OCTOBER 2019 9
against the netting is, I believe, a product of the
World War II-era color film; the oil finish used
on the wood stock would appear very dark
under certain angles and lighting.FAMILY REUNION
Imagine my surprise at seeing my father,
Sergeant Valentine Miele [above], quoted in
“These Final Days” (June 2019). For the 45th
anniversar y of D-Day, he chose to go to Europe:
not to France but to Lyme Regis, the
town on the southern coast of England
where he had been billeted. He returned
to the home he stayed in before the
invasion, which by chance was owned
by the town’s then-mayor. He marched
in the local parade and made friends
with whom he regularly corresponded
until he died on June 7, 2017.
Valentine G. Miele
Pa l i s a de s Pa r k , N. J.BOMB SQUAD
The “From the Footlocker” column
about the “Lazy Dog” bomb (June 2019)
brought back many memories for me. In 1951,
my now-deceased older brothers and I were
employed in the design department of a
medium-sized machine tool builder in
Detroit. Our company designed and built all
the tooling required to manufacture the com-
ponents of an M44 cluster bomb case, like
that depicted in the story. The bomb was to be
used by U.N. forces, then engaged in the
TO Korean conf lict. The product must have been
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FROM THE
EDITOR
Sharp-eyed readers will
notice something missing
this issue: Robert M.
Citino’s “Fire for Effect”
column. Rob, long a pres-
ence in the magazine, has
been writing the column
since early 2014. But his
duties as The National
WWII Museum’s Samuel
Zemurry Stone Senior
Historian and as
Executive Director of its
Institute for the Study of
War and Democrary are
demanding more and
more of his time, so Rob
has decided to call it a day.
Those of you lucky enough
to have met him know
how, well, perfect he is.
Smart, funny, profes-
sional, kind, and deeply
knowledgable. We’ll miss
his presence tremen-
dously. That said, we’ve
got another impressive
columnist lined up: I’ll
introduce him properly
next issue.
—Karen Jensensuccessful since the following year, in 1952,
Life magazine featured it in an article that
said the North Koreans and Chinese claimed
the bombs were being used to drop germ-
laden insects on their troops. (I doubt if this
was true.) It was a thrill for a 16-year-old to be
associated with this project, especially since I
had to climb over the prototype bomb case to
work at my drawing board.
Arthur L. Wilhelm
Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich.ATTENTION SPAN
Your “Weapons Manual” on the DD Sherman
tank (June 2019) reminded me of my experi-
ences with another Sherman variant. In 1953,
just after I received my civil engineering
degree, I went to work as a civilian employee
at the U.S. Army laboratory at Fort Belvoir,
Virginia (then called the Engineer Research
and Development Laboratory, or ERDL), in
the Bridge Design section. There, I did some
interesting work on a new task for the vener-
able vehicle.
The concept involved removing the Sher-
man’s entire gun turret and mounting a fold-
ing steel bridge on the remaining tank base.
The bridge could then be deployed over a
small ravine or stream spanning about 50
feet. It was strong enough to allow a fullyThis M60A1 AVLB,
here in Kuwait in
2003, uses an M
Patton tank as the
base for deploying
its 60-foot bridge;
a prototype from
the 1950s used the
hull of an M
Sherman tank.PLEASE SEND
LETTERS TO:
World War II
1919 Gallows Road, Suite 400,
Vienna, VA 22182-OR E-MAIL:
[email protected]
Please include your name,
address, and daytime
telephone number.loaded tank or truck to pass over it. The mech-
anism was originally—and still is—called the
Armored Vehicle-Launched Bridge (AVLB).
My job was to design and follow the construc-
tion of one of the connecting steel pieces. The
U.S. Army has used such a device since the
1980s, but we at ERDL had one up and run-
ning 30 years before!
Alfred Wilner
Manhattan Beach, Calif.Sergeant
Va lent i ne
Miele