Odd WW2 factoids.

@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.

@CWO:

@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?

Hey CWO Marc,
you woke my interest in looking up for these Flaktowers in Berlin and came to no results of finding the combination of the Bird sanctuary and the Towers.

The only close citation I got was that a cage for Birds might have been put close there AFTER the war was over.
(the Tiergarten ones)

To add some Informations:

One year after the beginning of WW II. the Royal Airforce succesfully bombed Berlin with 22 Bombers.
Since this day the Germans actually believed that it was impossible for the R.A.F. to come this close to the capitol of Germany.
They erred BIG TIME and the night alarms went into nonstop mode till the end of September of 1940.
In a meeting of 9th of September, Hitler ordered to built huge AA defense towers for Berlin.
Six Flak towers were planned and three were built. One Flaktower present actually two towers, a Gefechtsturm = G (Battlestation)
and another one ,the Leitturm = L ( controller unit, coordinator unit) .
In April of 1942, the construction works come to an close end.

The wall are up to 2,6 meters thick and the platform measure up to 3,8 meter wall thickness. (Wandstärke bis zu 2,6m, Abschlußdecke 3,8 m)

Weapons:
4 x 10,5 cm Marineflak (replaced by 12,8 cm Flakzwilling 40 in August '42),2 cm Flak 38 and 2 cm Flakvierling 38, as well 3,7 cm Flak 43 and 3,7 cm Flakzwilling 43

The Towers also offered shelter for 15.000 peoples and some of the towers had a built in hospital.

CWO Marc, this is what I got so far and you are free to correct me.

A picture of a Flakturm modell.

@aequitas:

you woke my interest in looking up for these Flaktowers in Berlin and came to no results of finding the combination of the Bird sanctuary and the Towers.

Here’s one reference:

http://junebarbarossa.devhub.com/blog/784584-the-prestige-objective-part-i/

“Of course, in a manner of speaking, Berlin was defensible, and had been so since 1941. That was when, in response to Allied bombing attacks, the first of six so-called Flak Towers had been erected. Berlin was not, and never really was, a fortress city. These towers represented the only form of defense it was believed Berlin required in the modern age, and why not? The city was last taken by foreign troops during the Seven Years’ War. At Humboldthain, Friedrichshain, and on the grounds of the Berlin Zoo, these leviathans were essentially antiaircraft forts, perfect expressions of Nazi tendencies toward gigantism and grandiosity. At the Zoo, at the southwest corner near the bird sanctuary, stood the most formidable of the Flak Towers. Two rooftop towers, L tower for communications, and G tower for main guns, dominated the structure, 132 feet high, covering a city block.”

Another Tiergarten bird sanctuary reference, this one from the Cornelius Ryan book I mentioned:

http://diendan.vnthuquan.net/tm.aspx?m=175644&mpage=1

“Wave after wave of planes hit the city. As fast as squadrons exhausted their ammunition, they peeled off to the east, to be replaced by others swarming in to the attack. The surprise Russian raid added a new dimension of terror to life in Berlin. Casualties were heavy. Many civilians were hit not by enemy bullets, but by the returning fire from the city’s defenders. To get the low-flying planes in their sights, anti-aircraft crews had to depress their gun barrels almost to tree-top level. As a result, the city was sprayed with red-hot shrapnel. The shell fragments came mainly from the six great flak towers that rose above the city at Humboldthain, Friedrichshain, and from the grounds of the Berlin Zoo. These massive bombproof forts had been built in 1941-42 after the first Allied attacks on the city. Each was huge, but the largest was the anti-aircraft complex built, incongruously, near the bird sanctuary in the zoo. It had twin towers. The smaller, called L Tower, was a communications control center, bristling with radar antennae. Next to it, guns now erupting with flame, stood G Tower. G Tower was immense. It covered almost the area of a city block and stood 132 feet high –equivalent to a 13-story building. The reinforced concrete walls were more than 8 feet thick, and deep-cut apertures, shuttered by 3- to 4-inch steel plates, lined its sides. On the roof a battery of eight 5-inch guns was firing continuously, and in each of the four turreted corners multiple-barreled, quick-firing “pom pom” cannons pumped shells into the sky.”

Hi CWO Marc, lets roll it up from the other side. What is meant by or with Bird sanctuary?
Maybe it is a term for something diffrent what I ,by translation wasn`t aware of.
But ,as I said, there is no Bird Sanctuary in any of the German refrences mentioned.
Thank you for your answers.