world war 1939-1945

John Charles Robinson, an African American from Gulfport, Mississippi, first knew he wanted to fly as a seven-year-old boy when he saw his first airplane. Amazingly his dream came true and in 1935 he became a commander of the Imperial Ethiopian Air Force during the Italo-Ethiopian War, which was the first Facist invasion of what would go on to become World War II. His story has been forgotten in the turmoil of the Spanish Civil War and the world-wide chaos of World War II.

World War II fighter pilot Eric Carter was one of the members of a secret mission code-named "Force Benedict". The men in this mission were dispatched to defend Murmansk, Russia's only port not under Nazi occupation. If Murmansk fell, Soviet resistance against the Nazis would be difficult to sustain and Hitler would then be able to turn all his forces on Britain. Many members of the mission thought they would never survive, but they did, and were threatened with court martial if they talked about where they had been. Seventy years later, Eric Carter tells of his experiences in Murmansk, the largest city north of the Arctic Circle.