Did you Know?

[TheRomanRuler]

16. Did you know?
Due to large front that had to be held with so few men, Finnish soldiers were often so exhausted they slept trough enemy air raids/artillery bombardments directed at their positions?
Every now and then it happened to other nation`s soldiers too, i just used Finns as example.

EDIT: Not really that unkown is it? o

 

[wildbillhdmax01]

17. Did you know: William Hitler, a nephew of Adolf Hitler, was in the U.S. Navy during WWII? He changed his name after the war.

 

[Bluestreak2k5]

18: Did you know?
That Boeing covered its entire B-17 aircraft production facility with a fake town in order to camouflage it.
http://www.taphilo.com/history/wwii/USAAF/Boeing/index.shtml

19: Did you know?
Germany used captured currency specialists (usually Jewish) to actually create authentic British Notes, and used these notes to buy items through Switzerland and other places. It was part of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Bernhard and the notes were so realistic that Jews were using the notes to buy equipment for Israel.

 

[RorySheen]

20: Did you know?

That Americans were so worried about potential German and Italian spies sneaking into the US that they did a deal with Lucky Luciano in order to get the Mafia to help them out and provide the US Navy with information.
Members of the Mafia also provided a lot of information about Sicily prior to the Allied invasion of Sicily. Lucky Luciano provided the Americans with Mafia contacts in Sicily and another mob boss even became an official advisor to the US Army.

I could be wrong but I believe that the Sicilian Mafia may have caused trouble for the Italian army prior to the invasion too.

I know this isn't exactly an unknown fact but it's a fact that I quite like, since it rarely gets mentioned, even though it was known by most people at the time.

 

[SFSLovenought]

21: Did you know?
The Japanese weren't the only ones to have an official suicide formation.
The Germans established the Leonidas Squadron, which would have used a manned version of the V-1 flying bomb.
Although Hitler was eventually persuaded to call off the project, several dozen German pilots still killed themselves attempting to destroy Soviet held bridges over the Oder river during the desperate fighting around Berlin.

 

[podcat]

21: Did you know?
The Japanese weren't the only ones to have an official suicide formation.
The Germans established the Leonidas Squadron, which would have used a manned version of the V-1 flying bomb.
Although Hitler was eventually persuaded to call off the project, several dozen German pilots still killed themselves attempting to destroy Soviet held bridges over the Oder river during the desperate fighting around Berlin.

I actually thought it was the other way around? Hitler was very against the idea of suicide attacks and considered it un-german.

EDIT: He did approve the project though with some reservations http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_Squadron


There was also Sonderkommando Elbe (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonderkommando_Elbe) which was a unit set up for ramming allied bombers mid-air, but the idea there was to bail out to safety.

 

[SFSLovenought]

I actually thought it was the other way around? Hitler was very against the idea of suicide attacks and considered it un-german.

EDIT: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonidas_Squadron

{Sheepish Blush}
I was just going off memory, and I remembered they went ahead a bit and then stopped.
Since nothing started or stopped in the 3rd Reich without going past his desk I just kind of assumed he was persuaded to cancel it (After being convinced to start it earlier.)

Sorry...PodCat~Sama...It won't happen again...

 

[bestmajor]

10. Did you know?
That 12 men alone of some W-S recon squad forced the capital city of Yugoslawia, Belgrad, to give up in 1941?
They drove into the city and bluffed they had several divisions in the city outskirts, but the next german division was over 80km away.

how does this make sense? iirc belgrade was declared as open city.

 

[TWking]

22. Did you know?
The Tirpitz had it's own cinema.
It also had it's own newspaper and bakery.

 

[shal5]

23. Did you know?
After the Norwegians sank the German ship Blücher, they landed the rest of their forces in Drøbak and took the train to Oslo.

24. Did you know?
When the Germans arrived in Oslo, they started play music to calm town the population. (Marching band music with instruments that is)

 

[jasonf]

25. Did you know?
That the third largest navy in the world at the end of the war was Canada's?

 

[Gamer_1745]

26. Did you know?

General Henri Guisan, the ranking Swiss general, brought all the Swiss officers colonels and higher into one field at the same time? What would have happened if say the Germans attacked this gathering?

 

[-Toni82-]

how does this make sense? iirc belgrade was declared as open city.

So now you know why

 

[telesien]

Did you know?

Israel was armed by German Bf-109 fighters supplied by Czechoslovakia under local brand Avia.
Jewish fighters and RAF veterans were flying Nazi planes against Arabs in Spitfires.

 

[ingwe]

Did you know that the Japanese created several submarines capable of carrying aircraft and that they were planning to attack the panama canal?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I-400_class_submarine

 

[CptVicky]

So your proof for your conspiracy theory is to cite conspiracy theory websites, authors, and deprecate valid sources? Mmmmkay.

I'd say posting BS conspiracy theories like this is going off-topic, since this is supposed to be a thread about *facts*, but that's just me.

It appears he didn't bither post the full story either.

Further clarification.

15. Did you know?
18 of the 20th highest finance supporters for Hitler came from american-british industries?
Bush Dynastie, Ford,....

And once again, [Citation needed].

 

[pacja]

27. Did you know?

In the early 1943, Italy's Regia Aeronautica tested Piaggio P.108 bombers modified as gunships with a 102mm cannon mounted in the nose. Despite never achieving an operational status, those planes had the largest caliber airborne gun until the introduction of 105mm howitzers on the AC-130s in the late Vietnam War.

 

[TheRomanRuler]

26. Did you know?

General Henri Guisan, the ranking Swiss general, brought all the Swiss officers colonels and higher into one field at the same time? What would have happened if say the Germans attacked this gathering?

Yes i know, thanks to TRE mod

 

[EmperorTojo]

28. Did you know?

In 1944, when Germany was at the brink of defeat, they signed the Nippon-German Technical Exchange Agreement with Japan, which evolved an effort to transfer German schematics of planes, dismantled V2 bombs, and other technological advances through the use of submarines. At the end of the war, Japan relied heavily on this for their development of planes especially.

 

[mvsnconsolegene]

29. Did you know?

That at the time of the 1943 Armistice, that Germany was providing the Italian Fascist Militia with armour and materials (Panzer IV. Ausf. G, PzKpfw III Ausf. N, StuG III Ausf. G, etc.) so that it could form an elite and politically-oriented armoured division that would be loyal to Mussolini? The 1ª Divisione Corazzata di Camicie Nere "M" was purged of fascist sympathizers and subordinated into the Royal Italian Army (as the 136ª Divisione Corazzata "Centauro II") when its officers sided with the State after the dismissal of Mussolini.

Guess the training didn't work.

EDIT: Or that it wasn't a good idea to form a division out of the survivors of decimated Italian units from the Eastern Front.

- CG