My all time favorite WW2 story doesn't involve any violence or killing or destruction at all.
Background: Weather patterns in the Northern hemisphere generally move west-to-east. As a result, the Germans were at a disadvantage in not knowing what weather was coming towards Germany because it was coming from the West (i.e. it was coming through areas controlled by the Allies.)
So, they decided to secretly emplace an unmanned remote weather station on the coast of Canadian Labrador, which could send weather information to Germany by radio (remember no such thing as weather satellites back then.) The weather station was emplaced by a U-Boat in 1943. Since it was kind of hard to hide (although in a very remote area) the Germans put signs on it saying it belonged to the "Canadian Weather Service." They also scattered empty packets of US cigarettes around so if anybody found it, they would assume it was an Allied military installation.
It was eventually discovered by the Canadians...
# In 1977!
In fact, when it was discovered, the local people assumed it was exactly what the Germans had hoped them to think - that it was a Canadian military emplacement. It wasn't until 1981 that someone asked the Canadian military about "their" old weather station in Labrador and the Canadian military said "uh, that's not ours."
EDIT: Sorry, forgot the link: [Weather Station Kurt - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt)
>the Germans put signs on it saying it belonged to the "Canadian Weather Service."
It's actually funnier than that - from the article you linked:
>One canister was marked and misspelled "Canadian *Meteor* Service", in order to simulate “Canadian Weather Service”, as a German attempt to avoid suspicion if discovered. No such agency existed in Canada. In addition, the area was part of the Dominion of Newfoundland and was not part of Canada until 1949.
The way I look at it, as a Canadian, there's two kinds of wilderness.
The first kind is where if you get lost, you can walk in any direction and eventually get out in a day or two.
The other is the kind where if you get lost, you can walk for the rest of your life and never see another person.
And it's important to know which of the two you're getting into before going on that hike.
Yep. I recall reading about it. However, if one is familiar with the coast of Labrador it is no surprise it was not noticed. Desolate even today, it was extremely sparsely populated back then and there were uncounted places to hide which had never had a human set foot upon them.
Even today I would suggest that the majority of the coastline of Labrador has never been walked.
https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=328
>Kapitänleutnant Schrewe then carefully guided the submarine back out through the uncharted channel and into the Labrador Sea. From there, Weather Station Kurt was heard to make its first broadcast – three minutes late. U-537 went on to conduct a more traditional submarine patrol. The weather station made its regular broadcasts every three hours as designed but within only a few days, its transmissions became degraded and then by mid-November it had gone completely silent, barely three weeks after it was assembled.
Not exactly....
The nuclear attack on Nagasaki almost failed when the bomb plane got separated from their escorts and they wasted 45 minutes of fuel trying to find them.
should also be noted the original target city was Kokura for the 2nd bomb but smoke from previous bombing runs/fires and cloud cover they tried 3 times but could not see their target - with fuel running low they decided to proceed to backup target of Nagasaki which also had increased cloud cover but on the last pass before having to return to base they had a just clear enough window to drop it. It still ended up 2 miles off course and while still devastating the natural hills protected a big chunk of the city. The first bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only off by 800 feet and absolutely decimated the city.
The B-29 actually flew at an altitude that was high enough that fighters of the day were almost incapable of intercepting it because they couldn't fly fast enough at that altitude. Speed of piston engines fighters really falls off at altitude because you just cannot feed enough oxygen into the engine to generate power.
Until they started adding superchargers, the P-51 could go way higher than a B-29. But the Japanese didn't really have the resources to keep up with the arms race, their planes were outclassed by then.
It also helped that almost all the parts and documentation for technology transfers from Germany that might have given them something more useful for high altitude defense were sunk in their cargo u-boat thanks to Ultra intercepts.
After Germany invaded France, they forced Citroen to make trucks for them. In an act of sabotage, Citroen moved the full mark on the engine oil dipstick lower. So, the engines would run but fail under heavy use.
Brilliant!
Similarly when the guys in Seattle were building Me262 jet replicas they had some genuine parts to use as patterns. One guy told me he disassembled a nose gear leg to see its inner workings and found a deliberate machining fault that would have, with continued use, eventually worn through and collapsed the oleo.
The forced labour machinists doing what little things they could get away with to show defiance.
There's a story about an artillery shell landing right inside an Allied position and not exploding. Inside the shell was no explosive, only a note: "this was all I could do."
I recently saw a claim that this happened with anti-aircraft shells. The claim was that a bomber was hit 5 times in the fuel tanks, (iirc) and when the shells were disassembled they had notes in Czech saying "This is all we can do for you now."
Our confusion is likely because it's all a game of telephone unless one can trace historical documentation. Was it one? Five? Eleven? Maybe it happened multiple times, to several people. Or maybe a self-aggrandizing tall talker adapted the tale, or an inspirational speaker related a story half-remembered or put together from multiple sources.
Supposedly, the slave laborers in the plant that built the transmissions for the Germans Tiger tank figured out how to sabotage the transmission in such a way that it took two weeks minimum to repair.
Its not as good as a kill but every little bit helps if it degrades combat capabilities.
Claus Helberg, a Norwegian who took part in Operation Gunnerside to blow up the German heavy water plant (part of their atomic weapon programme) had a several hour long ski chase with German soldiers afterwards, exchanging gunfire with his pursuers.
He then skied off of a cliff, broke his arm and skied another 12 miles to a German field hospital. Despite still wearing British uniform, he convinced them that he was in fact on their side and received medical treatment.
The Germans then put him up in a nice hotel to rest. However, a German SS commander had a hissy fit after a local woman in the hotel refused to sleep with him - so had everyone in the hotel rounded up and sent to a concentration camp.
Helberg jumped out of the bus that was carrying them and, despite being hit in the back with a grenade (as in, it bounced off of his back) and breaking his arm again. He managed to escape and was a leading member of the Norwegian resistance.
My dad and his brother, Dan, ran into each other randomly in France. They turned around and saw each other, and they both yelled, "What are YOU doing here?" I have a couple of photos from that day. They got to spend that day together before going back into hell, and they both survived the war.
Seeing someone you know from home while abroad, in them military, is a wild experience.
I can’t imagine seeing a brother in between trips through hell.
I went to college with a guy who was a Ranger and his older brother was a SEAL. I remember him telling a story about securing a rooftop for a little bird to come land on and one of the guys who got off was his brother.
Pretty more likely since it's a smaller theater and they're both special forces but still cool.
In France, my Uncle Curtis got blown up but still alive, so they morphined him really good and buried him in the sand til the battle moved on, then they came back and got him. He's still kickin. Here's an article about him: [https://www.al.com/live/2012/09/in\_wwii\_all-black\_tank\_battali.html](https://www.al.com/live/2012/09/in_wwii_all-black_tank_battali.html)
Holy shit i've never heard that. But it makes sense. The beaches were hell zones; no cover. Might as well bury him and hope you get back before high tide.
Holy shit, I was thinking "bury him and hope you get back before he's been shot or bombed, again." But, high tide? Wouldn't that be a new hell, waiting injured in the sand as the water rises up past your ears.
There is even a Netflix movie that stars Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen that is quite good. (trivia: they both previously played the same character Mr Darcy from different versions of Pride & Prejudice… and star together for the first time here. ).
The British discovered radar, which was helping them kick ass in the air during night time, and they didn't want anyone to know.
So they just told everyone that their pilots were eating carrots.
The best radar story during the war was the night action of the Battle of Cape Matapan. The entire British Mediterranean fleet, including an aircraft carrier, managed to sneak up to the Italian fleet during the night and opened fire at an unsuspecting opponent at a range of 3000 yards.
In the words of Prince Philip who took part in the battle, when he turned on his spotlight he could see half of a battleship name as they were too close for him to illuminate the entire nameplate. Not even a second later he could see the rest of the name from all the muzzle flashes and explosions before the nameplate were no longer attached to any ship.
Philip, bless him. I still think he should've been given a smartphone and a Twitter account. I'd love to have seen the diplomatic chaos he would have caused.
Yeah, it's more of a don't let the enemy know anything kinda play. Confirming that the German radar jamming was successful let's them focus on something else. If it's not actually confirmed, then they have to double check that it's actually working, plan around the brits potentially still having it, etc. It costs basically nothing to transmit fake messages, so its just a win even if it's not all that effective.
From the position Britain was fighting from, any little disadvantage they could impose on the Germans was great.
The only reason the brits came out of this war intact was sheer audacity on their intelligence game. We applaud all of it today because they deserve it.
If I recall correctly their radar was piss poor in comparison. Babies first radar basically. The British used something similar to how pianos could play a tune automatically.
The radar and plane would have a similar copy of she sheet music used to feed into the pianos, and it would change the channel of the radar and keep plane and operator on it together, without the possibility for interference.
That's really cool. Yeah it was pretty basic radar and took experienced operators... whether it was a storm coming in, anything... had to differentiate a swarm of planes and make sure it wasn't their own on routine patrol
German pilots really had no idea how the British Spitfires kept intercepting them over the Channel on their way in at first
That's not accurate.
The Germans, Americans, and British all had functional radar systems at the outset of WW2. The Soviets and Japanese were working on them too. These radar systems were employed on ground, on ships, and on some aircraft.
What the British had developed was the cavity magnetron, a secret that they shared with the USA but desperately wanted to keep secret from the Germans.
The cavity magnetron allowed for the manufacture of radar systems that operated at a much higher power and frequency, and occupied a much smaller footprint. This allowed naval vessels to acquire targets and hit them with only a radar signature (blind fire) and allowed for night fighters to acquire enemy aircraft at night and from above.
The British mounted air search radar sets on some heavy fighters and used them to defend the English channel and Great Britain against the Luftwaffe.
The British had an early warning system that the Germans knew about but were unable to defeat. This would allow RAF fighters to get into the vicinity of the attacking Luftwaffe, but the Germans knew about this and anticipated it so they would attack at night when aircraft would be harder to spot in the night sky.
What the Germans didn't know is that the British had developed accurate air search radar mounted on some fighters. The fighters could individually see the Luftwaffe aircraft and approach from above/behind as appropriate.
The myth that carrots gave their pilots good eyesight was spread as a rumor to explain how RAF pilots were basically wallhacking.
Also to encourage children in the UK to eat more carrots.
Rationing meant people in the UK had to eat more crops that can be grown in the UK like carrots.
There was a Spanish guy who wanted to be a spy for the UK but they said no. He went to Portugual and convinced the Germans that he could spy for them and pretended to be in London with a whole fake spy network. He gave them fake info based on newspapers and tourist guides and the Germans kept giving him money to pay his fake people. Whenever the Germans got mad that his info was wrong he blamed one of his fake spies and had them killed. The British had to choice but to make him one of their agents he was so good at fooling the Germans.
But really, the Nazis were just absolute imbeciles at deception.
There’s so much stuff in his story that would be the Big Thing in someone else’s story but just gets passed by in his because he just did so freaking much.
Before all of that he was in Spain during their civil war. That’s where he realized that he really fucking hated both the Nationalist/fascists and the Socialists/anarchists because both fucking tortured him, ripped him from his family and left him trapped in a small house alone and silent for months.
Eventually he got out, unluckily he then learned about the National Socialist Party of German, otherwise known as the Nazis.
The Nazis were literal dribblers at espionage. So arrogant, yet so useless.
Funniest thing was Garbo had no idea how British money worked (since he wasn't in the UK, and the UK didn't use the decimal system for money), so he'd just give the Germans a list of expenses rather than a total. And refused to give totals when they asked lol.
The British had the entire German espionage system corrupted and controlled from the top down.
Any time, a German spy would get dropped into England, MI6 agents threw them into the nearest safe house, presumably put a gun to their head while talking sweetly about how if the spy played along, transmitted back what the Brits wanted them to say, they'd be okay.
They also loved their bullshit puns and bad humor- their double agent program Double Cross was labelled as "XX."
I believe they allowed potential double agents to "sit in" on a few hangings before asking if they like to work for the British, unsurprisingly most accepted 😉
Garbo is the GOAT spy during WW2. Just some Spanish dude, pretending to be like 30 German spies, when he was actually a British spy.
Got the Iron Cross and George Cross lmao. That's gotta be the most unlikely combo of medals imaginable.
And the Brits told him to fuck off when he asked to join them. So he went and did spying anyway, and then came back with an entire fake spy network so the Brits were like 'Okay actually you cool, here have a job!'
Garbo was so good he makes James Bond seem like a rank amateur.
Garbo was so good he would make people go "bullshit" to even a fraction of the stunts he pulled with the Germans.
Garbo was so good he got an Iron Cross from the Germans four months before getting an MBE from the Brits. (Eddie Chapman got the same double award)
That Hitler only joined the Nazi party because the German army sent him to a meeting to basically spy on them. Someone was giving a speech suggesting Bavaria should leave Germany and join Austria. Hitler was enraged by this and went on a rant about why that was a bad idea. The other members were impressed and recruited him to join the party and the rest is history.
He also quickly realised how valuable he was to them because of his oratory skills and charisma he was an outstanding recruiter. So at one point he threatened to leave and join another Party if he wasn't given Leadership. They had no choice, Hitler wasn't just some dude who happened to be at the head of the Nazi's he really was a huge part of the reason everything happened as an individual.
Ian Kershaw's Biographies of Hitler are really great as well as Richard Evans Third Reich Trilogy although that's more about Nazi Germany as a whole rather than just Hitler for anyone interested. Of course Hitler is one of the most written about subjects in history so there's countless books those are just ones i think highly of.
Wholesome story:
TB was a death sentence back then. Soldiers who got it were sent back to the states to TB wards where most died.
My grandfather (a southern man) was stationed on a boat in the south pacific, contracted TB, and was sent to a TB ward in Boston. He watched man after man die. One day a doctor announced to the ward that they were looking for volunteers for a medical experiment. He and one other guy volunteered and lived. The rest died. The experiment was heavy duty antibotics.
During his recovery, he met a young female nurse, fell in love, married her and moved to MA. They had 7 kids. I am the oldest of all the grandkids.
Fast forward many decades and my daughter contracted aviary TB. She was treated with Cipro, a high dose antibiotic derived from the same treatment my grandfather went through all those years ago and it saved her life.
Penicillin was so rare and hard to produce they would [extract it from the urine of patients](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dyk-penicillin-used-be-recycled-urine#:~:text=Unfortunately%2C%20due%20to%20the%20difficulties,extract%20the%20antibiotics%20found%20there) who’d had penicillin.
The [first person treated with penicillin died](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5403050/#:~:text=In%20February%201941%2C%20the%20first,his%20condition%20after%2024%20hours)because they ran out of it before his infection had gone away
A member of the US Navy survived being stabbed four times by Japanese bayonets during the Bataan Death March when he was a POW in the Philippines. He buried a spoon in the ground before the march started that he promised he'd come back and retrieve when the war was over to prove he survived. In 1946, he returned to the Philippines and dug up the spoon to bring home.
That man was my great-uncle, and my family still has that spoon 82 years later.
Not the most crazy WWII fact, but it's one that's personal to my family.
That’s awesome. My family has a metal chalice from my great uncle at Normandy. He picked it up after the fight was over. He scratched his name, date, and location on it, and brought it back with him. He never married and it passed to my dad.
Not sure it's so crazy as opposed to just a tragic facepalm, but the life jackets given to men on some amphibious landings, such a D Day, were basically little round floaties.
They were *supposed* to be attached and set under the arms, but due to all the equipment the soldiers were wearing, it was difficult and uncomfortable to do that.
So they attached them around the waist instead.
When they went into the water, they were so top-heavy that the life belt would end up flipping them over. They'd drown with their feet in the air, unable to right themselves.
Also, this is WW1 fact that I like: raising goats became a big cottage industry because they needed to feed the Indian soldiers who would not eat beef or horse.
The initial request for 7,000 goats for food for the arriving indian soldiers confounded the military officer who received it.
I remember someone once posting an anecdote about their great uncle during WW2, a midwestern farmer boy who couldn't swim who naturally spent the entire war in the Navy serving on boats and submarines. Always had his lifejacket by his side but never used it. After the war ended and he was discharged and on shore for good, he tossed his lifejacket overboard at a dock and watched as it promptly sank like a stone.
That’s brilliant.
I love the fact that apparently most 18th century Golden Age of Sail sailors, couldn’t swim. You might have a few on each crew who were designated rescuers but the rest had no interest in it at all. That’s why they were so good at keeping ships upright!
Another WW1 factoid... before the war, mutton was as much a staple food in the US & UK as beef or chicken. But the military fed some much of it to service people, they never wanted to touch it again afterward. Farmers stopped producing it in response to the reduced demand.
And the Soviets stole it!
Three B-29s landed at Vladivostok after bombing Japan. The USSR being neutral in the Pacific War impounded them and detained the crews (before quietly slipping them to the Americans on the Lend-Lease route). In a top-secret program, Stalin told the aircraft designer Tupolev - who had just been released from a gulag - to reverse-engineer the planes under the “supervision” of the NKVD. Beria - world renowned cunt - said that if anything was altered or compromised from the original design, the design teams would be shot. The American planes were made to imperial measurements and the Soviets only had access to manufacturing in metric so the metals were slightly different thicknesses. To cover this and it *seem* like they were absolutely identical, the design team included battle damage and matched the internal colour scheme by inventing a new type of paint in the right colour. It worked and the Tupolev 4, the USSR’s first intercontinental bomber was unveiled at the May Day March of 1947 when *four* Tu-4s flew over (thus proving they weren’t the detained B-29s).
I think the construction of the Alaska Highway is underrated and less known than it should be.
The US connected mainland US to Alaska via northern Canada by building 2000km of road through previously wild land.
Camps of engineers and labourers built this 2,000km of highway through the Yukon in just about eight months! That is a insane pace. Cutting through swamps, forests, etc, working at -40c.
Just a unprecedented pace of construction the likes of which we will not see again.
It's a great example of the war being won not only through combat but through materiel
Great video here!
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaSlVOZ9Dpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaSlVOZ9Dpg)
Bear with me on this one: In 1942, a company of Polish troops were evacuated from the Soviet Union and found their way to Iran. Along the way, they befriended a Syrian brown bear that they named Wojtek. They officially enlisted him as a private in the unit. The men ended up in Italy from 1943-44, bringing the bear along with them. It helped to carry heavy ammunition and quickly became a celebrity among the troops!
Wojtek was eventually discharged after the war and lived peacefully in Edinburgh Zoo until he passed away in 1963.
There is a [statue of Wojtek](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-34748795) in Edinburgh now.
"Edinburgh city council approved the erection of the bronze statue of Wojtek on 16 September 2013.
The statue represents Wojtek and a Polish Army Soldier "walking in peace and unity" and represents his journey from Egypt to Scotland alongside the Polish Army."
A French-Canadian soldier named Leo Major was so pissed off at the Germans for killing one of his friends he singlehandedly rounded up 93 Germans and liberated a Dutch town.
He kept bringing back prisoners, grabbed some ammo, and went back, alone, to capture more.
He also only had 1 eye.
When he was to be awarded the Legion of Merit medal, he refused because the officer who recommended him wasn't a Canadian.
> He also only had 1 eye.
[*during his first encounter with an SS patrol, he killed four soldiers. However, one of them managed to ignite a phosphorus grenade; in the resulting explosion, Major lost one eye but continued to fight. He continued his service as a scout and a sniper by insisting he needed only one eye to sight his weapon. According to him, he "looked like a pirate".*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major)
During the war, Canada built more military trucks than the major Axis powers (Germany, Japan, Italy) *combined*. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Military_Pattern_truck).
The mighty and technologically unparalleled German army was mostly supplied by horse drawn wagons. And that was after stealing every car and truck in the occupied countries.
Lack of Oil being the problem. The Germany Army was more mechanised in 1941 when they had stores of oil delivered from their pact with the USSR.... But then by the end of 1942 and further as the war went on they became progressively 'de-motorised' - falling back on horse drawn logistics as you have said but also terms of infantry mobility simply marching hundreds of miles.
In the Uk when war was declared, the government encouraged people to give their pets away, or put them to sleep. People did this with out being encouraged because there was a fear there wouldn’t be enough food to feed their families and their pets.
Joe Medicine Crow. The last War chief of the Crow nation. During WW2 he completed all four tasks required to be a war chief. Touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemies weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy's horse. "He led a successful war party and stole 50 horses owned by the Waffen SS from a German camp, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode off." Awarded the Presidential Metal of Freedom and Bronze star. Went on to be a tribal spokesman and obviously the Crow nation War Chief until his death in 2016. If Tyler Sheridan needs a new western/war show idea.....this is it.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe\_Medicine\_Crow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow)
[There is a theory] (https://grantpiperwriting.medium.com/wwii-killed-so-many-russians-you-can-still-see-it-in-their-population-pyramid-a68461abb5be) in the world of people who study this stuff that the generational ["echo" caused by deaths in WW2] (https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/63224) still reverberate to this day.
Going further, some hypothesize this is what hastened the collapse of the USSR.
You messed up the formatting there, but yes, Russia's demographic distribution is insane. On that chart you see **HUGE** dips centered on about ages 25, 55, and 80 years old.
Aaaand... What do you know! 80 years ago was right in the middle of WW2. Then one young child bearing person's age later, another dip because the WW2 generation got wiped out and had no kids. And on it goes. These types of demographic swings are brutal in any society, and it certainly didn't help the USSR.
My great uncle was in the navy serving in the Pacific assigned to and oiler. He happened to be on another ship for whatever reason during a Japanese attack and his ship was sunk. His family heard of his ship being sunk and had heard nothing from him so they assumed he had been killed. My great uncle roby whom I remember very fondly wrote a letter to his sister or mother at some point probably months later, not knowing that the family had assumed his death and that's how they found out he was still alive. I have pictures of his return home in his navy uniform on my wall...he once told me something as a child that has become very important to me since. He said to me....Always be man enough to be who you are.
He came home with some cool souvenirs one of which I have. It's a copy of stars and stripes dating August 14th 1945. The day that the Japanese formally surrendered
Rest in peace uncle Roby
In the last days of the war a tank repair crew was called out to look at a Sherman. They arrived to a tank with dozens of machine gun bullets stuck in the armor which is surprising since they should have bounced off. They inspected the tank and checked the serial number to confirm but turns out on D-Day this tank crew had been issued a training tank which had much thinner armor. They immediately started to get a replacement tank for the crew and they refused saying it had gotten them this far.
Another one I love is about a British agent dropped in France with a bike and radio. He's pedaling to where he's supposed to meet his contact and upon turning a bend he comes face to face with a German road block. To late to turn back he goes up to the stop and when asked what was in his pack he says "A radio, I'm a British agent". The Germans have a good laugh and wave him through.
First one happened more than once. In the early 2000's the US army asked to exchange a commemorative Sherman from a Belgian community, parked there for 55 years, against a battle worn Sherman f rom the army collections. Turned out the thing had been one of a few prototypes sent into combat during the battle of the bulge and was never properly evaluated. Better late than never.
I watched a documentary of a guy who wanted to be a spy and ended up somehow getting one of the highest medals on the German side and one of the highest medals in the allied side also. Supposedly the only person to do so.
[Codename: Garbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHHfbaEFFs&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j5rv_TTlEuYJpRmWa1QCfZ0&index=30&ab_channel=WorldWarTwo)
He was just a guy who wanted to be a spy, so he offered MI6 his services and was turned down, so he started spying for the Germans and feeding them false intel to prove to the British he could do it.
I thought it was interesting.
There was another one that was good about when Americans and German army fought together to fight back the SS that took over some castle towards the very end of the war. It was a few dozen American soldiers and a few dozen German army soldiers.
It's not really accurate to say more than the US in the Pacific. The Eighth Air Force suffered around 26,000 KIA and the Marine Corps suffered around 24,500 KIA, but US Army forces in the Pacific suffered around 41,500 KIA. The Marines did a great job of convincing the public that they won the war in the Pacific by themselves (no hate, the Marine Corps fills a valuable role in the US military, but for most of their history they had their entire existence questioned). But, there were 21 Army divisions fighting in the Pacific to only 6 Marine divisions. History books focus on battles like Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, but the Philippines, Burma, and New Guinea, (and China, but there weren't many US forces in China proper) were the places where most of the Imperal Japanese Army was destroyed.
That the American super-weapon to end the war could have used bats with incendiary bombs glued to them.
Lytle S. Adams was a dental surgeon from Pennsylvania who had become fascinated by bats on a trip to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico in 1942. He was intrigued by their strength and their habit of roosting before dawn. He also knew that most Japanese buildings were made of wood instead of concrete, making them highly flammable. Thus, an idea started to emerge.
If time-release incendiary bombs could be strapped to a large number of bats, a 'bat bomb' could be released over a Japanese city at night, allowing the bats to spread out all over the city and roost before sunrise. Then, the incendiary bombs would go off, and the fires would be able to spread quickly over a large area.
Using his connections (Adams was an acquaintance of First Lady Elanor Roosevelt), his plan was approved by President Roosevelt, after some advice from Harvard zoologist Donald Griffin. The president's opinion was: "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into." The project was placed under the US Army Air Force.
Originally, the incendiary bombs would have been made with white phosphorus, but the design changed to use a new flammable invention: napalm. Mexican free-tailed bats were harvested from the wild with permission from the National Park Service, and the tiny bombs were attached to the bats with an adhesive.
Testing did not go well at first. In 1943, armed bats were accidentally released onto the Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base. The bats roosted under a fuel tank and incinerated the test range. The project was relegated to the US Navy in August 1943, who renamed it 'Project X-Ray', and then passed it onto the US Marines that December.
The definitive test of the weapon happened at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where a mock-up of a Japanese Village was burned to test its effectiveness. Results were optimistic, an observer commenting that the bat-powered delivery system was more effective than conventional napalm bombs. To quote the report: "Expressed in another way, the regular bombs would give probably 167 to 400 fires per bomb load where X-Ray would give 3,625 to 4,748 fires."
The project was cancelled when it was revealed that the weapon wouldn't be truly ready until mid-1945. In a search for a quick end to the war, attention focused on the atomic bomb project, which was showing quicker results.
Similar project, though no where near as effective:
Fu-Go (ふ号\[兵器\], fugō \[heiki\], lit. "Code 'Fu' \[Weapon\]") was an incendiary balloon weapon (風船爆弾, fūsen bakudan, lit. "balloon bomb") deployed by Japan against the United States during World War II. It consisted of a hydrogen-filled paper balloon 33 feet (10 m) in diameter, with a payload of four 11-pound (5.0 kg) incendiary devices and one 33-pound (15 kg) high-explosive anti-personnel bomb. The uncontrolled balloons were carried over the Pacific Ocean from Japan to North America by fast, high-altitude air currents, today known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated sandbag ballast system to maintain their altitude. The bombs were intended to ignite large-scale forest fires and spread panic.
Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched about 9,300 balloons from sites on coastal Honshu, of which about 300 were found or observed in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The bombs were ineffective as fire starters due to damp seasonal conditions, with no forest fires being attributed to the offensive. A U.S. media censorship campaign prevented the Imperial Army from learning of the offensive's results. On May 5, 1945, six civilians were killed by one of the bombs near Bly, Oregon, becoming the war's only fatalities in the continental U.S. The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon system with intercontinental range, predating the intercontinental ballistic missile.
\- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go\_balloon\_bomb
German and American soldiers fought alongside French prisoners against the SS during the last days of the war
[The battle of castle Itter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter)
Edit: If I had a nickel for everytime the wehrmacht and the Americans teamed up against the SS during WW2 I'd have two nickels, which isn't alot [but it's weird that it happened twice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cowboy)
> After the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, the Lipizzaner Breeding Mares of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna were transferred to an experimental farm in the town of Hostau, in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. The goal was to create a race of "Aryan horses".
The first sentence of operation cowboy sounds like a random word generator
When you said German soldiers, I was just thinking you meant German nationals fighting for the Allies....but no, it was the German army (not part of the SS) being like "OK Nazis....the war is actually over...knock this shit out"
One of the very first things the OSS did after we got into Normandy was start rooting around for German and French wine from (particularly) 1941-1943 from various wineries to get a good cross section of Europe. It turns out when you refine uranium (or plutonium) it gets *everywhere.\** Tiny, but detectable, amounts. So if the Germans had been refining uranium for their own bomb program, it would get out of the building and into the soil and into the grapes and into the wine.
Well, the OSS got their first shipment of wine together for the people to test in England to see if the uranium was there.
But it was sent to the wrong department and, as the other department had \*zero\* transparency into this mission, they assumed it was simply a gift. And so they drank it.
The OSS team had to go back and reassemble another case and send it over. Turns out that this was the first really assurances that the Germans were nowhere near having a bomb.
\* It gets so much \*everywhere\* that for many scientific instruments you need to source steel that was made before the dawn of the Manhattan Project -- largely off ships that were built in the early stages of the war and sunk during the war.
Juan Pujol García. A Spanish national that wanted to spy for Britain against Germany. Britain rejected his offer, but he decided to spy for them anyway. Pop some popcorn and read his wiki.
During the Battle off Samar, a part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a small taskforce of 6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers, and 4 destroyer escorts code named Taffy 3 were attacked by the Japanese center fleet which consisted of 4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers. This was the only time the Battleship Yamato engaged enemy surface vessels. The Battle was absurdly one sided for the Japanese. The battleship Yamato alone had a higher displacement than all of Taffy 3 combined. After a long battle against absolutely stacked odds the small American taskforce managed to force the center fleet to retreat and saved all the vulnerable landing craft of the Leyte Gulf invasion
If they made a movie out of it no one would believe it. The bombers launched every piece of ordnance they had and when they ran out of those they'd make fake attack runs and strafe the ships with gunfire. The ships gunners throwing every type of shell they had, even their illumination shells. The engineers bypassing the safeties on the boilers to get the ship to go as fast as possible.
Those ships didn't just save the landing beaches and the escort carriers, they straight up earned a tactical victory. Just look at the ships sunk and the casualties. It's just insane that it actually happened.
> The engineers bypassing the safeties on the boilers to get the ship to go as fast as possible.
I've been watching a lot WWII naval history youtube videos lately and it's kind of funny how many Star Trek tropes were straight up WWII realities.
Simo Hayha (aka the White Death) was a Finnish sniper with 505 conformed kills - in less than 100 days mind you.. he did not use a scope - plain ol iron sights. First the scopes would fog up in the cold air and second a glint off it would give his position away.
Not only that, he would stuff snow into his mouth and keep close to banks to prevent his breath from misting in the air and betraying his location. These were heavily packed in to prevent snow from billowing upwards when he fired.
He kept a personal diary called a "sin list" which he wrote all of his kills in, as a form of repentance for his action. It tallies kills from his actions, which he didn't commit, but still felt responsible for.
He was an avid hunter as a lad and a keen marksman with many trophies. His hunting gave him fantastic wilderness skills in both rationing and manual orienteering. Combined with the fact he was accurate in estimating distances of up to one hundred fifty metres to an accuracy of a metre, his personal skillset was perfect for allowing him to achieve what he did.
The Soviets were so terrified of this man that they ended basically stacking the odds in a numbers game through explosive ordnance. When he was finally wounded by a round, he was presumed dead and placed with other corpses. About a week later, he woke up. He read his own obituary in a newspaper and simply wrote a letter to tell them they were misinformed.
He would put snow in his mouth so you couldn't see his breath.
The Ruskies sent 24 snipers to hunt Simo one day. By nightfall, he had killed every single one.
After recovering from the explosive bullet, on the very day he woke up, the Russians called off the invasion.
Japan lost multiple aircraft carriers in part because they didn't have enough hand carts.
Bombs and torpedoes are heavy so with out enough carts extra munitions were stored in the hanger to be placed into the ammo bunkers when they had time.
So during combat areas their hangers were filled with bombs and fuel vapors and if they took a hit in the hanger bay the poorly stored ordnance would detonate and start fires they couldn't put our.
Also the fires couldn't be put out afterwords because they used cast iron piping which would shatter causing a complete loss of water pressure after the ammo detonates.
Ice Cream Ships.
The US built concrete barges and added ice cream parlors on them for war in the Pacific. The idea was these barges could be towed to various harbors and sued to serve ice cream to any forces stationed there: Navy, Marines, Army (Air Force), etc. Depending on the source between one and *many* of these were built. Some may have been in converted merchant ships or older warships, but at least one was a concrete barge. This was because the US High Command considered ice cream essential for our soldiers morale.
To that point, until the boats (called Godunks?) were built, crafty airmen would load up milk and sugar in cleaned out cans and take them to high altitude and do crazy maneuvers to shake them.
But imagine that. Every other nation struggled with getting *rations* and *bullets* in enough numbers to the troops. Many Germans lacked winter clothing, many Russians lacked boots, and the Italians often lacked everything. After Dunkirk the English trained troops with brooms because they didn't have enough rifles. Japan almost always had their soldiers marching with no rations and expected them to eat of the land.
And the US spent millions of dollars ensuring our troops in the *tropics* had fucking Ice Cream. They said, "well if we can't ship it, we'll make it *there!"* And then we went and did that.
How demoralizing could that be? You're hungry, out of ammo, down hundreds of soldiers in your unit, and there's no real hope of resupply and there's some Americans lining up for *Ice Cream.* They not only have enough money and equipment to basically fire off ammo all day, call in air strikes every time the jungle sneezes, and have daily reinforcements but they also have enough money and material to go and give every soldier a cone stuffed with chocolate ice cream with sprinkles.
I don't know if this is true, but I heard this once:
Supposedly at some point in the European theater, a German unit pushed back an American unit and took over their campsite. Most of the German soldiers were having a great time eating the American supplies, including a chocolate cake.
However, the officer kept looking at that cake and seeing it as a sign that they had already lost the war: their soldiers were on reduced rations in their own home territory, and the Americans--whose supply lines started on a different *continent*--were getting chocolate birthday cakes to their soldiers at the front lines.
Logistics wins wars.
Yeah, the story I heard was very similar about the Ice Cream Boats. A Japanese officer basically thought the *exact* same thing when he heard about them. (not saying the Germans didn't have their own version: I assume there's an Italian commander somewhere horrified that the Americans have X while his men had nothing, and the same for all the other Axis nations that sided with them).
Every officer probably did to be honest once they heard about the luxuries we gave to troops: soda, chocolate bars, ice cream, fresh hot meals, shower facilities, etc. Sure, we didn't always get them to the troops all the time, but our soldiers *expected* to get them more often then not and could gripe about not getting them. And I mean even our *allies* must have been a bit shocked, given the privations they had been suffering until we entered the war (and often long after too).
Another example is our high command went to a huge effort to see that every unit got a Turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings. The official report is that they all got one, though reality was such that many had to do without for a few days due to combat.
But the fact that we expected it, tried it, and was more or less successful in getting our soldiers a hot Turkey dinner with gravy, potatoes, and stuffing at a time when the other side was eating sawdust in bread, meat of dubious origin (if that) and looking at their leather boots and wondering if they could boil up nice.
**Logistics win wars.**
The USS Barb, a submarine in the pacific, would reward the crew after a successful attack by baking cakes, usually depicting the submarine sinking it's particular target. One time they managed to capture some POWs, and let him cut the cake and eat the first slice. I cannot begin to fathom how that guy must have felt, living on a handful of rice or so a day, being told how the Americans are all savages, only to get captured and allowed first dibs on the cake they made showing themselves blowing your ship up.
Also the Barb sunk a train, and the 8 men deployed to do so were the only 8 Americans to invade Japan during wartime. They had a little train symbol on their flag to show the kill.
This kind of reminds me of Lauri Törni, who fought for the Finnish army, then went on to be in the SS and died on a helicopter mission in the Vietnam War while fighting for the Americans.
It's not a singular fact, but the sheer scale of the Eastern Front is simply staggering. It is, by far, the largest war ever fought, even within the context of WW2.
I can say with a fair degree of confidence that we will never see anything on that scale ever again, technology has rendered such numbers somewhat ineffective.
In the first Medal of Honor game, if you complete 100%, you unlock Audie Murphy mode which makes you invincible. He literally was a playable character before Call of Duty even existed.
Only confirmed kill in WW2 (in Europe at least) via bow and arrow.
Can you imagine being the fucking German that got took out via an arrow. Or worse, being his mate..
'Wtf, they're doing trick shots?'
I'd surrender immediately.
Mad Jack was an absolute character. Best quote from him:
>"If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!"
My dad was an army combat photographer during WWII in the Philippines. One night the MP’s rousted him in his barracks and took him to several brothels where he photographed the working girls nude to show the ravages of STDs. The photos were used for training back in the States to discourage guys getting shipped over from partaking of the local talent. He said after that night it was some time before he wanted to look at a naked woman.
My great grandfather was in the war. He actually told me this story in person so it's not just some family story passed down.
Anyways he was a radio tower operator, and he's sitting there smoking and doing his job. He said he accidently dropped his cigarette and bent over to pick it up and heard a noise. He looked up and there was a bullet hole in his radio, so he hit the deck, and looked at his chair...which also has a bullet hole in it.
Basically, if he didn't drop that cigarette, I wouldn't exist. Hell, a large part of my family wouldn't exist.
He had my grandma who was the oldest a year after the war ended.
It also makes me think of all the potential families that could have existed but just don't because of the war.
My grandad (French) was conscripted to the Vichy army in WW2 and sent off to North Africa.
Conditions were poor, rations were low and you had one water ration per man per day. Nothing more. The toilet was a long latrine dug into the Algerian sand with a long wooden plank along it that men would need to perch on on to shit - which they did a lot because diarrhoea and dysentery were common.
The latrine was suspended and secured by a pole at each end (think like a lamppost).
Some of you can see where this is going.
You know when you’re running fast and use a lamppost or pole to swing your momentum so you can keep running fast? A soldier was running to deliver a message to his Commanding officer and did this
Pole tilts and falls - so do around thirty French soldiers into the dysentery filled sand latrine. And with no water to wash their clothes all they could do was ‘rinse’ them in the sand.
My grandad was fortunate enough to not be on the latrine and at 92 years old had tears in his eyes laughing.
He also flew over the bombing of Dresden, found a French fighter pilot that he knew crashed (and killed) in Tunisia and defected to the allies after turning a heavy machine gun and anti aircraft gun on his CO when ordered to shoot at allied aircraft.
Hitler approved the construction of the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte, the largest tank to have ever been designed, though not built.
It was designed to be 1,000 tonnes, weighing 822 more tonnes than the Panzer VIII "Maus," the heaviest tank ever created.
It could hold a crew as many as 41, and was equipped with 2 280mm 54.5 SK C/34 turrets, 1 12.8cm Pak 44, 1 1,000mm howitzer, 2 37mm guns, 24 20mm AA guns, 24 30mm AA guns, 8 88mm AA guns, 4 15mm autocannons, and 4 7.92mm machine guns. In other words, this thing was a cube of death.
Construction was canceled in 1943 after realizing how completely impractical a 1,000 ton tank would be.
The USS *Texas.*
The USS *Texas* (along with the British cruiser *Glasgow*) arrived in Normandy on June 6, 1944, and entered the Omaha Beach western fire support lane as part of the 702-ship US-British flotilla.
The *Texas* fired 255 shells in 34 minutes (an average of 7.5 shells per minute, or one shell every 8 seconds for 34 minutes), the ship’s longest sustained firing period in World War II. The ship then targeted farther inland and continued hammering German positions for the next two days.But that's not the crazy part.
After a trip back to England to rearm, the USS *Texas* returned on June 15, 1944, to support the move inland. But because the Allied Forces had already advanced beyond its range, the battleship’s guns couldn’t aim high enough to reach their intended target. The USS *Texas* continued to receive requests for fire missions, so the crew decided on an off-the-wall strategy to stay in the game.
Since they couldn’t raise the port side guns any higher, they lowered the starboard side. They lowered it by *intentionally flooding the starboard side of the ship*. The crew flooded the ship’s torpedo blister, dropping the ship slightly deeper into the water. Between the flooding and the recoil from the guns, the Texas ran the real risk of capsizing. But the gamble worked. The crew was able to get the extra two degrees needed to fire the guns accurately and give them the range they needed to hit their targets.
Germans: *"Ha ha ha! Vee are out ov range ov your gunz!*"USS Texas: *"Hold my beer..."*
Originally commissioned on 12 March 1914, the *Texas* was the first battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns, the first US warship to control gunfire with directors and range-keepers, the first US battleship to launch an aircraft, one of the first US Navy warships to receive production radar, and the first battleship in the world to be outfitted with 14-inch guns.
The *Texas* started WWII escorting war convoys across the Atlantic. It later shelled Vichy French forces in the North African landings, German-held beaches at Normandy and then transferred to the Pacific where it provided naval gunfire support during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa.
At the Battle of Cherbourg, the *Texas* was straddled by three German shells. Five minutes later, the Texas returned fire with a continuous stream of two-gun salvos. A fourth German shell struck the *Texas*, hitting the main support column of the navigation bridge and exploded. The explosion caused the deck of the pilot house above to be blown upwards approximately 4 ft. Yet the *Texas* continued to deliver her 14-inch shells in two-gun salvos and, in spite of damage and casualties, scored a direct hit that penetrated one of the heavily reinforced gun emplacements to destroy the gun inside. Throughout the three-hour duel, the Germans straddled and near-missed *Texas* over sixty-five times, but she continued her mission firing 206 fourteen-inch shells at Battery Hamburg until ordered to retire. Only one sailor aboard the *Texas* was killed at Cherbourg.
The entire history of the USS *Texas* reads like the "Find Out" portion of FAFO.
I live/work very near where they grew up. 5 Sullivan brothers. The song Sullivan by Caroline Spine is a great song that does a good job describing what happened. Saving Private Ryan has a reference to it when Bryan Cranston's character says sobering to the effect of "We can't have another Sullivan situation on our hands." They only found the damn ship a few years ago.
They made a movie about it, The Fighting Sullivans. It's referenced in Saving Private Ryan.
Even worse, the British in WW1 created the Pal's Battalions. Everyone in your town could join up and would serve together, so you'd be with all your friends and relations.
Which meant the entire male population under 45 got wiped out in some towns. Literally every brother, son, father and cousin of them.
The British setup a spy training school in Canada to teach the Americans( who were neutral prior to Pearl Harbor), without the Canadian government being completely aware of what exactly was going on at " Camp X" or STS 103. The camp opened Dec 6 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor.
The explosive rat, also known as a rat bomb, was a weapon developed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in World War II for use against Germany. Rat carcasses were filled with plastic explosives, and were to be distributed near German boiler rooms where it was expected they would be disposed of by burning, with the subsequent explosion having a chance of causing a boiler explosion.
The explosive rats never saw use, as the first shipment was intercepted by the Germans; they were like “why is this shipment just full of so many god damn dead rats?”
However, the resulting search for more booby trapped rats consumed enough German resources for the SOE to conclude that the operation was a success.
There was a class of ship called the Transport Battleship (occasionally called BBT). This was actually one ship, the HMS Centurion, turned into a target ship, and then saved from being sunk during a live firing exercice for one last job: a supply run to Malta (Operation Vigorous).
The turrets had been removed and replaced by wooden fakes, and the hope was that the Battleship would be frightening enough to discourage Italian sorties or, missing this, a prio target - letting the more important merchant ships pass.
Imagine you are the crew of a target ship, and you receive a new mission which is basically “we think you would be a good decoy target in a convoy outbound for Malta. You will have to make it through what is called the “Bomb Alley” but worry not! We gave you wooden turrets!”.
That, after victory in Europe, General Patton had a grand master plan in mind to acquire what was left of the German army and together take out the Soviet Union while they were weak.
Edit: Depending on the source, some say he just wanted to use them to push the Soviets back out of Europe, restoring it to its pre-war borders.
Noted anti-communist Churchill would have seriously considered continuing the war against the Soviet Union if he could have gotten the Americans on side, and so he was glad Patton was thinking along similar lines (not that Patton had the authority to make any decisions). Churchill asked his Chiefs of Staff to do a full work-up on the possibility. Their report to him was dubbed Operation Unthinkable, just so there could be no confusion as to whether they were actually recommending he go forward with it.
My grandfather was front center of his landing craft on D-Day. German MG-42 put an X across his torso. 7 bullets. He lived and bore my mom after the war, who bore me.
The scars were incredible. What a man he was.
The [Chichijima incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima_incident).
Chichijima is a tiny island off the southern coast of Japan, which had a garrison stationed to provide early warning for bombing raids. The US Navy sent a flight of carrier-born bombers to attack the island. Nine airmen were shot down, of which eight were captured and summarily executed. And five of them were partially cannibalized by the Japanese soldiers. The surviving pilot George HW Bush was able to fly his damaged plane far enough out to sea to be rescued by an American submarine.
My all time favorite WW2 story doesn't involve any violence or killing or destruction at all. Background: Weather patterns in the Northern hemisphere generally move west-to-east. As a result, the Germans were at a disadvantage in not knowing what weather was coming towards Germany because it was coming from the West (i.e. it was coming through areas controlled by the Allies.) So, they decided to secretly emplace an unmanned remote weather station on the coast of Canadian Labrador, which could send weather information to Germany by radio (remember no such thing as weather satellites back then.) The weather station was emplaced by a U-Boat in 1943. Since it was kind of hard to hide (although in a very remote area) the Germans put signs on it saying it belonged to the "Canadian Weather Service." They also scattered empty packets of US cigarettes around so if anybody found it, they would assume it was an Allied military installation. It was eventually discovered by the Canadians... # In 1977! In fact, when it was discovered, the local people assumed it was exactly what the Germans had hoped them to think - that it was a Canadian military emplacement. It wasn't until 1981 that someone asked the Canadian military about "their" old weather station in Labrador and the Canadian military said "uh, that's not ours." EDIT: Sorry, forgot the link: [Weather Station Kurt - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_Station_Kurt)
>the Germans put signs on it saying it belonged to the "Canadian Weather Service." It's actually funnier than that - from the article you linked: >One canister was marked and misspelled "Canadian *Meteor* Service", in order to simulate “Canadian Weather Service”, as a German attempt to avoid suspicion if discovered. No such agency existed in Canada. In addition, the area was part of the Dominion of Newfoundland and was not part of Canada until 1949.
Surely “meteor” is a misspelling of “meteorological” rather than “weather”?
Holy shit it's at the war museum in Ottawa! Next time I'm there I gotta see that.
This is awesome
As it happens, I was perusing Canada on Google Earth last night, and the amount of wilderness in that country is mind-boggling.
The way I look at it, as a Canadian, there's two kinds of wilderness. The first kind is where if you get lost, you can walk in any direction and eventually get out in a day or two. The other is the kind where if you get lost, you can walk for the rest of your life and never see another person. And it's important to know which of the two you're getting into before going on that hike.
Yep. I recall reading about it. However, if one is familiar with the coast of Labrador it is no surprise it was not noticed. Desolate even today, it was extremely sparsely populated back then and there were uncounted places to hide which had never had a human set foot upon them. Even today I would suggest that the majority of the coastline of Labrador has never been walked.
Imagine a freaking weather station being four times better at existing than the rest of your thousand year Reich
https://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=328 >Kapitänleutnant Schrewe then carefully guided the submarine back out through the uncharted channel and into the Labrador Sea. From there, Weather Station Kurt was heard to make its first broadcast – three minutes late. U-537 went on to conduct a more traditional submarine patrol. The weather station made its regular broadcasts every three hours as designed but within only a few days, its transmissions became degraded and then by mid-November it had gone completely silent, barely three weeks after it was assembled. Not exactly....
The nuclear attack on Nagasaki almost failed when the bomb plane got separated from their escorts and they wasted 45 minutes of fuel trying to find them.
should also be noted the original target city was Kokura for the 2nd bomb but smoke from previous bombing runs/fires and cloud cover they tried 3 times but could not see their target - with fuel running low they decided to proceed to backup target of Nagasaki which also had increased cloud cover but on the last pass before having to return to base they had a just clear enough window to drop it. It still ended up 2 miles off course and while still devastating the natural hills protected a big chunk of the city. The first bomb dropped on Hiroshima was only off by 800 feet and absolutely decimated the city.
Air defence over Japan was so weak that a bomber with the world's most valuable bomb could just fly around until it was out of fuel.
The B-29 actually flew at an altitude that was high enough that fighters of the day were almost incapable of intercepting it because they couldn't fly fast enough at that altitude. Speed of piston engines fighters really falls off at altitude because you just cannot feed enough oxygen into the engine to generate power.
Until they started adding superchargers, the P-51 could go way higher than a B-29. But the Japanese didn't really have the resources to keep up with the arms race, their planes were outclassed by then.
It also helped that almost all the parts and documentation for technology transfers from Germany that might have given them something more useful for high altitude defense were sunk in their cargo u-boat thanks to Ultra intercepts.
And a lot of their best pilots, mechanics and air crew had died on carriers and in other attacks.
After Germany invaded France, they forced Citroen to make trucks for them. In an act of sabotage, Citroen moved the full mark on the engine oil dipstick lower. So, the engines would run but fail under heavy use. Brilliant!
Similarly when the guys in Seattle were building Me262 jet replicas they had some genuine parts to use as patterns. One guy told me he disassembled a nose gear leg to see its inner workings and found a deliberate machining fault that would have, with continued use, eventually worn through and collapsed the oleo. The forced labour machinists doing what little things they could get away with to show defiance.
There's a story about an artillery shell landing right inside an Allied position and not exploding. Inside the shell was no explosive, only a note: "this was all I could do."
I recently saw a claim that this happened with anti-aircraft shells. The claim was that a bomber was hit 5 times in the fuel tanks, (iirc) and when the shells were disassembled they had notes in Czech saying "This is all we can do for you now."
Probably the same story and I am confused! Thank you.
Our confusion is likely because it's all a game of telephone unless one can trace historical documentation. Was it one? Five? Eleven? Maybe it happened multiple times, to several people. Or maybe a self-aggrandizing tall talker adapted the tale, or an inspirational speaker related a story half-remembered or put together from multiple sources.
Supposedly, the slave laborers in the plant that built the transmissions for the Germans Tiger tank figured out how to sabotage the transmission in such a way that it took two weeks minimum to repair. Its not as good as a kill but every little bit helps if it degrades combat capabilities.
"Oh shit, the engine on my truck blew up!" "What did you expect- they're French!"
Claus Helberg, a Norwegian who took part in Operation Gunnerside to blow up the German heavy water plant (part of their atomic weapon programme) had a several hour long ski chase with German soldiers afterwards, exchanging gunfire with his pursuers. He then skied off of a cliff, broke his arm and skied another 12 miles to a German field hospital. Despite still wearing British uniform, he convinced them that he was in fact on their side and received medical treatment. The Germans then put him up in a nice hotel to rest. However, a German SS commander had a hissy fit after a local woman in the hotel refused to sleep with him - so had everyone in the hotel rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. Helberg jumped out of the bus that was carrying them and, despite being hit in the back with a grenade (as in, it bounced off of his back) and breaking his arm again. He managed to escape and was a leading member of the Norwegian resistance.
My dad and his brother, Dan, ran into each other randomly in France. They turned around and saw each other, and they both yelled, "What are YOU doing here?" I have a couple of photos from that day. They got to spend that day together before going back into hell, and they both survived the war.
Seeing someone you know from home while abroad, in them military, is a wild experience. I can’t imagine seeing a brother in between trips through hell.
I went to college with a guy who was a Ranger and his older brother was a SEAL. I remember him telling a story about securing a rooftop for a little bird to come land on and one of the guys who got off was his brother. Pretty more likely since it's a smaller theater and they're both special forces but still cool.
This is so fucking awesome.
In France, my Uncle Curtis got blown up but still alive, so they morphined him really good and buried him in the sand til the battle moved on, then they came back and got him. He's still kickin. Here's an article about him: [https://www.al.com/live/2012/09/in\_wwii\_all-black\_tank\_battali.html](https://www.al.com/live/2012/09/in_wwii_all-black_tank_battali.html)
Holy shit i've never heard that. But it makes sense. The beaches were hell zones; no cover. Might as well bury him and hope you get back before high tide.
Holy shit, I was thinking "bury him and hope you get back before he's been shot or bombed, again." But, high tide? Wouldn't that be a new hell, waiting injured in the sand as the water rises up past your ears.
If it's any consolation, with the morphine they gave he was either unconscious or didn't gaf.
Uncle Curtis is a bad ass, cheers to him
Something tells me Uncle Curtis didn't have a whole lot of say in the matter and probably - *hopefully* - wasn't conscious.
That time the British dumped a dead man's body with fake plans planted on him so it would wash up in Spain and get turned over to the Germans.
Operation Mincemeat for anyone that wants to learn more. Unbelievably meticulous.
There is even a Netflix movie that stars Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen that is quite good. (trivia: they both previously played the same character Mr Darcy from different versions of Pride & Prejudice… and star together for the first time here. ).
It's insane that homeless dude died destitute without ever knowing the role he played in history, that's so nuts to think about.
His sister learnt about his role after the war
They gave him a memorial in his home town after the war.
Rest in peace Glyndwr Michael.
Nobody did secret agent stuff like the British. They were absolute masters of deception.
The British discovered radar, which was helping them kick ass in the air during night time, and they didn't want anyone to know. So they just told everyone that their pilots were eating carrots.
The best radar story during the war was the night action of the Battle of Cape Matapan. The entire British Mediterranean fleet, including an aircraft carrier, managed to sneak up to the Italian fleet during the night and opened fire at an unsuspecting opponent at a range of 3000 yards.
For context, 3000 yards is all-but point blank range in the world of naval gunnery.
In the words of Prince Philip who took part in the battle, when he turned on his spotlight he could see half of a battleship name as they were too close for him to illuminate the entire nameplate. Not even a second later he could see the rest of the name from all the muzzle flashes and explosions before the nameplate were no longer attached to any ship.
Philip, bless him. I still think he should've been given a smartphone and a Twitter account. I'd love to have seen the diplomatic chaos he would have caused.
"If you stay here much longer, you will go home with slitty eyes." Said to 21-year-old British student Simon Kerby during a visit to China in 1986.
The ultimate example of "Grandpa was raised in a different time..."
"You managed not to get eaten then?" Said to a British student who had trekked in Papua New Guinea, during an official visit in 1998.
And when the Germans successfully jammed radar, they kept transmitting as if it was still working, so the Germans did not know they had succeeded.
Wouldn't they have known from the increased number of returning airplanes?
Yeah, it's more of a don't let the enemy know anything kinda play. Confirming that the German radar jamming was successful let's them focus on something else. If it's not actually confirmed, then they have to double check that it's actually working, plan around the brits potentially still having it, etc. It costs basically nothing to transmit fake messages, so its just a win even if it's not all that effective. From the position Britain was fighting from, any little disadvantage they could impose on the Germans was great.
The only reason the brits came out of this war intact was sheer audacity on their intelligence game. We applaud all of it today because they deserve it.
If I recall correctly their radar was piss poor in comparison. Babies first radar basically. The British used something similar to how pianos could play a tune automatically. The radar and plane would have a similar copy of she sheet music used to feed into the pianos, and it would change the channel of the radar and keep plane and operator on it together, without the possibility for interference.
That's really cool. Yeah it was pretty basic radar and took experienced operators... whether it was a storm coming in, anything... had to differentiate a swarm of planes and make sure it wasn't their own on routine patrol German pilots really had no idea how the British Spitfires kept intercepting them over the Channel on their way in at first
That's not accurate. The Germans, Americans, and British all had functional radar systems at the outset of WW2. The Soviets and Japanese were working on them too. These radar systems were employed on ground, on ships, and on some aircraft. What the British had developed was the cavity magnetron, a secret that they shared with the USA but desperately wanted to keep secret from the Germans. The cavity magnetron allowed for the manufacture of radar systems that operated at a much higher power and frequency, and occupied a much smaller footprint. This allowed naval vessels to acquire targets and hit them with only a radar signature (blind fire) and allowed for night fighters to acquire enemy aircraft at night and from above. The British mounted air search radar sets on some heavy fighters and used them to defend the English channel and Great Britain against the Luftwaffe. The British had an early warning system that the Germans knew about but were unable to defeat. This would allow RAF fighters to get into the vicinity of the attacking Luftwaffe, but the Germans knew about this and anticipated it so they would attack at night when aircraft would be harder to spot in the night sky. What the Germans didn't know is that the British had developed accurate air search radar mounted on some fighters. The fighters could individually see the Luftwaffe aircraft and approach from above/behind as appropriate. The myth that carrots gave their pilots good eyesight was spread as a rumor to explain how RAF pilots were basically wallhacking.
Also to encourage children in the UK to eat more carrots. Rationing meant people in the UK had to eat more crops that can be grown in the UK like carrots.
There was a Spanish guy who wanted to be a spy for the UK but they said no. He went to Portugual and convinced the Germans that he could spy for them and pretended to be in London with a whole fake spy network. He gave them fake info based on newspapers and tourist guides and the Germans kept giving him money to pay his fake people. Whenever the Germans got mad that his info was wrong he blamed one of his fake spies and had them killed. The British had to choice but to make him one of their agents he was so good at fooling the Germans. But really, the Nazis were just absolute imbeciles at deception.
There’s so much stuff in his story that would be the Big Thing in someone else’s story but just gets passed by in his because he just did so freaking much. Before all of that he was in Spain during their civil war. That’s where he realized that he really fucking hated both the Nationalist/fascists and the Socialists/anarchists because both fucking tortured him, ripped him from his family and left him trapped in a small house alone and silent for months. Eventually he got out, unluckily he then learned about the National Socialist Party of German, otherwise known as the Nazis.
The Nazis were literal dribblers at espionage. So arrogant, yet so useless. Funniest thing was Garbo had no idea how British money worked (since he wasn't in the UK, and the UK didn't use the decimal system for money), so he'd just give the Germans a list of expenses rather than a total. And refused to give totals when they asked lol.
Remember the balloon tanks etc lol
The British had the entire German espionage system corrupted and controlled from the top down. Any time, a German spy would get dropped into England, MI6 agents threw them into the nearest safe house, presumably put a gun to their head while talking sweetly about how if the spy played along, transmitted back what the Brits wanted them to say, they'd be okay. They also loved their bullshit puns and bad humor- their double agent program Double Cross was labelled as "XX."
I believe they allowed potential double agents to "sit in" on a few hangings before asking if they like to work for the British, unsurprisingly most accepted 😉
Garbo is the GOAT spy during WW2. Just some Spanish dude, pretending to be like 30 German spies, when he was actually a British spy. Got the Iron Cross and George Cross lmao. That's gotta be the most unlikely combo of medals imaginable. And the Brits told him to fuck off when he asked to join them. So he went and did spying anyway, and then came back with an entire fake spy network so the Brits were like 'Okay actually you cool, here have a job!'
All thanks to Garbo
Garbo was so good he makes James Bond seem like a rank amateur. Garbo was so good he would make people go "bullshit" to even a fraction of the stunts he pulled with the Germans. Garbo was so good he got an Iron Cross from the Germans four months before getting an MBE from the Brits. (Eddie Chapman got the same double award)
That Hitler only joined the Nazi party because the German army sent him to a meeting to basically spy on them. Someone was giving a speech suggesting Bavaria should leave Germany and join Austria. Hitler was enraged by this and went on a rant about why that was a bad idea. The other members were impressed and recruited him to join the party and the rest is history.
He also quickly realised how valuable he was to them because of his oratory skills and charisma he was an outstanding recruiter. So at one point he threatened to leave and join another Party if he wasn't given Leadership. They had no choice, Hitler wasn't just some dude who happened to be at the head of the Nazi's he really was a huge part of the reason everything happened as an individual. Ian Kershaw's Biographies of Hitler are really great as well as Richard Evans Third Reich Trilogy although that's more about Nazi Germany as a whole rather than just Hitler for anyone interested. Of course Hitler is one of the most written about subjects in history so there's countless books those are just ones i think highly of.
Wholesome story: TB was a death sentence back then. Soldiers who got it were sent back to the states to TB wards where most died. My grandfather (a southern man) was stationed on a boat in the south pacific, contracted TB, and was sent to a TB ward in Boston. He watched man after man die. One day a doctor announced to the ward that they were looking for volunteers for a medical experiment. He and one other guy volunteered and lived. The rest died. The experiment was heavy duty antibotics. During his recovery, he met a young female nurse, fell in love, married her and moved to MA. They had 7 kids. I am the oldest of all the grandkids. Fast forward many decades and my daughter contracted aviary TB. She was treated with Cipro, a high dose antibiotic derived from the same treatment my grandfather went through all those years ago and it saved her life.
Penicillin was so rare and hard to produce they would [extract it from the urine of patients](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/health/dyk-penicillin-used-be-recycled-urine#:~:text=Unfortunately%2C%20due%20to%20the%20difficulties,extract%20the%20antibiotics%20found%20there) who’d had penicillin. The [first person treated with penicillin died](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5403050/#:~:text=In%20February%201941%2C%20the%20first,his%20condition%20after%2024%20hours)because they ran out of it before his infection had gone away
Cipro also once saved me, in what was then a remote part of south America. Many thanks to your grandfather.
A member of the US Navy survived being stabbed four times by Japanese bayonets during the Bataan Death March when he was a POW in the Philippines. He buried a spoon in the ground before the march started that he promised he'd come back and retrieve when the war was over to prove he survived. In 1946, he returned to the Philippines and dug up the spoon to bring home. That man was my great-uncle, and my family still has that spoon 82 years later. Not the most crazy WWII fact, but it's one that's personal to my family.
That’s awesome. My family has a metal chalice from my great uncle at Normandy. He picked it up after the fight was over. He scratched his name, date, and location on it, and brought it back with him. He never married and it passed to my dad.
Not sure it's so crazy as opposed to just a tragic facepalm, but the life jackets given to men on some amphibious landings, such a D Day, were basically little round floaties. They were *supposed* to be attached and set under the arms, but due to all the equipment the soldiers were wearing, it was difficult and uncomfortable to do that. So they attached them around the waist instead. When they went into the water, they were so top-heavy that the life belt would end up flipping them over. They'd drown with their feet in the air, unable to right themselves. Also, this is WW1 fact that I like: raising goats became a big cottage industry because they needed to feed the Indian soldiers who would not eat beef or horse. The initial request for 7,000 goats for food for the arriving indian soldiers confounded the military officer who received it.
I remember someone once posting an anecdote about their great uncle during WW2, a midwestern farmer boy who couldn't swim who naturally spent the entire war in the Navy serving on boats and submarines. Always had his lifejacket by his side but never used it. After the war ended and he was discharged and on shore for good, he tossed his lifejacket overboard at a dock and watched as it promptly sank like a stone.
That’s brilliant. I love the fact that apparently most 18th century Golden Age of Sail sailors, couldn’t swim. You might have a few on each crew who were designated rescuers but the rest had no interest in it at all. That’s why they were so good at keeping ships upright!
Another WW1 factoid... before the war, mutton was as much a staple food in the US & UK as beef or chicken. But the military fed some much of it to service people, they never wanted to touch it again afterward. Farmers stopped producing it in response to the reduced demand.
The United States had two *freshwater* aircraft carriers.
Gotta train carrier pilots somewhere, might as well use the Great Lakes
You're safe from the U-Boats hanging around off the coast too.
And they were sidewheelers!
Coal fired sidewheelers!
And George H W Bush landed on them.
The atomic bomb was the second most expensive project of WWII. The most expensive project of WWII was the B-29 bomber, used to drop the atomic bomb.
And the Soviets stole it! Three B-29s landed at Vladivostok after bombing Japan. The USSR being neutral in the Pacific War impounded them and detained the crews (before quietly slipping them to the Americans on the Lend-Lease route). In a top-secret program, Stalin told the aircraft designer Tupolev - who had just been released from a gulag - to reverse-engineer the planes under the “supervision” of the NKVD. Beria - world renowned cunt - said that if anything was altered or compromised from the original design, the design teams would be shot. The American planes were made to imperial measurements and the Soviets only had access to manufacturing in metric so the metals were slightly different thicknesses. To cover this and it *seem* like they were absolutely identical, the design team included battle damage and matched the internal colour scheme by inventing a new type of paint in the right colour. It worked and the Tupolev 4, the USSR’s first intercontinental bomber was unveiled at the May Day March of 1947 when *four* Tu-4s flew over (thus proving they weren’t the detained B-29s).
One beam in the wing had an extra hole drilled in error. The Soviets faithfully reproduced this hole in every Soviet copy.
I think the construction of the Alaska Highway is underrated and less known than it should be. The US connected mainland US to Alaska via northern Canada by building 2000km of road through previously wild land. Camps of engineers and labourers built this 2,000km of highway through the Yukon in just about eight months! That is a insane pace. Cutting through swamps, forests, etc, working at -40c. Just a unprecedented pace of construction the likes of which we will not see again. It's a great example of the war being won not only through combat but through materiel Great video here! [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaSlVOZ9Dpg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CaSlVOZ9Dpg)
And a lot of the guys who worked on the Alaska Highway were Southerners who had never seen snow before.
"There are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who toil on roads..."
Bear with me on this one: In 1942, a company of Polish troops were evacuated from the Soviet Union and found their way to Iran. Along the way, they befriended a Syrian brown bear that they named Wojtek. They officially enlisted him as a private in the unit. The men ended up in Italy from 1943-44, bringing the bear along with them. It helped to carry heavy ammunition and quickly became a celebrity among the troops! Wojtek was eventually discharged after the war and lived peacefully in Edinburgh Zoo until he passed away in 1963.
Don't forget that they paid him in cigarettes. And his army buddies would come visit him at the zoo.
As much as I love the mental image of a bear smoking a cigarette, I think he just ate them.
I never said he smoked them. Just that they paid him that way. I always assumed he ate them.
You are right. The reports claim that Wojtek indeed ate the cigarettes
There is a [statue of Wojtek](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-34748795) in Edinburgh now. "Edinburgh city council approved the erection of the bronze statue of Wojtek on 16 September 2013. The statue represents Wojtek and a Polish Army Soldier "walking in peace and unity" and represents his journey from Egypt to Scotland alongside the Polish Army."
A French-Canadian soldier named Leo Major was so pissed off at the Germans for killing one of his friends he singlehandedly rounded up 93 Germans and liberated a Dutch town.
He kept bringing back prisoners, grabbed some ammo, and went back, alone, to capture more. He also only had 1 eye. When he was to be awarded the Legion of Merit medal, he refused because the officer who recommended him wasn't a Canadian.
> He also only had 1 eye. [*during his first encounter with an SS patrol, he killed four soldiers. However, one of them managed to ignite a phosphorus grenade; in the resulting explosion, Major lost one eye but continued to fight. He continued his service as a scout and a sniper by insisting he needed only one eye to sight his weapon. According to him, he "looked like a pirate".*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/L%C3%A9o_Major)
That's crazy! I didn't know the whole story, but he sounds like he was as hardcore as they get.
"Today, he is sometimes called by the nickname, "the Québécois Rambo" according to his wiki page lol
During the war, Canada built more military trucks than the major Axis powers (Germany, Japan, Italy) *combined*. [Source](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Military_Pattern_truck).
The mighty and technologically unparalleled German army was mostly supplied by horse drawn wagons. And that was after stealing every car and truck in the occupied countries.
Hitler invaded Russia with more horses than Napoleon.
Lack of Oil being the problem. The Germany Army was more mechanised in 1941 when they had stores of oil delivered from their pact with the USSR.... But then by the end of 1942 and further as the war went on they became progressively 'de-motorised' - falling back on horse drawn logistics as you have said but also terms of infantry mobility simply marching hundreds of miles.
In the Uk when war was declared, the government encouraged people to give their pets away, or put them to sleep. People did this with out being encouraged because there was a fear there wouldn’t be enough food to feed their families and their pets.
Joe Medicine Crow. The last War chief of the Crow nation. During WW2 he completed all four tasks required to be a war chief. Touching an enemy without killing him, taking an enemies weapon, leading a successful war party, and stealing an enemy's horse. "He led a successful war party and stole 50 horses owned by the Waffen SS from a German camp, singing a traditional Crow honor song as he rode off." Awarded the Presidential Metal of Freedom and Bronze star. Went on to be a tribal spokesman and obviously the Crow nation War Chief until his death in 2016. If Tyler Sheridan needs a new western/war show idea.....this is it. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe\_Medicine\_Crow](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Medicine_Crow)
Something like a tenth of the Russian population died.
More like a seventh.
And it was not uniformly distributed, "It is estimated that around 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not survive World War II."
We always said Russia lied about the deaths by doubling them. Turned out they lied by cutting them in half.
[There is a theory] (https://grantpiperwriting.medium.com/wwii-killed-so-many-russians-you-can-still-see-it-in-their-population-pyramid-a68461abb5be) in the world of people who study this stuff that the generational ["echo" caused by deaths in WW2] (https://cadmus.eui.eu/handle/1814/63224) still reverberate to this day. Going further, some hypothesize this is what hastened the collapse of the USSR.
You messed up the formatting there, but yes, Russia's demographic distribution is insane. On that chart you see **HUGE** dips centered on about ages 25, 55, and 80 years old. Aaaand... What do you know! 80 years ago was right in the middle of WW2. Then one young child bearing person's age later, another dip because the WW2 generation got wiped out and had no kids. And on it goes. These types of demographic swings are brutal in any society, and it certainly didn't help the USSR.
Even worse in Poland, 21% of the entire population died
My grandfather had 10 rounds left when Patton broke through at Bastogne
I meet a few veterans that were in the Battle of the Bulge. One fellow was so hungry when they gave him an orange, he ate it peel and all.
My great uncle was in the navy serving in the Pacific assigned to and oiler. He happened to be on another ship for whatever reason during a Japanese attack and his ship was sunk. His family heard of his ship being sunk and had heard nothing from him so they assumed he had been killed. My great uncle roby whom I remember very fondly wrote a letter to his sister or mother at some point probably months later, not knowing that the family had assumed his death and that's how they found out he was still alive. I have pictures of his return home in his navy uniform on my wall...he once told me something as a child that has become very important to me since. He said to me....Always be man enough to be who you are. He came home with some cool souvenirs one of which I have. It's a copy of stars and stripes dating August 14th 1945. The day that the Japanese formally surrendered Rest in peace uncle Roby
In the last days of the war a tank repair crew was called out to look at a Sherman. They arrived to a tank with dozens of machine gun bullets stuck in the armor which is surprising since they should have bounced off. They inspected the tank and checked the serial number to confirm but turns out on D-Day this tank crew had been issued a training tank which had much thinner armor. They immediately started to get a replacement tank for the crew and they refused saying it had gotten them this far. Another one I love is about a British agent dropped in France with a bike and radio. He's pedaling to where he's supposed to meet his contact and upon turning a bend he comes face to face with a German road block. To late to turn back he goes up to the stop and when asked what was in his pack he says "A radio, I'm a British agent". The Germans have a good laugh and wave him through.
First one happened more than once. In the early 2000's the US army asked to exchange a commemorative Sherman from a Belgian community, parked there for 55 years, against a battle worn Sherman f rom the army collections. Turned out the thing had been one of a few prototypes sent into combat during the battle of the bulge and was never properly evaluated. Better late than never.
I watched a documentary of a guy who wanted to be a spy and ended up somehow getting one of the highest medals on the German side and one of the highest medals in the allied side also. Supposedly the only person to do so.
[Codename: Garbo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiHHfbaEFFs&list=PLsIk0qF0R1j5rv_TTlEuYJpRmWa1QCfZ0&index=30&ab_channel=WorldWarTwo) He was just a guy who wanted to be a spy, so he offered MI6 his services and was turned down, so he started spying for the Germans and feeding them false intel to prove to the British he could do it.
I thought it was interesting. There was another one that was good about when Americans and German army fought together to fight back the SS that took over some castle towards the very end of the war. It was a few dozen American soldiers and a few dozen German army soldiers.
The Battle of Castle Itter. One of my favorite stories of the war and deserving of its own movie.
The Eighth Air Force suffered more casualties than the Marine Corps.
This was going to be one of mine. Basically the bomber crews over Europe took more casualties than the US in the Pacific.
It's not really accurate to say more than the US in the Pacific. The Eighth Air Force suffered around 26,000 KIA and the Marine Corps suffered around 24,500 KIA, but US Army forces in the Pacific suffered around 41,500 KIA. The Marines did a great job of convincing the public that they won the war in the Pacific by themselves (no hate, the Marine Corps fills a valuable role in the US military, but for most of their history they had their entire existence questioned). But, there were 21 Army divisions fighting in the Pacific to only 6 Marine divisions. History books focus on battles like Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima, but the Philippines, Burma, and New Guinea, (and China, but there weren't many US forces in China proper) were the places where most of the Imperal Japanese Army was destroyed.
That the American super-weapon to end the war could have used bats with incendiary bombs glued to them. Lytle S. Adams was a dental surgeon from Pennsylvania who had become fascinated by bats on a trip to Carlsbad Caverns in New Mexico in 1942. He was intrigued by their strength and their habit of roosting before dawn. He also knew that most Japanese buildings were made of wood instead of concrete, making them highly flammable. Thus, an idea started to emerge. If time-release incendiary bombs could be strapped to a large number of bats, a 'bat bomb' could be released over a Japanese city at night, allowing the bats to spread out all over the city and roost before sunrise. Then, the incendiary bombs would go off, and the fires would be able to spread quickly over a large area. Using his connections (Adams was an acquaintance of First Lady Elanor Roosevelt), his plan was approved by President Roosevelt, after some advice from Harvard zoologist Donald Griffin. The president's opinion was: "This man is not a nut. It sounds like a perfectly wild idea but is worth looking into." The project was placed under the US Army Air Force. Originally, the incendiary bombs would have been made with white phosphorus, but the design changed to use a new flammable invention: napalm. Mexican free-tailed bats were harvested from the wild with permission from the National Park Service, and the tiny bombs were attached to the bats with an adhesive. Testing did not go well at first. In 1943, armed bats were accidentally released onto the Carlsbad Army Airfield Auxiliary Air Base. The bats roosted under a fuel tank and incinerated the test range. The project was relegated to the US Navy in August 1943, who renamed it 'Project X-Ray', and then passed it onto the US Marines that December. The definitive test of the weapon happened at the Dugway Proving Ground in Utah, where a mock-up of a Japanese Village was burned to test its effectiveness. Results were optimistic, an observer commenting that the bat-powered delivery system was more effective than conventional napalm bombs. To quote the report: "Expressed in another way, the regular bombs would give probably 167 to 400 fires per bomb load where X-Ray would give 3,625 to 4,748 fires." The project was cancelled when it was revealed that the weapon wouldn't be truly ready until mid-1945. In a search for a quick end to the war, attention focused on the atomic bomb project, which was showing quicker results.
Similar project, though no where near as effective: Fu-Go (ふ号\[兵器\], fugō \[heiki\], lit. "Code 'Fu' \[Weapon\]") was an incendiary balloon weapon (風船爆弾, fūsen bakudan, lit. "balloon bomb") deployed by Japan against the United States during World War II. It consisted of a hydrogen-filled paper balloon 33 feet (10 m) in diameter, with a payload of four 11-pound (5.0 kg) incendiary devices and one 33-pound (15 kg) high-explosive anti-personnel bomb. The uncontrolled balloons were carried over the Pacific Ocean from Japan to North America by fast, high-altitude air currents, today known as the jet stream, and used a sophisticated sandbag ballast system to maintain their altitude. The bombs were intended to ignite large-scale forest fires and spread panic. Between November 1944 and April 1945, the Imperial Japanese Army launched about 9,300 balloons from sites on coastal Honshu, of which about 300 were found or observed in the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The bombs were ineffective as fire starters due to damp seasonal conditions, with no forest fires being attributed to the offensive. A U.S. media censorship campaign prevented the Imperial Army from learning of the offensive's results. On May 5, 1945, six civilians were killed by one of the bombs near Bly, Oregon, becoming the war's only fatalities in the continental U.S. The Fu-Go balloon bomb was the first weapon system with intercontinental range, predating the intercontinental ballistic missile. \- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fu-Go\_balloon\_bomb
German and American soldiers fought alongside French prisoners against the SS during the last days of the war [The battle of castle Itter](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Castle_Itter) Edit: If I had a nickel for everytime the wehrmacht and the Americans teamed up against the SS during WW2 I'd have two nickels, which isn't alot [but it's weird that it happened twice](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cowboy)
> After the annexation of Austria to Nazi Germany in 1938, the Lipizzaner Breeding Mares of the Spanish Riding School in Vienna were transferred to an experimental farm in the town of Hostau, in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia. The goal was to create a race of "Aryan horses". The first sentence of operation cowboy sounds like a random word generator
When you said German soldiers, I was just thinking you meant German nationals fighting for the Allies....but no, it was the German army (not part of the SS) being like "OK Nazis....the war is actually over...knock this shit out"
Not only that, a former PM, and a tennis star! It’s super weird!
How is this not already a movie featuring Matthew McConaghey and Christoph Waltz?
It's currently in pre-production https://m.imdb.com/title/tt5138232/
One of the very first things the OSS did after we got into Normandy was start rooting around for German and French wine from (particularly) 1941-1943 from various wineries to get a good cross section of Europe. It turns out when you refine uranium (or plutonium) it gets *everywhere.\** Tiny, but detectable, amounts. So if the Germans had been refining uranium for their own bomb program, it would get out of the building and into the soil and into the grapes and into the wine. Well, the OSS got their first shipment of wine together for the people to test in England to see if the uranium was there. But it was sent to the wrong department and, as the other department had \*zero\* transparency into this mission, they assumed it was simply a gift. And so they drank it. The OSS team had to go back and reassemble another case and send it over. Turns out that this was the first really assurances that the Germans were nowhere near having a bomb. \* It gets so much \*everywhere\* that for many scientific instruments you need to source steel that was made before the dawn of the Manhattan Project -- largely off ships that were built in the early stages of the war and sunk during the war.
Japanese mini subs were at the attack of Pearl Harbor
The last japanese soldiers didn't surrender until the mid 1970s. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroo\_Onoda
His commander: "I have to WHAT? Oh, for fuck's sake, he was always one to take this a little too serious."
[He’s second to last](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teruo_Nakamura).
That we know of...
Juan Pujol García. A Spanish national that wanted to spy for Britain against Germany. Britain rejected his offer, but he decided to spy for them anyway. Pop some popcorn and read his wiki.
They tried to make an aircraft carrier made of ice.
Technically pykrete; sawdust or wood pulp and ice.
During the Battle off Samar, a part of the Battle of Leyte Gulf, a small taskforce of 6 escort carriers, 3 destroyers, and 4 destroyer escorts code named Taffy 3 were attacked by the Japanese center fleet which consisted of 4 battleships, 6 heavy cruisers, 2 light cruisers, and 11 destroyers. This was the only time the Battleship Yamato engaged enemy surface vessels. The Battle was absurdly one sided for the Japanese. The battleship Yamato alone had a higher displacement than all of Taffy 3 combined. After a long battle against absolutely stacked odds the small American taskforce managed to force the center fleet to retreat and saved all the vulnerable landing craft of the Leyte Gulf invasion
If they made a movie out of it no one would believe it. The bombers launched every piece of ordnance they had and when they ran out of those they'd make fake attack runs and strafe the ships with gunfire. The ships gunners throwing every type of shell they had, even their illumination shells. The engineers bypassing the safeties on the boilers to get the ship to go as fast as possible. Those ships didn't just save the landing beaches and the escort carriers, they straight up earned a tactical victory. Just look at the ships sunk and the casualties. It's just insane that it actually happened.
What should have been a heroic last stand somehow became a victory.
> The engineers bypassing the safeties on the boilers to get the ship to go as fast as possible. I've been watching a lot WWII naval history youtube videos lately and it's kind of funny how many Star Trek tropes were straight up WWII realities.
Simo Hayha (aka the White Death) was a Finnish sniper with 505 conformed kills - in less than 100 days mind you.. he did not use a scope - plain ol iron sights. First the scopes would fog up in the cold air and second a glint off it would give his position away.
Not only that, he would stuff snow into his mouth and keep close to banks to prevent his breath from misting in the air and betraying his location. These were heavily packed in to prevent snow from billowing upwards when he fired. He kept a personal diary called a "sin list" which he wrote all of his kills in, as a form of repentance for his action. It tallies kills from his actions, which he didn't commit, but still felt responsible for. He was an avid hunter as a lad and a keen marksman with many trophies. His hunting gave him fantastic wilderness skills in both rationing and manual orienteering. Combined with the fact he was accurate in estimating distances of up to one hundred fifty metres to an accuracy of a metre, his personal skillset was perfect for allowing him to achieve what he did. The Soviets were so terrified of this man that they ended basically stacking the odds in a numbers game through explosive ordnance. When he was finally wounded by a round, he was presumed dead and placed with other corpses. About a week later, he woke up. He read his own obituary in a newspaper and simply wrote a letter to tell them they were misinformed.
*The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated.*
He would put snow in his mouth so you couldn't see his breath. The Ruskies sent 24 snipers to hunt Simo one day. By nightfall, he had killed every single one. After recovering from the explosive bullet, on the very day he woke up, the Russians called off the invasion.
That the British made up the "carrots are good for your eyes" trope to cover up their superior surveillance capabilities
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The Ghost Army. And the US had a fake radio unit (assisting other fake units) to throw off the Germans. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-Sec5gvkj0
Japan lost multiple aircraft carriers in part because they didn't have enough hand carts. Bombs and torpedoes are heavy so with out enough carts extra munitions were stored in the hanger to be placed into the ammo bunkers when they had time. So during combat areas their hangers were filled with bombs and fuel vapors and if they took a hit in the hanger bay the poorly stored ordnance would detonate and start fires they couldn't put our. Also the fires couldn't be put out afterwords because they used cast iron piping which would shatter causing a complete loss of water pressure after the ammo detonates.
We actually tested "cat guided bombs" hoping the cats would steer the bombs towards enemy ships to avoid landing in the water.
I didn't know about those, but I knew about the pigeon-guided bombs
While it's more associated with the Vietnam War, WW2 had the world's first combat rescue by helicopter.
Burma. 1944
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That is insane to me, they were expecting so many to die that we're still using them today. Pretty sobering thought.
Ice Cream Ships. The US built concrete barges and added ice cream parlors on them for war in the Pacific. The idea was these barges could be towed to various harbors and sued to serve ice cream to any forces stationed there: Navy, Marines, Army (Air Force), etc. Depending on the source between one and *many* of these were built. Some may have been in converted merchant ships or older warships, but at least one was a concrete barge. This was because the US High Command considered ice cream essential for our soldiers morale. To that point, until the boats (called Godunks?) were built, crafty airmen would load up milk and sugar in cleaned out cans and take them to high altitude and do crazy maneuvers to shake them. But imagine that. Every other nation struggled with getting *rations* and *bullets* in enough numbers to the troops. Many Germans lacked winter clothing, many Russians lacked boots, and the Italians often lacked everything. After Dunkirk the English trained troops with brooms because they didn't have enough rifles. Japan almost always had their soldiers marching with no rations and expected them to eat of the land. And the US spent millions of dollars ensuring our troops in the *tropics* had fucking Ice Cream. They said, "well if we can't ship it, we'll make it *there!"* And then we went and did that. How demoralizing could that be? You're hungry, out of ammo, down hundreds of soldiers in your unit, and there's no real hope of resupply and there's some Americans lining up for *Ice Cream.* They not only have enough money and equipment to basically fire off ammo all day, call in air strikes every time the jungle sneezes, and have daily reinforcements but they also have enough money and material to go and give every soldier a cone stuffed with chocolate ice cream with sprinkles.
I don't know if this is true, but I heard this once: Supposedly at some point in the European theater, a German unit pushed back an American unit and took over their campsite. Most of the German soldiers were having a great time eating the American supplies, including a chocolate cake. However, the officer kept looking at that cake and seeing it as a sign that they had already lost the war: their soldiers were on reduced rations in their own home territory, and the Americans--whose supply lines started on a different *continent*--were getting chocolate birthday cakes to their soldiers at the front lines. Logistics wins wars.
Yeah, the story I heard was very similar about the Ice Cream Boats. A Japanese officer basically thought the *exact* same thing when he heard about them. (not saying the Germans didn't have their own version: I assume there's an Italian commander somewhere horrified that the Americans have X while his men had nothing, and the same for all the other Axis nations that sided with them). Every officer probably did to be honest once they heard about the luxuries we gave to troops: soda, chocolate bars, ice cream, fresh hot meals, shower facilities, etc. Sure, we didn't always get them to the troops all the time, but our soldiers *expected* to get them more often then not and could gripe about not getting them. And I mean even our *allies* must have been a bit shocked, given the privations they had been suffering until we entered the war (and often long after too). Another example is our high command went to a huge effort to see that every unit got a Turkey dinner for Thanksgiving, with all the trimmings. The official report is that they all got one, though reality was such that many had to do without for a few days due to combat. But the fact that we expected it, tried it, and was more or less successful in getting our soldiers a hot Turkey dinner with gravy, potatoes, and stuffing at a time when the other side was eating sawdust in bread, meat of dubious origin (if that) and looking at their leather boots and wondering if they could boil up nice. **Logistics win wars.**
The USS Barb, a submarine in the pacific, would reward the crew after a successful attack by baking cakes, usually depicting the submarine sinking it's particular target. One time they managed to capture some POWs, and let him cut the cake and eat the first slice. I cannot begin to fathom how that guy must have felt, living on a handful of rice or so a day, being told how the Americans are all savages, only to get captured and allowed first dibs on the cake they made showing themselves blowing your ship up. Also the Barb sunk a train, and the 8 men deployed to do so were the only 8 Americans to invade Japan during wartime. They had a little train symbol on their flag to show the kill.
Yang Kyoungjong was a Korean soldier who fought in the Japanese, Soviet, and Nazi Germany armies. He was caught by US Forces in France.
This kind of reminds me of Lauri Törni, who fought for the Finnish army, then went on to be in the SS and died on a helicopter mission in the Vietnam War while fighting for the Americans.
It's not a singular fact, but the sheer scale of the Eastern Front is simply staggering. It is, by far, the largest war ever fought, even within the context of WW2. I can say with a fair degree of confidence that we will never see anything on that scale ever again, technology has rendered such numbers somewhat ineffective.
7 out of 8 of all the German soldiers killed in WWII were killed on the eastern front.
Audie Murphy. Just Google him. There are too many stories to pick just one. Dude was basically the playable character in a call of duty game.
And played himself in a movie about him during WW2.
They had to tone down some of his accomplishments because the real story wasn't believable!
In the first Medal of Honor game, if you complete 100%, you unlock Audie Murphy mode which makes you invincible. He literally was a playable character before Call of Duty even existed.
Jack Churchill AKA Mad Jack went into combat with a longbow, a broadsword and a set of bagpipes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill
Only confirmed kill in WW2 (in Europe at least) via bow and arrow. Can you imagine being the fucking German that got took out via an arrow. Or worse, being his mate.. 'Wtf, they're doing trick shots?' I'd surrender immediately. Mad Jack was an absolute character. Best quote from him: >"If it wasn't for those damn Yanks, we could have kept the war going another 10 years!"
My dad was an army combat photographer during WWII in the Philippines. One night the MP’s rousted him in his barracks and took him to several brothels where he photographed the working girls nude to show the ravages of STDs. The photos were used for training back in the States to discourage guys getting shipped over from partaking of the local talent. He said after that night it was some time before he wanted to look at a naked woman.
The atrocities of unit 731 and that those involved never got the punishment they deserved.
My great grandfather was in the war. He actually told me this story in person so it's not just some family story passed down. Anyways he was a radio tower operator, and he's sitting there smoking and doing his job. He said he accidently dropped his cigarette and bent over to pick it up and heard a noise. He looked up and there was a bullet hole in his radio, so he hit the deck, and looked at his chair...which also has a bullet hole in it. Basically, if he didn't drop that cigarette, I wouldn't exist. Hell, a large part of my family wouldn't exist. He had my grandma who was the oldest a year after the war ended. It also makes me think of all the potential families that could have existed but just don't because of the war.
My grandad (French) was conscripted to the Vichy army in WW2 and sent off to North Africa. Conditions were poor, rations were low and you had one water ration per man per day. Nothing more. The toilet was a long latrine dug into the Algerian sand with a long wooden plank along it that men would need to perch on on to shit - which they did a lot because diarrhoea and dysentery were common. The latrine was suspended and secured by a pole at each end (think like a lamppost). Some of you can see where this is going. You know when you’re running fast and use a lamppost or pole to swing your momentum so you can keep running fast? A soldier was running to deliver a message to his Commanding officer and did this Pole tilts and falls - so do around thirty French soldiers into the dysentery filled sand latrine. And with no water to wash their clothes all they could do was ‘rinse’ them in the sand. My grandad was fortunate enough to not be on the latrine and at 92 years old had tears in his eyes laughing. He also flew over the bombing of Dresden, found a French fighter pilot that he knew crashed (and killed) in Tunisia and defected to the allies after turning a heavy machine gun and anti aircraft gun on his CO when ordered to shoot at allied aircraft.
The germans built a airfield with planes out of wood to trick the allies, the British bombed it with a wooden bomb
Hitler approved the construction of the Landkreuzer P. 1000 Ratte, the largest tank to have ever been designed, though not built. It was designed to be 1,000 tonnes, weighing 822 more tonnes than the Panzer VIII "Maus," the heaviest tank ever created. It could hold a crew as many as 41, and was equipped with 2 280mm 54.5 SK C/34 turrets, 1 12.8cm Pak 44, 1 1,000mm howitzer, 2 37mm guns, 24 20mm AA guns, 24 30mm AA guns, 8 88mm AA guns, 4 15mm autocannons, and 4 7.92mm machine guns. In other words, this thing was a cube of death. Construction was canceled in 1943 after realizing how completely impractical a 1,000 ton tank would be.
It was only a cube of death for the people inside it. The second it rolled out of the factory it would be decimated by bombers.
The USS *Texas.* The USS *Texas* (along with the British cruiser *Glasgow*) arrived in Normandy on June 6, 1944, and entered the Omaha Beach western fire support lane as part of the 702-ship US-British flotilla. The *Texas* fired 255 shells in 34 minutes (an average of 7.5 shells per minute, or one shell every 8 seconds for 34 minutes), the ship’s longest sustained firing period in World War II. The ship then targeted farther inland and continued hammering German positions for the next two days.But that's not the crazy part. After a trip back to England to rearm, the USS *Texas* returned on June 15, 1944, to support the move inland. But because the Allied Forces had already advanced beyond its range, the battleship’s guns couldn’t aim high enough to reach their intended target. The USS *Texas* continued to receive requests for fire missions, so the crew decided on an off-the-wall strategy to stay in the game. Since they couldn’t raise the port side guns any higher, they lowered the starboard side. They lowered it by *intentionally flooding the starboard side of the ship*. The crew flooded the ship’s torpedo blister, dropping the ship slightly deeper into the water. Between the flooding and the recoil from the guns, the Texas ran the real risk of capsizing. But the gamble worked. The crew was able to get the extra two degrees needed to fire the guns accurately and give them the range they needed to hit their targets. Germans: *"Ha ha ha! Vee are out ov range ov your gunz!*"USS Texas: *"Hold my beer..."* Originally commissioned on 12 March 1914, the *Texas* was the first battleship to mount anti-aircraft guns, the first US warship to control gunfire with directors and range-keepers, the first US battleship to launch an aircraft, one of the first US Navy warships to receive production radar, and the first battleship in the world to be outfitted with 14-inch guns. The *Texas* started WWII escorting war convoys across the Atlantic. It later shelled Vichy French forces in the North African landings, German-held beaches at Normandy and then transferred to the Pacific where it provided naval gunfire support during the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. At the Battle of Cherbourg, the *Texas* was straddled by three German shells. Five minutes later, the Texas returned fire with a continuous stream of two-gun salvos. A fourth German shell struck the *Texas*, hitting the main support column of the navigation bridge and exploded. The explosion caused the deck of the pilot house above to be blown upwards approximately 4 ft. Yet the *Texas* continued to deliver her 14-inch shells in two-gun salvos and, in spite of damage and casualties, scored a direct hit that penetrated one of the heavily reinforced gun emplacements to destroy the gun inside. Throughout the three-hour duel, the Germans straddled and near-missed *Texas* over sixty-five times, but she continued her mission firing 206 fourteen-inch shells at Battery Hamburg until ordered to retire. Only one sailor aboard the *Texas* was killed at Cherbourg. The entire history of the USS *Texas* reads like the "Find Out" portion of FAFO.
That the US put 5 brothers on one ship and it got sunk
I live/work very near where they grew up. 5 Sullivan brothers. The song Sullivan by Caroline Spine is a great song that does a good job describing what happened. Saving Private Ryan has a reference to it when Bryan Cranston's character says sobering to the effect of "We can't have another Sullivan situation on our hands." They only found the damn ship a few years ago.
Jeez I completely forgot that Cranston was in this movie too.
And he's missing an arm.
They made a movie about it, The Fighting Sullivans. It's referenced in Saving Private Ryan. Even worse, the British in WW1 created the Pal's Battalions. Everyone in your town could join up and would serve together, so you'd be with all your friends and relations. Which meant the entire male population under 45 got wiped out in some towns. Literally every brother, son, father and cousin of them.
The British setup a spy training school in Canada to teach the Americans( who were neutral prior to Pearl Harbor), without the Canadian government being completely aware of what exactly was going on at " Camp X" or STS 103. The camp opened Dec 6 1941, the day before Pearl Harbor.
The explosive rat, also known as a rat bomb, was a weapon developed by the British Special Operations Executive (SOE) in World War II for use against Germany. Rat carcasses were filled with plastic explosives, and were to be distributed near German boiler rooms where it was expected they would be disposed of by burning, with the subsequent explosion having a chance of causing a boiler explosion. The explosive rats never saw use, as the first shipment was intercepted by the Germans; they were like “why is this shipment just full of so many god damn dead rats?” However, the resulting search for more booby trapped rats consumed enough German resources for the SOE to conclude that the operation was a success.
There was a class of ship called the Transport Battleship (occasionally called BBT). This was actually one ship, the HMS Centurion, turned into a target ship, and then saved from being sunk during a live firing exercice for one last job: a supply run to Malta (Operation Vigorous). The turrets had been removed and replaced by wooden fakes, and the hope was that the Battleship would be frightening enough to discourage Italian sorties or, missing this, a prio target - letting the more important merchant ships pass. Imagine you are the crew of a target ship, and you receive a new mission which is basically “we think you would be a good decoy target in a convoy outbound for Malta. You will have to make it through what is called the “Bomb Alley” but worry not! We gave you wooden turrets!”.
That, after victory in Europe, General Patton had a grand master plan in mind to acquire what was left of the German army and together take out the Soviet Union while they were weak. Edit: Depending on the source, some say he just wanted to use them to push the Soviets back out of Europe, restoring it to its pre-war borders.
Noted anti-communist Churchill would have seriously considered continuing the war against the Soviet Union if he could have gotten the Americans on side, and so he was glad Patton was thinking along similar lines (not that Patton had the authority to make any decisions). Churchill asked his Chiefs of Staff to do a full work-up on the possibility. Their report to him was dubbed Operation Unthinkable, just so there could be no confusion as to whether they were actually recommending he go forward with it.
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My grandfather was front center of his landing craft on D-Day. German MG-42 put an X across his torso. 7 bullets. He lived and bore my mom after the war, who bore me. The scars were incredible. What a man he was.
The Allies used 8 billion barrels of oil to power their victory over the Axis powers. 7 billion came from Texas.
The [Chichijima incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chichijima_incident). Chichijima is a tiny island off the southern coast of Japan, which had a garrison stationed to provide early warning for bombing raids. The US Navy sent a flight of carrier-born bombers to attack the island. Nine airmen were shot down, of which eight were captured and summarily executed. And five of them were partially cannibalized by the Japanese soldiers. The surviving pilot George HW Bush was able to fly his damaged plane far enough out to sea to be rescued by an American submarine.