[OT] Strange WWII Things

[Paolo Tagliaferri]

I've found this on the web ... don't really know if this is true but some sounds quite weird ... [:0]
quote:
1. The first German serviceman killed in the war was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937), the first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940), the highest ranking American killed was Lt.Gen.Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps.

2. The youngest US serviceman was 12 year old Calvin Graham, USN. He was wounded and given a Dishonorable Discharge for lying about his age. (His benefits were later restored by act of Congress)

3. At the time of Pearl Harbor the top US Navy command was Called CINCUS (pronounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the Swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika". All three were soon changed for PR purposes.

4. More US servicemen died in the Air Corps than the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions your chance of being killed was 71%.

5. Generally speaking there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a p***enger on a cargo plane.

6. It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th round with a tracer round to aid in aiming. This was a mistake. Tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. This was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.

7. German Me-264 bombers were capable of bombing New York City but it wasn't worth the effort.

8. German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.

9. Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans.
They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were captured by the US Army.

10. Following a m***ive naval bombardment 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska. 21 troops were killed in the firefight. It would have been worse if there had been any Japanese on the island.

[jake431]

Very interesting; is there any way to verify any of this information? Cool stuff nontheless.

[Paolo Tagliaferri]

Well ... I think that internet search engines will surely lead to "stronger" sources to verify these facts.

For example: I searched about Calvin Graham ... and i found this:

Rick Schroeder, who we all know as Ricky Schroeder, played the part of Calvin Graham, in the Made for TV movie, “Too Young the Hero”. Calvin Graham, a USS South Dakota crewmember, was the youngest sailor to ever serve in the U.S. Navy. After serving 7 months aboard the BB57, locked up in the brig for 54 days, had his medals taken away, was discharged in 1943 when his mother told the navy his true age. He was finally awarded two purple hearts and back benefit pay 42 years later. The movie aired in 1988 on CBS.


I also searched about U-120 fate (I hardly believe that a submarine really was sunk by a toilet ...), and I found this page (http://uboat.net/boats/u120.htm). It seems that this boat was used for training purposes, and got scuttled on 30 April 1945 in "Operation Regenbogen" ... maybe they scuttled it by breaking its toilet ... :)

[Paolo Tagliaferri]

Ah! I like internet power!! I was curious about U-120, and posted a question about this "killer toilet" in the uboat.net forum. Here's what I got:

quote:
Hi Taglia,

It wasn't U-120 that was lost this way it was U-1206 (KL Karl-Adolf Schlitt).

Here is the story of the killer toilet:

“Every U-boat, except midget craft, had a toilet, with the larger types even having two, but one of them was usually used as a larder and therefore could not accommodate the crew until they had passed the contents through the other one. All U-boats had a so-called 'upper deck toilet' as men just urinated over the side. Of course, this luxury could not be used when the boat was submerged and once deeper than about 25m the interior toilet had to be closed as well because the water pressure outside the boat was too great to pump the contents out. This was hardly an imposition at the beginning of the war, but longer dives became the order of the day as the anti-U-boat measures became more ferocious, with boats in the Mediterranean and in American waters regularly remaining submerged for periods of 24 hours or so and special, high-pressure thunder boxes had to be installed. After all a functional 'head' could make all the difference between total and partial concentration.

The operation of this high-pressure toilet proved to be so difficult that men with a technical aptitude were specially trained to learn the intricacies of the new weapon. There was a delicate naval term for these men, and the term 'Toilet Graduate' will probably suffice in English. At least one boat, U1206 (KL Karl-Adolf Schlitt), was lost as a direct result of mishandling this complicated 'thunder box'. Kptlt Schlitt tried the system for himself but the LI sent a toilet graduate to help, and somehow with two minds on the same job, the levers were pulled in the wrong order and the commander's offering plus a thick jet of salt water was squirted into their faces. Seeing what had happened, the LI took the boat up to relieve the pressure, but some of the inflowing water drained into the batteries below to produce poisonous chlorine gases (chlorine is produced when salt from sea water reacts with acid in the batteries) and eventually, after an attack from aircraft, the boat had to be abandoned.”

Source: Showell, Jak P. Mallmann. U-Boats Under the Swastika. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1987. ISBN: 0-87021-970-7. Copyright: Jak P. Mallmann Showell, 1987.

Regards,

Ken Dunn


So ... it's true but at least it's less obscure now!

[simon]

With regard to 3, another crossover was the one of the British Army's armoured units, (I think it's the Royal Armoured Corps, although I might be wrong) had (Infact it still has) a skull and crossbones for their Cap-badge which bears a striking resemblance to the Waffen SS!

Another name change for propaganda, the German warship KMS Deutschland had it's name changed (I think it became the KMS Lutzow) in time for the battle for Norway, because Hitler was worried about the propagada implications if Deutschland was sunk!

And finally from me, initially British Submarines were numbered according to which class they belonged to, for example the fourth sub of the M class constuction would be M-4, until Churchill objected that he didn't want British subs numbered like U-Boats, so the Navy had to name them all instead.

[Ricky]

For more on Kiska, try this link:

http://www.multipointproductions.com/heroes/henri/the-battle-for-kiska-story.htm

RT take note - it also has an interesting slant on the Dolittle raids

And as for McNair:

In June 1944, McNair was posted to England to take command of the phantom 1st Army Group from Patton. While visiting the front again, he was killed by an errant American bomb during Operation Cobra near St. Lo, France, on 25 July 1944. He was the highest-ranking U.S. general killed in World War II. Tragically, his son, COL Douglas C. McNair, an artillery officer with the 77th Infantry Division, was killed in action less than a month later on Guam. McNair was posthumously promoted to general in 1954.
(from http://www.armyhistoryfnd.org/armyhist/research/detail2.cfm?webpage_id=395&page_type_id=3)

And for Nishizawa:

http://www.warbirdsresourcegroup.org/IJARG/nishizawa.html

[Paul Siemons]

Hello,

Admin,interesting stories, where can I find these on the web?


Greetings from Antwerp, Belgium


Paul Siemons

[GregP]

I found it by searching for "little know facts."

[PMN1]

quote:

10. Following a m***ive naval bombardment 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska. 21 troops were killed in the firefight. It would have been worse if there had been any Japanese on the island.


[/quote]

According to Morrisons Official History of USN operations in WW2 'A big operation was laid of for late July, but the Japanese fooled us by evacuating their 5,000 strong garrison under fog cover, leaving only three yellow dogs to contest the landings'

[i16stealth]

About US servicemen in Finland: I thought there weren't any.

[robert]

quote:Originally posted by i16stealth

About US servicemen in Finland: I thought there weren't any.


Like most postings of this type, the story is incomplete and misleading. The person being referred to is Army Captain Robert M. Losey, who was killed on April 21, 1940, and was the first American serviceman lost in the war. But he wasn't killed in Finland, and he wasn't killed by the Soviets.

Losey was the assistant to Major Frank Hayne, who was the Military Attache at the American Mission in Finland. Losey had been in Helsinki since February, 1940, as a nuetral observer. When Germany invaded Norway in April, the two were given orders to go to Stockholm, Sweden to observe the war from there. Losey was then given orders to go to Norway to assist in the evacuation of the American Embassy in Oslo. While there, he was then ordered to try and find a party of Americans who were trying to make it from Oslo to neutral Sweden, with whom contact had been lost. His car was draped with a large American flag, to attempt to identify him as a neutral American. He was in the town of Dombas, when a German air raid hit the town. He and several passengers from the train on which he loading his car ran for a railway tunnel to escape the bombs. Unfortunately, Losey lingered just inside the tunnel, close enough to the entrance to observe the air raid, and was hit and killed instantly when a bomb exploded close to the entrance.

So Captain Robert M. Losey was indeed the first US serviceman to be killed in WW2, and he was indeed attached to the American Mission in Finland. But he was killed in Norway, not Finland, he was killed by the Germans, not the Soviets, and he certainly wasn't an active belligerant...