Posted on 02/03/2017 12:24:31 PM PST by w1n1
Behind these photos are forgotten stories of soldiers and events that most would not know about. The fact is every campaign had its success and life span that took its toll on the soldier/airmen. For the survivors, it is the nightmare that most see in the dark and have provided freedom for the next following generation.
1. The Soviets were the only ones that realize just how skilled Finnish snipers were during the war, they were able to kill 40 Soviet troops for every Finnish soldier killed, that is unheard of today.
2. This photo shows the massive Japanese submarine I-401. This sub was the size of an aircraft carrier and even had three folded up bombers secured inside the sub. The mission of the submarine was to bomb the Panama Canal but instead the behemoth of a sub ended up at the bottom of the ocean.
3. Bomber crews were signed on to do 25 mission tours but what most didn’t know was that from 1942-1943 air losses were so common that it became statistically impossible for a bomber to complete a full tour. See the rest of the WWII facts here.
Catch-22.
coughMosinNagantcough
I knew almost all of these. Anyone who participated in Homer_J_Simpson’s WWII +70 years project would.
I knew these.
Some from old books and documentaries. The rest when the History Channel was good.
The Japanese finally test flew their first jet the day after the bombing of Hiroshima.
At 100mph faster than the fastest piston engine fighters, that would have made a mean kamikaze.
The Soviets had more tanks than the rest of the world combined when the Nazis invaded in June 41'.
Most of these were obsolete types that were phased out in flames in 41'-42'.
It may have been statistically impossible, but my uncle and his B-24 crew completed their missions and returned home in 1943. He was in the Ploesti Raid (Operation Tidal Wave), among other dangerous raids. Once he made it back to the US, he never flew in any kind of airplane again for as long as he lived. He died in the late 1990s.
When I was growing up, the man next door did a full tour as a B-17 pilot, then did a full tour as a fighter pilot.
He saw his brother get shot down while in the same bomber formation so he signed up for another tour.
The Germans first flew a jet in the 1930’s but Hitler thought it was a waste of resources.
I'm still having withdrawal issues from those daily postings
That looks just like an ME262.
Hands Up!
Bolshevik Lives Matter!
The German interrogator Hanns Scharf used no physical torture when interrogating allied pilots. This was unexpected for pilots expecting the "Vee haf vays of making you talk!" techniques they'd seen in movies.
He'd joke with them, give them booze, and even let one fly a Messerschmitt fighter. And they talked...
His prisoners, including ace Francis Gabreski, remained friends with him even after the war.
Most bomber crews did know. Read their memoirs.
My dad, a WWII combat veteran, stated that he had some bit
of sympathy for the ordinary German soldier. Just not the
Nazi officers. One of them pulled an antic that reinforced
his attitude along those lines. (The ordinary German soldier
didn’t want to be there; had just gotten under Hitler’s
control by ALLOWING it.) The “I’m with Her Hillary crowd of
rabble rousers bear more resemblance to the Hitler Youth &
their worship of him back then than anything I’ve seen. The
dirty tricks of the Hillarybots at Trump rallies mirrored
the dirty tricks of the Nazis in Germany before the war.
You and me both!
Yeah, I’m old enough to remember when there actually was history on History.
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