The Auk

"Those who know Field Marshal Auchinleck insist on his modesty. They relate that when he became known as 'The Auk' his officers came to him with the suggestion that their corps should henceforth bear the insignia of that ancient, ungainly bird. Ridiculing the idea of a personal build-up, he chose the elephant instead."

Anecdotage.Com - Thousands of true funny stories about famous people. Anecdotes from Gates to Yeats

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Tuesday, 26th September 1939

Nine Heinkel He 111s and four Junkers Ju 88s - following a reconnaissance flight by three Dornier 18D flying boats - attacked elements of the Home Fleet in the North Sea. It was during this action that Unteroffizier Karl Francke was mistakenly credited, by the Germans, with sinking 'HMS Ark Royal' in what was to be the Ju 88's first ever offensive action. The October 11th edition of the Volkischer Beobachter enlarged upon the supposed sinking and the cry 'Where is the 'Ark Royal' was repeated on German radio broadcasts. Francke was decorated with the Eisen Kreuz first and second class and promoted to Leutnant.

Later on Göring usually greeted Francke with " You still owe me an aircraft carrier!"

Amazon Online Reader : Ju 88 Kampfgeschwader on the Western Front (Osprey Combat Aircraft 17)

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American's Unheralded Enigma Breaker:
In breaking the Enigma for the American's the most unheralded effort was made by a man by the name of Joe Desch, who was an engineer to NCR. He did not posses an advanced degree, but developed the American bombes that cracked the Enigma through brute force coupled with other cryptoanalytic techniques. The building that this was done in still stands on the old NCR campus in Dayton Ohio on land now owned by the Univeristy of Dayton and is scheduled for demolition.
Do to the secrecy surrounding work done by many companies like NCR during the war, many almost went out of business when the war ended and they had nothing to market after spending the war years developing secret machines for the government.

Joseph Desch - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Great book to read: Jim DeBrosse and Colin Burke, The Secret in Building 26: The Untold Story of America's Ultra War Against the U-boat Enigma Codes, 2004

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Shortly after assuming office in 1945, president Harry Truman attended a series of historic meetings at which he was briefed on the Manhattan Project to develop atomic weapons. "That is the biggest fool thing we have ever done," he boldly declared. "The bomb will never go off."

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Normandy June/July 1944

"Prisoners taken both by 49th and 15th Scottish Division at this time were said to have asked to see the new British wonder-weapon: the belt-fed, multi-barrelled 25-pounder gun. Veteran Germans with battle experience of the Russian front asked with reverence to see this weapon, they refused to believe that the colossal weight of shells to which they had been subjected could possibly be fired by ordinary field guns!

Caen Anvil of victory by McKee

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Nuclear Reaction?

On August 6, 1945, when the first nuclear bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, 282,000 Japanese died and tens of thousands were left burned, maimed, and homeless.
When Albert Einstein, whose special theory of relativity formed its theoretical basis (and whose letter to Roosevelt had inspired the American research effort that resulted in the bomb's development), heard the news on the radio, such was his astonishment that he was rendered speechless - almost. His verdict? "Oi vey."

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As a life long pacifist Einstein may very well have uttered "Oi vey", and while his famous theory was the basis of the fission bomb he listened to his old friend Szilard and immediately grasped what was being said. However, when he did hear the concept his reaction was; "I never considered that".

And as horrendous as the atomics were, the numbers you used are off a tad.

When the first atomic was dropped on Hiroshima it is estimated that between 80 and 100,000 Japanese citizens (military and civilian) were killed outright, but since the records for the citizenry was kept "on site" the number may never be truly confirmed. Hibakusya (survivors) numbered more than 300,000 however. Physical illnesses due to radiation exposure, short term and long term effects took many of these as well. The population of Hiroshima at the time was about 310,000, plus 40,000 military and 20,000 daytime workers from the suburbs for at total of about 370,000 people. So it would appear at first glance that if there were more than 300,000 Hibakusya the number killed outright would be closer to the 80,000 number than the 100,000.

Over the next few months, and before the end of the year, according to data submitted to the United Nations by Hiroshima City in 1976, the death count reached 140,000 (plus or minus 10,000) by the end of December, 1945 which included the later deaths from radiation and other burns.


When the second was dropped on Nagasaki, it is estimated that between 70 and 75,000 civilian citizens were killed outright, with fewer radiation illnesses short and long term compared to Hiroshim as to the effects of the surrounding mountain and hill ridges which sort of funneled the blast from the industrial and port area away from the city proper. While their records were incinerated as well, the post-war figures are;

Death toll 73,884 persons
Number of injuries 74,909 persons


(From a report made by the Committee of Atomic Bomb Scientific Data Registry in July 1950.
Estimated population of the Nagasaki City before the atomic bombing was 240,000 people.)

The death toll total was bad enough in those two cities without exaggerating it; it was war itself however which brought about these deaths.

Without the bombs, and even without invasion in "Operation Downfall", the death toll to the Japanese would have exceeded those numbers from starvation and fire bombings before the Imperial Japanese finally accepted defeat. The conventional bombings continued until Aug. 14th remember?

Looking back, and not giving our American officialdom any credit, I personally would say that it was the psychological rather than physical damage which brought this nasty episode in human history to an end.

When the "Empire of the Sun", ruled by the "Son of The Sun goddess", and his subjects are eliminated by a (mis-quoted by Truman) "basic power of the sun", their entire cultural basis becomes irrelevant. It wasn't the size of the bomb, or the deaths from the bombs, it was the "nature" of the bombs themselves. If their enemy has harnessed the very power of their God and demi-God ruler; resistance is not to be continued.

The Japanese would not fight "forces of nature", they would let them pass and rebuild afterwards, volcanos, earthquakes, tsunamis. The would fight invaders and fires, but not nature. Just my "looking in from the outside", and knowing a number of Japanese personally and how devastating the "atomics" were to their psyche.

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Happy Trails,
Clint.

In December 1944, JG 400 had 109 rocketfighters of the type 163B available. Aside from the airfield in Brandis, additional airfields were in Leuna,Pölitz, and Heydebreck.

From Me 163 Komet by M Emmerling/ J Dressel

I guess they just did not have the fuel or pilots to all of them....

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Overall German General officer losses per theater

Poland 1939 0 KIA
Norway 1940 0 KIA
France 1940 1 KIA
France 1941-June 6,1944 : 1 KIA
Western front June 6 to May 7 1945 : 17 KIA
Africa 1941-43 : 7 KIA
Balkans 1941-44 6KIA
Italy: May 1943-Nov 30,1944 1 KIA
Eastern Front June 21,1941 to Jan 1945 : 82 KIA
Eastern Front Feb-May 1945 : 26 KIA
Balkans 1945 : 3 KIA
Italy 1945 : 4 KIA

From Quiet flows the Rhine by Maclean

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Luftwaffe Division commander casualties

GL Süssman 7th Airborne killed on 20.5.1941

GM von Wedel 10th Field killed 5.2.1944

GL Pistorious 4th Field killed 27.6.1944

GL Peschel 6th Field killed 30.6.1944

GM Crisolli 20th Field killed 12.9.1944

GM Erhard 7th Flak killed 17.4.1945

GM Krämer 11th Falk killed 11.5.1945

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The Daimler-Benz DB 601 was a German aircraft engine built during World War II. It was a liquid-cooled inverted V12, and powered the Messerschmitt Bf 109, among others.

The DB 601Aa was licence-built in Japan by Aichi as the Atsuta and Kawasaki as Ha-40 to be used in the Ki-61 Hien and in Italy by Alfa Romeo as R.A.1000. for C.202 .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daimler-Benz_DB_601

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Werner Best

http://www.holocaustresearchproject....tion/best.html

Lucky to survive as he was one of the persons creating holocaust.

"By 1935 Best was already a Standartenfuhrer – during World War Two he was promoted to SS- Obergruppenfuhrer – and the closest collaborator of Heydrich in building up the Gestapo and the Security Services. Between 27 September 1939 and 12 June 1940 Werner Best was Chief of Section l of the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) and it was in this capacity that he was charged and found guilty with complicity in the murder of thousands of Jews and Polish intellectuals."

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Churchill´s bodyguard:

Guarding the bulldog - Times Online

Driving back from Buckingham Palace in 1940, after the king had asked Churchill to form a government, Thompson congratulated him on the "enormous task" he had undertaken. "God alone knows how great it is," Churchill replied. "All I hope is that it is not too late. I am very much afraid it is, but we can only do our best." Tears welled in his eyes. He was 66.

In the desperate days of the fall of France in June 1940, the pair headed off to try to find the French cabinet. Before takeoff, Churchill asked Thompson for his revolver. "One never knows," he said. "I do not intend to be taken alive." No histrionics, these, for they were, as Thompson put it, truly "flying blind". "Incredible!" he wrote. "The prime minister of Great Britain high in the air, trying to find the whereabouts of our principal ally... A terrible fantasy."

They tracked down Reynaud, the French prime minister, to a chateau near Tours. It was dangerous on the ground, too, for Reynaud's mistress, Madame Hélène de Portes, was furious at Churchill's desperate pleas for France to continue fighting. "She came out in a fury of hatred," Thompson recollected. "I caught her and silenced her hysterics. She had no gun, though we found a knife on her person..."

Returning over the Channel, their civilian aircraft dived suddenly as a German Heinkel was spotted close by attacking fishing boats. Churchill refused to have a fighter escort — they were more needed elsewhere, he insisted — and the pilot sought cover in the sea mist. They stayed at wave-top height until the English coast was reached. "We had no more than Winston's Colt and my automatic," Thompson recalled. "Some German pilot will never know how close he came to winning the Iron Cross — First Class."

The Irish nationalist Michael Collins got short shrift when he complained at being hunted like an animal after Churchill put a £5,000 reward on his head. "You're lucky," Churchill said, and told him of the reward the Boers had posted when he had escaped them: "They only offered £25 for me." In Moscow, Thompson warned him that his room was almost certainly bugged. Churchill stamped the floor and said: "This is Winston Churchill speaking. If you have microphones in my room it is a waste of time. I do not talk in my sleep."

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Wehrmacht and training time for new privates....

Second World War Books Review

The most obvious program was to accelerate the induction of young men into the army. Normally men were inducted in the year that they reached the age of eighteen. However, in 1943 the date of induction was pushed forward to provide replacements sooner. The class of 1924 (men born in 1924, reaching the age of eighteen in 1942) had received about six months' training and entered combat in the winter of 1942-1943. The class of 1925 (age eighteen in 1943) was drafted in May 1943 and sent to the front as early as September 1943 after only four months' training. The class of 1926 was drafted in the late fall of 1943 before reaching eighteen and was given only four months' training before being sent to units beginning in March 1944. The class of 1926 was available nine months earlier than would normally have been the case and made an enormous number of men available in the spring of 1944.

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" When asked to design a crest and motto for 100 Group ", recalls Jack Short, "one wag produced a drawing of an aircrew officer peering through the keyhole of a bathroom (ostensibly at a young lady in a tub ) with the motto, " We snoop to conquer"! As things turned out not too far removed from the Chester Herald approved version of "Dare to Discover" and a bright-eyed owl over a signals motif."

From " Confounding the Reich " by Bowman and Cushing

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funny my generation belived you would get pregnant , guess as a male the same result would happen ! lol