When the weather finally broke, America’s Army Air Force was unleashed. On December 24, Christmas Eve, the United States flew 1,138 tactical sorties (fighters) and an astounding 2,442 heavy bomber sorties. Most wars are fought individually or in small groups. Rarely do participants see or even understand the grand scope and design swirling around them. Just witnessing this vast air armada had a huge psychological effect on the soldiers below on both sides. Few people in history have ever seen anything like it—before or since—and one of them was my late father, Capt. Sidney P. Kozak. Like the other men of that era, my father kept most of his stories to himself, but he shared one that still gives me chills. On that day when the skies cleared, he said the men around him heard and even felt the sound before they understood its source. Then, suddenly, the entire sky filled with planes from one end to the other. He actually waved his arm across some imaginary horizon to add emphasis. And they were all flying in one direction. “I couldn’t believe one country could build that many airplanes,” he told me years later, still in awe (and he had no concept of the massive numbers flying over the Pacific at the same time). Then he paused in his story and shared a very personal moment with a son who rarely, if ever, heard anything personal from this man. “It was the most religious experience of my life,” he said, looking far off and not at me. It is impossible to quantify the impact of a sight like that on an individual, especially given the situation. But watching wave after wave pushing across the sky, flying in strict, regimental formation, with their contrails streaming behind them for miles, electrified the men below and gave them courage. These young Americans were no less cold and hungry and miserable than their forebears at Valley Forge on another Christmas 167 years earlier. And they were no less their equals. weeklystandard/articles/planes-filled-sky_822413.html?page=1
Posted on: Sat, 27 Dec 2014 01:16:19 +0000