This is the fascinating true-life story of the man who filmed in Hiroshima and 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 we have today was shot and of McGovern’s efforts to save it for posterity despite decades of US government suppression. Earlier, ‘Big Mack’ was a 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.
‘Rebels to Reels’, 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 six 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 Ireland where, as a boy and the son of an RIC policemen, McGovern associated with the infamous Black and Tans as he eye-witnessed the Irish War of Independence unfold. This ultimately led to the partitioning of Ireland, the centenary of which also occurs this year.
Here’s a YouTube video on the book launch: Rebels to Reels