Home Front Warriors : Building the P-47 Thunderbolt and the LST Warship In Evansville, Indiana During World War II

Description

“Home Front Warriors” is the third book in a series of Evansville and Tri-State history books by Harold Morgan. Previous books in this series are “Home Front Heroes” and “Home Town History”.

Evansvilleʼs most renowned WWII products were the P-47 Thunderbolt fighter and the Landing Ship Tank; the LST. This book endeavors to illustrate how the devoted employees built the components and assembled the P-47 and the LST. The authorʼs goal is to provide as many war-time production employee photos as space allowed.

Harold Morgan lived the war years and a total of 15 years of his young life immediately west of the airport and Republic Aviation. The many test flights and machine-gun test firing sounds became common enough to the author as a child as to be generally unnoticed.

After collecting 40,000 historical photos and images of various subjects, the author wants to use as many of his photo collection as possible. The author selected 500 of these photos to illustrate how these war winning products were built and used.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Harold Morgan came to Evansville with his family whenever his father took a job as inspector of P-47 tail-assemblies in the Republic Aviation plant in 1942. They choose to stay in the city after World War II, with Harold becoming a student of Stringtown Elementary, Reitz High School and Evansville College. Having retired from consulting engineering in 2001, Harold Morgan has written several genealogical books as well as his local history book: “Home Front Heroes – Evansville and the Tri-State During WWII”.

Researching early area history and historical photos became a hobby for the author. Over several years, he has collected over 30,000 historic area photos. This is the second book of several Evansville area photo history books soon to follow.

Inspired by Joshua Stoffʼs excellent book; “Picture History of WWII American Aircraft Production”, Haroldʼs book consists of photos and extended captions to describe each photo and era.

About 90% of the authorʼs historical information has been taken from local newspapers and miscellaneous library files. He continues to research local history and has been well received by area libraries, schools, museums, groups and individuals.