WWII Field Trips, and Bomber Activity

When she heard we were learning about World War II, one of our neighbors volunteered to tell us about her father and father-in-law's experiences in the war. We went over to her house one day and listened to stories about her father working as a radar operating aboard a submarine in the Pacific, and some of her husband's dad's memories about life before and during the War. It was fascinating! Hearing about what life was like in Salt Lake City, for regular families a lot like us, was a whole different perspective than the more generic one we got from most books about "War life in the United States." And, our friend also had her dad's old navy uniform and coat, which she showed us! It was pretty sobering to see Abe holding it up and think about how boys only a few years older than him were going off to war.

Warm lining from the Navy-issued coat her Dad wore

Another day, we drove up to the aircraft museum in Layton. We're always happy to have an excuse to visit the Hill Air Force Base, but this time our field trip was made extra awesome because we met friends there—and THEY brought their friend, a World War II Veteran, to talk to us! He was amazing. It was an honor to meet him.

The museum owns one of the very kinds of planes he flew in the war. He told us about being shot full of holes over Germany, and making an emergency landing with all his engines out. He was miraculously unhurt, but some of his crew were killed at their posts on that mission. It was incredible to hear about all this firsthand.

We also got to see one of the Norden bombsights, a cool innovation during the war that we'd read about in several airplane books

We didn't spend as much time on military planes as we might have, having covered them earlier during our Aviation Unit, but we did do an activity where we tried to drop gummy bears into paper cups on the ground while running past them at full speed. This is a very small taste of what pilots had to do when dropping bombs (and which the Norden bombsight helped with!). The children loved it.

Some of them took "at full speed" more literally than others...

War Life in Great Britain, and Incendiary Bomb activity

I read a lot of books which talked about the evacuation of children from England during the war. (The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, for example, but many others too.) So that aspect of the war has always been interesting to me. It was called "Operation Pied Piper," and here is a video showing footage from the effort. And here's an article with some more pictures.

This video told British citizens how to deal with an incendiary bomb. We tried this ourselves, with a smoke bomb. The kids loved it! :)

We also watched parts of a TV show called "The 1940's House." It's a reality show where a family lived for a couple months just as a family in the 1940s would have. The show indulged in the requisite manufactured "dramatic crisis" from time to time, but on the whole it was pretty interesting and informative.

Silly (but enjoyable) video about the British Home Guard.

This map showing all the bombs dropped during "The Blitz" is pretty amazing.

A few pictures from my recent visit to Churchill's Cabinet War Rooms. London feels so full of WWII history!

How I love Sir Winston Churchill. I read a great biography of his wife Clementine, and I'm (very slowly) still working my way through the three-volume "The Last Lion" series.

To understand the ups and downs of Sir Winston's life, you need a basic knowledge of how the British parliament works. Here's a quick video that we liked, and here's another.