Tag Archives: Lancaster

Teen heroes rescue abducted child in Lancaster, Pennsylvania

Here’s a great hero story from Lancaster Online.

Excerpt:

[Temar] Boggs, a McCaskey freshman who lives in Gable Park Woods, had been hanging out with a friend at nearby Lancaster Arms apartments and helping move a couch when a man came by asking if they’d seen a missing girl.

They hadn’t, Boggs said, so they went to watch TV.

A short time later, his friend went outside and saw lots of police officers and people from the neighborhood looking for the girl.

Police said that the girl had been taken that afternoon from the 100 block of Jennings Drive.

Boggs and about six friends joined the search.

[…][Boggs] and another friend, Chris Garcia, rode on area streets — Michelle Drive, St. Phillips Drive, Gable Park Road — looking for her.

That’s when a maroon car caught his eye. (He had gotten a bit ahead of Garcia.)

The car was on Gable Park and turned around when it got near the top of a hill toward Millersville Pike, where Boggs said several police officers were gathered with the kind of cart used to carry an injured football player off the field.

The driver, an older white man, then began quickly turning onto and out of side streets connecting to Gable Park, Boggs said.

The neighborhood is something of a maze; many of its streets are cul-de-sacs.

Boggs got close enough to the car to see a little girl inside. Garcia was nearby.

The driver looked at Boggs and Garcia, then stopped the car at Gable Park and Betz Farm Road and pushed the girl out of the car. The driver then drove off, Boggs said.

Boggs said he didn’t see where the car went.

“She runs to my arms and said, ‘I need to see my mommy,’ ” Boggs said.

Boggs scooped the girl onto his shoulders and began riding the bike toward home, but then decided that wasn’t safe, so he carried her and walked back while Garcia pedaled along, guiding the bike Boggs had been using.

Back at Lancaster Arms, when Boggs and Garcia arrived with the girl, someone summoned a firefighter or law enforcement officer.

Boggs said the girl was reluctant to leave him and go to the official.

“She didn’t want to leave me because she thought they were going to do something to her. I said, ‘No, it’s OK,’ ” he said.

[…]Boggs doesn’t see himself as a hero.

“I’m just a normal person who did a thing that anybody else would do,” he said.

That’s a good positive story of young men being heroic.

Friday night movie: The Dam Busters (1955)

Here’s tonight’s movie:

IMDB mean rating: [7.6/10]

IMDB median rating: [8/10]

Description:

The Dam Busters is a 1955 British Second World War war film starring Michael Redgrave and Richard Todd and directed by Michael Anderson. The film recreates the true story of Operation Chastise when in 1943 the RAF’s 617 Squadron attacked the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe dams in Germany with Wallis’s “bouncing bomb”. The film was based on the books The Dam Busters (1951) by Paul Brickhill and Enemy Coast Ahead (1946) by Guy Gibson.

The film falls into two parts. The first part involves Wallis struggling to develop a means of attacking Germany’s dams in the hope of crippling German heavy industry. Working for the Ministry of Aircraft Production, as well as doing his own job at Vickers, he works feverishly to make practical his theory of a bouncing bomb which would skip over the water to avoid protective torpedo nets. When it came into contact with the dam, it would sink before exploding, making it much more destructive.

WARNING: the Lancaster pilots have a dog for their mascot and the dog has a name that may be offensive to some viewers. (It’s the n-word). So, don’t watch the movie if you can’t handle that. But this is a World War 2 classic.

Map:

Ruhr dam raid map: click for larger image
Ruhr dam raid map: click for larger image

The Lancaster bomber:

AVRO Lancaster Heavy Bomber
AVRO Lancaster Heavy Bomber

AVRO Lancaster specifications:

General

  • Length: 69 ft. 5 in.
  • Wingspan: 102 ft.
  • Height: 19 ft. 7 in.
  • Wing Area: 1,300 sq. ft.
  • Empty Weight: 36,828 lbs.
  • Loaded Weight: 63,000 lbs.
  • Crew: 7

Performance

  • 4 × Rolls-Royce Merlin XX V12 engines, 1,280 hp each
  • Range: 3,000 miles
  • Max Speed: 280 mph
  • Ceiling: 23,500 ft.

Armament

  • Guns: 8 × .30 in (7.7 mm) machine guns
  • Bombs: 14,000 lbs. depending on range, 1 x 22,000-lb. Grand Slam bomb

It’s one of my favorite war movies about the best-regarded heavy bomber of the war, on either side. (The B-17 is a close second)

Happy Friday!

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