Comments by "vk2ig" (@vk2ig) on "Mark Felton Productions" channel.

  1. Thanks Mark. Anyone wilfully using Nazi-era symbols is asking to kick an "own goal" when it comes to courting public support. I get that the former Waffen-SS symbol may be coincidentally a symbol representing Ukrainian independence; but using the Black Sun and Swastika is just asking for trouble.
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  2. Another Tirpitz fact: one of the Norwegian resistance radio operators who kept tabs on the Tirpitz and reported her position to the British was Torstein Raaby, who was later the radio operator on Thor Heyerdahl's Kon-Tiki expedition.
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  3. There is also a sense of superiority held by some who come to places like Africa and the Middle East. The example in modern history which sticks in my mind is just after the Americans took Baghdad. They were cutting down the statue of Saddam Hussein. The locals all looked on with interest and some sense of joy. Finally, the statue hits the ground and ... a US serviceperson covers it with an American flag. You could see the locals' opinion immediately switch from considering the Americans as liberators to occupiers. That's what a sense of superiority can do.
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  4. Quite a few of them captured in the Northern Desert campaign ended up as POWs in Australia, and were "hired out" to the farmers. And some of them returned as post-war immigrants after arriving home and discovering what a mess Europe had become.
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  5. As an example: one of the Italian machine guns used in the desert had quite an interesting operation. It used a rectangular magazine which was "walked" through the firing mechanism. For each firing, the mechanism extracted the round from the magazine, pushed it into the breech, closed the breech and fired the round, then extracted the empty cartridge case from the breech ... and put it back into the magazine! The gunner's mate had to strip hot empty cartridge cases from the magazine and then load fresh rounds into it. Also, the case would expand in the breech upon firing (too much back pressure) which would cause it to jam ... so the designers put in an oiling mechanism to make the cartridges easier to extract. But in the desert, when the oil mixed with the sand it formed something akin to a grinding paste which locked the case in the breech and sometimes would result in the rear of the case being torn off and rendering the weapon useless until an armourer could remove the rest of the case stuck in the breech.
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  6. I knew a German guy once who had a picture of his father (a fighter pilot in the Luftwaffe) with Göring.
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  7. I don't understand why your comment would attract hatred. It's quite a plausible story, and very thought-provoking: "What if ...?" Thanks for posting.
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  8. "Do you think you're fast enough, bartender?"
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  9.  @dleechristy  The enemy of thy enemy is thy friend ...
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  10.  @BigJon410  You might be surprised: "Hallo, ich bin Herr Ed!"
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  11. "Welcome to the Special Camp!" "Special? What's so special about it?" "We don't serve food at this camp."
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  12. Wife: "Video tapes? Yeah, right. This is the 2020s dear, not the 1990s! Now where are you really going? What's her name, and how long has this been going on?"
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  13. Another consideration is the difference in the average level of education of the German vs Russian soldier, and hence the type of training that can be instilled in such troops.
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  14.  @oldsynner  And lets the viewers know where the evidence is missing, too, so that they may choose not to draw uninformed conclusions as well.
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  15.  @comunistubula4424  You beat me to it - I was going to say the same thing regarding Poland. They certainly didn't cooperate with the Nazis, but ended up "hosting Soviet guests" for many years.
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  16. In 200 metres turn left ... TURN LEFT!
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  17. In a documentary I saw on TV a long time ago, a British soldier was being interviewed. He said they came across a group of four or five British soldiers whose hands had been tied with barbed wire and had been shot. They were the crew of a Crocodile tank ... the inference was that the Germans soldiers didn't like people who used flamethrowers on them.
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  18.  @dhowe5180  Quite possibly. It could have been that his family had died during the war, so there was no-one back "home" to contact. Plenty of German men were released from non-Soviet prison camps at war's end and headed home, only to find that home was a heap of rubble and their family was dead long ago.
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  19.  @nicktecky55  The press in the UK is something to behold, though. When I lived, there, the Tabloids made or broke people. I guess it hasn't changed much, only maybe the news moves more quickly due to the rapid response of the online media?
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  20. "I knew Felton before he was a superstar!" (Apologies to Glen Campbell)
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  21. Indeed. People should realise that it would be like Allied pilots taking a Brewster Buffalo or a Wirraway trainer out to fight Mitsubishi Zeroes.
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  22. That's a very good question about how a US Officer could have concealed themselves in Von Ribbentrop's personal baggage. On the other hand, an entire US Army platoon could have concealed to themselves in Göring's personal baggage.
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  23. The Allies actually had the Germans fooled with some of their radio broadcasts. They had a station called "Atlantic Sender" which the Germans thought was one of theirs. This was part of the Allies Psy Ops. They'd play music, and read announcements (in German) about the hometowns of U-boat sailors, etc, so there would've been a few Germans who were exposed to music from the Allied side. Apart from that, of course, the German population could've tuned into the BBC or the equivalent to the AFRTS. Even though the very affordable radios available to the public, e.g. Volksempfänger, were a bit deaf (purposely, to keep down costs but the government only wanted the people to listen to German stations) they'd still hear further away after dark with an external antenna. However; listening to foreign stations was a crime in Germany after the war started, so one would've had to be very careful about when to listen, with whom to listen, and to whom to speak about it.
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  24.  @535tony  The original Shermans weren't so easy to bail out of if you were the loader. There wasn't a loader's hatch - this was added later. The only way the loader could get out was to reverse the process of getting in: raise the gun as high as it would go, climb over the breech, and then exit via the commander's hatch. If the gun couldn't be raised (e.g. after a hit if the trunnion or elevation gear was distorted), or if the commander couldn't move (incapacitated or hatch was jammed) then that was it for the loader. :(
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  25. @Philo Jones A Wehrmacht veteran who emigrated to Australia and wrote a book about his experiences related how his unit surrendered to the US forces thinking they were safe from the Soviets. They were being held with other Germans POWs surrounded by a ring of US military ... that night they heard lots of machinery noises and wondered what was going on - in the morning they found out: the Americans had left ... and ... instead they were being guarded by the Soviets. The next decade was not a very comfortable one for the veteran or his comrades.
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  26. PFC Jones visiting sick bay: Doc: Jones, no wonder you're sick! You've put on 40 pounds since you were here last! Jones: It's all the good food they're feeding me, doc ...
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  27.  @genghishank1  Cap is required to warm up their brain so that it can commencing functioning, I think.
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  28.  @SurferJoe1  They'd also claim that the Nazis were to have used Die Glocke to travel back in time to fetch Nostradamus in order for Hitler to meet him, but Nostradamus was unable to make the rendezvous due to unforeseen circumstances.
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  29. Tea. A British colonel can't possibly go looking for the secrets of the T-54 without a cup of tea beforehand!
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  30. Mark will probably need to rest his mouth for an entire week after forcing himself to say that.
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  31. Or he kept calling on the speaker to surrender.
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  32.  @frankmiller95  I think Dave is merely beside himself with the thought of hearing more about Albert Göring, and the possibility of Dr Felton reading this comment thread.
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  33. Yes, it is amazing the twists and turns of the aerial dogfight called life can take.
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  34. Maybe they really were Nazis who'd disembarked from a U-boat which had sailed up from the secret Antarctic base ... :)
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  35. There was a guy living on the outskirts of the small town I grew up in / near, and he had a Bren Gun Carrier and later added a Ferret Armoured Car.
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  36. It sounded like Dr. Felton was saying "Vulcan" (with a "u") to me - it's the British accent ... which isn't surprising given that he's British.
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  37. And here's the script for that video ... [Intro music] Not many people know of an intriguing spy drama which played out in London during World War Two. A German spy parachuted into England - unfortunately for him and The Third Reich, he was captured and executed at The Tower Of London. [Outro music] Thanks for watching, please subscribe and share. Also visit my audio channel War Stories With Mark Felton. You can also support both of my channels on PayPal and Patreon - details in the description box below.
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  38. Excellent job, Mark! Enjoyed watching this while having a lunchtime cuppa. The airlift was very impressive ... but I was very impressed with many of the individual figures, and especially a German team of 12 unloading 10 tons of coal in 5 minutes and 45 seconds, and a French team building Tegel airport in under 90 days! Dropping chocolate bars to the kids was a great idea. :)
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  39. Great video, thanks! BTW, Japan was also at war with the Netherlands: seizing the Dutch East Indies colony, sinking Dutch ships, capturing and imprisoning (and executing) Dutch service personnel, and destroying Dutch aircraft (a whole lot of seaplanes were caught at anchor when the Japanese bombed Broome on Australia's northern coast). In return, the Dutch submarines operating out of Fremantle, WA, were busy sinking Japanese shipping.
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  40. "The sun shines just the same afterwards". And to me, that's the thing that's so hard to process sometimes. The sun can be shining in what would be a nice fine day, then terror and death descends on your life, and then afterwards the sun is shining in a nice fine day ... as if nothing had happened.
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  41.  @tomhannah3825  During a WW2 remembrance in Australia about twenty years ago, some young Japanese tourists were shocked to learn that their country had been at war with Australia.
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  42.  @michaelomalley1856  Imagine the indigestion! And his mother: "Alexander! Don't you DARE devour another book this late in the afternoon! I've been slaving over a hot stove for hours to cook dinner, and I just will not stand hearing you say you're not hungry again tonight!"
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  43.  @riograndedosulball248  It has been coming to light in recent years, though. I knew nothing of this until about five years ago.
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  44. Until I read Antony Beevor's book "Stalingrad", I didn't realise the Italians had fought on the Eastern Front. The book also tells the story of Italian POWs in the USSR.
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  45.  @skrimper  Always treat your puppy as if it's loaded - point it into the sand box in order to prevent an unauthorised discharge ...
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  46.  @Eagle_the_18th  It's like that German lady who was a Luftwaffe pilot and ended up running sex shops.
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  47.  @trooperdgb9722  That's what it was designed for.
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  48.  @annoyed707  LOL! "I am sorry, Comrades OberLeutnant and Feldwebel, but your travel permit is out of date - don't you know there's a war on? Where did you say you were from, again?"
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  49.  Guy Incognito  Indeed. "Gaul to survive" would've been the situation had they overshot Scotland and landed in France.
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  50. We certainly are fatter than our grandparents and great-great grandparents - this is very hard to deny when one sees people getting around with guts that arrive somewhere 1 minute before they do.
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