New Website Layout

We hope you enjoy the new website layout. We've integrated our blog with our website content so everything is at one location and easier to see. You can continue to navigate to our url www.97thfieldartillery.com , but it will now take you to the blog directly. From there you can navigate the website content from the black links at the top of the page.

World War II tank to be restored in Leicestershire

BBC is reporting that a Sherman Tank that survived the D-Day landing is getting restored. You can read the full atical here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/local/leicester/hi/people_and_places/history/newsid_9366000/9366680.stm

Colonel William “Bill” Bower last of the Doolittle Raider pilots has died

Colonel William “Bill” Bower was the last surviving pilot of the famed “Doolittle Raiders” in World War II, whose air attack on Japan in April 1942, just four months after Pearl Harbor, lifted American morale in the early days of the war.

He volunteered for the first U.S. attack on Japan, which was led by Lt. Col. James “Jimmy” Doolittle on April 18, 1942. Bower piloted one of the 16 B-25B Mitchell medium bombers launched from the U.S.S. Hornet to attack Tokyo, the Japanese capital, and other Japanese cities.

Bower flew his B-25, with a crew of five, to Yokohama, where they bombed the docks of Japan’s second largest city. They eventually parachuted over China; the nighttime jump was his first from an airplane.

In a wartime diary, Bower wrote on the morning of the raid that he wasn’t nervous. “This was it, adventure, my chance to be a first-timer, but most important perhaps our success would do much to bring this mess to a quicker end.”

Colonel Bower died Monday January 11, 2011 at his home in Boulder, Colo. He was 93 years old.

You can read more on the Doolittle Raid here.

Richard Winters Dies at 92; Led ‘Band of Brothers’

New York times is reporting that Major Richard Winters has passed away. He was 92. Major Winters lead the Easy Company 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division unit through the beaches of Normandy to the Hitler's Mountain retreat. The story of him and his unit made it to the Mini-series that Tom Hanks directed called "Band of Brothers". Read the full story below

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/11/us/11winters.html?src=ISMR_AP_LO_MST_FB