Comments by "Sar Jim" (@sarjim4381) on "Mark Felton Productions"
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While the Panther was inferior to the MiG in almost every flight characteristic, the two things it had going for it was better fire control and better guns. The 37mm Nudelman cannon was a bomber destroyer and not something useful in fighter to fighter combat. Its rate of fire was only 40 rounds per minutes and it only carried 40 rounds of ammunition when fully loaded. It was a devastating if it hit, but the chances of hitting a Panther tearing past you at 570 mph was slim to none.
The Nudelman 23mm cannon were much better suited for dogfighting.but the engineering evaluation of the MiG showed it was overweight. To reduce weight, the number of cannon was reduced from three to two, and the ammunition per gun to only 60 rounds. The gun was very fast firing at 850 rounds per minute, a good feature in jet combat, but the MiG carried a mere 60 rounds per gun. A pilot had about 10 seconds worth of shooting before he was empty.
The Panther had four 20mm AN/M3 cannon. They fired at the slower rate of 700 rounds a minute, but the Panther carried 190 rounds per gun. All four cannon could fire for about 23 seconds before the Panther ran dry. The Panther also had the advantage of a computing optical gunsight compared to the less sophisticated and less accurate gyroscopic gunsight carried by the MiG. Combined with a rugged airframe and superb Navy pilots, the Panther managed to bring down seven MiGs for the loss of two Panthers during the Korean War. With the arrival of the Cougar, a much more capable aircraft developed directly from the Panther, the Panther continued on in the fighter-bomber role. The last Panthers weren't retired until the mid to late 60's.
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This was really a classic type of Japanese operation. Overly complicated, dependant on split second timing, not enough manpower or weapons, no back up plan, and using a kamikaze type attack rather than the parachute assault the soldiers had actually been trained to carry out. Japanese intelligence of American strength on Okinawa was nearly non-existent, and the numbers of troops and fighters already on the island was far in excess of their estimates. A largely nuisance raid like Operation Gi-gou could never seriously impair America's ability to continue bombing the home islands.
Some historians believe Operation Gi-gou was simply an army demonstration of how they too were willing to engage in organized suicide attacks. Operation Ten-Go, the doomed suicide attack of the Yamato and her escorts headed to Okinawa, happened five weeks before Operation Gi-gou, and there was great pressure on the army to show they were fully committed to the defense of the homeland. This operation was to answer the criticism of the army that Japanese soldiers, while they fought to death in defensive battles, had no offensive plans, especially for suicide attacks, while the navy and air force were losing thousands of men a week in such attacks. The fruitless Operation Gi-gou would seem to have been a political response on the part of the army to save face and show the emperor they were also fully committed. On such things did the last days of the war turn for Japan.
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@sadwingsraging3044 141 US soldiers were executed in WWII, all except one for murder, rape, or both. The sole exception was the rather famous case of Eddie Slovik, executed by shooting on January 31, 1945 for desertion. The military had long =feared an outbreak of murder, rape, and/or looting as the military began to take over enemy countries. They used the executions and a way to underline the military's resolve not to let this happen. Given the millions of troops involved with the invasion and occupation of Axis countries, the number of US servicemen who were involved in such crimes was far lower than would have been expected, but the idea you'd be executed if you committed such crimes, or at least would if you were caught, seemed to have a salutary effect in diminishing such crimes.
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First, the U-571 probably had no deck gun, or at least a large caliber deck gun. They had been removed from almost all ocean going boats by the start of 1945 or earlier as it was far too dangerous to try to sink enemy ships by gunfire. She carried a quad 20mm flak gun and a twin 37mm AA gun. Throwing the ammo and torpedo detonators overboard was part of the surrender order sent by Doenitz, so that's not out of the ordinary. Some boats even jettisoned their antiaircaft guns as well so there was no armament above decks. Firing off the torpedoes to lessen weight and give the men more room for the voyage also makes sense. Throwing the logbook, ship's documents, code books, and the men's identification overboard was part of normal Kriegsmarine policy if a ship knew it was going to surrender and had time to jettison these items. Sabotage of the engines ensured the boat wouldn't be of immediate use ot the enemy.
It's unlikely that Wermuth was the boat's commander before the surrender. He was the equivalent rank of a Lieutenant (j.g.) in the USN. No submarine would normally have such a low ranking officer as captain. Even that late in the war, a full Lieutenant was the lowest rank to command a sub. My guess is they learned of the surrender during the unexplained two days in port at Skagerrak, Norway. I suspect they were actually in port on May 8, the date of surrender, not the March 5 he told interrogators. Disagreements between Wermuth and the actual captain broke out about what to do after the surrender. Wermuth wanted to make for a neutral port while the captain wanted to surrender and then return to Germany. As was the case with several other subs in Norway at the time, those who wanted to stay left the boat to make it back to Germany on some other German vessel while Wermuth and the remaining crew started out on their long voyage. He may have taken on some German sailors also wanting to make a breakout to flesh out the crew.
Wermuth stated they travelled 66 days underwater using their snorkel. I assuming they were alternating engines, something they would have done to extend the life of at least one of them. Wermuth stated he was originally going to try for Spain or Portugal but allied air patrols were constant and he didn't think he could make it to either port unharmed. The other alternative was Argentina. Wermuth may not have known that Argentina had declared war on Germany since it would have happened while he was enroute to Norway, and he was presumably a busy man after that. He knew that Argentina had a large German population and the government had Nazi sympathizers.
If my guesses about what happened are right, an underwater voyage of 66 days would have been about right running underwater at no more that seven knots for most of the voyage. Wermuth hated the Americans and the British. He was an ardent Nazi and expected to be tortured and imprisoned if he fell into allied hands. Some or all of his crew may have expected the same given Nazi propaganda about the brutal way German POWs were treated. I've never been able to find out where Wermuth was born, He was said to have no friends and never discussed his family with his men. It's possible his home was now in the Soviet area of Germany, and he didn't relish being welcomed home by the Soviets, who had a special distaste for U-boat captains and officers. Whatever the reason, it appears Wermuth and his men decided to take their chances in Argentina. His epic voyage still remains clouded in mystery, but no evidence has ever been brought force to support any of the many conspiracy theories about the U-530.
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A stroke of luck it could be, but postwar interviews and Japanese naval records do indicate that I-26 was there at the time and did indeed do the shelling. The idea that a USN submarine was the one doing the shelling and that the entire crew had remained silent all these years is just laughable. Japanese submarines were well known for their poor performance in surface actions. They gun itself was noted for excessive dispersion, and the I-26 didn't carry a director, since the ones in use by the IJN were too heavy to mount on a submarine mast. Aiming was done using telescopic sights on the gun mount, put them too low for reliable long distance shelling. Japanese submarine tactics were to rely on their excellent torpedos, only using their deck gun on vessels judged too small to waste a torpedo on. Since these were generally merchant vessels that were either unarmed or poorly armed, Japanese submarines would come to nearly point blank range to sink the vessel. In at least 50% of the attacks, the shells either missed or hit non-vital parts of the target. The Japanese sub would then dive to escape an attack, assuming her shells did sink the merchantman. Japanese submarines were just not very capable when it came to attacking land targets several miles away, something their gun crews rarely practiced for. Japanese sub commanders felt these attacks put their boats at unnecessary risk for very little benefit, so they rarely pressed home an attack, preferring to mount a mostly symbolic shelling. Cdr Yokota, captain of I-26, was noted as being a particularly unaggressive skipper, as shown by the poor war record of 1-26 while under his command.
By June 26, 1942, US and Canadian antisubmarine forces had been fully aroused. This was particularly true with the attack by I-26, since Cdr Yokota was aware of the invasion of the Aleutian Islands starting on June 3. The main goal of the attack was not the lighthouse, but the radio station, one of the most important on the Pacific coast for both its long range transmitting capabilities and its RDF (radio direction finding) broadcasts used by merchant ships for locating their positions. Japanese intelligence on the exact location of the radio station was only approximate at best, and the radio towers weren't lighted, making them hard to see in the fading light, especially with the reported rough seas and two mile visibility in haze reported that night. The lighthouse keeper put out the light immediately after the first shell was fired, making locating the radio station that much harder. The radioman on the sub monitored the Point Estevan station as it continued to send out SOS signals, and the sub continued to shell, hoping that one would hit the radio station. Instead, the Japanese gunners were using the elevation of the light as their aiming point based on information the radio station was being the lighthouse, so their shell went harmlessly long into the uninhabited area further inland. I-26, fearing an attack by aircraft, moved back out to sea on the surface, using her high top speed of 23 knots to put distance between her and the likely point of of attack by arriving aircraft.
In fact, it took nearly 90 minutes for the first RCN (Royal Canadian Navy) Catalina patrol bomber to arrive over Point Estevan. Four other aircraft showed up in the next half hour, but the first Canadian subchaser took over four hours to arrive. By that time, I-26 was long gone. This was an acute embarrassment to the RCN, which had assured both its citizens and the USN that it was fully able to protect its coastline. The attack was reported as merely a bub firing a few shells and then submerging due to aircraft attack. This false report by the RCN has helped fuel the ridiculous conspiracy theories about an attack by a USN sub or even a Canadian cruiser. All the evidence points to the attack being exactly what it seemed - a Japanese sub shelling a relatively unprotected coastline. This is one of those continuing conspiracy theories second only to the sinking of the Australian cruiser Sydney , but being supported by nearly zero evidence.
Ironically, the attack by I-26 caused far more sinkings than her torpedoes and deck gun. All the Canadian lighthouses went dark and the RDF stations stopped transmitting after the attack. It's estimated that at least 15 merchantman were lost by running up on the many rocks and reefs along the Canadian Pacific coast with no lights or RDF stations to guide them.
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The Me-163 was built as a bomber destroyer, streaking through the formations in hope a few rounds would hit a bomber and bring it down. According to German testing, just four to five 30mm HE shells would cause fatal damage to an allied bomber. The problem was the 163 had very poor gunshights to begin with, and closing speeds of near 800 mph made hits as much a matter of luck as anything else. The Me-163 was never meant to be a dogfighter, a role excelled by the P-51. Most P-51's would just loiter above the bomber stream, wait for the 163 to run out of fuel, and jump it as its sink rate began to increase and maneuverability decreased. Somewhere between nine and eighteen allied bombers were lost to the 163 while at least 10 163's were shot down by the bombers themselves or escorting fighters. As far as I know, no 163 ever shot down a fighter in combat. The rocket fighter was a technological dead end, and Germany spent a lot of money, manpower, and resources it didn't have just to put a technically advanced plane in the air. It was not the only type of expensive weapon of doubtful utility developed toward the close of the war while looking for the wonder weapon that would win the war.
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Thanks for another interesting video. Syria was only in the Six Days War because of false reports that the IDF had been crushed and Egyptian forces were advancing n Tel Aviv. Not wanting to be left out of the division of territory after the war, the Syrian Army went into action. In addition to poor maintenance of its armored vehicles, they also had a plethora of types, from the Panzer IVs, Churchills, Shermans, and various Russian types, including the T-34 and T-54.
Even though the Syrians had over 1,000 tanks on strength, less than 300 were operation on the first day of the war. Israel swifty destroyed two thirds of the Syrian air force on the ground, ending any hope of close air support. Israel's aircraft were free to roam the Golan Heights, and any tanks that showed themselves were quickly attacked. There were a few hard tank vs tank battles when the Syrians were able to mount an armoured attack before the Israeli planes showed up, but many Syrian tanks were either abandoned by their crews or swiftly withdrew behind Syrian lines. The infantry was poorly trained and led, and it tended to break and run at the sight of Israeli tanks. The constant attacks by aircraft, while not really doing much damage to the Syrian defense lines, demoralized Syrian soldiers and caused many units to surrender en masse, sometimes killing their own officer trying to prevent the surrender. Syria had gotten itself in a war based on lies, and in a war it wasn't prepared to fight. All the Panzers in the world couldn't have helped them in 1967
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Great story. Many people in the US are somewhat familiar with the exploits of the LRDG due to the 1960's TV show "Rat Patrol". However, the producers decided to have three of the soldiers be Americans and only one British. This didn't sit well with British viewers, and even less well with Australians and New Zealanders, since the actual makeup of the LRDG was about half Aussies and Kiwis. The BBC pulled the show after six episodes. Australian TV showed it on Saturday afternoons. the traditional time slot for kid's shows. The show typically had three jeeps as a raiding party, far too few in real life, and they were armed with single M2 .50 caliber machine guns rather than the plethora of twin Vickers K and Lewis guns they were typically armed with, only having an occasional M2. Of course, being only a 30 minute show, there wasn't much time to develop historically accurate plots, even if the producers wanted to do so. It was primarily popular with kids who liked the shoot em up atmosphere of the show, and the show only lasted two seasons.
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One has to wonder how many other things could have gone wrong if this had been a real attack from the east.
The British sometimes had problems getting onto a war footing when the worst happened in the Falklands as well. The loss of HMS Sheffield showed this kind of confused thinking compared to the battle readiness of the captain and crew of her sistership, the HMS Glasgow, operating in the same task force. The Agave radar of the two Exocet carrying Argentine Super Etendards was detected at more than 40 miles out, and before the missile launch. As per policy, Glasgow sent out an urgent warning of the hostile aircraft to all ships of the task force over HF and UHF radio. The Sheffield's radio operators hadn't been monitoring the HF radio since that was a long range radio, and all ships of the task force were within 10 miles of each other. It never heard the UHF warning because Sheffield and HMS Coventry were carrying out idle chitchat on the UHF radio. The Sheffield's captain had decided that a submarine attack was the greatest threat and was zigzagging every 90 seconds, making the ship's radars less effective against an air threat. In addition to all this, the radar jamming transmitter on the Sheffield was non-functional All this confusion, failure to follow procedures, non-operative equipment, and general lack of situational awareness on May 25, 1982 caused the loss of an aircraft, and the loss of an irreplaceable destroyer and the deaths of 20 crew on May 4 of the same year.
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The US had operational Sikorsky R-4 helicopter squadrons in 1943, and they operated from ships and land. They were in Burma, the South Pacific, Burma, Britain, and Europe as the allies advanced. The Coast Guard gained a lot of experience flying the Navy version, HNS-1, on rescue and patrol flights along the US East Coast in 1944-45. The USN and RN flew R-4s from shipboard landing decks as early as 1944, and the USN was regularly flying the first vertical replenishment flight in the Pacific by late 1944. United Aircraft, Sikorsky's parent company, had built 100 R-4's by November of 1944. They were already building the R-5 (also named Dragon), a much larger and more powerful machine, by March, 1944, and the first went into service by February, 1945.
So, just to be clear, the Germans were not ahead of the allies when it came to helicopters in general. What they were ahead on what was the first heavy lift helicopter, the Fa 223. Even the Fa 223 was a dead end in terms of heavy lift birds as the the widely separated rotors required a plethora of chains, wires, and gears shafts, a fatal flaw that caused most of the Fa 223 crashes. Some of the design details were used in experimental US helicopters that led the CH-37 Mojave, largest helicopter in the world at the time of the first flight in 1953, and the first large enough a vehicle could drive onboard.
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My dad served on PT boats for three years in the Pacific. As much respect as I have for PT's, they just didn't have the fighting capabilities of the E-boats. They were low, fast, had small armored wheelhouses, and had superior torpedoes and torpedo launchers. They weren't built for Pacific fighting, where their bases would be primitive affairs, and they had to keep moving as new islands were taken. The E-boats were home every day in prepared bases, generally slept in barracks ashore, had their mess on the same land bases, and repairs were carried out by base mechanics. Because of this, an E-Boat needed a smaller crew and didn't waste space on things like a galley, bunks, or carrying a supply of repair parts. I hadn't heard of this operation, but i know E-boats were used to insert agents by the Nazis in Norway before the invasion. They should have been ideal for this operation too, as they proved to be. Excellent video as usual.
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@chrisneedham5803 135,000 rubles in 1945 for a T-34/85. Best I can determine, the exchange rate was about 20 rubles to the pound, so about 6,750 pounds. Since I'm a Yank, it's easier for me to work with dollars. The exchange rate to the dollar in 1945 was $4 to the pound, so the tank would have cost $27,000 to produce. By comparison, the cost of a Sherman was about $33,000 at the same time. The T-34 was cheaper, but not a whole lot cheaper.
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The English Electric Canberra was one of the few British military aircraft purchased by the USAF. It was designated the B-57 Canberra, albeit modified by Martin and later General Dynamic into a number of variants, including the WB-57 "weather" reconnaissance and RB-57 strategic reconnaissance aircraft. Both were used for checking on Soviet nuclear tests and deep penetration flights over the Soviet Union. Like the RAF flights, they remain classified, but at least one was shot down by SA-2 missiles in 1965 while flying a mission from Turkey. Some flew with the Pakistan Air Force to snoop on Indian nuclear tests and radar installations, once being shot down by friendly fire from SA-2 missiles operated by the PAF. The Republic of China (Taiwan) Air Force also operated RB-57 flights over China, only being intercepted and destroyed by a MiG-17 in 1958 with another shot down by yet another SA-2 over China. More RB-57's,, B-57, and Canberra B.20s of the RAAF flew in various phases of the Vietnam war, some as tactical bombers and others in all sorts of electric reconnaissance missions and night attackers.
The ultimate version of the RB series, the RB/WB-57F, flew mission from Japan, Germany, and RAF Mildenhall, all involved in some kinds of strategic reconnaissance, most of which are still classified. Even though the RB-57 is long out of service with the USAF, three WB-57 versions remain in service with NASA as scientific test beds, although rumors are they were also flying reconnaissance missions over Afghanistan, and at least one of them was flying out of Mildenhall to test equipment later deployed to Afghanistan. There's some doubt about how long these aircraft will continue to fly, but the civil registration of aircraft was renewed in 2018. Since the three NASA aircraft are still flying in some military roles, the service ceiling remains classified as "over 60,000 feet" it's rumored they can actually fly at 75,000 feet. Pretty amazing for an aircraft that first flew in 1954 while the EE version's first flight was 1949.
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The Mosquito wasn't close in bombload, even on paper. Although the theoretical maximum bomb load was 4,000 pounds, that was for a mission of less than 700 miles round trip. A more typical bombload was 2,500 pounds. The B-17 carried 4,500 pounds over ranges three times as long as the Mosquito, and had an internal bombload of 8,000 pounds over a 1,400 mile radius. A maximum bombload with external racks for a 700 mile mission was over 17,000 pounds. The B-17 was a slow but heavy strategic bomber while the Mosquito was a light but fast bomber, and later one of the first true multirole aircraft.
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The Japanese had used small scale banzai charges as far back as the Russo-Japanese war in 1905 and during the Sino-Japanese war in 1930's, but most of those were against troops armed with slow firing bolt action rifles and only a few machine guns. The first massed banzai charge against well armed modern forces was on Attu in the Aleutians in 1943. After all night repetitive charges by Japanese soldiers mostly using bayonets and swords, 2,600 of them were wiped out by massed machine gun and artillery fire, with only 29 soldiers too badly wounded to commit suicide captured. The US lost 549 killed and wounded, but the ratio demonstrated the futility of such tactics. Still, this last stand was in line with the Japanese bushido code of warfare, and the defense of Attu was romanticized in Japan as each soldier assuming the role of a samurai, something previously limited to officers and nobility. This set the stage for the tremendous waste of soldiers on Saipan.
As the war grew ever closer to the home islands, banzai charges were discouraged, since it was possible to evacuate some surviving troops from doomed islands to others to fight again. There were still some smaller scale banzai charges, particularly on Okinawa, but the Japanese high command came to recognize that Americans weren't going to break and run under massed banzai charges. The bushido code really didn't work in modern warfare.
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The Nazis had collected so much loot, and conditions in immediate postwar Germany and surrounding Axis countries were so chaotic, that it was inevitable that Allied troops would be involved in looting. For accounts I've read from US and British soldiers involved in looting, their view was so much loot was available that a few things stolen here and there would hardly be missed.
That would have been true if looting was confined to troops in direct contact with the loot and they just pilfered a few gold coins or some silverware. That wasn't the case, however, as the US and British commanders in the region did little to stop the looting. The supposed reason was this was all Nazi owned loot, and troops deserved a little of it after risking their lives fighting against the Nazia across Europe. No one took into account that a large portion of the loor was stolen from civilians.That evolved into a full scale theft and racketeering operation, with Army assets being used to transport stolen goods from Germany and Austria to more friendly neutrals like Spain, extending across the Channel to England and Ireland, and then transshipments on to the US. Bribes were being paid all the way from top commanders down to black stevedore troops to keep the operation going. The whole operation lasted almost a year before finally being shut down by special investigators from the Inspector General's Office, although even some of them were later arrested for at least aiding the operation. There are persistent rumors the bribery extended all the way to Eisenhower's staff if not to Eisenhower himself. It was and is a shameful organized crime operation within the Army, and one that still needs further investigation.
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Thanks for another interesting video. The Japanese had plans for a really huge submarine on the drawing boards in 1944. It would have been nearly 500 feet long, have a submerged weight of about 9,000 and, except for two torpedo tubes and as many as fourteen 25 mm machine guns for self defense, it was strictly a cargo submarine. It had two eight foot hatches and disappearing 10 ton cranes to handle the expected load of nearly 1,000 tonnes of cargo. The Germans badly needed tungsten, tin, rubber, and opium for making morphine. Due to the active fighting on the Eastern and then the Western front as well, the Germans were going through morphine faster than they could produce opium poppies. The Japanese needed the high quality aluminum and steel the Germans were producing, plus plans for the Tiger tanks, propeller and jet aircraft, and German radar. I doubt the idea of shipping a complete Tiger tank to Japan was ever a serious proposition with the I class subs. Needless to say, the Japanese cargo submarines were never built.
The Japanese did have one success transporting cargo when they converted the I-351 from a seaplane carrier to an oil tanker. She made a successful transit from Singapore to Japan carrying 500,000 gallons of high octane aviation gas. This could only be produced by former British Singapore refineries because Japanese refineries were built to produce larger quantities of lower octane gas. This was fine for earlier Japanese planes, but not for the larger, higher horsepower liquid cooled inline engines being built from German plans. The I-351 was headed back to Singapore on July 14, 1945 when she was sunk by the US sub Bluefish.
I'm sure you already know this, but the only navy to produce pure cargo subs in WWII were the Italians. Only having some antiaircraft machine guns for self defense if caught on the surface by allied aircraft, these 2,100 ton R class boats were built for trade between Italy, Germany, and Japan. They could carry 600 tonnes of cargo and could travel 14,000 miles unrefueled. They were potentially valuable transports, but the only two completed boats were sunk, one by the British sub HMS United and the other by allied aircraft within days of each other in July 1943 before they could complete any missions.
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By far the most successful interceptor against the V-1 was the old twin engined wooden Gloster Mosquito with any non-essential equipment stripped and carrying four 20mm cannon and four 12.7mm machine guns. It could fly at 420 mph, within the cruise envelope of the V-1. Mosquitos would take off from RAF bases carrying 2,500 pounds of bombs and rockets. They would attack any identified V-1 launch sites in France or Holland with their bombs and rockets. Once they were gone, the Meteor had the endurance to loiter over France, looking for the telltale plume of black exhaust from a V-1. Once one was spotted, the Mosquito pilots would accelerate to maximum speed and wait for the point the V-1 started to level out. It was at it slowest (350 mph) speed then and its most unstable. The Mosquito would come right up on its tail and fire a three second burst. THe combination of the armor piercing 20 mm rounds and incendiary 12.7 mm rounds was generally enough ot bring the V-1 down. Several kills were made by the same wing flipping technique as used by the Meteor when the ammo was exhausted. The Meteor was the glamour place of the fight against V-1's, being the world's first operational jet interceptor. However, it shot down or otherwise destroyed only 13 V-1's due of the issues Mark described in the video. The sturdy Mosquitos, taking on yet another new role, was the almost unsung hero, destroying 623 buzz bombs. Unfortunately, no aircraft could help once the V-2 ballistic missiles started falling on the UK.
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Another part of this story is the heroic rescue carried out by a Martin PMB-R Mariner flying boat. She was the transport version of the armed patrol bomber. She happened to be in Fiji on a refueling stop on the way back to Hawaii. The naval commander in charge at Fiji, having heard of the Cape San Juan sinking and being in possession her last known position from the RNZAF Hudson, asked if the Mariner could help. Neither Captain William W. Moss Jr., the plane's commander, or his crew had any training in ocean rescues. They were merely freight pilots, flying supplies between Hawaii and our Pacific outposts. Still, Capt. Moss, a Pan Am Clipper pilot before the war and pressed into service at the start, was an expert at handling big flying boats in rough water, so he was willing to give it a try.
He gathered his crew together to tell them of the mission. He said they may never find the sinking ship and, if they did, he might not be able to get the plane safely down in the huge waves out there. Getting the plane back in the air was even more doubtful. He was only asking for volunteers, Not only did his entire crew raise their hands, several other naval officers also wanted to risk it. Knowing the capabilities of the Mariner, Capt Moss was forced to turn down these offers as well as leaving being three of his own crew so there would be maximum room for survivors. The crew hurriedly stripped everything from the plane not absolutely needed for flight to give them their best chance of getting back in the air if they made it safely down.
After getting as much fuel as possible into the main tanks and two auxiliary tanks, the Mariner lifted off shortly after noon Fiji time. After a rough five hour flight through tropical rain squalls, they were at the last known position of the ship. They could see nothing through the squalls until there was what one crewman called a "miraculous break in the clouds" and right below them lay the Cape San Juan. Capt Moss could see many men in the water with very little hope of survival in the 15 foot swells. At the time, he didn't know about the shark carnage beneath him. Two more RNZAF Hudsons were circling about eight miles south of the Mariner, vigorously wagging their wings. Moss decided to investigate and found the Hudsons pointing out an eight mile long streak of floating oil, the slick reducing the waves from 15 feet to "only" 5 feet. After checking with his copilot, First Officer Frank Saul, they decided that the oil slick was their best chance and prepared the crew for landing. As he got closer, he could see black dots floating the slick, the dots being survivors in the water. He managed to set the plane down at the head of the slick and bounced along wave crests for almost the full length of the slick before finally settling down on the ocean.
A quick check showed the boat was not significantly damaged, so the next task was rescue. The crew threw out a liferaft at the end of a 100 foot line of rope. They taxied to the area where they had seen the most men in the water and killed the engines, fearing some men could be killed by the spinning props as the plane was coming down into the trough of a wave. For the next two hours, Capt. Moss kept the nose pointed into the wind as the plane surfed the waves.The survivors grabbed the lifeline and then pulled themselves into the raft. When the raft was full, Mariner crew hauled the raft to the plane and unceremoniously dumped the men into the plane. They repeated this five times until they had taken 48 survivors onboard. The plane was far over the normal maximum takeoff weight by then.
One of the Hudsons fired two red Very flares. Moss didn't know what they meant, only that red meant danger, and there might be another sub in the area. Since the plane was already overfilled anyway. Moss ordered the auxiliary tanks jettisoned and prepared for takeoff. The helpful Hudsons once again circled the best slick, and the Mariner taxied over and pointed the nose into the wind. Spooling up the engines to full power, the takeoff run began. It took a full 50 seconds by Saul's watch. The plane once again was gyrating wildly from wave to wave, one time almost dipping the port wing into the sea. Finally, one more collison with the top of a wave tossed the Mariner 50 feet into the air, and the Mariner started to fly. After another five or so miles of flying in ground effect 100 feet above the top of the waves, the boat was finally able to climb and turn for Fiji.
A last minute addition to the crew was Pharmacist’s Mate A.C. Burress, and he treated the injured men, some with shark bites, on the way home. In addition to bandaging wounds and setting broken bones, some got morphine and some got swigs of Admiral Halsey's whiskey, pressed into Moss's hands by one of the officers that had volunteered but had to be left behind. The rescued men were grateful for both types of medicine. The men were further treated at the naval hospital after a safe and relatively easy landing in the Suva lagoon. Capt. Moss and First Officer Saul were both technically civilians so not eligible for medals. The best they got was a commendation letter from the Navy. Moss had a half bottle of whiskey left which he intended to share with the crew. By the time he got to his quarters, it was near midnight. As he sat at the end of his bunk, he started to take a swig of the whiskey, but ended up downing the entire half bottle. He then fell into a deep and dreamless sleep, yet another unsung hero from that war so long ago. Sorry for the length of this, but I felt like this was a story that needed to be told.
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The capture wasn't happenstance. Captain Gallery was bound and determined his task group was going to capture a U-boat intact. He had boarding parties trained and drilled them so they could board quickly and disable any scuttling charges. His men trained in shooting targets in the body center mass so as not to damage any instruments or important equipment with stray bullets if a gunfight broke out. They also trained with bayonets and, at least in one case, a cutlass . The escorts all practiced depth runs that would do the most apparent damage to a sub without actually sinking it. His gun crews worked on firing patterns that would stop the Germans from manning the deck guns. They trained their fire just above the deck so the hail of gunfire would force sailors overboard without causing further damage to the sub. The fast action of Gallery's men allowed the capture by boarding of the first enemy ship captured by US sailors in combat since 1789. A combat photographer was on board the Guadalcanal, so that's why we have such a good record of the capture.
Admiral King was first going to court-martial Captain Gallery for towing the half sunken sub instead of getting the code books and sinking it. Admiral King rightly feared the Germans would find out about the capture and then change all their codes. Gallery had also drilled the men of the task force in secrecy. letting them know anyone who broke silence before the capture was announced would be spending the rest of the war guarding a lighthouse in the Aleutians. It worked, and not one man ever spoke of it until released by the Navy to do so. Gallery escaped a court-martial once those above King heard the story and saw the films. They knew they had the makings of the greatest Navy war bond drive ever. After the end of the war against Germany, that's exactly what happened, the U-505 visiting various East Coast cities during June, 1945, and raising millions from the sales of war bonds, with each bond purchased allowing the purchaser a tour of the boat, while the film of the capture played in an endless loop on the fantail. This notoriety and the work of Captain Gallery and his brother, Father John Gallery, to convince the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry to take the boat for display saved the U-505 from being sunk as a gunnery and torpedo target. As the video notes, the U-505 remains there to this day and is well worth a visit.
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Not any longer. All the ex-USN LST's have been retired. One, the ex-RHS Syros, ex-LST-325, was given to The USS LST Memorial, Inc, a group made up of mostly retired LST sailors. They made an epic voyage in the now officially renamed USS LSt-325, sailing her back to the US from Greece under her own power, starting on December 15, 2000 and arriving in Mobile AL on January 10, 2001. With the exception of one "youngster" of 52, the average age of the crew of 29 was 71. They made all the underway repairs and solved numerous mechanical faults to bring their ship back home. It's quite a story for anyone interested in naval history, and one impossible to read without a few tears.
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fazole, I see you are deep in the "Hitler escaped to South America" fantasy. The one Ju 390 V1 was destroyed on the ground in Dessau on April 25 when there are many witnesses that Hitler was still in Berlin.
There's no evidence Ju 390 V2 ever flew. Professor Heinrich Hertel, the technical director for Junkers stated that the V2 was never completed. The only claim it flew comes from one author who says he saw the logbook of test pilot Oberleutnant Joachim Eisermann, nd the log has two flights for the V2 on February 19, 1945. No one has ever seen this supposed log book. Even if true, the total flying time was 70 minutes. In any event, the V2 had a projected range of about 9500 km with maximum fuel. We will never know if either version could have achieved this range since neither ever took off with more than a half load of fuel.
The story about the Japan flight comes from one author, James P O'Donnell, who claims Albert Speer told him of a secret flight over the pole sometime late in the war. Speer never mentions this in any of his other writings nor is mentioned by Kössler or Ott, two reliable Luftwaffe historians. No one in Japan has ever been found who knows of this supposed flight, and there's no mention of the plane ever getting back to Germany if such a flight occured.
As to your idea in another comment that a "secure air corridor was formed from Berlin to Denmark in the last days", well, I guess I'd need more proof than a film presenting yet another theory. The Luftwaffe was barely able to get a plane off the ground without being attacked by allied aircraft in the last days of the war. The whole idea of a secure air corridor is just laughable.
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It wasn't the subs that failed, it was their weapons. Many boats staged attacks where they fired four and five torpedoes, all duds. Firing off a quarter of your torpedo loadout with no effect except attacks by Japanese depth charges can make a captain a little timid. Most skippers had never fired a fish in anger so it would take time for them to get good, even with good torpedoes. Time was one thing they didn't have.
To top it off, all the boats with the exception of a few S class boats had a gun armament of a single 3"/50 and a Lewis gun. The 3" gun was specified because the submarine command didn't want the boats to be tempted to slug it out with enemy patrol craft on the surface. Unfortunately, the deck gun was all they had left, and some commanders fought it out on the surface anyway. The Sculpin is one example, sinking at least two and maybe four merchant ships on the surface in the opening days of the war. Many subs were tied up transporting Filipino and American treasure and taking "important" people to Java and Australia. When caught on the surface by an air attack, the single Lewis gun and, if the commander was lucky and got it set up on the conning tower in time, the single water cooled .50 caliber machine gun, didn't stand much of a chance shooting down Japanese bombers.
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My late uncle was among the first of the US troops to occupy the Obersalzberg. They were part of a technical unit tasked with documenting Hitler's residences. Being a bunch of capitalists, they looked around at what they could take home with them that wouldn't technically be theft, but still give them something to sell back home. They decided on about 50 pounds of shattered marble pieces from the fireplace of the ruined great hall in the Berghof. They split it up between six guys and manage to get it back to the US in late 1945.
One of the soldiers was a lieutenant, Arthur Weatherhead, president of Weatherhead Company, maker of aircraft parts. I don't know which one of them had the idea, but I assume it was Weatherhead. The company made a casting that was a replica of the Berghof fireplace with a small piece of the marble insertion at the top. My dad was a machinist that was an expert witt castings before the war, and Weatherhead hired him to make the fireplace castings. It was some kind of copper color, very heavy metal. At the top was the phrase, "Flick your ashes on Hitler's hearth". There's was a piece of paper glued to the back with a summary of how the ashtrays came to be. The last time I saw this ashtray was when I was about ten years old, so that would have been 1956, but that phrase has stuck with me all these years.
I have no idea what happened to the ashtray. I had forgotten all about it before my dad passed away, but there were at least several hundred made. He moved around the west several times and I assume it was lost or discarded in one of those moves. To my knowledge, none were ever sold. They were given away to good customers and VIPs. My dad got his as a thanks from Weatherhead for making the castings. That temporary job turned intro permanent employment with Weatherhead. He was first a glassware washer in the lab. He went to college at night, got his engineering degree, and became an aeronautical engineer. He worker fro Weatherhead from 1945 until 1975. It was a great company, and they had employee picnics every ear where they rented Euclid Beach for the day, and all the kids had free run of the park, riding on as many rides as they could get in before barfing. There were tables laden with every kind of food you could imagine, and everyone got a steak, cooked by volunteer employees. He loved working for Weatherhead, but the aircraft industry recession of the mid 70's hit the company hard, and he was laid off, along with a thousand other employees, in 1976. My dad was an inveterate inventor, and he started a second career manufacturing a report binding machine of his own invention. He passed away in 2005. He was a great father and I miss him every day.
Sorry for the length of this but, as you might imagine, I was pretty excited to see the subject of this fine video. I wish I still had that ashtray. I remember it and the story so well from my youth. I wonder if there are any left? Seems like they'd have some collector value if there are.
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@KB4QAA Okay, arming the fusing, which can and was changed by a couple of the bomb techs that knew how to do it. Yes, it was dangerous, but they wanted to sink RN ships. Returning pilots reported the hits with no detonation, and going in at 10 feet was the only way to evade the CAP and AA missiles, and going in with zero altitude arming was the only way to do it. I guess I should amend my statement about detonating bombs to there were two that did explode when hitting Coventry , but the after action reports states the third unexploded bomb is what caused the fatal damage. I'm sure you know of Antelope sinking after attempts to disarm an unexploded bomb. My point, without making this into a book, was if all the bomb hits actually detonated, the damage to the task force would have been far greater than the six ships that were sunk.
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The Italian Co-Belligerent Navy was made up of men that almost all went over to the allied side. It had nine cruisers, 33 destroyers, 39 submarines, and a number the excellent Italian motor torpedo boats. Most were used in the Mediterranean, although at least three submarines were part of allied invasion of D-Day, and a larger number were used in the invasion od southern France. The cruisers and destroyers were valuable ships for convoy escort and shore bombardment. The submarines sunk a number of German vessels during the southern France campaign as well as in Italy for the mopping up of German forces still in Italy after the armistice. The navy in general was considered the least loyal to then fascist government, and Mussolini was always careful to have at least one political officer that acted essentially as spies to report any disloyalty or possible mutinies. Several were shot after the armistice as the Italian crews hated them and turned on them the first chance they got. There were active plans to integrate the Co-Belligerent Navy into allied forces for the final push into Japan, plans not carried out due to the surrender of Japan.
Three of the four Italian submarines stranded in Japanese waters after the armistice. The crew of the Ammiraglio Cagni heard of the armistice by radio on September 9 and managed to evade Japanese and German patrols by heading south. The boat surrendered off Durban, South Africa to the Flower class corvette HMS Jasmine on September 20. Crews of the other. three subs were interned by the Japanese after the armistice and were turned over to the German Pacific command. The Reginaldo Giuliani was sunk on February 17, 1944 by the HMS _Tally-Ho_. The other two made a few patrols with mostly German crews before the German surrender. The two subs were seized by the Japanese after the surrender, and about twenty Italian sailors agreed to fight for the Japanese while rest chose to be POW's. The last Italian submarine still in combat for s facist power may have been the last enemy vessel to shoot down an allied aircraft when the _Luigi Torelli_, unaware of the end of the war, shot down a patrolling B-25 off the coast of Java on September 30, 1945.
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The Piukara was a singularly unsuccessful aircraft during the Falklands War. The Argentine Air Force (AAF) deployed at least 24 aircraft to the Falklands and at least another 20 from mainland bases. Since the aircraft were designed for close air support and interdiction of ground forces. the RAF viewed them as a real risk. Instead, at least 11 were destroyed on the ground by a combination of air attack, SAS radis, and naval gunfire. The AAF conscript ground crews apparently had no training in dispersing and camouflaging the craft on the ground, so they were found neatly lined up in rows on airfields. Only a few were dispersed to hastily prepared landing strips, something the Pukara was supposed to be able to handle. One of these craft shot down a Marine Scout helicopter, the only Argentine air ot air victory of the war. Another Pucara, flying from one of these outlying strips that was unknown to the British, attacked troops advancing toward Goose Green. It was promptly shot down by small arms fire. It was the only known attack by a Pukara on British troops. In the defense of Argentine pilots, they were limited to only a few hours flying a month due to Argentine budget restrictions, and the aircraft didn't carry the kinds of radar and navigation instruments needed for low level, nap of the earth flying. This deficiency led to one Pukara being brought down by a Stinger missile. In the end, eleven Pukaras were captured by the British.
The AAF still has faith in the Pukara, although it probably doesn't have much choice. Other than a dozen A-4M FightingHawk attack aircraft and a couple IA-63 trainer/ground attack aircraft, the Pukara is the only combat aircraft available, and the only counterinsurgency craft. 20 have been taken in hand to upgrade their electronics and weapons fits and add modern engines. They should be much more effective aircraft when the upgrades are finally complete. With typical Argentine budget problems and bureaucratic meddling, a program that was supposed to be complete by 2017 is still dragging on today. It's expected the upgraded aircraft will soldier on until 2045, the last survivors of the Falklands War.
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Excellent video. Hardly anyone in the military history community has presented much information on Flight 777 until now.
There may have been another reason for 777 becoming a target. Despite Leslie Howard's reputation as a ladies man, there have been persistent rumors that he was secretly gay, or at least bisexual. The Germans supposedly had compromising photos of him. If they existed, they would have been devastating to his career and, by extension, the British war effort. An Abwehr agent was going to meet with him in Lisbon to threaten him with exposure if he didn't turn and become a double agent for the Germans. Churchill got wind of this from yet more decrypted Enigma transmissions. Howard was the most popular British male actor of the period, and he served as a spokesman for the British cause. Churchill and MI6 believed Howard had become too big a risk to MI6 operations since he knew many of the British spies operating in neutral Europe. They were also planning the Churchill deception on flight 777. It was going to be a much better outcome for MI6 if Howard was aboard 777, since he would go down in flames as a hero, and his death would cause yet more anti-German feeling in Britain. All this is just one part of a swirl of rumors about 777. I've never been able to find any solid proof for any of this. All the information supposedly came from people now long dead, and who had good reason to try to remain anonymous. It's a good example of how intelligence agencies in WWII, and I'm sure up until now, plan tissues of lies until no one knows the real truth.
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