Definitely. I hate those people.
But yeah, that last sentence works for any country like France, Yugoslavia, Greece, and China.
Odd WW2 factoids.
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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.
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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.
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Nice Seth.
I like it left like that as a reminder of the attack. -
King Tiger tanks required 5 litres of fuel per Kilometer
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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.
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Now that is an excellent story.
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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”
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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.
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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.
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Last one:
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not survive World War 2
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@Axistiger13:
Last one:
80% of Soviet males born in 1923 did not survive World War 2
That’s crazy!
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@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. :)
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In the battle for Moscow, the ratio was around 20:1
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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.
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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
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Churchill once referred to Mussolini as “Hitler’s utensil”.
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Hitler was also known as the “carpet eater” to some of the internal staff/party leaders who secretly despised him…
After an incident/nervous breakdown he had when dealing with the annexation of upper Czechoslovakia.
-From The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich-
“Teppichfresser!” muttered my German companion, an editor who secretly despised the Nazis. And he explained that Hitler had been in such a maniacal mood over the Czechs the last few days that on more than one occasion he had lost control of himself completely, hurling himself to the floor and chewing the edge of the carpet. Hence the term “carpet eater.” The evening before, while talking with some of the party leaders at the Dreesen, I had heard the expression applied to the Fuehrer — in whispers, of course.”
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Hitler was also known as the “carpet eater” to some of the internal staff/party leaders who secretly despised him…
This sounds like it’s the inspiration for the scene in the 1943 Daffy Duck cartoon “Scrap Happy Daffy” in which (if I recall correctly) an enraged Hitler chews his way across the full length of a carpet like a high-speed lawnmower.
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Amid the chaos and carnage of the Battle of Berlin in April 1945, 16-year-old Hitler Youth member Armin Lehmann was saved from almost certain death by the fact that his superiors – who had no reservations about sending kids into combat against the advancing Russians – could not tolerate breaching regulations by putting an underage driver at the wheel of a truck. Lehmann was one of the youngsters decorated by Hitler on his birthday, April 20th, an event memorably reproduced in the movie Downfall. Moments after the ceremony, the whole group was piled into trucks to be sent off to the front. Lehmann was assigned to drive one of the vehicles, but at the last moment an officer discovered that he didn’t have a drivers’s license. Lehmann was pulled from the group (whose members, as far as he knows, were later all killed in battle) and was reassigned to serve as a messenger between nearby government offices and – of all places – Hitler’s underground bunker. Over the next ten days, Lehmann got to see or meet various members of Hitler’s entourage, including Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann, Joseph Goebbels and Eva Braun. Lehmann was one of the last people to make it out of the bunker and he lived to the ripe old age of 80. He passed away in 2008, four years after finally publishing the memoirs he had long hesitated to write.
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Project x-ray was a plan that the US came up with to drop bombs filled with bats on Japan. The bats were fitted out with incendiary devices that would set fire to Japanese cities. Fortunately for the bats, the plan deemed too expensive, and the project was dropped. On a side note, escaping bats set fire to an air base in New Mexico.
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