296 replies to this topic

[Mark Carver]

On this day, March 8th, 1949, radio personality Mildred Gillars, more famously known as "Axis Sally" was imprisoned for treason after being arrested in Berlin. Gillars had been born in Maine in 1900, but had moved out of the country in 1929. She eventually ended up in Germany, and got a job teaching English at a school in Berlin. In 1940, she moved to a job at the German State Radio, and got engaged to a German citizen. For these reasons, she chose to ignore the State Department's request for all American citizens to return home in 1941, due to the impending hostilities. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor shook her, and she denounced the assault and the Japanese. However, under threat of unemployment or worse, she swore an oath of allegiance to Germany and remained at the radio ministry. For the first year of Germany's war with the United States, her job remained largely apolitical. However this changed when Max Otto Koischwitz, a program director in the USA zone of the German radio, cast her in a new show called "Home Sweet Home". This show was directed at American soldiers, and was purposed at making them as homesick as possible by reminding them of home and often insinuating that their lovers were likely being unfaithful while they were away. The goal was to distract American troops with thoughts of home, and make them lose faith in the Allied cause and their leaders. The soldiers who listened to her mostly did so out of spite, and had many nicknames for her, including Berlin Bitch, but the most common was Axis Sally. She continued in her role of attempting to demoralize American and Allied soldiers up through the end of the war, often using interviews with captured Allied troops to demonstrate the perceived superiority of the German cause and that the only hope for them was to surrender. These broadcasts were largely unsuccessful, and often taken as humorous. Nevertheless, after the war's end, the US Attorney General dispatched prosecutors to find Gillars and bring her to trial for treason. She was eventually found under a false name, and arrested in March of 1946. She was held for the next years while evidence was gathered against her, and then she was brought to trial in January of 1949. Despite her defense arguing that her broadcasts were not treason, but rather just unpopular opinions, she was found guilty and sentenced to ten to thirty years in prison. Gillard would serve her time in a prison in West Virginia, and would be released in 1961. She passed away of colon cancer in June of 1988.

 

https://www.facebook...istory/?fref=nf

[Don Quixote]

An Auschwitz survivor is currently the world's oldest man.

 

http://www.bbc.com/n...e-east-35787569

[Mark Carver]

Good article on Operation Anvil (invasion of southern France).

 

 

http://warfarehistor...campaign=buffer

[Mark Carver]

Almost 660,000 built...

 

[Mark Carver]

A special interview conducted on February 1st, 2016 with Together We Served member and former WWII Veteran BMCM Maurice Poulin U.S. Coast Guard (Ret) (1941-1966)

 

[Don Quixote]

Gilbert Horn, Sr., Assiniboine code talker and one of "Merrill's Marauders," dies aged 92.

 

http://www.armytimes...-dies/82425424/

[Mark Carver]

How the FBI prevented Jewish American gangsters from altering the course of history in 1933 - 

By Robert Rockaway

 

“In 1933, I was approached by someone respectable, a Jew not involved in any criminal activity, and asked for my help. He wanted me to contact some of my underworld pals in a plan to kill Hitler.” I stared at the man sitting across from me. I was incredulous. A plan to kill Hitler in 1933? Involving Jewish American mobsters? Was he serious? The story seemed far-fetched, a bube meyseh (old wives’ tale). I was skeptical.

 

http://www.tabletmag...-to-kill-hitler

[Mark Carver]

[Mark Carver]

73 years ago today

 

[Mark Carver]

PBS NOVA - Bombing Hitler's Supergun

 

Spring 1943. World War II is slowly beginning to turn in favor of the Allied forces. But, growing desperate, Hitler hatches plans for a diabolical weapon: a bank of “superguns" housed in a massive underground complex in Nazi-occupied northern France. Together the guns would be able to pump 300 heavy high explosive shells into downtown London every hour—a target 100 miles away. This weapon could spell doom for the Allies. But how can such a massive gun possibly work? Join NOVA as engineers, archeologists, and World War II historians investigate this fearsome weapon. And discover the two audacious missions designed to destroy the seemingly impregnable supergun complex, one of which is led by none other than Joseph Kennedy Jr. Can these hair-raising missions save the Allied forces?

http://www.pbs.org/video/2365752005/

 

[Mark Carver]

Great read...

U.S. Military Generals in World War II - Thomas R Cagley

 

General George S. Patton, Jr., once said, “An army is like a piece of cooked spaghetti. You can’t push it, you have to pull it after you.” He was referring to commanders being leaders as he had little use for commanders that were not out in front of their units. This attitude was the norm in the U.S. military in World War II, and the amazement is not that a few dozen general officers were lost, but that U.S. armed forces did not lose more!

 

Leaders being out front or is not a unique military concept, nor exclusively that of the United States. Since the earliest days of recorded warfare, the good leaders have always been at the forefront of battle.

 

Some nations have a unique concept of control over military leadership. This was especially evident in the Soviet Union in the years before the onset of World War II. During the war, Hitler not only directed military battles, but controlled the general officer corps to an incredible, and as it turned out, disastrous degree.

 

http://warfarehistor...n-world-war-ii/

[Mark Carver]

Marine Comes Home From Tarawa Over 70 Years Later

 

On November 20, 1943, Marine Pfc. James Johnson [age 19] was killed on the island of Tarawa. He was buried in one of the multiple battlefield cemeteries on the island, but after the war, the military was unable to locate his remains.

 

n June 2015, History Flight Inc., a nongovernmental organization, located a burial site on Tarawa of what they believed were the remains of 35 Marines. The group turned the remains over to the U.S. Government’s Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency for DNA analysis.

 

Scientists at the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory were able to positively identified Johnson’s remains, who now, over 70 years after his death, will be buried in a special ceremony at Arlington National Cemetery.

 

Found with Johnson were a rosary ring, a St. Christopher Cross, coins and other small items he carried with him the day he stormed ashore on Tarawa.

http://awartobewon.c...es-home-tarawa/

 

 

[Mark Carver]

Jane Fawcett, British Decoder Who Helped Doom the Bismarck, Dies at 95

 

Jane Fawcett, who was a reluctant London debutante when she went to work at Bletchley Park, the home of British code-breaking during World War II, and was credited with identifying a message that led to a great Allied naval success, the sinking of the battleship Bismarck, died on May 21 at her home in Oxford, England. She was 95.

 

http://www.nytimes.c...p-stories-below

[Mark Carver]

After 70 years of waiting, WWII B-17 gunner, 94, revisits Britain. And dies quietly there

 

U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Melvin Rector long carried Britain in his heart after he helped defend it during World War II, but 70 years passed without him stepping foot in the country.

 

The 94-year-old finally decided to leave his home in Barefoot Bay, Fla., to visit Britain earlier this month. The National World War II Museum in New Orleans conducts a travel program through which interested parties can visit certain sites of the war. He signed up for one, in hopes of visiting the Royal Air Force station Snetterton Heath, in Norfolk.

 

He served there with the 96th Bomb Group in 1945 as a radio operator and gunner on B-17 Flying Fortress bombers, flying eight combat missions over Germany during the spring of the war’s final year. On four of these missions, his plane came under heavy fire. One almost proved catastrophic, and the plane returned to base with holes dotting its wings.

https://www.washingt...britain-bunker/

[Mark Carver]

Rescued from the woods near Lennigrad (now St Petersburg) Russia in 1989

 

The first BMW 801–engine Focke-Wulf to fly since the 1950s is Paul Allen’s Fw-190A-5/U3, part of the ex-Microsoft billionaire’s Flying Heritage Collection

 

The warbird of the moment seems to be the long-neglected Focke-Wulf Fw-190, with a number of impressive restoration and replica-building projects underway or, in several cases, complete and flying. What none of the few flying Focke-Wulfs have, however, is an original BMW 801 radial engine. Some are equipped with Chinese-built copies of a Russian ASh-82 power plant, and at least two Fw-190D-9 replicas have upright Allison V-12s in place of that version’s Junkers Jumo inverted V-12. Another Fw-190 replica has already crashed, ditching in the Medi­terranean just off a French beach due to the catastrophic failure of its near-new Chinese engine. A number of static exhibit museum 190s have BMW 801s, but few have been fired up and none will ever fly.

 

Some dismiss the 801 as “just a copy of the Pratt & Whitney Hornet,” which is at best a vast oversimplification. BMW indeed license-built Hornets before World War II, particularly for use in the elderly Junkers Ju-52 trimotor, but the Focke-Wulf’s engine is a far more advanced twin-row 14-cylinder rather than an 18, and it differs in many other ways from the Pratt that preceded it. Most notably, the 801 had a remarkable single-lever power control system that automatically managed rpm, prop pitch, mixture, timing and supercharger setting according to throttle position and altitude—a system that Porsche, not surprisingly, reinvented for its PFM Mooney lightplane engine in the mid-1970s. The big Kommando­gerät controller at the heart of this system, as complex as a Swiss chronometer, is hen’s-tooth rare.

http://www.historyne...iceless-bmw.htm

 

[Mark Carver]

The most important battle of Pacific started 74 years ago. Good article on the intelligence that lead to the victory by the USN.

 

THE BATTLE OF MIDWAY: THE COMPLETE INTELLIGENCE STORY by Mark Munson

 

The Battle of Midway in June of 1942 was one of the most important naval battles in world history and a turning point in the Second World War. Between June 4 and 7, aircraft from aircraft carriers Enterprise, Yorktown, and Hornet of the U.S. Navy’s Task Forces 16 and 17 ambushed and sank the Imperial Japanese Navy’s carrier force that only six months before had attacked Pearl Harbor and terrorized the Pacific. The Battle of Midway is important to memorialize and remember for many reasons. Among these reasons is that it is an inexhaustible source of still-relevant lessons on how to successfully apply intelligence at all levels of war.

 

Intelligence Collection and Analysis

 

At the root of the American victory at Midway was U.S. Navy intelligence successfully breaking Japanese codes and discovering the Japanese Navy’s plans to attack Midway Atoll.

Station Hypo was the team of U.S. signals intelligence (SIGINT) analysts led by then-Commander Joseph “Joe” Rochefort. Immediately after Pearl Harbor, Station Hypo began attempting to decode messages transmitted using theJN-25 code. By late April, Rochefort’s team assessed that the Japanese were planning major operations against the central Pacific and Aleutians. In a famous trick, Pacific Fleet Commander Admiral Chester Nimitz approved a ruse proposed by Rochefort that saw the American garrison at Midway send a fake message “in the clear” (on open channels) regarding broken water evaporator units on the island. Almost immediately afterward, American listening posts intercepted Japanese transmissions mentioning the water shortage and the need to bring along extra water to support the operation. The identity of the Japanese objective was conclusively determined as Midway.

 

http://warontherocks...lligence-story/

[Mark Carver]

Baltimore Museum of Industry begins $500,000 restoration of World War II-era shipyard crane

 

At some point or another, it became an unspoken routine.

 

Hilda and Ed Hawkins would park their Toyota Camry at the Baltimore Museum of Industry, where they lectured three days a week, and Hilda would get out and peer up at the World War II-era crane overlooking the parking lot.

 

"I know," Ed told his wife. "Don't even say it."

 

She hardly needed to: Anyone could see the crane badly needed maintenance. Its peeling burgundy paint was giving way to a grimy, brown-and-orange rust, and pigeons had long since laid claim to the operator's cab at the top, flying into an open window to nest.

 

Now the museum is raising money to restore the 100-foot-tall, 74-year-old crane. Officials say the project could take more than a year and cost as much as $500,000.

http://www.baltimore...0605-story.html

 

[RShack]

^^^^^^

I wonder how much the crane cost when new....

[Mark Carver]

D-Day!

 

[Mark Carver]

FDR's prayer...

 

    My Fellow Americans:

 

    Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

 

    And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

 

    Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity.

 

    Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

 

    They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed, but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

 

    They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest -- until the victory is won. The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the violences of war.

 

    For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and goodwill among all Thy people. They yearn but for the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

 

    Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic servants, into Thy kingdom.

 

    And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of brave men overseas, whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them -- help us, Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of great sacrifice.

 

    Many people have urged that I call the nation into a single day of special prayer. But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our efforts.

 

    Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

 

    And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

 

    And, O Lord, give us faith. Give us faith in Thee; faith in our sons; faith in each other; faith in our united crusade. Let not the keeness of our spirit ever be dulled. Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting moment -- let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

 

    With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogances. Lead us to the saving of our country, and with our sister nations into a world unity that will spell a sure peace -- a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

 

    Thy will be done, Almighty God.

 

    Amen.

 

    President Franklin D. Roosevelt - June 6, 1944