Feldgrau.net

There is a cave beetle in Slovenia which were named after Adolf Hitler

Theres a four-wing bungalow in North Dublin with the groundplan of a swastika, built in 1940.....at the time when the IRA were working on Plan Kathleen and the Luftwaffe were making very high level photo-recce runs over Ireland...

there's also a map in one of the older Zelda games (if any of you are gamers, like me) that's shaped like a swastika. that stirred up some controversy.

A German Luftwaffe pilot landed in England by mistake thinking he was still over the French coast.

The British must have been glad to capture a M-109 in perfect condition.

in 1944, 27 (or so) panzer 4 ausf. J's were sent to Finland. None of them were used against the Russians, all were used to boot out the Germans in the Lapland war.

Potsdamerplatz wrote:A German Luftwaffe pilot landed in England by mistake thinking he was still over the French coast.

The British must have been glad to capture a M-109 in perfect condition.

There were several other Luftwaffe pilots who landed in the UK by error. I don't know how many, but I suspect that there were quite a few.

The RAF got their first FW-190 in summer 1942 when it was still a new type, due to a mistaken landing at Pembrey, Wales. They got at least one more 190 the same way in 1943 at Manston, Kent.

On 13th July 1944 a Ju-88 G1 crew got completely lost and put themselves down at Woodbridge, Suffolk. See link:

http://www.ww2.dk/misc/captured.pdf

Those are just a few random examples that I have facts for. There must have been a lot more in total. It worked the other way round too; the RAF gave "presents" due to pilot disorientation as well!

yeah, i'm sure the moders and the other guys like Phylo and Krospell have some more interesting stuffs for us. why not Phylo, trying not to lose your photo challenge ideas?

Well, I do remember one FW190 pilot at least brought his plane over to the UK - intentionally! There was a pic of it a couple years ago in Flypast.

As for others, there are lots of pics of pancaked Me109s from the Battle of Britain, it actually doesn't take much to make a pilot want to bring his aircraft down if he can, the most obvious being that in a spiralling dogfiht, each trying to turn inside the other, its VERY easy to loose track of height and to find out that you're too low to bail! Time to look for the nearest flat field with your electrics out or glycol spilling out. Remember these planes were NOT "fly by wire", instead it took 1/pilot injury, 2/cutting of control cables 3/ aileron or rudder damage or 4/ dropping below stall speed to make these babies uncontrollable.

I have a lovely picture in a newly-published book of an Me110 sitting on its belly in a London street, complete and relatively undamaged in the landing - even the props are straight so it must have "feathered" its engines and as it slowed to stall they stopped turning and were in the right position not to bash the tarmac. Nosed up to the kerb, it looks as if its parked there!

The same book has pics of TWO pancaked He111s, one in Dalkeith in Scotland and one in the North-East of England and BOTH in perfect condition. There's one pic I remember seeing selwhere of a relatively complete Do17bis, but it seems the poor old Ju88 didnt fare as well in contact with Terra Firma.

( I once read that the more low-level a monoplane's wings, the more likely it is to land without undercarriage in controlled flight in one piece. Something about spreading the all up weight, makes the buggers slide like a stone skimmed across water. hence the Ju88s crack-up rate I assume, versus the remarkable pics of the He111s LOL )

Unfortunately my scanner in on the blink, and other things come before replacing that but for those with access to it in a WH Smiths or Easons, The book mentioned above is "Britain at War - Unseen Archives" a compendium from Parragon of the Daily Mails' photo archives from 1939-1945 ISBN 1-40546-788-9 and discounted to only £3.99! 380 photo pages.

lovely usage of the word 'pancake'

i'm sure the fritzes had the $hit scared out of them as they realised that they weren't in France...

"pancake" - standard wartime/RAF usage. I think it was maybe even "official" wireless R/T terminology.

This is new to me at least:

We have all heard of Lt. Gorman ramming a Royal Tiger during Goodwood. But in Dagliesh's book on the operation he noted 1) that the Tiger was at that moment, also hit by a Pak 40 shot probably aimed at the Sherman. It ripped the seat out from under the driver. And may have precipitated the bail out as much as having been rammed.

2) Unlike other versions of the incident that I've read (where the German crew surrenders meekly to the British crew) this quoted the gunner, roughly, as saying that after the intial shock he found himself facing the British Driver (or some crewman), they both reached for their pistols which weren't there, grinned at each other, and took off running in opposite directions!

cheers
Reb

I have read somewhere, that one possible way that the British planned to repel any German invasion (e.g. Operation Sea Lion), was to flood the Channel with flammable fuel, and then set it ablaze when the time came.

Matt B.

In 1941, shortly after Barbarossa, Hitler went for a demo of the 80cm Dora cannon. Hitler then told Guderian that the Dora can be used against tanks but Guderian was enraged to hear that because how could Dora be used against Russian tanks if it takes 45 minutes to reload?

excerpt from wikipedia:

From the airfield, Hitler, accompanied by President Ryti, was driven to where Mannerheim was waiting at a railroad siding. When Hitler saw the Marshal, he ran toward him. "An officer doesn't run," Mannerheim is said to have remarked to the officers accompanying him. "Only corporals do that."

ouch!

The Panzerfaust often had warnings written in large red lettering on the upper rear end of the tube, the words usually being "Achtung! Feuerstrahl!" (Beware! Fire Jet!). This was to warn soldiers to avoid the backblast. Axis soldiers who didn't understand German (such as Finns and Italians) sometimes leaned the weapon on their shoulders like rifles and were burnt badly

wouldn't that blow your whole arm off?