Would you bow before this man?

'I have everything in my life because of him': Poignant moment Holocaust survivor salutes American soldier who liberated him from Nazi concentration camp hell in emotional reunion after 70 years Excerpt:

This is the poignant moment when a man rescued from the hell he endured at the hands of the Nazis met his saviour and gave him a salute almost 70 years later. Joshua Kaufman first saluted his rescuer Daniel Gillespie. Then he kissed his hand and finally, he fell to his feet, exclaiming: 'I have wanted to do this for 70 years. I love you, I love you so much...'. Kaufman, now 87, was a 'walking corpse' on April 29 1945 when U.S. Army soldier Gillespie, 89, marched in with his comrades to liberate the charnel house that was the Dachau concentration camp near Munich. Gillespie, a machine gunner with the 42nd 'Rainbow Division,' moved to block 11 of the infamous complex which was the first camp built by the Nazis to house its enemies in 1933.  ... Kaufman had the last word on the beach when he said: 'I have everything I wanted in life through him. That is the reason for my thankfulness.'

Comment: I would bow before the man who saved me from the hell of the Holocaust! In the same way, I bow before the Lord Jesus Christ: "For one will scarcely die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person one would dare even to die— but God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Since, therefore, we have now been justified by his blood, much more shall we be saved by him from the wrath of God" (Romans 5:7-9)

Midway Marauder James Muri's bold hunch

James Muri, Bomber Pilot Honored for Valor in Battle of Midway, Is Dead at 94
Excerpt:

James Muri survived the first half of June 4, 1942, on the strength of his Army Air Forces pilot training. That was the day of his first combat mission, and the first day of the Battle of Midway. He piloted an unwieldy B-26 twin-engine bomber through heavy antiaircraft fire, maneuvered it close to a Japanese aircraft carrier, dropped a torpedo and pulled away into a sky filled with enemy shells just as his bomb detonated.

... [He] first had to evade the hail of antiaircraft fire still coming from the carrier he had just attacked. His inspiration, which saved the lives of his crew as well as his own, was to swing around, go in low and fly straight over the carrier’s deck to avoid its guns.

“The guns were all pointing out. That was the safest place to be,” he said, explaining his reasoning in a 2002 interview with The Billings Gazette. “I always said we could have touched down if we had lowered the gear.”

Mr. Muri’s return to his base on Midway Island was dogged by Zero fighter planes. After his two gunners were wounded, he sent his co-pilot to man the plane’s antiaircraft cannons during the long flight back.

He and his crewmen, all of whom survived, were among 42 members of the Army Air Forces awarded the Distinguished Service Cross for valor in the Battle of Midway, which was considered the decisive contest for control of the Pacific in World War II. Fourteen of the members killed in the battle received the medal posthumously.

Comment: Image sources and additional information: The Midway Marauders, Japanese aircraft carrier Akagi, Obituary, Wiki.

How Allied mathletes helped win the war

How Allied Forces Used Tank Serial Numbers To Defeat The Germans

Excerpt:

During World War II, Allied forces readily admitted that German tanks were superior to their own. The big question for Allied forces, then, was how many tanks Germany was producing. Here's how they reverse-engineered serial numbers to find out.

To solve the problem of determining production numbers, the Allied forces initially tried conventional intelligence gathering: spying, intercepting and decoding transmissions and interrogating captured enemies.

Via this method, the Allies deduced that from June 1940 to September 1942, the German military industrial complex churned out around 1,400 tanks each month. That number just didn't seem right. To put that number in context, Axis forces used "only" 1,200 tanks during the Battle of Stalingrad, an eight month battle with a total of almost two million casualties. So that number of 1,400 was likely way too high.

Obviously skeptical of the above result, the Allies looked for other methods of estimation. And then they found a critical clue: serial numbers.

Allied intelligence noticed each captured German tank contained a serial number unique to the tank. With careful observation, the Allies were able to determine that the serial numbers had a pattern denoting the order of tank production.

Using this data, the Allies were able to create a mathematical model to determine the rate of German tank production, and estimated that, during the same summer 1940 to fall 1942 time period, the Germans produced 255 tanks per month — a fraction of the 1,400 estimate.

And it turns out, the serial number methodology was spot on: after the War, internal German data put der Fuhrer's production numbers at 256 tanks per month — one more than the estimate.

Comment: Didn't know that mathlete was a word! HT: wired.com/autopia