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Lesser known details of WW2 part four

Discussion in 'WWII General' started by Kai-Petri, Jul 9, 2005.

  1. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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  2. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    http://www.airspacemag.com/issues/2006/august-september/rooftop.php

    In the USA

    By 1941, some 13,000 marks had been painted on barns, hangars, skyscrapers, oil tanks, and train stations. Now, in January 1942, on the heels of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Civil Aeronautics Administration, goaded by the War Department, directed that all air markers near both coasts be obliterated.

    “The number of military ships which have been forced to land due to running out of gasoline…has been appalling,” Noyes later wrote to her bosses, blaming the loss of air markers. The CAA chief of airways countered: “The Army feels that the value of markers to the enemy overshadows the need by our pilots; therefore the air marking project will remain suspended for the duration of the emergency.”
     
  3. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    At the outbreak of the war, Germany’s stockpiles of fuel consisted of a total of 15 million barrels. The campaigns in Norway, Holland, Belgium, and France added another 5 million barrels in booty, and imports from the Soviet Union accounted for 4 million barrels in 1940 and 1.6 million barrels in the first half of 1941. Yet a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941.

    http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/aureview/1981/jul-aug/becker.htm

    From 2.8 million barrels in 1938, Romania’s exports to Germany increased to 13 million barrels by 1941, a level that was essentially maintained through 1942 and 1943. Romanian deliveries amounted to 7 million barrels in the first half of 1944 and were not halted until additional raids on Ploesti had been flown in the late spring and summer of 1944.
     
  4. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    From "Black propaganda" by Stanley Newcourt-Nowodworski

    Sib about HMS Ark Royal.Early in war the Ark Royal was bombed, and a German pilot was decorated for sinking the ship, which only had been damaged. Later it was sunk. The problem was whether to ignore a success or to repeat its claim.A sib solved the problem. The explanation being that Britain had broken Anglo-German naval convention and built two Ark Royals. The unpleasant - for the Germans- corollary was that if there were two Ark Royals , there might be two of every other capital ship as well!
     
  5. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Saint-Pierre and Miquelon

    After Nazi Germany invaded most of Europe during World War II, the islands were controlled by Vichy France. On Christmas Eve 1941, Free French forces led by Rear-Admiral Émile Muselier captured the islands on behalf of Charles de Gaulle. Saint-Pierre and Miquelon became the focus of a serious rift between Free French forces and the United States Department of State, which was courting Vichy France and threatened to send ships to take the islands back.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Pierre_and_Miquelon

    President Roosevelt is conferring with Winston Churchill at the White House when Secretary of State, Cordell Hull interrupts to announce the seizure. The grand strategists of the Allied war effort chuckle and brush the matter off but Hull is livid. The Secretary protests the action as a threat to his carefully crafted policy designed to prop up Vichy in hopes it will stand firm against German demands for the remains of the French fleet and bases in North Africa. Hull further denounces the actions of those he terms, "the so-called Free French" as a violation of the Monroe Doctrine and the Havana Convention’s proclamation that the American republics will tolerate no transfer of European possessions in the western hemisphere as a consequence of the war. Hull threatens to resign unless Roosevelt backs his demands for a restoration of the status quo in St. Pierre and Miquelon. Roosevelt agrees to persue the matter.

    and more here:

    http://worldatwar.net/article/miquelon/index.html
     
  6. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Johnny Walker Diving Mines

    This British weapon 72 inches in length and weighing in the 500 lb class had a most unusual mechanism of action. With a main charge of approximately 100 lb Torpex/aluminum in a shaped charge and a hydrogen gas generation system the idea was to form a large bubble of hydrogen gas that would lift a warship out of the water and 'break its back'.
    Seven Lancaster bombers each carrying a dozen Johnny Walker bombs attacked the battleship Tirpitz in September 1944. No damage was inflicted and the Johnny Walkers were never used again. As ingenious as the concept was in actual use the weapon failed to produce the desired effect.

    Interestingly enough 43 years after the attack the Norwegians found one of the Johnny Walker devices still intact near Kara Fjord.

    http://www.ww2guide.com/bombs.shtml
     
  7. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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  8. skunk works

    skunk works Ace

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    I have a book by L. Douglas Keeney
    Gun camera WW 2
    It has all the famous ones and a few I've not seen.
    Air to ground and air to air.
    Good site though, very good.
     
  9. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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  10. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    And why was the the co-operation between the Allied so bad ( perhaps? ) in 1939-40...

    From Julian Jackson´s : The Fall of France (2003 )

    " French politicians were even more ignorant of Britain than the British of them. The image of "Perfidious Albion" ran deep. When Chamberlain visited Rome in January 1939, Daladier confided his opinion to the American Ambassador, William Bullitt, who passed it on to Roosevelt:

    He ( Daladier) fully expected to be betrayed by the British and added that this was the customary fate of the allies of the British. Daladier went on to say that he considered Neville Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the King a moron; and the Queen an excessively ambitious woman who would be ready to sacrifice every other country in the world in order that she might remain Queen of England.He added that he considered Eden a young idiot and di not know a single Englishman for whose intellectual equipment and character he had respect. He felt that England had become so feeble and senile."

    ----

    The British regarded French politics as Byzantine, French politicians as frivolous, and the country as decadent.

    :eek:
     
  11. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Following the Bielefeld viaduct raid the B1 specials were dubbed " Clapper aircraft " , for, as the squadron put it, after you had dropped the Grand Slam the Lancaster went like the clappers!
     
  12. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    From Williamson Murray "Luftwaffe 1933-1945"

    Hitler had calculated that the Nazi Soviet Non Aggression Pact would mitigate the effects of an Allied blockade. Reality proved quite different. Import tonnage fell 57 percent.By January 1940 the value of imports had fallen to RM 186 million as compared to RM 472 million in Jan 1939 while import tonnage declined from 4,445,000 tons the previous year to 1,122,000 tons. Moreover, petroleum reserves declined from 2,400,000 tons at the beginning of war to 1,600,000 tons in May 1940 while gasoline supplies fell from 300,000 tons in Sept 1939 to 110,000 tons by April 1940.
     
  13. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Maybe the "friendly fire" was sometimes rather heavy:

    From Caygill´s book "Spitfire Mk V in action" on Overlord period:

    "... a Wing commander further down the coast called the operational control ship insisting that if the firing did not cease immediately, he would withdraw his wing not only for the morning , but for the rest of the f-king war."
     
  14. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Also from Caygill´s book:

    " Most pilots were keen to remove the invasion stripes from their aircraft as soon as possible as the paint had been applied in a very rough and ready manner which resulted in a marked detoriation in the aircraft´s top speed."
     
  15. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    On June 7th of 1943, Japanese ambassador in Germany, General Oshima was shown a Tiger from sPzAbt 502. Single Tiger was then sold to Japan in 1943, but was never delivered due to the war situation and was loaned by Japan to the German Army (sSSPzAbt 101). Henschel charged Japan 645.000 Reichsmarks for fully equipped Tiger (with ammunition and radio equipment), while the regular price for the same Tiger was only 300.000 Reichsmarks.

    http://www.achtungpanzer.com/tiger.htm
     
  16. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    The typical staff officer is a man past middle life, spare, wrinkled, intelligent, cold, noncommittal, with eyes like a codfish, polite in contact, but at the same time unresponsive, cool, calm and as damnably composed as a concrete post or plaster of Paris cast; a human petrification with a heart of feldspar and without charm or the friendly germ; minus bowels, passions or a sense of humor. Happily they never reproduce and all of them finally go to hell.

    - Gen George S. Patton, Jr

    ------------

    The Allied high command's dominating thought was to make sure of success, a thought that led it to use orthodox methods and material. As a result it was almost always possible for me, despite inadequate means of reconnaissance and scanty reports, to foresee the next strategic or tactical move of my opponent.

    - German Field Marshall Albert Kesselring, explaining why Allied casualties were so high and Allied progress so slow in the Italian campaign, 1943

    -------------

    How terrible, fantastic, incredible it is that we should be digging trenches and trying on gas-masks here because of a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing.

    - Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain, in a radio broadcast, 27 September 1938 referring to the German invasion of Czechoslovakia

    ---------

    http://qyrang.org/quotes.htm
     
  17. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Can You Take It?

    by Anonymous - this poem was found on the wall of a solitary confinement cell at Dulag Luft.

    It's easy to be nice, boys
    When everything's O.K.
    It's easy to be cheerful,
    When your having things your way.
    But can you hold your head up
    And take it on the chin.
    When your heart is breaking
    And you feel like giving in?

    It was easy back in England,
    Among the friends and folks.
    But now you miss the friendly hand,
    The joys, and songs, and jokes.
    The road ahead is stormy.
    And unless you're strong in mind,
    You'll find it isn't long before
    You're dragging far behind.

    You've got to climb the hill, boys;
    It's no use turning back.
    There's only one way home, boys,
    And it's off the beaten track.
    Remember you're American,
    And when you reach the crest,
    You'll see a valley cool and green,
    Our country at its best.

    You know there is a saying
    That sunshine follows rain,
    And sure enough you'll realize
    That joy will follow pain.
    Let courage be your password,
    Make fortitude your guide;
    And then instead of grousing,
    Just remember those who died.

    http://www.merkki.com/new_page_2.htm

    As well as icluding info on the Luftwaffe interrogators above!
     
  18. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    Just read Hans-Peter Dabrowski book on Heinkel He 112 and must admit that from below the A-01 version looks just like a Spitfire.

    I mean just remembered that Galland asked for Spitfires at one point from Göring. If they had He 112 instead of Bf 109 he might not have needed to ask for Spitfires...maybe...

    ;)
     
  19. PzJgr

    PzJgr Drill Instructor

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    You know Kai, I was about to post the very same thing. Though, the design was advanced, the specs do not look like the Spits.
     
  20. Kai-Petri

    Kai-Petri Kenraali

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    By 1942 there were only 9,150 foreign Jews legally resident in Switzerland, 980 more than in 1931. Many of these were the richer Jews who had fled Germany leaving behind their shops, factories and other properties. These were quickly snapped up, dirt cheap, by unscrupulous Swiss businessmen who made their fortunes out of Jewish miseries.

    http://members.iinet.net.au/~gduncan/1941.html

    ( Why am I not surprised...)
     

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