You could mail me or go to my home page. Last updated 2000 May 29.
Sometime in 1942, a man most of you never heard of enlisted in the United States Army Air Force, and became a waist gunner on a B-17. He didn't want to fight in a war, but wanted to go home, get a good job, and raise a family. He did his best regardless. He was shot down while returning from a raid on Osnabrueck in December 1943, and spent the next year and a half as a POW. He survived everything, went home, got married, got a job in the Post Office, and raised two sons, one of whom is me. His name was Howard R. Thornley.
Accordingly, these pages are dedicated to all the people who never wanted to be in a war, found themselves in one anyway, and fought their own tiny part of the war and survived as best they could.
I've been interested in military and naval affairs all my life, although I've never been in military service. ( If you want to know why....) I have written a few things. All of these are the result of extensive, if unsystematic, study and pondering, and I have made little or no effort at scholarly documentation. If you disagree, you can either go somewhere else, consider me an idiot, dig around to try to figure out where I got the idea, or write me.
Strategy fascinates me. The best book I've seen on it is Strategy, by Luttwak. One very interesting book is The Art of Maneuver, by Leonhard, although the author presents maneuver as the proper way to fight (there are others, but Leonhard doesn't cover them here). My own incoherent thoughts on strategy are slowly forming here.
World War II is an interesting study for a variety of reasons. I've found that myths abound. The best single-volume history that I've seen is A World At Arms, by Weinberg, but Weinberg tends to be opinionated and idiosyncratic (if not so much as I am), and the second best history, Willmott's The Great Crusade, is more conventional. My own take on the history of World War II combines various elements from these. There's also a lot of controversies, which a wise man would shy away from. My take on these controversies is, instead, available here.
Here's a collection of military-related links.
After the war, my father wrote about his experiences in a questionnaire for a book by Larry Scholl. As far as I know, this book was never published.
All contents of these pages Copyright 1997 by David H. Thornley.