Athens, Ga.
– Operation Alacrity: The Azores and the
War in the Atlantic, written by Norman Herz, an emeritus professor at the University of Georgia,
and published by the Naval Institute Press, has been named 2005 Book of the
Year by the Portuguese Tribune, a
newspaper in Modesto, Calif., that “prides itself in promoting
Portuguese-American success stories.”
The book tells the story—for the first time—of the secret
operation that led to the construction of a secret Allied airfield in the Azores Islands
and may well have changed the course of World War II.
The Tribune, which
is the oldest Portuguese bilingual newspaper on the West Coast, selected Norman
Herz’s book “for its contributions toward a better and wider understanding of
the 20th -century history of the Azores.”
In 1943, the Allies set up a top secret plan to counter the
threat of the German U-Boats, one that involved the construction of clandestine
air bases on the Azores Islands, owned by Portugal, which was neutral in the
war. Herz, then a corporal with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and now an
emeritus professor of geoarcheology, found himself in the middle of the secret
plans; his book tells the story of how the Allies help save the seas.
The operation has been mostly unknown since it took place 60
years ago, largely, Herz argues, since it would have embarrassed the government
of Portugal,
which neither knew about the airfield nor approved it. During his research,
Herz found nothing about the secret operation in any official history of World
War II, but during several years’ research in Washington, he was able to uncover a number
of declassified memos from the files of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and in
State Department files.
Herz, then a recent graduate with a degree in geology from
City College of New York, joined the Army Air Corps in March 1943. The army
wanted him to be a drill instructor because of his college ROTC training.
However, since that duty would have kept him in the States and he wanted to go
overseas, he volunteered for engineering duty and was soon transferred to the
Center for Aviation Engineering near Richmond,
Va. Through a friend, however, he
met an officer with the Corps of Engineers who said he was heading for a
classified mission overseas. Herz became part of the mission to build the
airfield but waited many years to tell the story.
##
