Soldier
A soldier is one who fights as part of an army. A soldier can be a conscripted or volunteer enlisted person, a non-commissioned officer, or an officer; the word soldier derives from the Middle English word soudeour, from Old French soudeer or soudeour, meaning mercenary, from soudee, meaning shilling's worth or wage, from sou or soud, shilling. The word is related to the Medieval Latin soldarius, meaning soldier; these words derive from the Late Latin word solidus, referring to an Ancient Roman coin used in the Byzantine Empire. In most armies use of the word "soldier" has taken on a more general meaning due to the increasing specialization of military occupations that require different areas of knowledge and skill-sets; as a result, "soldiers" are referred to by names or ranks which reflect an individual's military occupation specialty arm, service, or branch of military employment, their type of unit, or operational employment or technical use such as: trooper, commando, infantryman, paratrooper, ranger, engineer, craftsman, medic, or a gunner.
In many countries soldiers serving in specific occupations are referred to by terms other than their occupational name. For example, military police personnel in the British Army are known as "red caps" because of the colour of their caps. Infantry are sometimes called "grunts" or "squaddies", while U. S. Army artillery crews, or "gunners," are sometimes referred to as "redlegs", from the service branch color for artillery. U. S. soldiers are called "G. I.s". French Marine Infantry are called marsouins because of their amphibious role. Military units in most armies have nicknames of this type, arising either from items of distinctive uniform, some historical connotation or rivalry between branches or regiments; some soldiers, such as conscripts or draftees, serve a single limited term. Others choose to serve until retirement. In the United States, military members can retire after 20 years. In other countries, the term of service is 30 years, hence the term "30-year man". According to the United Nations, 10-30% of all soldiers worldwide are women.
Airman Marine Sailor Media related to Soldier at Wikimedia Commons
Propaganda
Propaganda is information, not objective and is used to influence an audience and further an agenda by presenting facts selectively to encourage a particular synthesis or perception, or using loaded language to produce an emotional rather than a rational response to the information, presented. Propaganda is associated with material prepared by governments, but activist groups, religious organizations and the media can produce propaganda. In the twentieth century, the term propaganda has been associated with a manipulative approach, but propaganda was a neutral descriptive term. A wide range of materials and media are used for conveying propaganda messages, which changed as new technologies were invented, including paintings, posters, films, radio shows, TV shows, websites. More the digital age has given rise to new ways of disseminating propaganda, for example, through the use of bots and algorithms to create computational propaganda and spread fake or biased news using social media. In a 1929 literary debate with Edward Bernays, Everett Dean Martin argues that, "Propaganda is making puppets of us.
We are moved by hidden strings which the propagandist manipulates." Propaganda is a modern Latin word, the gerundive form of propagare, meaning to spread or to propagate, thus propaganda means that, to be propagated. This word derived from a new administrative body of the Catholic church created in 1622 as part of the Counter-Reformation, called the Congregatio de Propaganda Fide, or informally Propaganda, its activity was aimed at "propagating" the Catholic faith in non-Catholic countries. From the 1790s, the term began being used to refer to propaganda in secular activities; the term began taking a pejorative or negative connotation in the mid-19th century, when it was used in the political sphere. Primitive forms of propaganda have been a human activity as far back as reliable recorded evidence exists; the Behistun Inscription detailing the rise of Darius I to the Persian throne is viewed by most historians as an early example of propaganda. Another striking example of propaganda during Ancient History is the last Roman civil wars during which Octavian and Mark Antony blame each other for obscure and degrading origins, cowardice and literary incompetence, luxury and other slanders.
This defamation took the form of uituperatio, decisive for shaping the Roman public opinion at this time. Propaganda during the Reformation, helped by the spread of the printing press throughout Europe, in particular within Germany, caused new ideas and doctrine to be made available to the public in ways that had never been seen before the 16th century. During the era of the American Revolution, the American colonies had a flourishing network of newspapers and printers who specialized in the topic on behalf of the Patriots; the first large-scale and organised propagation of government propaganda was occasioned by the outbreak of war in 1914. After the defeat of Germany in the First World War, military officials such as Erich Ludendorff suggested that British propaganda had been instrumental in their defeat. Adolf Hitler came to echo this view, believing that it had been a primary cause of the collapse of morale and the revolts in the German home front and Navy in 1918. In Mein Kampf Hitler expounded his theory of propaganda, which provided a powerful base for his rise to power in 1933.
Historian Robert Ensor explains. Most propaganda in Nazi Germany was produced by the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda under Joseph Goebbels. World War II saw continued use of propaganda as a weapon of war, building on the experience of WWI, by Goebbels and the British Political Warfare Executive, as well as the United States Office of War Information. In the early 20th century, the invention of motion pictures gave propaganda-creators a powerful tool for advancing political and military interests when it came to reaching a broad segment of the population and creating consent or encouraging rejection of the real or imagined enemy. In the years following the October Revolution of 1917, the Soviet government sponsored the Russian film industry with the purpose of making propaganda films In WWII, Nazi filmmakers produced emotional films to create popular support for occupying the Sudetenland and attacking Poland; the 1930s and 1940s, which saw the rise of totalitarian states and the Second World War, are arguably the "Golden Age of Propaganda".
Leni Riefenstahl, a filmmaker working in Nazi Germany, created one of the best-known propaganda movies, Triumph of the Will. In the US, animation became popular for winning over youthful audiences and aiding the U. S. war effort, e.g. Der Fuehrer's Face, which ridicules Hitler and advocates the value of freedom. US war films in the early 1940s were designed to create a patriotic mindset and convince viewers that sacrifices needed to be made to defeat the Axis Powers. Polish filmmakers in Great Britain created anti-nazi color film Calling mr. Smith about current nazi crimes in occupied Europe and about lies of nazi propaganda; the West and the Soviet Union both used propaganda extensively during the Cold War. Both sides used film, and
War in Afghanistan (2001–present)
The War in Afghanistan, code named Operation Enduring Freedom – Afghanistan and Operation Freedom's Sentinel, followed the United States invasion of Afghanistan of 7 October 2001. The U. S. was supported by the United Kingdom and Australia and by a coalition of over 40 countries, including all NATO members. The war's public aims were to dismantle al-Qaeda and to deny it a safe base of operations in Afghanistan by removing the Taliban from power. Since the initial objectives were completed at the end of 2001, the war involves U. S. and allied Afghan government troops battling Taliban insurgents. The War in Afghanistan is the longest war in U. S. history. Following the September 11 attacks in 2001 on the U. S. which President George W. Bush blamed on Osama bin Laden, living or hiding in Afghanistan and had been wanted since 1998, President Bush demanded that the Taliban, who were de facto ruling the country, hand over bin Laden; the Taliban declined to extradite him unless they were provided clear evidence of his involvement in the attacks, which the U.
S. dismissed as a delaying tactic and on 7 October 2001 launched Operation Enduring Freedom with the United Kingdom. The two were joined by other forces, including the Northern Alliance – the Afghan opposition, fighting the Taliban in the ongoing civil war since 1996. By December 2001, the Taliban and their al-Qaeda allies were defeated in the country, at the Bonn Conference new Afghan interim authorities elected Hamid Karzai to head the Afghan Interim Administration; the United Nations Security Council established the International Security Assistance Force to assist the new authority with securing Kabul, which after a 2002 loya jirga became the Afghan Transitional Administration. A nationwide rebuilding effort was made following the end of the totalitarian Taliban regime. In the popular elections of 2004, Karzai was elected president of the country, now named the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. NATO became involved in ISAF in August 2003, that year assumed leadership of it. At this stage, ISAF included troops from 43 countries with NATO members providing the majority of the force.
One portion of U. S. forces in Afghanistan operated under NATO command. S. command. Following defeat in the initial invasion, the Taliban was reorganized by its leader Mullah Omar, launched an insurgency against the Afghan government and ISAF in 2003. Though outgunned and outnumbered, insurgents from the Taliban - and to a lesser extent Hezb-e-Islami Gulbuddin and other groups - waged asymmetric warfare with guerrilla raids and ambushes in the countryside, suicide attacks against urban targets, turncoat killings against coalition forces; the Taliban exploited weaknesses in the Afghan government to reassert influence across rural areas of southern and eastern Afghanistan. From 2006 the Taliban made significant gains and showed an increased willingness to commit atrocities against civilians – ISAF responded by increasing troops for counter-insurgency operations to "clear and hold" villages. Violence escalated from 2007 to 2009. Troop numbers began to surge in 2009 and continued to increase through 2011 when 140,000 foreign troops operated under ISAF and U.
S. command in Afghanistan. Of these 100,000 were from the U. S. On 1 May 2011, United States Navy SEALs killed Osama bin Laden in Pakistan. NATO leaders in 2012 commended an exit strategy for withdrawing their forces, the United States announced that its major combat operations would end in December 2014, leaving a residual force in the country. In October 2014, British forces handed over the last bases in Helmand to the Afghan military ending their combat operations in the war. On 28 December 2014, NATO formally ended ISAF combat operations in Afghanistan and transferred full security responsibility to the Afghan government; the NATO-led Operation Resolute Support was formed the same day as a successor to ISAF. As of May 2017, over 13,000 foreign troops remain in Afghanistan without any formal plans to withdraw, continue their fight against the Taliban, which remains by far the largest single group fighting against the Afghan government and foreign troops. Tens of thousands of people have been killed in the war.
Over 4,000 ISAF soldiers and civilian contractors, over 62,000 Afghan national security forces were killed, as well as over 31,000 civilians and more Taliban. Afghanistan's political order began to break down with the overthrow of King Zahir Shah by his distant cousin Mohammed Daoud Khan in a bloodless 1973 Afghan coup d'état. Daoud Khan had served as prime minister since 1953 and promoted economic modernization, emancipation of women, Pashtun nationalism; this was threatening to neighboring Pakistan, faced with its own restive Pashtun population. In the mid-1970s, Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto began to encourage Afghan Islamist leaders such as Burhanuddin Rabbani and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, to fight against the regime. In 1978, Daoud Khan was killed in a coup by Afghan's Communist Party, his former partner in government, known as the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan; the PDPA pushed for a socialist transformation by abolishing arranged marriages, promoting mass literacy and reforming land ownership.
This provoked opposition across rural areas. The PDPA's crackdown was met including Ismail Khan's Herat Uprising; the PDPA was beset by internal leadership differences and was weakened by an internal coup on 11 September 1979 when Hafizullah Amin ousted Nur Muhammad Tara
Cargo aircraft
A cargo aircraft is a fixed-wing aircraft, designed or converted for the carriage of cargo rather than passengers. Such aircraft do not incorporate passenger amenities and feature one or more large doors for loading cargo. Freighters may be operated by civil passenger or cargo airlines, by private individuals or by the armed forces of individual countries. Aircraft designed for cargo flight have features that distinguish them from conventional passenger aircraft: a wide/tall fuselage cross-section, a high-wing to allow the cargo area to sit near the ground, a large number of wheels to allow it to land at unprepared locations, a high-mounted tail to allow cargo to be driven directly into and off the aircraft. By 2015, dedicated freighters represent 43% of the 700 billion ATK capacity, while 57% is carried in airliner's cargo holds, Boeing forecast Belly freight to rise to 63% while specialised cargoes would represent 37% of a 1,200 billion ATKs in 2035. Aircraft were put to use carrying cargo in the form of "air mail" as early as 1911.
Although the earliest aircraft were not designed as cargo carriers, by the mid-1920s aircraft manufacturers were designing and building dedicated cargo aircraft. In the UK during the early 1920s, the need was recognized for a freighter aircraft to transport troops and materiel to pacify tribal revolts in the newly occupied territories of the Middle East; the Vickers Vernon, a development of the Vickers Vimy Commercial, entered service with the Royal Air Force as the first dedicated troop transport in 1921. In February 1923 this was put to use by the RAF's Iraq Command who flew nearly 500 Sikh troops from Kingarban to Kirkuk in the first strategic airlift of troops. Vickers Victorias played an important part in the Kabul Airlift of November 1928–February 1929, when they evacuated diplomatic staff and their dependents together with members of the Afghan royal family endangered by a civil war; the Victorias helped to pioneer air routes for Imperial Airways' Handley Page HP.42 airliners. The World War II German design, the Arado Ar 232 was the first purpose built cargo aircraft.
The Ar 232 was intended to supplant the earlier Junkers Ju 52 freighter conversions, but only a few were built. Most other forces used freighter versions of airliners in the cargo role as well, most notably the C-47 Skytrain version of the Douglas DC-3, which served with every Allied nation. One important innovation for future cargo aircraft design was introduced in 1939, with the fifth and sixth prototypes of the Junkers Ju 90 four-engined military transport aircraft, with the earliest known example of a rear loading ramp; this aircraft, like most of its era, used tail-dragger landing gear which caused the aircraft to have a decided rearward tilt when landed. These aircraft introduced the Trapoklappe, a powerful ramp/hydraulic lift with a personnel stairway centered between the vehicle trackway ramps, that raised the rear of the aircraft into the air and allowed easy loading. A similar rear loading ramp appeared in a somewhat different form on the nosewheel gear-equipped, late WW II era American Budd RB-1 Conestoga twin-engined cargo aircraft.
Postwar Europe served to play a major role in the development of the modern air cargo and air freight industry. It is during the Berlin Airlift at the height of the Cold War, when a massive mobilization of aircraft was undertaken by the West to supply West Berlin with food and supplies, in a virtual around the clock air bridge, after the Soviet Union closed and blockaded Berlin's land links to the west. To supply the needed numbers of aircraft, many older types the Douglas C-47 Skytrain, were pressed into service. In operation it was found that it took as long or longer to unload these older designs as the much larger tricycle landing gear Douglas C-54 Skymaster, easier to move about in when landed; the C-47s were removed from service, from on flat-decks were a requirement of all new cargo designs. In the years following the war era a number of new custom-built cargo aircraft were introduced including some "experimental" features. For instance, the US's C-82 Packet featured a removable cargo area, while the C-123 Provider introduced the now-common rear fuselage/upswept tail shaping to allow for a much larger rear loading ramp.
But it was the introduction of the turboprop that allowed the class to mature, one of its earliest examples, the C-130 Hercules, in the 21st century as the Lockheed Martin C-130J, is still the yardstick against which newer military transport aircraft designs are measured. Although larger and faster designs have been proposed for many years, the C-130 continues to improve at a rate that keeps it in production. "Strategic" cargo aircraft became an important class of their own starting with the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy in the 1960s and a number of similar Soviet designs from the 70s and 80s, culminating in the Antonov An-225, the world's largest aircraft. These designs offer the ability to carry the heaviest loads main battle tanks, at global ranges; the Boeing 747 was designed to the same specification as the C-5, but modified as a design that could be offered as either passenger or all-freight versions. The "bump" on the top of the fuselage allows the crew area to be clear of the cargo containers sliding out of the front in the event of an accident.
When the Airbus A380 was announced, the maker accepted orders for the freighter version A380F, offering the second largest payload capacity of any cargo aircraft, exceeded only by the An-225. An aerospace consultant has estimated that the A380F would have 7% better payload an
Airborne leaflet propaganda
Airborne leaflet propaganda is a form of psychological warfare in which leaflets are scattered in the air. Military forces have used aircraft to drop leaflets to attempt to alter the behavior of combatants and non-combatants in enemy-controlled territory, sometimes in conjunction with air strikes. Humanitarian air missions, in cooperation with leaflet propaganda, can turn the populace against their leadership while preparing them for the arrival of enemy combatants. There are six different functions of airborne leaflet propaganda that have been used over the past century: Threaten destruction Warn enemy combatants and non-combatants that their area will be targeted; this has the dual purpose of reducing collateral damage and encouraging enemy combatants and non-combatants to abandon their duties, reducing the target's military effectiveness. Prompt the enemy to surrender Explain to prospective deserters how to surrender. Offer rewards Rewards could be offered to encourage individuals to provide assistance, or to encourage defection.
Disseminate or counter disinformation Reduce enemy morale through propaganda. Neutralize enemy propaganda. Advise radio listeners about frequencies/times of propaganda broadcasts and methods for circumventing radio jamming. Facilitate communication Create a friendly atmosphere for the enemy by promoting ideologies such as freedom, "noble intentions". Provide humanitarian assistance Inform people where to find airdropped food, how to open and consume it, when it comes. Airborne leaflets have been used for military propaganda purposes at least since the 19th century. One early example is from the Franco-Prussian War when in October 1870 during the Siege of Paris, a French balloon coming from the city dropped government proclamations over Prussian troops that stated the following: Paris defies the enemy; the whole of France rallies. Death to the invaders. Foolish people, shall we always throttle one another for the pleasure and proudness of Kings? Glory and conquest are crimes. Only one war is just and holy.
Leaflet propaganda has been delivered by airplanes since the Italo-Turkish War of 1911–12. Aerial leaflets were first used on a large scale during World War I by all parties; the British dropped packets of leaflets over German trenches containing postcards from prisoners of war detailing their humane conditions, surrender notices and general propaganda against the Kaiser and the German generals. By the end of the war MI7b had distributed 26 million leaflets. On August 1918, the famous Italian writer and fighter pilot Gabriele D'Annunzio, organized the Flight over Vienna: a famous propaganda operation during the war, leading 9 Ansaldo SVA planes in a 1,100-kilometre round trip to drop 50,000 propaganda leaflets on the Habsburg capital; the Germans began shooting the leaflet-dropping pilots, prompting the British to develop an alternative method of delivery. Mr. A. Fleming invented the unmanned leaflet balloon in 1917, these were used extensively in the latter part of the War, with over 48,000 units produced.
The hydrogen balloon would drift over no-man's land to land in the enemy trenches. At least one in seven of these leaflets were not handed in by the soldiers to their superiors, despite severe penalties for that offence. General Hindenburg admitted that "Unsuspectingly, many thousands consumed the poison" and POWs admitted to being disillusioned by the propaganda leaflets that depicted the use of German troops as mere cannon fodder. In 1915, the British began airdropping a regular leaflet newspaper Le Courrier de l'Air for civilians in German-occupied France and Belgium. Distribution of airborne leaflet propaganda was used by both Allied and Axis forces in the Second World War, starting with a Royal Air Force leaflet drop over the port of Kiel in September 1939; the first proposal to construct a special bomb with which to disperse airborne leaflets was put forward by British air force officers during World War II. The most successful "leaflet bomb" model of the War was the Monroe bomb, invented in 1943 by USAAF Captain James Monroe of the 305th Bombardment Group.
It was developed from laminated paper containers, used to transport M-17 incendiary bombs. The British improved; some of the V-1 flying bombs launched by the Germans against southern England carried leaflets – they were contained in a cardboard tube at the tail of a missile. This would be ejected by a small gunpowder charge while the V1 was in mid-air, en route to its target. Allied airborne leaflets printed during WWII were "factual, in the main truthful, served to create a reputation for reliability both in supplying information and refuting German accounts which we said to be untruthful"; the leaflets did not reach their intended targets because they were dropped from such high altitudes and drifted over lakes and rural areas. Although leaflets were seen as being an effective tactic in manipulating troops when morale was low, "During the early months of the war, leaflets or pamphlets were scattered over enemy territory by aircraft and balloons but it was more than doubtful whether these had any useful effect, their obvious defects being that few can have reached their targets and, being printed, they were sometimes out of date by the time they were ready to distribute.
The front-line distribution of leaflets was quite another matter and these were dropped by aircraft or fired by shells, the messages they bore being less careful about the general principles of consistency and frankness and only truthful about matters on which the enemy had contradictory information". It was found that psychological warfare
Loadmaster
A loadmaster is an aircrew member on civilian aircraft or military transport aircraft tasked with the safe loading and unloading of aerial cargoes. Loadmasters serve in the civilian airlines of many nations; the loadmaster performs the calculations and plans cargo and passenger placement to keep the aircraft within permissible center of gravity limits throughout the flight. Loadmasters ensure cargo is placed on the aircraft in such a way as to prevent overloading sensitive sections of the airframe and cargo floor. Considerations are given to civilian and military regulations which may prohibit the placement of one type of cargo in proximity to another. Unusual cargo may require special equipment to be loaded safely aboard the aircraft, limiting where the other cargo may feasibly be placed. Tactically, loadmasters may directly affect combat readiness as they are responsible for determining the load order of aircraft so that more tactically important material is off-loaded first and therefore ready to deploy faster than other support items.
The loadmaster may physically load the aircraft, but supervises loading crews and procedures. Once positioned aboard the aircraft, the loadmaster ensures that their charge is properly secured, as an unexpected shift of the load can produce serious handling problems for the aircraft. Chains and integrated cargo locks are among the most common tools used to secure the cargo; because cargo may shift during abrupt maneuvers, the loadmaster must determine the appropriate type and placement of cargo restraint. Many loadmasters may be required to be qualified for "aerial delivery" of paratroops or cargo by parachute. Compared to the routine transportation of cargo, airdrops can be a technical and dangerous undertaking. Under some situations, the most effective way to resupply ground troops is by aerial delivery of equipment, ammunition and medical supplies. Many military victories have been dependent in large part upon aerial delivery. Cargo helicopter loadmasters provide aircraft clearance information and direct pilots to safe positions when landing and taking off.
Although the aircraft loadmaster career field was not formally established by the US Air Force until 1953, duties assumed by loadmasters began early in World War II when laundry personnel assigned to Air Corps quartermaster units began flying on troop carrier transports in the Australia and New Guinea in the China-Burma-India area of operations, to eject cargo bundles they have prepared for airdrop from the doors over drop zones. By 1944 the IX Troop Carrier Command in Europe included personnel designated as "dropmasters" in its troop carrier squadrons. In 1944 the Air Transport Command began assigning enlisted men, most of whom had been in training for aircrew duty in other fields, including pilots and bombardiers, as "flight clerks." The first flight clerks were assigned to special flights known as "Red Ball" which were set up to deliver crucial aircraft parts to ATC units in India assigned to the India-China Ferry. By the end of the war, flight clerks were flying on most four-engine transports to be responsible for cargo manifests and take care of passengers.
Weight and balance computation does not appear to have been one of their duties, although it has been associated with the loadmaster career field since it was established. They were given the MOS 2967 - Flight Traffic Clerk; the new MOS was an outgrowth of the 967 MOS, given to men assigned to air cargo units as air traffic specialists. During World War II, aircraft were loaded haphazardly, with ground personnel piling as much cargo into an airplane as possible, which led to weight and balance problems. To alleviate the situation, air terminal squadrons were set up by the troop carrier wings overseas and, after the establishment of the Air Transport Command, at air terminals in the United States. Officers and navigators, were trained to perform weight and balance calculations and became responsible for load planning. Aerial engineers on bombers and four-engine transports were trained in weight and balance calculations using special slide rules developed for each airplane and known as "slipsticks".
The term "loadmaster" is believed to have been created by the Douglas Aircraft Company, because the first known use of the term appears in the flight manuals for the C-124 Globemaster II aircraft in the late 1940s, the largest piston-engine transport aircraft in the US inventory at the time. A fixed-wing aircraft is supported in flight only by its wing. For an aircraft to become and remain airborne, the wing must move through the air at a specified "angle of attack". To assure that the wing moves through the air at the proper angle of attack, the aircraft's center of gravity must fall within a range specified by the aircraft's designers. An aircraft, too nose-heavy or too tail-heavy will not fly properly, because the angle of attack is affected adversely; this can destroy lift, cause a stall in certain maneuvers. The center of gravity of a transport aircraft is a function of a number of factors: the weight of the empty aircraft, the weight of the fuel load, the weight of the cargo and passengers, the weight of the crew, the positions of each of these factors.
The weight of each of these factors is known before a flight. What varies from flight to flight is not only the weight of any or all of these factors, but the position of such factors as fuel and cargo; the weight of each of these factors is converted into a "moment", by multiplying the weig
Operations Manna and Chowhound
Operation Manna and Operation Chowhound were humanitarian food drops, carried out to relieve a famine in German-occupied Holland, undertaken by Allied bomber crews during the final days of World War II in Europe. Manna was carried out by British RAF units, as well as squadrons from the Australian, New Zealand and Polish air forces, between 29 April and 7 May 1945. Chowhound was an operation by the U. S. Army Air Forces, which dropped, together with Operation Manna, a total of over 11,000 tons, of food into the still-unliberated western part of the Netherlands, with the acquiescence of the occupying German forces, to help feed Dutch civilians in danger of starvation. After it was realised that Manna and Chowhound would be insufficient, a ground-based relief operation named Operation Faust was launched. On 2 May, 200 Allied trucks began delivering food to the city of Rhenen, behind German lines. By early 1945, the situation was growing desperate for the three million or more Dutch still under German control.
Prince Bernhard appealed directly to Allied Supreme Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower, but Eisenhower did not have the authority to negotiate a truce with the Germans. While the prince got permission from British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U. S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eisenhower had Air Commodore Andrew Geddes begin planning immediately. On 23 April, authorisation was given by the Chief of George Marshall. Allied agents negotiated with a team of German officers. Among the participants were the Canadian future writer Farley Mowat and the German commander-in-chief, General Johannes Blaskowitz, it was agreed that the participating aircraft would not be fired upon within specified air corridors. The British operation started first, it was named after the food, miraculously provided to the Israelites in the Book of Exodus. The planning of the operation was done by the Royal Air Force; the first of the two RAF Avro Lancasters chosen for the test flight, the morning of 29 April 1945, was nicknamed Bad Penny, as in the expression: "a bad penny always turns up".
This bomber, with a crew of seven young men, took off in bad weather despite the fact that the Germans had not yet agreed to a ceasefire. Bad Penny had to fly low, down to 50 feet, over German guns, but succeeded in dropping her cargo and returning to her airfield. Operation Manna began in earnest. British aircraft from Groups 1, 3, 8 took part, flying 145 sorties by Mosquitoes and 3,156 sorties by Lancaster bombers, flying between them a total of 3,301 sorties; these bombers were used to dropping bombs from 6,000 metres, but this time they had to do their job from a height of 150 metres, some flying as low as 120 metres, as the cargo did not have parachutes. The drop zones, marked by Mosquitoes from 105 and 109 Squadrons using Oboe, were: Katwijk, The Hague and Gouda. Bomber Command delivered a total 6,680 tons of food. John Funnell, a navigator on the operation, says the food dropped was tinned food, dried food and chocolate; as we arrived people had gathered and were waving flags, making signs, etc. doing whatever they could.
It was a marvellous sight. As time went on, so there were messages, such as Thank you for coming boys. On the 24th April, we were on battle order at Elsham Wolds. We went to a briefing and were told the operation was cancelled because Bomber Harris thought it was too dangerous for the crews; the idea was we would cross the Dutch border at 1,000 feet, drop down to 500 feet at 90 knots, just above stalling speed. On the 29th, we were on battle orders again. There was no truce at that point, as we crossed the coast, we could see the anti-aircraft guns following us about. We were meant to rise up to 1,000 feet, but because of the anti-aircraft guns we went down to rooftop level. By the time they sighted on us, we were out of sight. A lot of people were surprised we went in case of any trigger-happy tail gunner, it was going to be'Operation Spam', in my log book. We went to Lyden, but dropped the food at Falkenburg. We navigators are interested in the longitude of the place, rather than the name; the idea was for people to gather and redistribute the food, but some could not resist eating straight away, which caused some people to get sick and vomit, a result that fatty food can have in starved bodies known as Refeeding syndrome.
On the other hand, distribution sometimes took as long as ten days, resulting in some getting the food only after the liberation. Many lives were saved, it gave hope and the feeling that the war would soon be over. Earlier, there had been a distribution of white bread made from Swedish flour, shipped in and baked locally. A popular myth holds that this bread was dropped from aircraft, but, a mix-up between the two events; the food was not dropped with parachutes, as is said. On the American side, ten bomb groups of the US Third Air Division flew 2,268 sorties beginning 1 May, delivering a total of 4000 tons. 400 B-17 Flying Fortress bombers of the United States Army Air Forces dropped 800 tons of K-rations during 1–3 May on Amsterdam Schiphol Airport. Published in 2015, a book Operation Chowhound is well-documented as to the statistics behind these operations. At least one B-17 crew received battle recognition despite having no guns for their humanitarian mission, as
