WWII Forums Quiz Part VII

[scarface]

ahem!....

Mr. Slip Digit !!!!!!!

(...pssst....Jeff.....



..... are you there???)

[Slipdigit]

On what day did the Reichswehr cease to exist?

[mikebatzel]

14 October 1935?

[Slipdigit]

Y'all are going to shoot me. I forgot to write the date down and the book is at the house. I may call my wife later and see if she can find the page for me.

[Slipdigit]

Correct year, wrong month and day (at least by my source).

[macrusk]

March 16, 1935

Sir Eric Phipps (Berlin) to the Foreign Secretary, March 16, 1935
Chancellor [Hitler] who returned here last night, has just summoned me and informed me in the presence of Baron von Neurath [Foreign Minister] that the German Government has decided, in reply to the two years period of service voted yesterday by the French Parliament, to bring in universal military conscription in Germany at once. Peace army will consist of about 500,000 men . . . From German Secret Rearmament, 1934-5

The Reichswehr was the name of the German armed forces until March 1935.

Afterward, with the introduction of the draft with the new law,

Gesetz für den Aufbau der Wehrmacht, from 16 March 1935, the name of Reichswehr was replaced by Wehrmacht to denote German armed forces. The Reichswehr was a small armed forces made up of 100,000 soldiers, 4,000 army officers, 15,000 sailors and navy officers, and 3,040 civil servants with officer rank. James S.Corum,

The Luftwaffe: Creating the Operational Air War, 1918–1940 (Kansas,
1997), p. 85. from https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/dspace.../1/rigg_bm.pdf

Proclamation to this effect has been issued to the German nation. (646)
[Ref.: E.L. Woodward et al., Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919-1939 (H.M.S.O.), 2nd series, XII]

Searching for answers and I learn things I didn't know before!

[Slipdigit]

Ding ding ding ding ding ding ding

Michelle is on the money.

The floor is yours.

[macrusk]

Hmm, since I love sharing what I've recently learned

What was the Mark I and its significance?

[mikebatzel]

The Mark I is a British Tank of WWI. It was the first and most successful heavy tank of the war

[macrusk]

Sorry Mike, I didn't think of clarifying that it was not the tank - this was something else, a later development of the WWII.

[mikebatzel]

An early version of the Supermarine Spitfire?

[macrusk]

Related to a weapon but not a weapon. See Roll of Honour.

[creeper2ads]

Randome guess-smoke bomb? (NOT CORRECT!, just guessing)

[skunk works]

Not that 55 foot long, 8 foot wide 760,000 pieces, 5 ton, 500 miles of wire, built by Howard Aiken & Grace Hopper for the Navy in 1944, for gunnery & ballistic calculations, and used until 1959 computer ? Is it ?

[macrusk]

Ta Da!!

Skunkworks has got it right!

From Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper
About Rear Admiral Grace Hopper

".... After Pearl Harbor, Hopper decided to serve her country during World War II. In 1943 Hopper was sworn into the United States Navy Reserve. She was commissioned a Lieutenant (JG) and was ordered to the Bureau of Ordnance Computation Project at Harvard University. She became the first programmer on the Navy's Mark I computer. Hopper loved this 8 foot high, 8 foot wide gadget filled with relays, switches and vacuum tubes. Once, while working on Mark I, a group of admirals came to see the machine in action. Earlier that day, something failed and was causing the computer to shut down every several seconds. Hoppers quick thinking saved her and her staff some embarrassment. She leaned against the machine and kept her finger discreetly on the start button the whole time to keep the computer running. The Mark I made mistake after mistake but the admirals didn't notice. They left thinking they witnessed and error free run.

In 1946, when Hopper was released from active duty, she joined the Harvard Faculty at the Computation Laboratory where she continued her work on the Mark II and Mark III. She traced an error in the Mark II to a moth trapped in a relay, coining the term bug. This bug was carefully removed and taped to the log book. Stemming from the first bug, today we call errors or glitch's in a program a bug. In 1946 she joined the Eckert-Machly Computer Corporation (later called Sperry Rand). At Eckert-Machly she helped design the first commercial electronic computer called the UNIVAC. The UNIVAC operated a thousand times faster than the Mark I."

Your go, skunk works.

[skunk works]

Two ships, disabled in battle were left behind (from main group) to tempt the enemy to dispatch ships to finish off cripples. It was an ambush, but discovered by enemy float planes. They spit the hook.

Name the ships

[skunk works]

Hint?

In the pacific, 1944

[skunk works]

Hint again?
American ships
a CL & a CA, known as Bait Division 1
under tow at 5 knots

[scarface]

I just did a 'Google' on 'Bait Division 1', and all I got was a page full of links to fishing tournaments!

-whatever

-Lou

[skunk works]

Didn't think it would be that easy, did ya?

The "tugs" were...
USS Pawnee, and
USS Munsee

[macrusk]

The ships Houstonand Canberra

Schneider diary:
"10-14-44 Still hitting Formosa. B29 hit there also today.
In 72 hours we've had 6 h