What have you learned about WW2 recently?

They will have been forced laborers. In "Mittelbau Dora" alone, there is talk of 20,000 dead.

 

"How hard can you fight?"

"How scared am I?"

 

The Italians operated a jet plane... in 1940...

 

The Pensacola class heavy cruisers had their triple turrets mounted above their double turrets. The narrower barbettes of the double turrets allowed the hulls to be narrower towards the forward and aft parts of the ship.

Didn't seem to work out well because they were top heavy and rolled a lot. Plus it's odd looking.

 

Did the other cruisers make fun of them?

 

Not as long as any Tone class were around. Yeesh!

 

Thin skinned German AFV (open topped pzjr) fled when confronted by AT rifle armed Soviet infantrymen.

 

The USS Salt Lake City, sister to the Pensacola, had the nickname Swayback Maru.

 

Honorable Captain San, we have three turrets aimed at you!

 

I’ve learned that all of our fighting men are sleek, highly-tuned athletes. There are no exceptions.



Possibly the most well-fed Gurkha with a military record, photographed on peacekeeping duty in postwar Japan.



German army reservist, circa 1939.



This one looks like a member of the Luftwaffe. There is no way that he would fit in the cockpit of a Bf 109.



Not sure about the circumstances, but both men are wearing coveralls typically worn by mechanics.



Robert Earl Hughes (1926-1958) was rated as the largest man to apply for U.S. military service in World War II. And the heaviest human to have walked without assistance. His extreme size was attributed to a ruptured thyroid gland. The photo is dated 1944, when his weight was published at 709 lb. Hughes reached a peak weight of 1,071 lb, with a chest measured at 10.3 ft.



Jakob Nacken (1906-1987) was a German soldier taken prisoner near Boulogne-sur-Mer, in 1944. Seen here with photographer Eddie Worth of the Associated Press. Nacken was a minor celebrity prior to his wartime service and by repute the tallest man in the Wehrmacht, with a height of over seven feet. His lengthy employment in show business was interrupted by the war and conscription. He later emigrated to the United States.

 

The "topweight" problem was caused by the ships coming out lighter than originally planned by the designers. So not so much of too much weight high up, but less than planned low down. They were the first class of USN cruisers built to the 10,000 ton Washington Treaty limit. Unexpectedly they came out at 9,100 tons. The next class, the Northamptons, were already under construction before the Pensacolas completed, but were still lighter than planned, just not so much so.

Until the WNT no one had designed a ship to a tonnage limit, particularly one that was defined the way "standard displacement" was defined. So all navies encountered problems. Early USN ships came out underweight, Japanese ships overweight. Britain got a bit lucky. The 8" twin turrets on the Counties came out heavier than planned, but weights were saved elsewhere so ovrall they came out close to the planned figures.

 

I liked the E+D+O = 1 system for ship displacement.

E = endurance. Food, berthing, laundry, etc.
D = Defense, AAA, armor, etc.
O = Offense, Guns, Torps., Dirty Looks, etc.

Stole that from Friedman. I think it was him.

 

Not really sure of the veracity of this claim but....

Questionable Tactics

During World War II, the British military explored various unconventional tactics to counter the threat of enemy submarines, and one particularly quirky idea involved training seagulls to defecate on enemy periscopes. The thinking was that if seagulls could be conditioned to target periscopes with their droppings, it would obstruct the vision of submarine crews and potentially reveal their positions.

However, this plan had a rather humorous and unexpected flaw. Seagulls, while excellent coastal birds, couldn’t fly far enough out to sea to make this strategy effective against submarines operating in deeper waters. So, despite the ingenuity behind the idea, it turned out to be more comical than practical and was eventually abandoned in favor of more conventional anti-submarine measures.




I read this from an article on Quora. It does provide for some entertaining reading at times.

 

The seagulls routinely land on the water when they're out hunting. They can process seawater using special glands.

Also, I'm pretty sure they don't have to ante up fare for their trips.

 

Birds can be trained to do some pretty incredible things but I'm marking myself 'skeptical' on getting a seagull to even be aware of that bodily function.

You never know though. I had a truly heinous experience sleeping on a beach in Florida with a malevolent pelican who jettisoned a full load at low altitude.

The Pidgeon-Guided Missile

 

Britain has huge numbers of gulls, all well equipped with guano. I'm sure they could have been persuaded to "do their duty" for King and Country.

 

All sorts of crazy schemes to use animals were suggested in WW2. IIRC there was one to use cats as anti-submarine weapons cos they hate water and would prefer a U-boat deck!!

Slightly more realistic if still hair brained:-
Pigeon guided bombs
The Saga of the Bird-Brained Bombers

Bats carrying incendiary devices
Bat bomb - Wikipedia

Anti tank dogs
Anti-tank dog - Wikipedia

 

Just reading 'Twentieth century Coventry ', published 1971, and came across this....

"Daimler built a scout car of such quality that Rommel, when he captured one in the Western Desert, was so satisfied with it that he used it for the rest of the war".

I know he used a captured AEC armoured command vehicle but not sure about a Daimler - anybody heard this before?

 

Ewwwwwwwww!

Did any get in your beer?