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Tom Houlihan wrote:

panzermahn wrote:During the Japanese 2nd wave attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, a youth took out his hunting rifle and shot at one of the Japanese fighter-bombers. It exploded.

Okay, I'll accept a lot of things, since reality is often stranger than fiction. This one, however, I need proof on! I wanna see sources! It's hard enough to take one down with an A.A. MG, much less one shot from a hunting rifle! And having been stationed there, I know there ain't no olliphants in Hawaii, so we ain't talking a big-bore gun!

Hi Tom,

This one comes from an old book, Reader's Digest's Stories of the War (i think it's Volume 2, published by Reader's Digest 1954), chapter on the attack on Pearl HArbor. I don't have the book with me right now by apparently as far as I can remember, the boy's shot actually hit of bomb's contact point which caused the bomb to explode. I think it's a lucky shot.

Panzermahn

I think it's a lucky shot.

That goes beyond lucky! That's the hand of Mars himself guiding that round!

One of the two Soviet ships that accompany the ill-fated convoy PQ17 in 1942, Azerbaijan (the other one is Donbass), had a woman on board (the wife of the captain)

panzermahn wrote:

Tom Houlihan wrote:

panzermahn wrote:During the Japanese 2nd wave attack at Pearl Harbor in 1941, a youth took out his hunting rifle and shot at one of the Japanese fighter-bombers. It exploded.

Okay, I'll accept a lot of things, since reality is often stranger than fiction. This one, however, I need proof on! I wanna see sources! It's hard enough to take one down with an A.A. MG, much less one shot from a hunting rifle! And having been stationed there, I know there ain't no olliphants in Hawaii, so we ain't talking a big-bore gun!

Hi Tom,

This one comes from an old book, Reader's Digest's Stories of the War (i think it's Volume 2, published by Reader's Digest 1954), chapter on the attack on Pearl HArbor. I don't have the book with me right now by apparently as far as I can remember, the boy's shot actually hit of bomb's contact point which caused the bomb to explode. I think it's a lucky shot.

Panzermahn

Hi Tom,

Apologies for the book title error. It is supposed to be

Secrets and Stories of the War: A Selection of the Articles and Book Condensations in Which the Reader's Digest Recorded the Second World War (Volumes 2, 1963)

http://www.amazon.com/Secrets-Stories-W ... F8&s=books

I had this in my personal collection at my home town. I think my late grandpa left me this although he don't really read English that much

Panzermahn

from a guiness world records book:

on february 10, 1945 a Japanese unit based of the Burmese island of Ramree was outflanked by Brit naval forces and forced to trek across 10 miles (16km) of mangrove swanp. the swamps housed thousands of 4.57 meter long saltwater crocs. by the morning of february 20, only 20 of the 1000 soldiers thai had entered the swamp had survived.



one of Heydrich's grandparents was Jewish.


Simo Häyhä, a Finnish (!!!!!!) sniper has the record for most kills, at 542. more incredibly, he never used a telescopic sight, only using iron sights because:
1. you need to lift your head up higher for a scope
2. glass reflects sunlight

he also killed 300 russkies with a Suomi SMG. and died at the age of 93 in 1996.
when asked about his 'score' he said:
"I did what I was told to as well as I could."


Hitler was one of the first anti-smoking campaigners, because he was told that smoking could give you cancer.

I had to return to the toilets on u-boats subject, as we all love toilet humour

The use of a toilet involved operating valves and pumps to get it to work. Basically you have to get the "content" from the bowl out and pumped into a sevage tank, from there again you have to push it out into the sea. If you did this in the wrong order or didn't close certain valves the outside sea pressure would rush in through the sevage tank and force the "content" back and up through the toilet bowl. Leaving that poor sailor with a face full of it....

The toilet wasn't alowed to be used when below 25 meters in case of the outside pressure being too great for safe use.

There was also a tradition on some boats of welcomming a new officer by removing the "how to" plaque in the toilet with a fake one that was sure to cause a mishap...

The u-boat that was sunk was U-1206, on April 14. 1945. Aparently the toilet flooded over with so much sea water that it reached the batteries, producing poisonous chlorine gas. The boat surfaced to went out the gas and was caught on the surface by airplanes, the captain decided to abandon ship. It was the u-boats first and only patrol.

HI Tom , you do know Zero's had absolutaly no armoured plating to protect the pilot, hitting him with a small caliber would had penetrated the thin metal sheet from the hull....it could had been done .....but the plane immediately exploding i do not believe , killing or severely wounding the pilot yes.....

Ps1, I have no doubt the lad hit the target! Remember, those were still the days when quite often if you couldn't hit your target, you didn't eat! So, hitting a Zero probably wouldn't have been an issue!

It's the explosion part I find incredible! That's a luckier shot than the torpedo that jammed the rudder on the Bismark!

Adolf Hitler was made an honorary corporal in the Italian Fascist Blackshirts Militia in 1937

Tom Houlihan wrote:

I think it's a lucky shot.

That goes beyond lucky! That's the hand of Mars himself guiding that round!

During a bombing attack on one of the Pacific Islands B-17's were attacking a Japanese airfield on one of the islands in the South Pacific well one of the B-17's had opened its bomb doors and as the first bomb came out an anti-aircraft shell exploded just in front of the bomb thus triggering the detonation of the bomb this set of the other bombs, the B-17 evaporated.

panzerschreck1 wrote:HI Tom , you do know Zero's had absolutaly no armoured plating to protect the pilot, hitting him with a small caliber would had penetrated the thin metal sheet from the hull....it could had been done .....but the plane immediately exploding i do not believe , killing or severely wounding the pilot yes.....

It is possible as Zero's did not have self sealing petrol tanks.

German U-571 was not boarded by the US Navy as depicted by the American Movie in context in capturing the Enigma Machine for the allies but in fact was sunk by a RAAF (Royal Australian Air Force) Shorts Sunderland

Also the British had a working model of the Enigma machine before WWII broke out it was supplied to them via the Polish in 1938, it wasn't until the Royal Navy had intercepted two German armed trawlers of the Icelandic Coast that they captured the codes that allowed the British to break the Enigma machines secrecy.

And onto Hitler and Charlie Chaplin's "The Little Dictator", Hitler gave out a Fuhrerdirective to ban the Movie in Germany but had his own private copy and it was his favourite movie.

The Royal navy didn't capture their first set of KM daybooks for the Enigma from the trawlers, they took their first from an U-boat that was flushed to the surface and the crew abandoned ship, and before it sank two ratings rowed across and grabbed the code and daybooks and made it out of the scuttling submarine. Capturing the trawlers' gave them three copies in total.

(KM code books, and the daybooks giving the Enigma machine settingswere written on very soft paper, and the books weighted with lead, ANY emersion in even the least water would turn them instantly to pulp)

The Great Dictator may have been his favourite comedy, but his favourite films were :-
The Charge of the Light Brigade
Lives of the Bengal Lancers
and
Northwest Passage!!!

more stuff(ing)

Ernst Röhm, the leader of the SA (Sturm Abteilung, not the Suomen Armeija) was a homosexual. (the irony is that the Nazis were against gays and this man helped Adolf to power)


and about the Zero:
the first captured zero surprised the allies. it only had a 1000 hp motor, and it was very nimble and fast. that was because it had very little armor and no self sealing fuel tanks.

rather off-topic, but sick and yet interesting:

"I came across some gurhka soldiers who were laughing uproariously. when i asked what the joke was, one who spoke english explained that they had been on patrol when they found three Germans asleep in a slit trench. they cut off the heads of the ones outside but left the chap in the middle as he would have a terrific shock when he awoke!"
-brit major, 78th division before Cassino battle.