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SSgt Harry McCown (Mac)
to remember
Beeson, Duane Willard, Lt Col.
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Contact Info
Home Town Boise, Idaho
Last Address Sarasota Army Air Field, Florida
Date of Passing Feb 15, 1947
Location of Interment Arlington National Cemetery (VLM) - Arlington, Virginia
Duane Beeson was born on July 16, 1921, in Boise, Idaho. He enlisted in the Royal Canadian Air Force on August 15, 1941 and transferred to the British Royal Air Force's American Eagle Squadron 71 on September 5, 1942. Beeson then joined the U.S. Army Air Forces on September 23, 1942, and served with the 334th Fighter Squadron of the 4th Fighter Group, becoming its commanding officer on March 15, 1944. During the war, Beeson was credited with destroying 17.33 enemy aircraft in aerial combat, plus an additional 5 while strafing airfields, before being shot down and taken as a Prisoner of War by the Germans on April 5, 1944. After spending 390 days in captivity, he was released when the Russians freed the prison camp he was being held in on April 29, 1945. After the war, he was stationed at Sarasota Army Air Field, Florida, where he met Tracy Waters. They were married in January 1946. Col Beeson was diagnosed with a brain tumor and died on a plane flight to have an operation on February 13, 1947. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
Other Comments:
BEESON, DUANE W. (POW)
The President of the United States takes pleasure in presenting the Distinguished Service Cross to Duane W. Beeson (AO-885184), Captain (Air Corps), U.S. Army Air Forces, for extraordinary heroism in connection with military operations against an armed enemy while serving as Pilot of a P-51 Fighter Airplane in the 334th Fighter Squadron, 4th Fighter Group, EIGHTH Air Force, in aerial combat against enemy forces on 29 January 1944, in the European Theater of Operations. On this date Captain Beeson shot down two enemy aircraft. Captain Beeson's unquestionable valor in aerial combat is in keeping with the highest traditions of the military service and reflects great credit upon himself, the 8th Air Force, and the United States Army Air Forces. Headquarters: U.S. Strategic Forces in Europe, General Orders No. 24 (1944)
World War II
From Month/Year
December / 1941
To Month/Year
December / 1946
Description Overview of World War II
World War II killed more people, involved more nations, and cost more money than any other war in history. Altogether, 70 million people served in the armed forces during the war, and 17 million combatants died. Civilian deaths were ever greater. At least 19 million Soviet civilians, 10 million Chinese, and 6 million European Jews lost their lives during the war.
World War II was truly a global war. Some 70 nations took part in the conflict, and fighting took place on the continents of Africa, Asia, and Europe, as well as on the high seas. Entire societies participated as soldiers or as war workers, while others were persecuted as victims of occupation and mass murder.
World War II cost the United States a million causalities and nearly 400,000 deaths. In both domestic and foreign affairs, its consequences were far-reaching. It ended the Depression, brought millions of married women into the workforce, initiated sweeping changes in the lives of the nation's minority groups, and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life.
The War at Home & Abroad
On September 1, 1939, World War II started when Germany invaded Poland. By November 1942, the Axis powers controlled territory from Norway to North Africa and from France to the Soviet Union. After defeating the Axis in North Africa in May 1941, the United States and its Allies invaded Sicily in July 1943 and forced Italy to surrender in September. On D-Day, June 6, 1944, the Allies landed in Northern France. In December, a German counteroffensive (the Battle of the Bulge) failed. Germany surrendered in May 1945.
The United States entered the war following a surprise attack by Japan on the U.S. Pacific fleet in Hawaii. The United States and its Allies halted Japanese expansion at the Battle of Midway in June 1942 and in other campaigns in the South Pacific. From 1943 to August 1945, the Allies hopped from island to island across the Central Pacific and also battled the Japanese in China, Burma, and India. Japan agreed to surrender on August 14, 1945 after the United States dropped the first atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Consequences:
1. The war ended Depression unemployment and dramatically expanded government's presence in American life. It led the federal government to create a War Production Board to oversee conversion to a wartime economy and the Office of Price Administration to set prices on many items and to supervise a rationing system.
2. During the war, African Americans, women, and Mexican Americans founded new opportunities in industry. But Japanese Americans living on the Pacific coast were relocated from their homes and placed in internment camps.
The Dawn of the Atomic Age
In 1939, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt, warning him that the Nazis might be able to build an atomic bomb. On December 2, 1942, Enrico Fermi, an Italian refugee, produced the first self-sustained, controlled nuclear chain reaction in Chicago.
To ensure that the United States developed a bomb before Nazi Germany did, the federal government started the secret $2 billion Manhattan Project. On July 16, 1945, in the New Mexico desert near Alamogordo, the Manhattan Project's scientists exploded the first atomic bomb.
It was during the Potsdam negotiations that President Harry Truman learned that American scientists had tested the first atomic bomb. On August 6, 1945, the Enola Gay, a B-29 Superfortress, released an atomic bomb over Hiroshima, Japan. Between 80,000 and 140,000 people were killed or fatally wounded. Three days later, a second bomb fell on Nagasaki. About 35,000 people were killed. The following day Japan sued for peace.
President Truman's defenders argued that the bombs ended the war quickly, avoiding the necessity of a costly invasion and the probable loss of tens of thousands of American lives and hundreds of thousands of Japanese lives. His critics argued that the war might have ended even without the atomic bombings. They maintained that the Japanese economy would have been strangled by a continued naval blockade, and that Japan could have been forced to surrender by conventional firebombing or by a demonstration of the atomic bomb's power.
The unleashing of nuclear power during World War II generated hope of a cheap and abundant source of energy, but it also produced anxiety among large numbers of people in the United States and around the world.
