Most improbable event in WWII, in your opinion?

Australians at Tobruk...

 

How is that improbable?

 

They were meant to be destroyed or pushed out by Rommel's men...just a bunch of RATS...

 

But so was everybody else opposing the Germans.

It just doesn't register highly on my improbablo-meter.

Not like the story of Yang Kyoungjong, the Korean captured in Normandy who had fought for the IJA, Red Army and Wehrmacht.

Or the story of Witold Pilecki, fighting throughout the war, first in the Polish Army, then as a member of the resistance, volunteering for Auschwitz, and fighting during the Warsaw uprising, only to succumb to Stalin's goons in '47.

Improbable events; I'd rank the Georgian Uprising and battle on Texel Island, well past the German surrender, as one. Georgians. In Wehrmacht uniforms. Fighting Germans. In Holland. After the war.

 

Rommel certainly thought it was improbable...each to his own I spose.

 

I suppose that is why the British left them there?

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Magee

I think there's a high chance of this story being at least partly B.S. but i'm still posting it!

 

The scale and success of Ultra.....and all the peripheral people and technology that it spawned.

 

Germans finding the keys to the bunkers of Westwall in Sept 1944...

 

I like the story about Master Gunnery Seargent Leland Diamond driving off an IJN cruiser with his mortar during the struggle on Guadalcanal.

 

Finns stopping the Red Army at tali-Ihantala

 

Thinking again about the most unlikey event I witnessed in WW2, consider the tale about Peter in this thread, go down to posting No3.

http://ww2talk.com/forums/topic/5808-christmas-in-hell/

Ron

 

Nice one.
I think I'd possibly add Finland's entire history of fighting and survival in the period. Almost nobody looking at it in any detail could have seriously predicted the outcome/s, and just how wounded the bear would be.

 

The loss of HMS Glorious:

A fast carrier in unsafe waters was ecorted by a mere two DD and nothing else. Despite the symbolic escort there was no CAP in the air, half the boilers were cold and not even all lookout positions had been manned.

If it had not happened and you made it up, people would tell you it's way to absurd to be credible.



Belgium:

Exactly four months before the German invasion a German liason plane crashed in Belgium and what did it carry? The German plan for the invasion of Belgium. Did the Belgians declare war on Germany or at least fully(but secretly) coordinate their defence with France and the UK? Not that I know. Incredible, they got it in writing but still didn't do a damn. And the result of that inaction was IMO a key reason if not the key reason for the succes of the Western Campaign.

 

I would say it was D-Day because of the liberation of France and all the events afterwards

 

I have heard this said many times.....
1. Is it true.?
2. Was it common on a mission "like that".?
I realize somebody has to have some kind of Plans/Details/Knowledge about what to do, but was that guy doing something that was not commonly done.?
Thank You

 

Louie Zamperini

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Zamperini

 

The Germans were surprised, the captured plan (if historically true as info about it is contraddictory) was captured after the initial drop so could have not have had anything to do with the inital German dispositions. The problem for 1sr Para was more that you cannot jump on top of a veteran amoured division, even a badly understrength one, and hope to get away with it. The British didn't suffer high losses during the jump, the problems came afterwards.

My "most improbable" ... the invasion of Northern Norway, if anybody had immagined the Germans taking Narvik in the face of the RN he would have been laughed at. The destruction of the Soviet air force in the early days of Barbarossa has also something of the incredible, there were a lot of Soviet planes and not that many German ones.