Tanker Turk and Hellcat Dan

On April 6, 1945, the author’s father, Robert “Turk” Lindsey, a tank commander with Patton’s 3rd Army, crossed the battle lines at Rinteln, Germany in an unarmed jeep and single-handedly convinced over two thousand Nazi’s to surrender without a single shot being fired. On that same day, during the most intense kamikaze attack of the war, the author’s father-in-law, Daniel Archibald Carmichael, while flying a Grumman Hellcat, shot down a Japanese Zero over Okinawa to become a World War II fighter pilot ace. Two fathers, two different war fronts on opposite sides of the world, “Tanker Turk and Hellcat Dan” chronicles the harrowing paths that brought these two heroes to that fateful day in April. Written like a novel, and revolving around the hopes, fears, and hardships involved in long separations from home, the story highlights the serendipitous twists of fate that often occur during a war.