True Comics #21

Russian Marshal Semyon Timoshenko rises from a farm boy in 1915 to become one of the Allied nations' most formidable military commanders, earning his reputation as the "Ace Blitz-Buster" through daring cavalry tactics, strategic brilliance, and unwavering determination across decades of warfare. From his early days fighting the Germans in World War I, through the chaos of the Russian Revolution, to his pivotal role defending his nation against Nazi invasion in 1941, Timoshenko's career is a study in tactical innovation and leadership under impossible odds. This eight-page account traces how a soldier's courage and conviction shaped the defense of a nation.

In 1943 Los Angeles, young car enthusiasts known as "Jallopy Jockeys" build lightning-fast racing machines from salvaged auto parts—calling them "Gow Jobs" or "Hot Irons"—and prove they're born mechanics by pushing speeds over 120 miles an hour. When street racing and public complaints threaten to shut them down, the boys organize the Southern California Timing Association to race legitimately at Harper Lakes, earning the respect of seasoned drivers and the local police. Their mechanical skills and discipline catch the attention of America's aircraft manufacturers and military, opening doors to careers building planes and serving their country during wartime.

War Gliders! explores America's innovative use of engineered aircraft to transport troops into combat zones, detailing how groups of silent gliders are towed aloft, released near enemy territory, and piloted to precision landings by skilled aviators. From the physics of flight and the specialized training that transforms young men into glider pilots, to the tactical advantages of deploying thousands of troops under cover of darkness, this story reveals how these remarkable machines are reshaping modern warfare and amphibious invasion strategy.

Pierre Durand, the mysterious French Underground saboteur whose face remains unknown to the Nazi secret police, carries out daring missions across occupied France—assuming clever disguises to disrupt German operations at munitions factories, signal offices, and railroad yards. While the Gestapo scrambles to identify and capture him, Durand and his network of operatives maintain their campaign of resistance, keeping hope alive among the French people through clandestine action and the underground newspaper *Liberateur*. His methods prove so elusive that the Nazis can only know him by his work, never his true face.

During World War I, Bohemians living under Austro-Hungarian rule found their resistance to the empire suppressed by strict censorship—until workers at a canning factory devised an ingenious way to smuggle news of their unrest to the outside world. This true account follows how a single tin can, hidden among thousands of others in a shipment to a neutral country, carried a coded message that would finally break through the information blackout.

When the Canadian destroyer ASSINIBOINE intercepts what appears to be a Swedish freighter in the Caribbean in 1940, a sharp-eyed officer spots a crucial detail—the ship's missing smokestack—that unmasks a German imposter. Fast forward to September 1942, and the ASSINIBOINE faces a far deadlier challenge: a Nazi U-boat that refuses to stay submerged, leading to a desperate hours-long gun duel through dense fog that tests the crew's nerve and ingenuity. This thrilling account captures the grit and determination of the Canadian Navy as they take on the enemy at close quarters.

Dr. Samuel Mudd tends to a wounded stranger's broken leg one fateful night in 1865, unaware that his patient is John Wilkes Booth, who has just assassinated President Lincoln. When authorities discover Booth's boot in Mudd's home, the doctor is arrested and convicted of aiding the assassin's escape, despite his insistence that he knew nothing of the crime. Sentenced to life imprisonment on the remote Dry Tortugas, Mudd faces a test of his principles when disease strikes the prison and he must decide whether to use his medical skills to help those who condemned him.

The U.S.S. Yorktown earns her reputation as the "fightingest ship in the Navy" when she charges into the pivotal battles of the Coral Sea and Midway in 1943, her guns blazing and her planes striking hard against enemy forces despite mounting damage. Led by Captain Buckmaster, this determined carrier refuses to go down without a fight, even as enemy fire closes in and her crew faces impossible odds. A true story of naval courage and sacrifice that shows what it takes to keep fighting when everything is stacked against you.

Between 1815 and 1850, America experiences rapid westward expansion and explosive growth—pioneers push into new territories, the Erie Canal and steam trains knit East and West together, and the nation stretches all the way to the Pacific. Yet beneath this prosperity lies a deepening fault line: as settlers and their conflicting visions of labor clash over whether slavery will spread into the new lands, the very success that's made America boom threatens to tear it apart.

Victoria Drummond, the "nicest lady on her block" in London, conceals a remarkable secret: she's a skilled engineer in the British Merchant Navy, and when World War II erupts, she volunteers to serve aboard an unarmed freighter crossing to America. When a Nazi bomber attacks the defenseless ship at sea, Victoria must work alone in the engine room, coaxing unprecedented speed from the engines to help the captain dodge bomb after bomb in a harrowing 35-minute assault. Her quick thinking and mechanical expertise keep the vessel and crew alive against all odds, earning her the gratitude of an entire nation—though back home, her neighbors remain blissfully unaware of her wartime heroism.

When the Navy's lucky goat mascot proved too much to handle, West Point seized the chance to field a mascot of their own—a hardworking mule named Jack, freshly conscripted from the Philadelphia Quartermaster Depot. This rollicking true story follows how an Army mule and Navy goat faced off before the big game, proving that sometimes the best rivalry mascots come from the most unexpected places.