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Weird World War 2 Facts

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Old 07-01-2005, 10:08 AM   #1
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Weird World War 2 Facts

According to this site
http://www.world-war-2.info/facts/

Here are a few of them.....

* A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!)

The dangers of unpressurised aircraft

* 80% of Soviet males born in 1923 didn't survive World War 2

* Germany lost 40-45% of their aircraft during World War 2 to accidents

Had to be the BF109's landing gear

* The Russians destroyed over 500 German aircraft by ramming them in midair (they also sometimes cleared minefields by marching over them). “It takes a brave man not to be a hero in the Red Army”. - Joseph Stalin

* Generally speaking, there was no such thing as an average fighter pilot. You were either an ace or a target. For instance, Japanese ace Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down over 80 planes. He died while a passenger on a cargo plane.

* It was a common practice on fighter planes to load every 5th found with a tracer round to aid in aiming. That was a mistake. The tracers had different ballistics so (at long range) if your tracers were hitting the target, 80% of your rounds were missing. Worse yet, the tracers instantly told your enemy he was under fire and from which direction. Worst of all was the practice of loading a string of tracers at the end of the belt to tell you that you were out of ammo. That was definitely not something you wanted to tell the enemy. Units that stopped using tracers saw their success rate nearly double and their loss rate go down.

* More US servicemen died in the Air Corps that the Marine Corps. While completing the required 30 missions, your chance of being killed was 71%. Not that bombers were helpless. A B-17 carried 4 tons of bombs and 1.5 tons of machine gun ammo. The US 8th Air Force shot down 6,098 fighter planes, 1 for every 12,700 shots fired.

* 6 bomber crewmen were killed for each one wounded

* Over 100,000 Allied bomber crewmen were killed over Europe

* 2/3 of Allied bomber crews were lost for each plane destroyed

* 12,000 heavy bombers were shot down in World War 2

* The highest ranking American killed was Lt. Gen. Lesley McNair, killed by the US Army Air Corps.

* The first American serviceman killed was killed by the Russians (Finland 1940).

* The first German serviceman killed in the war was killed by the Japanese (China, 1937)

* The MISS ME was an unarmed Piper Cub. While spotting for US artillery her pilot saw a similar German plane doing the same thing. He dove on the German plane and he and his co-pilot fired their pistols damaging the German plane enough that it had to make a forced landing. Whereupon they landed and took the Germans prisoner. It is unknown where they put them since the MISS ME only had two seats.

* Following a massive naval bombardment, 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska. 21 troops were killed in the fire-fight. It would have been worse if there had been Japanese on the island.



* The Graf Spee never sank, The scuttling attempt failed and the ship was bought by the British. On board was Germany’s newest radar system.

* The German Air Force had 22 infantry divisions, 2 armor divisions, and 11 paratroop divisions. None of them were capable of airborne operations. The German Army had paratroops who WERE capable of airborne operations.

* The average German officer slot had to be refilled 9.2 times

* Air attacks caused 1/3 of German Generals' deaths

* Most members of the Waffen SS were not German

There are many more on the site

http://www.world-war-2.info/facts/
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:19 AM   #2
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I find some of those a bit suspicious.
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:22 AM   #3
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I don't take many of those as 'facts'. They'd need to be proved.
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To those in that club.
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:23 AM   #4
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Me too.


But this one is just funny

Quote:
* Following a massive naval bombardment, 35,000 US and Canadian troops stormed ashore at Kiska. 21 troops were killed in the fire-fight. It would have been worse if there had been Japanese on the island
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:24 AM   #5
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Yeah: T
The Graf Spee did sink!
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:30 AM   #6
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Yeah I found some of them suspicious as well, particularly the claim about the Graf Spee not sinking
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:31 AM   #7
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I wonder where they got that stuff from?
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Classic ww2aircraft.net quotes:

fly boy said: "isn't that the first jet bomber? becasue i have flown one in a flight sim before and i know how it handles"

"wait what ok who made the b-2 crash come on people that messed up its a b-2"

"ah yes the mistel those things are so annoying is games and in real life"
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:37 AM   #8
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Probably because there's no pictures of the Graf Spee actually sinking, only of it on fire. They wanted to fool young children into believing that it's the truth! Poor young children...poor-poor-poor young children...

It's the same kind of thing when people say "Dogs can't look up" and stupid people believe them without actually thinking to themselves..."What do wolves do when they howl?" or "They look up at me all the time"

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To those in that club.
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:40 AM   #9
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I found this on the following site
http://www.wilk4.com/humor/humorm175.htm
The Graf Spee never sank. The scuttling attempt failed and the ship was bought as scrap by the British. On board was Germany's newest radar system.

The Graf Spee did sink when scuttled, but only in waters less than 25 ft deep. It was not bought as scrap by the British, and in fact lay in the silt in the River Plate estuary in Uruguay. An effort is being made to raise her to turn her into a ship museum. See "Salvage Team Prepares to Raise WWII Ship" for more details of her sinking and the recovery effort. (Thanks to Lewis Perelman for the info)
http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,1104786,00.html

Bado said the recovery team would first try to remove a 27-ton communications tower equipped with early radar and what was then sophisticated sighting equipment for its 11-inch guns.

“The radar was one of the first to be used in that era,” said Bado, whose group has private funding and Uruguayan government backing for the operation which could take years.

“(The Graf Spee) will be rebuilt on land and will be the best ship museum in the world," said Bado. "This is the last salvageable German battleship."


So it sank in shallow waters and is being recovered

http://www.lummifilm.com/grafspee/about.html

http://www.german-navy.de/kriegsmari...ee/photos.html
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:40 AM   #10
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When I was about 7 my cousin told me Michael Jackson was dead. I belived it for about 4 years
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Old 07-01-2005, 10:43 AM   #11
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If only it was true. Shame on your cousin for getting your hopes up like that!
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"When you go home tomorrow, don't expect anyone to know what you have been through. Even if they did know, most people probably wouldn't care anyway. Some of you may get the medals you deserve, many more of you will not. But remember this, all of you are now members of the front-line club, and that is the most exclusive club in the world." - Lt. Col. Matthew Maer CO 1st Battalion, the Princess of Wale's Royal Regiment. Camp Abu Naji, Oct. 2004

To those in that club.
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Old 07-01-2005, 11:10 AM   #12
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A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!)
With increasing altitude, gases within body cavities expand (according to Boyle’s law; see above and Table 2-6). Such expansion does not result in any difficulty if the concomitant pressure can be relieved. However, if the gases are "trapped" in an organ with inelastic walls and the gases continue to expand within the walls of the organ, some degree of pain and other clinical symptoms and signs may be experienced.

Flight at even low cabin altitudes may cause sutures to rupture. Gas can expand, exerting pressure on the blood vessels and the optic nerve. This could lead to internal bleeding.

http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fnihb/ons/nur.../chapter_2.htm

Gases expand by a factor of 2.4 at 20,000ft. That is an expansion of 140% and could be bad news in an unpressurised aircraft.
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Old 07-01-2005, 12:26 PM   #13
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mm, i'd rather see sorces for some of those stats....
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Old 07-01-2005, 02:45 PM   #14
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The Graff Spree didn't sink. She was scuttled but in shallow water and was boarded soon after. In the after magazine they found a fused 11in shell hanging over a pile of shells on a chared rope that hadn't broken.
We were able to get a lot of information from the wreckage.
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Old 07-01-2005, 07:07 PM   #15
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Just because it only went down in 25 feet (which has been mentioned previously), it doesn't mean it didn't sink. Also, what did we learn from the ship?

Also, is it Graf Spree or Graf Spee? I see it different all the time, it's quite annoying. Especially when you're trying to say it.
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To those in that club.
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