the storm was terrorizing the people on and around Lake Wawasee, it was also busy leveling cornfields and ripping down trees and power poles in Topeka, Ligonier, and North Webster. Trees were torn completely out of the ground along route 13 from Syracuse to North Webster. By 7pm the storm had covered route 33 from Ligonier to Churubusco with trees, telephone wires, and hail. In Churubusco a tree fell on a car that was driving down one of the little town's streets. A barn north of Collins was blown down.

The tempest had spent a great deal of energy destroying property around Lake Wawasee, and, while still very powerful, was not quite the unwelcome terror in Noble and Whitley counties that it had been earlier. However, as it entered northwest Allen County shortly after 7pm, it had rested long enough and made the decision to attempt to return to its previous fury.

The storm created a swath of destruction from the northwest corner of the county to the north side of Fort Wayne. Hail and wind leveled cornfields. Corn that wasn't blown down by the terrific wind was stripped by the hail, reducing their height from three feet to twelve inches. Windows were blown out of farm houses and several barns were beaten to the ground. Hail the size of hens' eggs battered the Irene Byron Sanatorium near Wallen, breaking dozens of windows. Torrential rain flooded all roads in the north part of the county. The Weather Bureau Airport Station, at Smith Airport on the north side of Fort Wayne and less than a mile away from the large hail, reported 1.34 inches of rainfall between 7pm and 8pm. The road outside the weather office was washed away.

Around 8pm Dorothy Beckerich's body was discovered.

Dorothy was from Indianapolis and had just turned twenty-one. She had been having a great time with her friend Virginia Rush, with whom she shared a cabin on Ideal Beach. That afternoon Lloyd from the cabin next door had asked her and Virginia to go out on the lake in Ray's boat. They didn't have to think twice - a boat ride would be great. Three hours later Dorothy's water-soaked body washed up onto the beach, half a mile east of the South Shore Inn, not far from the remains of her twenty-year-old roommate, Virginia.

The storm raged on as it ripped down trees and power poles in Saint Joe, New Haven, and Monroeville. At Harlan the trees were stripped of their bark and leaves. A barn was blown across a road into a farmhouse. A hundred chickens and a cow were killed when another barn was demolished by the unrelenting gusts.

At 8:30pm the storms crossed the Ohio line. They produced two tornadoes. The first one struck southwest Paulding County between McGill and Tipton where it produced F2 damage to two barns. The second tornado dropped from the sky just northwest of Van Wert around 9pm and inflicted F2 damage to six barns. Nobody was killed or injured in either tornado.

The last of the six bodies at Lake Wawasee was found at 5:45 Friday morning, nearly thirty-six hours after the accident. Fortunately Robert Yoder, who had silently depended on her for support as the storm clouds gathered that Wednesday afternoon, was not present to watch the men pull Billie's lifeless body from the water, where she had drowned and been held seven feet below the surface by sunken debris.

Epilogue

On Wednesday, July 21, 1943, a terrible storm swept across northeast Indiana. Directly in the path of its untempered fury was Lake Wawasee, and a boat with fourteen friends out for an evening on the lake. The boat capsized in the tallest waves ever seen on the lake, spilling all fourteen people into the water. Eight of those people never forgot the terror they were put through that night.

Perished

Sergeant Lloyd Burkholder, age 25, of Goshen

Dean Yoder, age 21, of Elkhart

Lloyd Conklin, age 21, of Goshen

Dorothy Beckerich, age 21, of Indianapolis

Billie Binkley, age 20

Virginia Rush, age 20

Survived

Earl Markham, age 32, of Goshen

Ray Reim, age 27, of Goshen

Eloise Reim, age 24, of Goshen

Doris Radkey, age 22, of Goshen

Betty Radkey, age 20, of Goshen

Barbara Castetter, age 13, of Rome, New York

Betty Yoder, age 13, of Goshen

Robert Yoder, age 9, of Goshen

The survivors owed their lives to two teenage girls from central Indiana: Rita Niesse and Jacqueline Casey.

Click on the image for a map of the track of the storm

References

Grazulis, Thomas, 1991: Significant Tornadoes, 1690-1991,

DOC,NOAA,NWS, 1943: Monthly Meteorological Summary for Fort Wayne, Indiana, National Climatic Data Center, Asheville, NC.

DOC,NOAA,NWS, 1943: Daily Maximum Temperature by Years, National Weather Service Office, South Bend, IN.

DOC,NOAA,NWS, 1943: Total Precipitation, National Weather Service Office, South Bend, IN.

Goshen News Democrat. July 22, 1943

Columbia City Post and Mail. July 22, 1943

Columbia City Post. July 23, 1943

Elkhart Truth. July 22, 1943

Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. July 22, 1943

Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. July 23, 1943

Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette. July 24, 1943

 

The Battle of Roosevelt Ridge which saw US and Australian forces pitted against the Imperial Japanese Army began on New Guinea.

Patton's Seventh Army took Castelvetrano, Santa Margherita, Corleone, Valledolmo, and Alimena, Sicily.  This action cleared the western part of the island.

Friday, July 16, 1943. Morire per Mussolini e Hitler, o vivere per l'Italia e per la civiltà.

Italy's Fascist Grand Council, concerned by the arrival of Allied troops on Italian soil, convened for the first time since 1939.  On the same day, Allied aircraft dropped leaflets over the Italian mainland that read "Morire per Mussolini e Hitler, o vivere per l'Italia e per la civiltà" (Die for Mussolini and Hitler, or live for Italy and for civilization).  

Radio broadcast a joint message to the Italian people from Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt.

Italy, as a fascist state, was coming undone.

The British Air Ministry approved the use of "Window", aluminum strips, as a radar countermeasure.

Effect of Window on radar signature.

The Germans ordered the deportation of 13,000 Jews living in Paris to the Drancy detention center, a way stop for them on the way to Auschwitz.

Yitzhak Wittenberg, a Jewish Lithuanian resistance leader, surrendered to the Gestapo in Vilnius in exchange for an agreement that the Vilnius ghetto would not be liquidated.  He did shortly there after in an undetermined fashion.

The ghetto was liquidated by the Germans in September 1943.

In an event which tends to be misreported, Père Marie-Benoît (Padre Maria Benedetto), a Capuchin Franciscan friar who successfully rescued 4,000 Jews during the war, met with Pope Pius XII in an effort to advance his plan to try to transfer approximately 30,000 French Jews to North Africa, in order to remove them from danger.  The Italian portion of the plan ultimately fell apart when the Germans occupied northern Italy following the collapse of Mussolini's government, but the Spanish portion, which did result in the rescue of 2,600 French Jews on the somewhat ironic pretext that they were Jews of Spanish ancestry, which is the cover that Franco's government operated under. 

He died in 1990 at age 95.

The Battle of Mount Tambu began on New Guinea between the Imperial Japanese Army and American and Australian forces.

The Batman character appeared in film for the first time, this being in a fifteen-minute serial episode before major features.  In the original series, he was called "The Batman", with the first episode being "The Electrical Brain".

Saturday, July 3, 1943. Oak Ridge sees its first residents.

The first residents of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, a government constructed town dedicated to the Manhattan Project, arrived.

U.S. howitzer being fired during battle.

The Battle of Wickham Anchorage on Vangunu concluded in an American victory.

The island today retains a small population of subsistence farmers.

Wednesday, April 7, 1943. An uncomfortable meeting.

Hitler and Mussolini met at Schloss Klessheim.

Mussolini was sick and Hitler babbled on.  Il Duce suggested that perhaps the pair approach Uncle Joe about a separate peace, but Hitler would have none of it.

The Japanese conducted massive air raids in the Solomons on this day, although they were not a complete surprise due to American radio intercepts.  Marine Corps pilot James E. Swett would be awarded the Medal of Honor for his actions.  His citation reads:

FIRST LIEUTENANT JAMES E. SWETT

UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS RESERVE for service as set forth in the following CITATION:

For conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his life above and beyond the call of duty, as a division leader in Marine Fighting Squadron TWO TWENTY-ONE in action against enemy Japanese aerial forces in the Solomon Islands Area, April 7, 1943. In a daring flight to intercept a wave of 150 Japanese planes, First Lieutenant Swett unhesitatingly hurled his four-plane division into action against a formation of fifteen enemy bombers and during his dive personally exploded three hostile planes in mid-air with accurate and deadly fire. Although separated from his division while clearing the heavy concentration of anti-aircraft fire, he boldly attacked six enemy bombers, engaged the first four in turn, and unaided, shot them down in flames. Exhausting his ammunition as he closed the fifth Japanese bomber, he relentlessly drove his attack against terrific opposition which partially disabled his engine, shattered the windscreen and slashed his face. In spite of this, he brought his battered plane down with skillful precision in the water off Tulagi without further injury. The superb airmanship and tenacious fighting spirit which enabled First Lieutenant Swett to destroy eight enemy bombers in a single flight were in keeping with the highest traditions of the United States Naval Service.

Swett, far right.

Born in 1920, Swett was a prewar private pilot before joining the Navy, and then transferring following flight school to the Marine Corps.  Swett remained in the Marine Corps following World War Two but left for the reserves folloiwng the Marine Corps' decision not to deploy him to Korea during the Korean War as he was a Medal of Honor recipient.  He died in California in 2009 at age 88.

The British government published a report by John Maynard Keynes about the global postwar economy, proposing an international monetary fund.

Allied forces prevailed at Wadi Akarit

Bolivia declared war against the Axis powers.

There were still a fair number of foreign language newspapers in the U.S., even in languages which had been officially unpopular during the prior World War.  This one printed in German fraktur, which interestingly was now officially prohibited in Germany itself.

Today In Wyoming's History: April 7: 1943. On this day, the sale of coffee was banned in Cheyenne and Casper due to violations of wartime rationing restrictions.

Monday, January 4, 1943. Stalin, Man of the Year.

Stalin appeared on the cover of Time Magazine as the 1942 Man of the Year.

Japanese Prime Minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo, ordered Japanese forces to withdraw from Guadalcanal.

A unit of the Jewish Fighting Organization launched an unsuccessful attack aimed at the Czestochowa Ghetto.  On the following day the Nazis, as a reprisal, killed 250 children and elderly, and shipped the remaining ghetto residents to concentration camps.

Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin was born in Rockville Centre, New York.

Friday, December 25, 1942. A wartime Christmas.

Old Radio: December 25, 1942: 'Victory Parade's Christmas Par...:   December 25, 1942: All day long, Coca-Cola sponsored Victory Parade's Christmas Party of Spotlight Band s, transmitted on NBC Blue N...

A monograph sponsored by the National Park Service states the following about the Victory Parade radio program:

An Overview of The Spotlight Bands Series

In the fall of 1941, the Coca Cola Company signed a twenty-six week con¬tract with the Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) to air over 125 of its stations, the best of the big bands six nights a week. Monday through Friday, for a quarter of an hour from 10:15 to 10:30 pm Eastern Standard Time, five different bands appeared from the stage of the new Mutual Theater in New York City. The building which held a capacity of 1,000 guests had been the former Maxine Elliott Theater on West 39th Street that the network had acquired and renovated with the most modern of broadcasting equipment for the new series. Sixty percent of the programs originated from these facilities with the remaining forty percent being split between Chicago and Hollywood.

The Kay Kyser Orchestra was the first band to broadcast from the theater on November 3rd and for the next four evenings the melodies of Guy Lombardo, Sammy Kaye, Tommy Dorsey and Eddy Duchin were heard across the nation. The Saturday segment known as the 'Silver Platter' portion aired at the same time but was thirty min¬utes in length, 10:15-10:45 PM. However, unlike the Monday through Friday bands, the one on Saturday was not selected by the network. Rather, this time spot was kept open for the leader rolling up the largest nation-wide record sales during the previous week, thereby creating a mystery band for the listening audience each Saturday evening. The first 'Silver Platter' winner was the Freddy Martin Orchestra which had been selected because they had amassed the greatest amount of single sales the previous month with their recording of Tchaikovsky's classic, Piano Concerto in B Flat, featuring pianist Jack Fina.

Within a relatively short time, the Spotlight Band broadcasts became the most popular big band draw on the radio dial. The result was that the network rescheduled the series into an earlier primetime slot for greater audience exposure. With the February 2, 1942, program featuring the Benny Goodman band, a change was made to 9:30-9:45 PM Eastern War Time weekdays and 9:30-10:00 PM for Saturdays.

As the series neared its twenty-six week completion, negotiations between the network and the sponsor to renew stalled. The last performance aired on May 2, 1942 and featured the Harry James Orchestra from Hollywood. (As a footnote, the James band won the most 'Silver Platters' in the first series totaling seven including the last six Saturdays in a row because of their hit recording, Don't Want To Walk Without You, featuring vocalist Helen Forrest). 

Throughout the summer, negotiations with the network and Coca Cola con¬tinued but to no avail. For various reasons, the soft drink firm decided not to re-sign with Mutual. The “music trades” reported that the sponsor wished to become more involved in the war cause and were determined to return the program to the airwaves in the fall with a “new look”. By mid-August, Coca Cola had agreed to terms for a sec¬ond series with the Blue Network, soon to become the American Broadcasting Company or (ABC).

The first move toward the “new look” for the series was a name change to “The Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands”. With America now in the War, Coca Cola insist¬ed that their presentation be geared as much to the entertainment of the fighting men on both the home and training fronts as to its civilian audience. The format of six different bands each week was retained, but the nightly broadcast time was extended to twenty five minutes, 9:30-9:55 PM EWT. The last five minutes of each half hour was devoted to local news. Another important new feature was that the listening audience became directly involved with the selection of the weekly bands. A combination of two polls rather than record sales now determined which band played and where. The first involved the civilian listeners who voted for the bands they wanted to hear each week and the second was the “Victory Poll” open only to service personnel and defense work¬ers who, with their votes, determined the different nightly locations. The most signifi¬cant difference from the original series was that the broadcasts now aired directly from the various military installations, hospitals, and war plants throughout the country. Not only did Coca Cola send the bands to these locations at their expense, but, each time, the bands were booked and paid to play a three hour engagement. Also, for the first time, the radio shows in this series were numbered by the network. The importance of this notation will become apparent shortly. (Ironically, the first band to start the second series on September 21, 1942, was the Harry James Orchestra performing from the Marine Base on Parris Island, North Carolina).

On December 25th, Coca Cola sponsored a special presentation entitled, “Uncle Sam's Christmas Tree of Spotlight Bands”. This big band bonanza went on the air at noon EWT with the Sammy Kaye Orchestra from Fort Monmouth at Red Bank, New Jersey, and with few interruptions moved west and closed at midnight featuring the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra at the San Pedro Naval Base, San Pedro, California. A total of forty-three different bands, including Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong, Gene Krupa, Duke Ellington and Fletcher Henderson, participated in fifteen minute segments from all over the country. The music marathon was the largest of its kind ever attempted on a coast to coast radio network.

As the twenty-six week contract with the Blue Network ended in March, 1943, the Coca Cola Company appeared pleased and signed on again for the next two years. At this time Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) became involved with their own version of the band series. AFRS began, on March 22, to record the network programs direct from radio and telephone line feeds onto acetate lacquers in their studio facili¬ties. Later the programs were remixed and edited down to a fifteen minute format elim¬inating any mention of the sponsor. A new musical introduction and announcements by an AFRS broadcaster were then added. These new versions were pressed onto 16-inch transcription discs and distributed via AFRS to radio stations within their network around the world. (As a further footnote, many of these discs have survived till today and have proved a valuable asset in logging the specific whereabouts of the hundreds of bands at the time as well as the contents of their performances).

The first band that AFRS recorded for their purposes was the Hal McIntyre Orchestra. This program was #157 in the network series and assigned #1 with AFRS. This meant that originally there was a numerical difference of 156 between the two list¬ings. However, in October a discrepancy occurred when there appeared to be no pro¬gram #177 in the AFRS series. Many theories have surfaced in an attempt to explain this error. However, to date, no explanation has held water. Therefore, from this point onward a numerical difference of 155 existed between the series. For the next two years the Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands program numbering continued through #858 on the network and #703 on AFRS until Saturday June 16, 1945 with the Eddie Oliver Orchestra. At this time Coca Cola ended its six nights a week broadcasts and long term relationship with ABC.

However, two nights later, on June 18th, the Spotlight Band programs were back on the air when Coca Cola again teamed with Mutual (MBS), their original network partner, from the fall of 1941. With this move came a cutback in airtime for the bands. Instead of six nights a week, they now only performed three nights: Monday, Wednesday and Friday at the same time. The first band to broadcast in the new week¬ly format and initiate the third Spotlight Band series was the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra followed on Wednesday by Vincent Lopez. The Friday spot was pre-empted. For the next nine months until the end of March 1946, the band series continued unchanged from various venues and military installations around the country. On March 29th, with the networks 979th program (AFRS #826), the Ray Herbeck Orchestra brought to a close the third Spotlight series.

The band show now embarked on its fourth and final association with Coca Cola. This involved three set bands, one for each of the same three nights of the week. On Monday April 1st, there was Guy Lombardo; Wednesday, April 3rd, Xavier Cugat; and Friday, April 5th, the Harry James Orchestra. Although the network at this time discon¬tinued numbering the programs, AFRS continued with theirs. Much success and radio exposure for the dozens of different big bands had transpired since the original series began in the fall of 1941, but the marketing value of these musical organizations was no longer what it had been. Coca Cola decided it no longer wanted to be in the band business and let its contract with Mutual expire on December 27, 1946. With the Harry James appearance of November 22, the great era of the Victory Parade of Spotlight Bands came to a close.

Wayne Knight, Music Historian

The British 8th Army captured Sirte.

Fernand Bonnier de La Chapelle, the French resistance royalist who had assassinated Admiral Darlan, was executed.  He was rehabilitated in 1945 on the basis that Darlan's assassination had been "in the interest of liberation of France" although you apparently have to be French to grasp how.

German soldiers at Stalingrad receive their last issuance of horsemeat. The Germans had by this point slaughtered all of their horses.

Christmas dinners were held for those far away from home, including this one at the Andrew Feruseth Club on Christmas Day.

American families, like that of my father, went through their second wartime Christmas, but in some ways this one was significantly different.  Various types of rationing had set in, and the war was now over a year old with no end in sight, at least no end that most people could reasonably foresee.

Canadian ones, like my mothers, were going through their fourth wartime Christmas.

September 15, 1942. The Devastating Torpedo Run of the I-19.

USS Wasp after being hit.

The Japanese I-19 fired fatal torpedo shots at the USS Wasp and USS O'Brien, and damaged the USS North Carolina off of Guadalcanal in a single torpedo run of six torpedoes.

The USS O'Brien being hit, the Wasp is burning on the left.

The I-19 had a devastating career in the Pacific War until its luck ran out on November 25, 1943, when it was sunk by the USS Radford.

On the same day, Italian frogmen placed limpet mines on the British SS Ravens Point at Gibraltar, sinking her, but not beyond repair.

The United States Army Air Force bombed Kiska for the second day in a row.

Saturday, September 12, 1922. The Battle of Edson's Ridge and the Laconia incident commence.

Japanese forces, believing that the Marines have only 2,000 men on Guadalcanal, when in fact there are 12,000, attack Edson's Ridge.  The fighting, which commences at night, is intense and confused, but the Japanese make little progress.

Edson's Ridge after battle.

The U-156 sinks the British troopship Laconia in the South Atlantic, which is carrying a mixed group of Italian POWs, civilians and military personnel.  The submarine surfaced to pick up survivors, and was surprised to find that many were Italian.