Odd WW2 factoids.

@Zooey72:

@ABWorsham:

Another odd fact of WWII, was Japan’s balloon bomb program intended to bomb the U.S by use of the jet stream. The plan was to cause wide spread panic and wildfires across the U.S.

A Sunday School class was the only casualties to these light bombs.

To add to this, one of the balloon bombs to make small contribution to the war.  One of them made its way to Oakridge TN where we were developing the A-Bombs.  It fell and hit a telephone pole and knocked out power for a couple of hours to some of the facilities where people were working.

wow, thanks for the addition information.

The Red Army experimented with “sobaki-istrebiteli tankov” units, or anti-tank dogs, which were trained to run under the chassis of enemy tanks and blow them up with explosives strapped to their backs.  The dogs appear to have ended up inflicting more damage to the Russians (by running back towards the Soviet lines) than to the Germans.

On the German side, a robotic equivalent of the same concept was the Goliath remote-control tracked mine.  It looked like a miniature WWI British Mark IV rhomboid-shaped tank.  It was designed to be driven under enemy tanks (or among enemy troops) by remote-control wires, then detonated.  The Goliath weighed between 75 and 100 kilograms, and was probably the smallest functional tank-like weapon built during WWII – completely at the opposite end of the scale of the largest one, the German 188-tonne Maus tank.  It would have been interesting to take a picture of these two weapons side-by-side.

From 1940 to 1942, the Nazi Party’s SD intelligence agency ran a covert surveillance operation inside a Berlin brothel, the purpose of which was to monitor (using hidden microphones) the conversations of prominent clients to pick up possible evidence of dissent against the regime.  This salacious espionnage scheme later inspired several postwar Nazi exploitation films, each more tasteless than the previous one, the earliest and best-known of which was the movie Salon Kitty by Italian director Tinto Brass (who went on to make the notorious film Caligula a couple of years later).

@CWO:

On the German side, a robotic equivalent of the same concept was the Goliath remote-control tracked mine.  It looked like a miniature WWI British Mark IV rhomboid-shaped tank.  It was designed to be driven under enemy tanks (or among enemy troops) by remote-control wires, then detonated.  The Goliath weighed between 75 and 100 kilograms, and was probably the smallest functional tank-like weapon built during WWII – completely at the opposite end of the scale of the largest one, the German 188-tonne Maus tank.  It would have been interesting to take a picture of these two weapons side-by-side.

Royal Engineers found 'em.
8-)

@aequitas:

Royal Engineers found 'em.

And an odd thing about both weapons is that the smallest one had the biggest-sounding name (Goliath) while the biggest one had the smallest-sounding name (Maus).  Though if I’m not mistaken the Maus was originally intended to be called the Mammuth, possibly as the next logical name progression upward from the Elefant tank destroyer.

@Zooey72:

A sad story that I had heard when I was in college taking a WW2 class.  As the war continued to go badly for Japan food shortages because a big deal (obviously).  There was a show elephant at the Tokyo Zoo that the government decided would not be fed any more.  They did not want to spare the large round (or chemicals) to kill it.  They just let the thing sit there and starve to death.  The trainer was an older man who couldn’t fight (hence he didn’t find himself at Iwo Jima or some other such place).  Every day he would pass the Elephant and it would start to do tricks on its own, begging for food.  Eventualy the trainer killed himself because he couldn’t stand the sight of what was happening to his Elephant.

This story will haunt me from now on whenever I see an elephant.

@ABWorsham:

Another odd fact of WWII, was Japan’s balloon bomb program intended to bomb the U.S by use of the jet stream. The plan was to cause wide spread panic and wildfires across the U.S.

A Sunday School class was the only casualties to these light bombs.

To stop the bombs, the army took a sample of the sand in the ballast. Then they matched it with an earlier scientific study that catagorized sand. (I feel sorry for the scientist in charge of that) They matched the sand to beach in Japan and sent in some bombers to blow up the factory nearby.
Geology- saving lives since 1944

I don’t know if this counts, but Chungking, the wartime capitol of China was the most heavily bombed city during WW2.

The 460mm (18.1-inch) main guns of the Japanese superbattleships Yamato and Musashi were the largest-caliber guns ever used as anti-aircraft weapons.  In addition to firing the two conventional types of heavy naval gun ammunition – armour-piercing rounds and high-explosive shells – these weapons could also fire a third type of 460mm round called San-Shiki, which was designed to bring down enemy aircraft.  Sometimes inaccurately described as a a giant shotgun shell, the San-Shiki round was time-fuzed to burst a certain number of seconds after firing; when it exploded, it sprayed a cone-shaped pattern of incendiary tubes and steel fragments into the air along its flight path.  Yamato used these rounds in combat against the US carrier planes which attacked (and ultimately sank) it during its suicidal attempt to reach the American task forces engaged in the invasion of Okinawa.

Berlin’s huge Flak Tower G, intended to help defend the city against air attack, was incongruously located next to the Berlin Zoo’s bird sanctuary.

@CWO:

Berlin’s huge Flak Tower G, intended to help defend the city against air attack, was incongruously located next to the Berlin Zoo’s bird sanctuary.

I think you mixed afew things up CWO Marc.  :-)

@Zooey72:

The ‘god sniper’ from “Saving Private Ryan” was BS.  The first thing we blew up when we entered a town (and vice versa) was the church steeple for the EXACT reason the god sniper was there.  No one went up there because it was standard protocol to blow the thing up.  It was also a great location to call down artillery, so it had to go.  Funny how in the Iraq war we had to tip toe around Mosques because we were afraid of offending someone, but in WW2 blowing up a Church was a ‘no duh’ moment.

I agree with you on that ZOOEY72, totally BS.
Raised points in WW II. are frequently used by scouts and snipers and will be removed or evaded by any troops if neccessary.
Also BS, the shot of the Marder III ,which cannot raise its gun that high, that close to blow up the tower.

Other then that nice post ZOOEY72.

@Zooey72:

It is not PC, but read the story and tell me if anyone ever deserved to be in a concentration camp it is this PoS.  This is not from my college class, I saw this story on the History Channel.

This was an old man crying when I saw it from what happened to him happened when he was a child.  He was in a Concentration camp and put in a kid’s bunker.  In the middle of the night a guy grabs him and forces him down on his bunk.  He shoves bread into his mouth as ‘payment’ and than rapes the kid.  In the morning the guy runs off, but feels some degree of shame (or whatever) and steals the boys cap.  If the kid shows up to formation without his cap Germans will kill him (which I am sure was the intent of the rapist/thief).  Being raped as a child is horrible, but it did take second place to what was going to come if he didn’t show up with his cap.  He stole another kid’s cap, and than had to watch as that kid was executed.

I hope to God the guy who did this was a patient of Josef Mengele.  I also hope that whatever horrors that happened to him while he was in a Concentration camp were just a taste of what he is now getting in Hell.

I heard a story of a Jew who survived KZ Ausschwitz, who was beaten almost everyday and saw a lot of horror and unforgivable things ,who later after the war met a Guy, who was running up and down the street and asking for forgivness.
The Jew went to that guy and asked him what he is trying to achieve and were the problem is, now he turns arround and telling him who he was , the Jews eyes getting all wide up and realizing that in Front of Him is a former SS Officer who served in that KZ he (the Jew) was imprisoned there.
With trembling voice after a while the Jew then accepted his apology and forgave him and the former SS officer felt the heavy burden released from his shoulders.
They never met again or became good friends, but at least got their release of heavy burden taken away by pure forgivness!

The “GEFRIERFLEISCHORDEN”

Better known to us as the Ostmedal ,created and handed out by and through the Führer.
All you had to do to get this piece of med(t)al was to stay in combat during the wintertime from 15. November 1941 till 15. April 1942. May also be known as „Eisbandorden“ or „Rollbahnorden“.

• wich is a term for Icemedal or runway medal.
  Nevertheless the certificate wich is handed out together with this medal states that it might stay in ownership after death and will be passed on to the remaining family members.
  Fact, it rarely happend since this medal was thrown away by the German soldiers who had no use for it at all and sometimes even burned their money so the could get a warm glimpse for the freezing hands in the winter times of 1942(mainly in Stalingrad).

Here’s a strange factoid…

For there record, there are 1000’s of Aushcwitz survivors.  In fact - the last estimate is that approximately 190,000 people survived Auschwitz alone.

You’d think less people would walk out of death camps.

@aequitas:

@CWO:

Berlin’s huge Flak Tower G, intended to help defend the city against air attack, was incongruously located next to the Berlin Zoo’s bird sanctuary.

I think you mixed afew things up CWO Marc.  :-)

As I recall, the anti-aircraft flak tower located next to the Tiergarten bird sanctuary is mentioned in Cornelius Ryan’s book The Last Battle.  Could you clarify to what mix-up you’re refering?

The U.S. recognizes its World War II veterans as anyone who has served between the dates of December 7, 1941 and December 31, 1946 (yes, 1946 – that’s not a typo) because the latter date was the one on which Harry Truman (through Presidential Proclamation 2714) declared that all WWII hostilities had ceased.