The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was an intelligence agency of the United States during World War II. The OSS was formed as an agency of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for all branches of the United States Armed Forces. Other OSS functions included the use of propaganda, subversion, and post-war planning.
Aaron Bank was a United States Army colonel who founded the US Army Special Forces, commonly known as the "Green Berets". He is also known for his exploits as an OSS officer during World War II, when he parachuted into France to coordinate the French Resistance and organizing an operation intended to capture Adolf Hitler. In retirement, Bank warned about terrorism and modern technology. He is largely responsible for the high level of security at U.S. nuclear power plants since the early 1970s.
The Alsos Mission was an organized effort by a team of British and United States military, scientific, and intelligence personnel to discover enemy scientific developments during World War II. Its chief focus to investigate the progress that Nazi Germany was making in the area of nuclear technology, and to seize any German nuclear resources that would either be of use to the Manhattan Project or worth denying to the Soviet Union. It also investigated German chemical and biological weapon development and the means to deliver them, and any other advanced Axis technology it was able to get information about in the course of the other investigations.
Operation Big was an operation of the Alsos Mission, the Allied seizure of facilities, materiel, and personnel related to the German nuclear weapon project during World War II. It was tasked with sweeping several targeted towns in the area of southwest Germany designated to the French First Army, including Hechingen, Bisingen, Haigerloch, and Tailfingen.
The Norwegian heavy water sabotage was a series of Allied-led efforts to halt German heavy water (deuterium) production via hydroelectric plants in Nazi Germany-occupied Norway during World War II, involving both Norwegian commandos and Allied bombing raids. During the war, the Allies sought to inhibit the German development of nuclear weapons with the removal of heavy water and the destruction of heavy-water production plants. The Norwegian heavy water sabotage was aimed at the 60 MW Vemork power station at the Rjukan waterfall in Telemark.
Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos is a comic book series created by Jack Kirby and Stan Lee and published by Marvel Comics from 1963 to 1981. The main character, Sgt. Nick Fury, later became the leader of Marvel's super-spy agency, S.H.I.E.L.D. The title also featured the Howling Commandos, a fictional World War II unit that first appeared in Sgt. Fury and his Howling Commandos #1.
No. 303 Squadron RAF, also known as the 303rd "Tadeusz Kościuszko Warsaw" Fighter Squadron, was one of two Polish squadrons that fought during the Battle of Britain along with No. 302 Squadron, of 16 total Polish squadrons during the Second World War. Flying Hawker Hurricanes, the squadron claimed the largest number of aircraft shot down of the 66 Allied fighter squadrons engaged in the Battle of Britain, even though it joined the fray two months after the battle had begun.
Nazi Germany undertook several research programs relating to nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors, before and during World War II. These were variously called Uranverein or Uranprojekt. The first effort started in April 1939, just months after the discovery of nuclear fission in Berlin in December 1938, but ended only a few months later, shortly ahead of the September 1939 German invasion of Poland, for which many notable German physicists were drafted into the Wehrmacht. A second effort under the administrative purview of the Wehrmacht's Heereswaffenamt began on September 1, 1939, the day of the invasion of Poland. The program eventually expanded into three main efforts: Uranmaschine development, uranium and heavy water production, and uranium isotope separation. Eventually, the German military determined that nuclear fission would not contribute significantly to the war, and in January 1942 the Heereswaffenamt turned the program over to the Reich Research Council while continuing to fund the activity.
Operation Epsilon was the codename of a program in which Allied forces near the end of World War II detained ten German scientists who were thought to have worked on Nazi Germany's nuclear program. The scientists were captured between May 1 and June 30, 1945, as part of the Allied Alsos Mission, mainly as part of its Operation Big sweep through southwestern Germany.
Jonathan "Junior" Juniper is a fictional character appearing in American comic books published by Marvel Comics. Created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, his first appearance was in Sgt. Fury and the Howling Commandos vol. 1 #1. He is known to be the first major character death in a Marvel comic and the only Howling Commando ever to die in battle.
Target for Tonight is a 1941 British World War II documentary film billed as filmed and acted by the Royal Air Force, all during wartime operations. It was directed by Harry Watt for the Crown Film Unit. The film is about the crew of a Wellington bomber taking part in a bombing mission over Nazi Germany. The film won an honorary Academy Award in 1942 as Best Documentary by the National Board of Review. Despite purporting to be a documentary there are multiple indicators that it is not quite as such: film shots include studio shots taken from the exterior of the aircraft looking into the cockpit whilst "in flight"; several stilted sections of dialogue are clearly scripted; on the ground shots of bombing are done using model trains; and several actors appear, including Gordon Jackson as the young rear gunner. The film does give a unique insight into the confined nature of the Wellington's interior and some of the nuances of day to day operation such as ground crew holding a blanket over the engine while it starts to regulate oxygen intake.
Alexander Jefferson (POW) (WIA) was an American Air Force officer, famous as one of the Tuskegee Airmen, the 332nd Fighter Group. He served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.
The Czech and Slovak Legion, also known as the Czechoslovak Legion, was a military unit formed in the Second Polish Republic after Germany occupied Czechoslovakia in March 1939. The unit took symbolic part in the defence of Poland during the German invasion on 1 September 1939.
Operation Halyard, known in Serbian as Operation Air Bridge, was an Allied airlift operation behind Axis lines during World War II. In July 1944, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) drew up plans to send a team to the Chetniks force led by General Draža Mihailović in the German-occupied Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia for the purpose of evacuating Allied airmen shot down over that area. This team, known as the Halyard team, was commanded by Lieutenant George Musulin, along with Master Sergeant Michael Rajacich, and Specialist Arthur Jibilian, the radio operator. The team was detailed to the United States Fifteenth Air Force and designated as the 1st Air Crew Rescue Unit. It was the largest rescue operation of American airmen in history.
Hélène Marguerite Deschamps Adams was a member of the OSS, a forerunner of the CIA.
The Rüsselsheim massacre was a war crime that involved the lynching and killing of six American airmen by townspeople of Rüsselsheim during World War II.
Joseph Morton was an American war correspondent for the Associated Press (AP) in the European Theater during World War II. On December 26, 1944, a Nazi counter-partisan unit named "Edelweiss" stormed a log cabin high on Homolka Mountain in today's Slovakia which housed 15 Allied intelligence officers, a Slovak officer, a Slovak-American interpreter, two Slovak civilian resistance fighters, and Morton himself, covering an OSS operation in the country for a story. Although the Allied officers were duly uniformed and Morton had a war correspondent ID in order to be treated as prisoners of war according to the Geneva Convention (1929), the SS headquarters, in compliance with the Commando Order—which stated that all Allied commandos should be killed immediately without trial, even those in proper uniforms—ordered the summary execution of Allied officers and others caught in the act. On January 24, 1945, Joseph Morton, along with 13 Allied officers, was executed at the Mauthausen-Gusen concentration camp. He was the only Allied correspondent to be executed by the Axis during World War II.
Operations Ginny I and II were two ill-fated sabotage missions conducted by the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in 1944 during the Italian campaign of World War II. Their aim was to blow up railway tunnels that would cut the line of communication to German forces in central Italy. The first mission, Ginny I, occurred on February 27/28, 1944, when fifteen U.S. soldiers attempted to land west of the small town of Framura. However, the OSS team had to abort after they landed on the wrong spot and could not find the tunnel. The second attempt, Ginny II, occurred a month later on March 22 when the same team attempted to land on the same spot. However, they landed again in the wrong place and were captured two days later by the German Army. Although the OSS members were properly uniformed, they were summarily executed on March 26 under Hitler's Commando Order of 1942 at the command of German General Anton Dostler. After the war, Dostler was tried by a military tribunal for the deaths of fifteen Americans, sentenced to death, and executed by a firing squad.
Target Unknown is a 1951 American war film directed by George Sherman and starring Mark Stevens, Alex Nicol and Robert Douglas. An American bomber crew are forced to bail out over Occupied France in 1944 and are captured by the Germans, who subject them to strenuous interrogation. The film begins with a written foreword that reads: "In the making of this picture, the cooperation of the Department of Defense and the United States Air Force is gratefully acknowledged."
