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This is the fascinating and never before told true-life story of the man who led the filming of what is the definitive film record we have today of the aftermath of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As one of the first outsiders into Japan at the end of hostilities, Dan McGovern started to film firstly amid the death and destruction of Nagasaki only weeks after the dropping of the atomic bombs. This three-part, highly researched biography tells the full story of how the often harrowing footage of those destroyed cities was shot and of how McGovern safeguarded that footage for posterity despite decades of US government suppression.
Earlier, ‘Big Mack’ was designated cameraman and photographer to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt before being chosen to train the very first combat cameramen of World War Two for the then United States Army Air Forces. This was after he had first established the USAAF’s Combat Camera Training School in Hollywood, California where he worked with some of the most celebrated actors and directors of his day.
‘Rebels to Reels’, also for the very first time, tells the full story of how McGovern trained those cameramen before he himself deployed to England from where he flew perilous combat missions over Nazi occupied Europe. Readers glean a unique ‘fly on the fuselage’ experience as ‘Rebels to Reels’ brings them on McGovern’s B-17 missions as he filmed. This biography also contains Dan’s remarkable accounts of his involvement in the UFO Roswell Incident and of the transition of the USAAF into the United States Air Force - the 75th Anniversary of which occurs in 2022.
However, Dan’s story begins not in America, but in his native Ireland where, as a boy and the son of a policemen of the Royal Irish Constabulary, McGovern associated with the infamous Black and Tans as he eye-witnessed the Irish War of Independence unfold and later the partitioning of Ireland with the foundation of Northern Ireland in 1921 and the Irish Free State the following year the centenary of which also occurs this year. This biography is a must for anyone who loves a great story but it will particularly appeal to anyone with an interest in History, Military History and World War 2; Photography, Film and the history of both, Aviation and the history of Policing.
