Two Books Review on Eve of Memorial Day

choi

Yesterday, I posted "Why It Took Hakuto-R months to Enter Moon Orbit." Today I add Note (d):


(d) Parrish NL et al, Ballistic Lunar Transfers to Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit: Operational Considerations. NASA, 2020
https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citati ... ads/20200011549.pdf
("Ballistic lunar transfers (BLTs) exist for a variety of 3-body orbits.13 In these transfer orbits, the Sun's gravity is used to raise perigee and adjust inclination. In order for the Sun's gravity to have a significant effect on the trajectory, the apogee must be approximately 1-2 million kilometers")

And in Note (2)(b)(ii) Wikipedia link
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-energy_transfer
, the apogees of more than 1 million km are what are shown in these two animations (of low energy transfer) -- with SLIM's flight profile (several rounds around Earth before the low energy transfer closely resembling that of Hakuto-R.

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The following two are reviews by Mark Yost in the Saturday column "Shortcut" (because these are mini reviews) with the heading: Military History (to indicate the arena of books under review) -- ending up with "Shortcut: Military History").

(1) Death Behind the Lines
(book review on Tim Grady, Burying the Enemy; The story of those who cared for the dead in two World Wars. Yale University Press, 2025)

Note:
(a) behind enemy lines (idiom)
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/behind%20enemy%20lines
(b) "Becker's mother, Agathe"

Agatha (given name)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agatha_(given_name)
is a feminine given name, as in Agatha Christie.
(c) University of Chester
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Chester
(1839- ; public; located in Chester (county town of Cheshire, England) )

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IN A FOREST FIELD  Wooden crosses marking graves of German airmenin Plymouth, England, as photographed in 1956. Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge Archive
Eduard Becker was a German airman shot down over Scotland in July 1941. After their bodies were recovered, he and his crew were given proper burials in a local cemetery. In 1954 Becker’s mother, Agathe, finally arrived to pick up her son’s remains. Upon discovering Becker’s grave “so well cared for and beautifully set out,” Agathe opted to leave him where he was, “reassured by the idea that her son’s presence . . . was helping to heal everything that ‘the war had destroyed.’”

Somewhere around 80 million people were killed during World War II, about half of them combatants. We know (mostly) what happened to those who perished on the battlefield, but what of those who died in enemy territory or in captivity?

As Tim Grady, a professor of modern European history at the University of Chester, writes in “Burying the Enemy,” Becker was among the approximately 4,500 Germans who died on British soil during World War II. For the most part these soldiers, sailors and airmen were treated with dignity, put into graves in the town cemetery and tended to with care. After all, Mr. Grady reminds us, there would have been local boys, perhaps shot down on similar bombing runs over Germany, who suffered the same fate.

As the Allied bombing campaign intensified over Nazi Germany, the German civilians became less and less sympathetic to the crewmen who landed in their gardens. Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propagandist, exploited these feelings, saying it would be understandable if the “child murderers” were “beaten to death by a beleaguered public.” And they sometimes were.

Those who survived capture were sent to prisoner-of-war camps, where treatment varied. British and American prisoners held by the Axis powers were generally treated well. But the Nazis hated the Russians so much that they killed some 3.2 million Soviet prisoners.

World War I had been different. Given that the lines of the western front hardly moved and neither side used aircraft to bomb enemy territory in any significant way, most of the deaths beyond the battlefield “occurred behind the barbed wire of internment camps. Illness and disease, particularly the influenza pandemic of 1918-1919, were the biggest killers,” Mr. Grady tells us. Other deaths came from suicide by those “ground down by the monotony of life in captivity.”

Once the wars ended, former enemies struggled to cooperate in the task of repatriating the bodies. It often took years to work through the red tape on all sides. Families—and governments—persevered.
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choi

(2) Setting a Trap for Japan
(book review by Martin Dugard, Taking Midway; Naval warfare, secret codes, and the battle that turned the tide of World War II. Dutton, 2025)

Note:
(a) Adm Isoroku Yamamoto "had an unstinting work ethic and a particular fondness for a Tokyo geisha named NIWA Michi 丹羽 美智. * * * oversaw a series of campaigns in the Western Pacific that consolidated Japan's gains and stretched its control from the Indian Ocean to the Philippines and beyond."
(i) English dictionary:
* unstinting (adj): "not restricting or holding back : giving or being given freely or generously  <an unstinting volunteer>"
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/unstinting
   ^ How to Use unstinting in a Sentence
   https://www.merriam-webster.com/sentences/unstinting
   ("Everton had a model and a plan, one based on smart recruitment, player development and an unstinting work ethic.  SI.com [Sports Illustrated], 18 May 2018"
   ^ In plain English: a strong work ethic
   ^ * stint (vi): "to be sparing or frugal"
   https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stint
(ii) "stretched its control from the Indian Ocean"

Just the northeastern brim of Indian Ocean. See Japan during World War II
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan_during_World_War_II
(a map with the caption: "A map of the Japanese advance from 1937 to 1942"

(b) Midway (1976 film)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midway_(1976_film)
(c)
(i) ensign
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ensign
may refer to flag or rank (as here).
(ii)
(A) George H Gay Jr
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_H._Gay_Jr.
(an ensign in United States Navy, having been rejected by Army Air [US Air Force was formed in 1947]; section 2 World War II: June 4, 1942)
(B) Battle of Midway
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Midway
(section 3 Battle, section 3.1 Initial air attacks: first showing a map and then a table of timeline (which provides legend for the map) )

From the timeline, the sinking order of 4 Japanese aircraft carriers are:
June 4: Soryū 蒼龍, Kaga 加賀 (named after the ancient Kaga Province 加賀国);
June 5: Akagi 赤城 (named after Mount Akagi 赤城山 (elevation 1.8 km) ), Hiryū 飛龍 (built based on Soryū design).
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Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, Japan’s chief naval strategist during World War II, was a gambler who “won large sums on poker, bridge, shogi—Japanese chess—and the Japanese game of stones known as ‘go.’” He had an unstinting work ethic and a particular fondness for a Tokyo geisha named Niwa Michi. As Martin Dugard reminds us in “Taking Midway,” Yamamoto, after hobbling the American fleet at Pearl Harbor, oversaw a series of campaigns in the Western Pacific that consolidated Japan’s gains and stretched its control from the Indian Ocean to the Philippines and beyond. At that point, “Australia was in reach,” Mr. Dugard writes. “New Guinea. Oil-rich Borneo. Even that western-most tip of the United States known as the Aleutian Islands.”

Finding out where Japan might strike next was the task of Cmdr. Joseph Rochefort, the officer in charge of the U.S. Navy’s top-secret code-breaking unit at Pearl Harbor. Rochefort and his staff were brilliant. But, as Mr. Dugard tells us, much of their work was second-guessed by Washington. To prove that he was right—that Yamamoto was planning to attack Midway—Rochefort convinced the Navy to send a false message about a disabled water plant on the island. In intercepting and relaying this message, the Japanese also revealed that Midway would be their next target. Rochefort’s team heard it all. Now the trap was set. Yamamoto wasn’t sure where the U.S. aircraft carriers were, but he believed they were nowhere near Midway.

Mr. Dugard is best known for his collaborations with Bill O’Reilly on their Killing series. His account of the June 1942 battle will be recognizable to audiences of the excellent 1976 film “Midway.” All the familiar characters are here, including Ensign George Gay, the Navy pilot who was shot down early in the battle and who watched, while floating in the Pacific, as the U.S. sank three Japanese aircraft carriers. Four enemy carriers in total went down as the tide of the Pacific war turned.

A more accurate title for the book would be “The First Six Months of 1942.” Indeed, in Mr. Dugard’s dramatic style, the lead-up to the battle occupies more than 80% of the book. And in an unfortunate oversight, he demotes Lt. Cmd. Wade McClusky, referring to him as the commander of Scouting Six, sent out to find the Japanese fleet near Midway. McClusky was, in fact, the air-group commander of USS Enterprise. His role in finding the Japanese fleet was more integral to the victory than Mr. Dugard acknowledges.