Saints and Soldiers is really good equipment-wise, the movie itself is mediocre. It’s on Amazon prime instant video. It’s set in the opening days of the battle of the bulge. The only thing I noticed is that the Germans who shoot 70-plus American POW’s at Malmedy are regular Wehrmacht and not SS, but whatever.
Odd WW2 factoids.
-
Credit all goes to CWO! His has does an incredible job in this thread, I check it everyday!
Much appreciated. I’m starting to run out of WWII oddities that I can recall from memory, however, so the solid week of daily anecdotes which you’ve just seen will start to fizzle into something much more irregular (starting tomorrow, when I’ll be away on business for the day). Contributions from the board’s other history buffs will be most welcome to pick up the slack.
-
Agreed. Great job Marc. Thank you.
I was going to ask if you had a book on this wierd stuff( like some of us do on other equally bizarre subjects) or if it was from memory.
Your memory is better than mine!
I am forgetting more and more these days. -
@wittmann:
I was going to ask if you had a book on this wierd stuff( like some of us do on other equally bizarre subjects) or if it was from memory.
Usually I’ll just remember the core element of an odd anecdote, but I’ll then need to research it to get more details and to verify that it actually happened. On one occasion I discovered that an anecdote I was about to post turned out to be of dubious authenticity. This was the story about Enrico Fermi offering at Alamogordo to take bets on whether a miscalculation in the yield of the Trinity explosion would result in the A-bomb igniting the Earth’s atmosphere or whether it would merely incinerate the state of New Mexico. It’s possible he did in fact make the remark as a joke, but it would only have been a joke because I found a desclassified Manhattan Project report which shows that the scientists had already calculated that a fission explosion would not be capable of setting off an atmospheric reaction of that kind. (Though as I recall, the report did caution that this wouldn’t necessarily be the case for a fusion explosion.) Sometimes, though, I’ll stumble across an anecdote by accident, as was the case in the one about the pumpkin bombs; I’d never heard of them, but came across them while looking up something else.
-
I seem to recall reading on several occasions that Germans spies deployed abroad would always keep a german uniform with them.
The purpose was so that if they felt they were to be ‘caught’, as long as they were wearing their uniforms, they could not be sentenced to death for whatever sabotage or spying they were responsible for.
Specifically I remember the RCMP catching a spy freshly dropped off from a submarine - in uniform!
-
Wolfgang Heyda, a German U-boat commander interned at the POW camp near Bowmanville, Ontario, escaped and managed to get all the way to the New Brunswick coast (where he was supposed to picked up by a U-boat), but was arrested there by the Canadian authorities (who were waiting for him). His claims that he was a Canadian ex-soldier – bolstered by an impressive collection of forged documents – were met with considerable scepticism when the arresting officers found that he was carring Red Cross chocolate from Germany and a wad of Canadian banknotes dating from before the First World War.
-
I did learn one interesting little tidbit while stationed at Schofield Barracks, HI a couple years ago. Right across from Schofield is what is now known as Wheeler Army Airfield. During WWII, the US started to build an underground factory right next to Schofield and the air field. This bombproof factory would be an area where they’d conduct final assembly of fighters. These fighters would roll off the line, make a hundred yard journey to Wheeler, and then fly out to a carrier deck or if necessary straight into the battle of Hawaii.
This undertaking was originally started during the early months of the US of the war when everyone feared that Japan would soon invade the islands. The underground factory wasn’t completed until several years later and by that point Japan didn’t have a navy left, so it was never used for it’s intended purpose. At various points it’s been mothballed, used as a storage facility, or for other purposes and still exists to this day.
-
Also, while I was stationed there ('07-'10) it was possible to still see superficial damage and crappy patching to several of the old buildings, specifically barracks. These were caused during Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes strafed the other military installations on the island. Obviously these barracks were pretty moldy due to their age and were slated to be torn down completely and rebuilt or extensively renovated. The process actually started during my stint there, but yeah I got stuck in an old moldy barracks and didn’t get any of the newer barracks. Yay me! :roll:
I don’t know if you’ll still be able to see the damage if you visited today. And unfortunately I don’t have any pictures. I did however find some evidence of similar damage at Hickam.
-
Nice Seth.
I like it left like that as a reminder of the attack. -
King Tiger tanks required 5 litres of fuel per Kilometer
-
When the cruiser USS Astoria was sunk at the Battle of Savo Island in 1942, one of her crew members – Signalman Third Class Elgin Staples – spent several hours floating at sea in a lifebelt until he was picked up by another American warship. The lifebelt, which had been manufactured in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, had a number of factory markings stamped on it. One of these markings turned out to be the identification number of the Firestone quality-control worker who had inspected and approved the lifebelt which had helped Staples survive: his own mother.
-
Now that is an excellent story.
-
Guys,
@CWO:
When the cruiser USS Astoria was sunk at the Battle of Savo Island in 1942, one of her crew members – Signalman Third Class Elgin Staples – spent several hours floating at sea in a lifebelt until he was picked up by another American warship. The lifebelt, which had been manufactured in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, had a number of factory markings stamped on it. One of these markings turned out to be the identification number of the Firestone quality-control worker who had inspected and approved the lifebelt which had helped Staples survive: his own mother.
@wittmann:
Now that is an excellent story.
––I would call that a 5 star story!
“Tall Paul”
-
Max Heiliger was the fictitious name the SS used to establish a bank account in which they deposited money, gold, and jewels taken from European Jews.
-
And another funny one:
The original abbreviation of the National Socialist Party was Nasos. The word “Nazi” derives from a Bavarian word that means “simple minded” and was first used as a term of derision by journalist Konrad Heiden.
-
Last one:
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not survive World War 2
-
@Axistiger13:
Last one:
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not survive World War 2
That’s crazy!
-
@Axistiger13:
Last one:
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not survive World War 2
That’s crazy!
You have to understand… even by the end of the war the kill to death ratio on the eastern front was 7 Russians to 1 German.
Bodies were throw on the fire to keep communism alive.
That said - think about it… If 10 armed soldiers broke into your house to kill you, do you think you could waste all 10 before they got you? Probably not likely.
But if you got 7 out of 10 before it was over… that’s respectable. :)
-
In the battle for Moscow, the ratio was around 20:1
-
In the battle for Moscow, the ratio was around 20:1
One of the reasons we didn’t try to race to Berlin. High command decided it would be way too high a price to pay for a prestige victory that we’d have to turn over half of anyway.
-
The age pyramid still shows effect of world war 2, the “lost generations” produced less kids and the echo continues…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Population_Pyramid_of_Russia_2009.PNG
Suggested Topics
