The Me 163 liquid rocket fuel was made of two separate components, one being hydrogen peroxyde, the other Potassium permanganate. The jet trail was purple! As you can imagine, these liquids were extremly aggressive. When refuelling, the two fuel components had to be fed in at separate times, and the plane had to be abudantly hosed in between or else.

The pilot had to wear a special flight suit which was rather imperfect. There were occasions when there were pipe ruptures at landing, the cockpit got flooded, and the poor pilot simply melted. Yuk, to say the least.

Also, landing that high wing load brute on a simple skid was literally a pain, as there were a lot of spinal injuries as a consequence.

Another example of those bright ideas Germans came up with. Pretty on paper, bringing lots of political kudos to the originator and his sponsors, but meaning hell for the poor guys who had to operate those death traps.

Cheers,

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On May 28 1940 de Gaulle's tanks forced the German armour to retreat at Caumont. He became the first and only French commanding officer to force the Germans to retreat during the invasion of France.

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Some BBC transmitters during WW2:

GUSTAV SIEGFRIED EINS, mainly for the European mainland and the Wehrmacht.

SENDER ANTLANTIK, meant for the personnel of the Kriegsmarine and with as main task misleading.

SOLDATENSENDER CALAIS, the later successor of Gustav Siegfried Eins, with the same aim.

WEHRMACHTSSENDER NORD, which was important after the invasion for that part of Europe that was liberated.

http://www.documentatiegroep40-45.nl...el/radio2.html

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Black Propaganda

ON MAY 23, 1941, a few German civilians and soldiers, twisting the knobs of their radios, suddenly heard in German ,"Here is Gustav Siegfried Eins" repeated several times, followed by "Calling Gustav Siegfried Eighteen." Then came a message in a very easily decipherable code apparently directing one underground agent to meet another, then, in clear German, a diatribe against Hitler's deputy, Hess, who had recently flown his plane solo to Scotland on what appeared to be a private peace mission, and against "that flatfooted bastard of a drunken Jew Churchill.".

This was the beginning of Britain's fantastic "Black Propaganda Radio" operation .

All of the broadcasts came from a station in Britain whose chief, Sefton Delmer, spoke the language fluently, and had access to detailed reports of conditions inside Germany from British Intelligence, reports of bomber crews, captured German soldiers, etc.

At the end of World War 2, Delmer was awarded an OBE and returned to journalism.

http://www.seftondelmer.co.uk/contents.htm

It was amazing however, how many Germans were genuinely taken in, and did in fact believe the station to be a German Forces Radio.

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Even though German propaganda loved to present German battleships, tanks and fighters: The Germans could not have lead WW2 without the help of 3 million horses. It was the last war in which horses played a major role.

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If someone tries to remove the speck in your right eye, will you turn to him the other also?

Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler:

It is estimated that over the course of it's life over 60,000 men had served in the Leibstandarte.

http://www.vampire-bat.co.uk/panzer/..._Divisions.htm

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Leicht Kreuzer Emden

http://www.feldgrau.com/emden.html

Mar 45: Emden sailed from Konigsberg lacking much of her machinery, carrying Hindenburg's coffin, his widow and about 1,000 refugees. Arrived at Kiel.

According to Cajus Bekker they were buried in Aug 1946 to Marburg ( Elisabeth church? ) ( Marburg an der Lahn according to Wikipedia )

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_von_Hindenburg

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During opening German barrage in Belgorod sector on July 5th 1943 that marked beginning of Operation Zitadelle more shells were fired than during all of the French and Polish campaigns!

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There is no difference between death and life-just a circle to be closed by time.

I must say that it seems there were some interesting feelings left after WW1 between the French and the British.

From Julian Jackson´s : The Fall of France (2003 )

" French politicians were even more ignorant of Britain than the British of them. The image of "Perfidious Albion" ran deep. When Chamberlain visited Rome in January 1939, Daladier confided his opinion to the American Ambassador, William Bullitt, who passed it on to Roosevelt:

He ( Daladier) fully expected to be betrayed by the British and added that this was the customary fate of the allies of the British. Daladier went on to say that he considered Neville Chamberlain a desiccated stick; the King a moron; and the Queen an excessively ambitious woman who would be ready to sacrifice every other country in the world in order that she might remain Queen of England.He added that he considered Eden a young idiot and di not know a single Englishman for whose intellectual equipment and character he had respect. He felt that England had become so feeble and senile."

----

The British regareded French politics as Byzantine, French politicians as frivolous, and the country as decadent.

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Here is an interesting one.
According to 21st report to Congress on Lend-Lease Operations, USA delivered 15,417,000 pairs of army boots to Soviet Union during the war.

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There is no difference between death and life-just a circle to be closed by time.

They also sent 300 M3 Lee's and i think 36 M10's

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Goto wwiif.cjb.net for a new wwii forum.

By 1939 the 49 year-old Colonel Charles de Gaulle had spent two years in command of the 507th Tank Regiment (RCC) and earned himself the nickname of "colonel motor".

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Finnish women helping in the WW2

In the 1920’s there had been established a Lotta-Svärd organization which got its name from the poem titled Lotta Svärd which was written by the national poet Runeberg. The organization trained women in national defense duties. Lotta’s had to swear a Lotta-oath, so they were a half-military organization. (The organization was abolished by Soviet Union’s demand in the fall of 1944). When the war broke Lotta’s were ordered to the front for medical treatment, feeding, air control, communication, field post, collecting the K.I.A’s and many other duties. 300 Lotta’s were killed and 400 injured on the front.

http://www.wmin.ac.uk/mad/coursearea...hamalainen.doc



Finnish Lotta Svärd awards in WW2

http://www.wehrwolf.net/finland/lottasvard.htm



Finnish Lotta´s studying

More pics:

http://www.lottamuseo.com/lottakuvia.htm

The Finnish women were not soldiers like in the Red Army ( for example )but otherwise did everything they could to help.

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The Red Ball Express

http://www.strandlab.com/redball/

The Red Ball Express was the codename for one of World War II's most massive logisitics operations, namely a fleet of over 6,000 trucks and trailers that delivered over 412,000 tons of ammunition, food, and fuel (and then some!) to the Allied armies in the ETO between August 25 and November 16, 1944.

In a desperate effort to bridge the gap between user units at the front and mounting stockpiles back at Normandy a long distance, one-way, "loop-run" highway system — dubbed the Red Ball Express — was born.

." It began on 25 August, with 67 truck companies running along a restricted route from St. Lo to Chartres, just south of Paris; and reached a peak four days later with 132 companies (nearly 6,000 vehicles) assigned to the project. Communications Zone (COMMZ) and Advance Section (ADSEC) transportation officials were responsible for overseeing Red Ball activities, but it required the support and coordination of many branches to succeed. While the Engineers were busy maintaining roads and bridges, MPs were on hand at each of the major check points to direct traffic and record pertinent data. Colorful signs and markers along the way — not unlike the old Burma Shave signs that covered America's own countryside — kept drivers from getting lost, and at the same time publicized daily goals and achievements. Quartermasters truck drivers, materiel handlers, and petroleum specialists were ever present both along the route and at the forward-area truck-heads. Disabled vehicles moved to the side of the road, where they were either repaired on the spot by roving Ordnance units or evacuated to rear-area depots.

Round-the-clock movement of traffic required adherence to a strict set of rules. For instance, all vehicles had to travel in convoys and maintain 60-yard intervals. They were not to exceed the maximum speed of 25 mph and no passing was allowed. After dark, Red Ball drivers were permitted the luxury of using full headlights instead of "cat eyes" for safety reasons. At exactly ten minutes before the hour each vehicle stopped in place for a 10-minute break.

In late August, Eisenhower decided to forward most petroleum supplies to the First Army (Hodges) and the British 21st Army Group (Montgomery). This action was to come at the expense of Patton's Third Army to the South. On 31 August, Patton's daily allotment of gasoline dropped off sharply from 400,000 to 31,000 gallons

Finally, the Red Ball Express had an inherent problem in that it was fast approaching a point of diminishing returns. As the route got longer and longer, the Red Ball required more gasoline — ultimately as much as 300,000 gallons per day — just to keep the Red Ball vehicles themselves moving.

The map of the route:

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resour...Images/pg5.gif

An article:

http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2...200202151.html

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Well, this and that...

Roosevelt and Churchill forged a close friendship as their countries struggled against Hitler, but their relationship did not begin well. They had first met in 1918 at a dinner in London, when Churchill was minister of munitions and Roosevelt the young assistant secretary of the navy. Churchill quickly forgot the encounter, but Roosevelt did not. Years later he recalled that Churchill “acted like a stinker” and was “one of the few men in public life who was rude to me.” As president, Roosevelt put his feelings aside in 1939, when Churchill returned to the post of first lord of the admiralty. “It is because you and I occupied similar positions in the First World War that I want you to know how glad I am that you are back in the Admiralty,” he wrote. After Churchill became prime minister in 1940, he and Roosevelt met a second time for a wartime conference aboard ship off the Newfoundland coast in August 1941. And Churchill traveled to Washington several times after the United States entered the war, even spending the Christmas holidays at the White House after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

http://americanhistory.about.com/lib...casablanca.htm

At the final Casablanca press conference on January 24, Roosevelt announced that the Allies would seek the “unconditional surrender” of Germany and Japan . Churchill later claimed he was surprised by the president’s statement, as they had only briefly discussed the subject. Roosevelt himself said that the idea simply “popped into my mind” as he reflected on General Ulysses S. Grant’s strategy toward the South during the American Civil War .

Roosevelt had told the assembled sailors on the Memphis that during 10 days in Casablanca, the United States and Britain had agreed on “plans to keep the war going at full speed during the rest of 1943. We hope it will be over by then, but you can never tell. If it is not over, we will be even more ready in 1944 for the final victory.”

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[quote]Originally posted by Kai-Petri:
[QB] General George S. Patton never allowed himself to flinch under fire and strongly disapproved of officers taking cover, even during heavy bombing. One day during World War II, he found Major General Terry Allen in charge of a camp riddled with slit trenches. "Have you got a slit trench too?" he asked. "Yes, sir," Allen replied, pointing, "right over there." Without a word, Patton walked over to the hole, unzipped his pants, and urinated into it.

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This is true..but the rest of the story is that when General Terry De La Mesa Allen's "shotguns" or bodyguards saw this, it infuriated them so much they both instinctively jacked rounds into their weapons and took the safeties off. Georgie could be said to have flinched that day as he immediately left the area!

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Semper Fi,
Texas Fred

Christmas 1940

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/war/wwt...rfire_03.shtml

Facts for life in the UK:

This was the first real wartime Christmas.
This was also the first Christmas 'on the ration', with food rationing having been a part of everyday life for almost a year. By this time weekly rations were four ounces of bacon and/or ham, six ounces of butter and/or margerine, two ounces of tea, eight ounces of sugar, two ounces of cooking fats and meat to the value of 1/10d (9p), although in the week before Christmas, the tea ration was doubled and the sugar ration increased to twelve ounces.

There was still plenty of non-rationed food available, however - at a price. Wines and spirits were plentiful, but French goods were almost completely gone, and imported fruit was extremely expensive. For Christmas, practical gifts were in vogue - gardening tools, books, bottling jars, seeds. Some gardening magazines even recommended a bag of fertilizer as a gift, and the most popular present for Christmas 1940 was soap.

The usual seasonal football matches took place that year, although many players were in the forces, and transport problems meant long-distance fixtures were a problem. So the pre-war league was replaced by a regional structure, while scratch teams were the order of the day. Two famous football players, Tommy Lawton and Ken Shackleton, both played for two different teams on Christmas Day 1940 - Everton and Tranmere, and Bradford and Bradford City respectively. Brighton and Hove Albion, away to Norwich, could only muster five players, and their team was supplemented by Norwich reserves and supporters. Unsurprisingly Norwich won 18-0.

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The First US Army Group was activated 1943 in London, England to prepare the plans for the invasion of the European continent.





Omar Bradley's headquarters deployed to England in October 1943, and Bradley took on the dual task of First Army commander and acting commander of the skeletal 1st U.S. Army Group (subsequently redesignated the 12th Army Group). This Army Group had been established on October 19, 1943, to plan United States participation in the forthcoming invasion. Bradley would command the American army group when it was activated. But until the landings were secure, all American ground forces in northern France would be under the temporary command of General Sir Bernard L. Montgomery. Bradley activated 12th Army Group on 01 August 1944, and assumed command of 21 divisions comprising some 903,000 men.

Although its staff was largely transferred to the Twelfth Army Group in July 1944, the First US Army Group continued to exist on paper as a deception device until its inactivation on 18 October 1944. To mislead the Germans into believing that the Pas de Calais, rather than Normandy, would be the site of the invasion, Eisenhower's staff created a mythical 1st Army Group, with an order of battle larger than that of Montgomery's 21st Army Group.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/milita...army/fusag.htm

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