May 29, 2006

Off-topic: NATS

For Memorial Day, I want to single out the 26,604 personnel who served in World War II in the Naval Air Transport Service, and one in particular (who's still with us): my dad, CDR Joseph G. Hansen, USNR (Ret.):

Familiarly known as NATS, it played a major role in the Pacific War. The cargoes it carried sent damaged ships and submaries back to sea... It supplied fighting units throughout the Pacific... and brought as much as 1,000 pints a day of life-giving plasma and whole blood... It evacuated casualties from the active fighting fronts... The importance of such service was only partly measurable in statistics; it also lay in the shortened convalescence and improved morale of each casualty...


Keep 'em flying.

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