Courage Is Always an Option, but You Must Be Willing to Choose It

Like a child’s model airplane, it was made of wood. The Germans first mocked it as a “wooden coffin,” but quickly changed to calling it “lightning terror.” Parked on the runway, it looked awkward and ungraceful, with none of the sleek beauty of the Spitfire. But it flew over 400 miles per hour and became the Gestapo’s most hated plane.

They called it the Mosquito. The only World War Two airplane made entirely of wood, its story is a modern parable of the values of the Greatest Generation and what we are losing in Trump’s America. On the 80^th anniversary of VE Day, let us pause to consider who we were at our best.

It was flown by British pilots, South Africans, Poles, Americans. The Mosquito was used for pin-point bombing attacks in some of the most famous raids of WWII, particularly targeting Gestapo headquarters and prisons. They would attack from the lowest level possible to assure accuracy. Made of wood and easy to shoot down, their defense was their speed and difficulty to track on radar.

While American B-17s and British Wellington bombers were used in mass raids from a high altitude, the Mosquito's unique qualities made it ideal for precision attacks. Allied Command used the Mosquito as a surgical weapon against the worst of the German military machine. Mosquitos bombed the Gestapo headquarters and torture centers in Oslo, Copenhagen, and Aarhus, Denmark. But its best-known mission was Operation Jericho.

Before D-Day, the Germans had captured a cell of French resistance fighters with knowledge of D-Day plans and were torturing them in a fortress French prison compound in Amiens, France. A dozen Mosquitos flown by British pilots, all volunteers, flew in at under 100 feet and destroyed the walls of the prison, allowing over 250 resistance fighters to escape, killing many of their Gestapo torturers.

The lead pilot who helped design the raid was killed with his navigator when he returned to the prison after dropping his bombs on the wall to strafe the German SS troops attempting to recapture the prisoners. He did so knowing he was violating the tactic that was the primary defense of the wooden plane: fly at top speed over a surprised target and escape before anti-aircraft defense could respond.

The allies maximized the psychological impact of a weapon that could be wielded like a modern drone. On the tenth anniversary of Hitler’s rise to power, January 30^th, 1943, a huge major Nazi rally was scheduled in Berlin, with speeches by Hermann Goring and Joseph Goebbels, broadcast on national radio. As Reichsmarschall Gorring, Commander-in-Chief of the Luftwaffe, took the stage, a squadron of Mosquitoes flew in at rooftop level, creating havoc at the rally and forcing the broadcast off the air. Two hours later, when Goebbels began speaking, a second Mosquito squadron attacked.

The Mosquito symbolizes the power of unified allies fighting evil at great sacrifice. It was conceived by the British de Havilland company, with over a thousand manufactured in Canada. The plane was built for fast attacks across the English Channel, not the long-distance flying required to shuttle the planes from Toronto to England. Rushed into production without the standard protocols of testing, it invariably had design flaws that only emerged under the extreme test of a cross-Atlantic flight. Dozens of Canadian pilots were killed in the delivery effort, so many that only volunteers were used, but there was never a shortage of pilots willing to take the risk.

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Today, Trump attacks Canada with language more threatening than any used by Adolf Hitler toward the then British Commonwealth nation, which never threatened to end the sovereign nation of Canada. No ally of France demanded a mineral deal in exchange for support. No leader of an allied nation praised Adolf Hitler as a “genius.” FDR never asserted that Germany was invaded by a hostile nation or blamed both sides for the war.

The Mosquito proved how courage, commitment, and sacrifice could literally silence hate. The Republicans, paralyzed with fear while Donald Trump and his band of thugs betray the Greatest Generation’s legacy, are as complicit as the “good Germans” who enabled Hitler while trying to deny any responsibility for the consequences.

There is nothing to be gained by sympathizing with these Republicans who pretend they have no options. This is an extraordinary moment in American history, but their actions are the most ordinary of human responses. They are selfish cowards who cower under the threats of a leader they mostly despise but fear. Trump will one day no longer be in power, but the shame of these weak men and women should last forever.