Interesting/Strange WW2 facts.

[PaulClift]

Any on there that can be rubbished or are they all true?

http://www.world-war-2.info/facts/

"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."

How could they have 11 paratroop divisions not capable of airborne?

[forty-two]

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 Paratrooper units of the Air Force weren't airborne capable???

[Connaught Ranger]

After the Crete debacle Hitler placed a ban on large scale combat jumps.

Apart from the mandatory training jumps in basic training there was no possibility to do many if any further jumps later on.

As the war progressed and air assets got reduced the number of planes and gliders for paratroops were severely reduced, thus reducing the paras to the role of infantrymen.

The German Army paras were very small in number compared to the Luftwaffe paras, the ss-para unit the smallest of all.

Connaught Ranger.

[BlackFlag]

"Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were capture by the US Army."

Wtf?

[[WDW]Megaraptor]

The only nation that Germany declared war on was the USA.



Hmm never thought about that one before.

[muttbutt]

"Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were capture by the US Army."

Wtf?
That's actually true I believe, there were also other Asian's there.

[Gustlik]

Look at this
http://www.world-war-2.info/countries/

especially at "Allied Powers"

where is Poland? I don't see
also in " supporters of the Allies" I don't see Poland and for example Czech

there're Guatemal, Haiti, Honduras ...

Oh, what a bull**** source of information

[Herman the II]

where is Poland? I don't see
also in " supporters of the Allies" I don't see Poland and for example Czech



Polandball not happy....:-(

Poland is listed within the following rubric:
Countries that were attacked, occupied, or switched sides during the war (Most countries below had declared their neutrality before being assaulted.)

[muttbutt]

Look at this
http://www.world-war-2.info/countries/

especially at "Allied Powers"

where is Poland? I don't see
also in " supporters of the Allies" I don't see Poland and for example Czech

there're Guatemal, Haiti, Honduras ...

Oh, what a bull**** source of information
Poland and Czechoslovakia ect were occupied, they had contingents that fought with the allies.

[therifleman]

"Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were capture by the US Army."

Wtf?


http://i280.photobucket.com/albums/kk190/Winimperial/wwii438.jpg

[Migs]

A number of air crewmen died of farts. (ascending to 20,000 ft. in an un-pressurized aircraft causes intestinal gas to expand 300%!)My Grandpa told me his adventures into the compression chamber during crew training and as a turret gunner in a Lockheed Typhoon. In the chamber everyone would try to hold the farts in, as there was a nurse present with them sometimes...but everyone had to give in eventually p-).

[Roaming East]

Hmm, these were ripped from the book Secrets of WW2 by James Dunnigan. i got it lying around here somewhere...

[Marmot1]

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.

Not to mention ca. 200 WIA...

[sgt_G]

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



ummm is this a mistype? or did some gunner get overzealous tracking a 109?

[sgt_G]

"Among the first "Germans" captured at Normandy were several Koreans. They had been forced to fight for the Japanese Army until they were captured by the Russians and forced to fight for the Russian Army until they were captured by the Germans and forced to fight for the German Army until they were capture by the US Army."

KJ perfected time travel???rofl

[Atlantic Friend]

Look at this
http://www.world-war-2.info/countries/

especially at "Allied Powers"

where is Poland? I don't see
also in " supporters of the Allies" I don't see Poland and for example Czech


Ha, same for France.

Quote from the site :


World-War-2.info is the best resource for World War 2 information available on the Internet.

Bwahahahahahahaha !

[Breakfast in Vegas]

ummm is this a mistype? or did some gunner get overzealous tracking a 109?Friendly fire. IIRC he was bombed.

[1Cie GevGn]

Hmm, these were ripped from the book Secrets of WW2 by James Dunnigan. i got it lying around here somewhere...

x2 Got it aswell, some fun facts in it.

[herman30]

Doh! Need to learn to read.

[Atlantic Friend]

Poland is there, scroll down. Under the titel:

Countries that were attacked, occupied, or switched sides during the war (Most countries below had declared their neutrality before being assaulted.)

Poland (invaded by Germany and the Soviet Union in September 1939)

But didn't that made them at the very least Allies supporters? Because well, they did have troops fighting at the Allies' side until V-E Day. You'd think the "best resource for WW2 information available on the net" would know that...

[UNSC LEADER]

-A German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.

-German anti freeze froze in the USSR.

-When allied armies reached the Rhine the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act).

[PaulClift]

-german anti freeze froze in the ussr.


russia cold!!!!11

[FlintHillBilly]

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (****ounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika". All three were soon changed for PR purposes.

Thought this was rather interesting, not sure if it is true though.

[baboon6]

At the time of Pearl Harbor, the top US Navy command was called CINCUS (****ounced "sink us"), the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the swastika, and Hitler's private train was named "Amerika". All three were soon changed for PR purposes.

Thought this was rather interesting, not sure if it is true though.

The first is certainly true. CINCUS was the abbreviation for Commander-in-Chief United States Fleet, a position dating from the 1920s when the Atlantic and Pacific Fleets were combined under one commander. The Asiatic Fleet remained separate.
Shortly before WW2 the Atlantic/Pacific Fleet system was resurrected but the job of CINCUS was held additionally by the Commander-in-Chief Pacific Fleet, Admiral Kimmel, from February 1941, then as a separate job by Admiral King from December 1941. When Admiral King became Chief of Naval Operations in March 1942 he retained the position of CINCUS but changed the acronym to COMINCH.

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

Hitler's train was indeed named Amerika, I'm not sure if it was changed though.

[pascalywood]

-A German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.



About five minutes after somebody first drew up the plans for an underwater ship called a "submarine," somebody standing over that guy's shoulder said, "so how do you take a **** in one?"
It's not like a regular boat where you can just poop over the side (that's what they do, right?) and the whole physics of a flushing toilet like you have in your bathroom stop working when, instead of a house, you're in a vessel submerged in water exerting massive pressure from every direction. To see what flushing a toilet in that situation would look like, picture the exact opposite of a successful toilet flush.



On April 14, 1945, the German submarine U-1206 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-1206) found this out the hard way.
Who ****ed Up?
That model of boat had a new, fancy toilet-flushing system that used a complex system of high-pressure valves to allow them to flush the toilets even when running deep under the sea. So complex, that you couldn't operate the system without supervision.
But the captain of the submarine, Karl-Adolph Schlitt, figured he would chance it. After all, it's a damned toilet! How complicated can it be?



One splashing, cursing, Charlie Chaplin-esque slapstick sequence later, and Schlitt found himself wading through the Atlantic seawater that was quickly rushing into the submarine. Unable to pump the water out, Schlitt had no choice but to surface the sub.
Of course, this was in the middle of a war. Oh, and the German submarine just happened to be on a spy mission just 10-miles away from the British coast. It was almost immediately spotted by an English plane, which proceeded to bomb the **** out of the sub. Schlitt found himself unable to escape and gave the order to abandon ship, where every surviving member of the crew was captured.

[Breakfast in Vegas]

the shoulder patch of the US Army's 45th Infantry division was the swastika.According to Wiki, the 45th had a swastika emblem as tribute to Native Americans in the US Southwest, who used the symbol.

The symbol was dropped already in 1939 to avoid association with the Nazis however, therefore before Pearl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_(United_States)

[tluassa]

The first point already seems very debatable to me:

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

- WTF ? First of all, if we count the prewar times, "German servicemen" died in the Spanish Civil War as part of the Legion Condor in 1936 !

secondly, WW2 started in 1939, so it makes no sense to say that a Japanse in 1937 killed the "first German servicemen".


"Most members of the Waffen SS were not German."

In 1944 and 1945 there were a lot of foreigners drafted into the Waffen SS, however before that 50% and more were German.

PS: Is it intentional that the language is so blurry and avoids exact words ? "Most" what is that ?

[Gustlik]

Poland and Czechoslovakia ect were occupied, they had contingents that fought with the allies.


Ok, I know, but there isn't any information about Poland was in the alliance, and fought with England etc. aganist Axis


btw, my english sucks

[TheKiwi]

Sheesh, most of the "facts" here are facts only if you very very carefully cherry pick your data.

[the_penguin]

Sheesh, most of the "facts" here are facts only if you very very carefully cherry pick your data.

Spoil sport, real facts are not fun.

[Marmot1]

-A German submarine U-120 was sunk by a malfunctioning toilet.

-German anti freeze froze in the USSR.

-When allied armies reached the Rhine the first thing men did was pee in it. This was pretty universal from the lowest private to Winston Churchill (who made a big show of it) and Gen. Patton (who had himself photographed in the act).

p-) Wiki says...

Many reliable sources incorrectly list U-120 as sinking due to a malfunctioning toilet. This submarine was actually the much larger U-1206 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-1206).

[baboon6]

After the Crete debacle Hitler placed a ban on large scale combat jumps.

Apart from the mandatory training jumps in basic training there was no possibility to do many if any further jumps later on.

As the war progressed and air assets got reduced the number of planes and gliders for paratroops were severely reduced, thus reducing the paras to the role of infantrymen.

The German Army paras were very small in number compared to the Luftwaffe paras, the ss-para unit the smallest of all.

Connaught Ranger.

To add to this, by the end of the war many men serving in Luftwaffe parachute divisions had had no parachute training at all. In fact quite a few were former Luftwaffe ground crew hastily remustered as infantry, same as in the field divisions.

There were a few battalion or smaller-sized airborne ops after Crete, the only ones I can think of off the top of my head are Leros in 1943, the assault on Tito's HQ in Yuogoslavia in 1944 (AFAIK the only airborne op by the SS parachute battalion), and the Ardennes in 1944.

[wasser]

p-) Wiki says...

Additionally, according to the Wiki it's possible the toilet had nothing to do with U-1206's loss.


During survey work for the BP (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BP) Forties Field (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forties_oilfield) oil pipeline to Cruden Bay (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cruden_Bay) in the mid 1970s, the remains of U-1206 were found at http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9a/Erioll_world.svg/18px-Erioll_world.svg.png57°21′N 01°39′W / 57.35°N 1.65°W / 57.35; -1.65 (http://stable.toolserver.org/geohack/geohack.php?pagename=German_submarine_U-1206&params=57_21_N_01_39_W_scale:10000000) in approximately 70 m (230 ft) of water. The site survey performed by RCAHMS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Royal_Commission_on_the_Ancient_and_Historical_Monuments_of_Scotland) suggests that the leak that forced U-1206 to surface may have occurred after running into a wreck located at the same site.[3] (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_submarine_U-1206#cite_note-2)

More info is here (http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/101830/details/u+1206+north+sea/).

[Vandervahn]

The first point already seems very debatable to me:

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

- WTF ? First of all, if we count the prewar times, "German servicemen" died in the Spanish Civil War as part of the Legion Condor in 1936 !

secondly, WW2 started in 1939, so it makes no sense to say that a Japanse in 1937 killed the "first German servicemen".
....

A good case can and has been made that the 2nd World War indeed started in 1937 with the Sino-Japanese war.

[wasser]

A good case can and has been made that the 2nd World War indeed started in 1937 with the Sino-Japanese war.

Indeed. The same could not be said for a Civil war in a country that ultimately sat on the sidelines during WW2.

[SoSo]

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

Sounds believeable to me. The Germans did send some military advisors to help the KMT.

[Roaming East]

The first point already seems very debatable to me:

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

- WTF ? First of all, if we count the prewar times, "German servicemen" died in the Spanish Civil War as part of the Legion Condor in 1936 !

secondly, WW2 started in 1939, so it makes no sense to say that a Japanse in 1937 killed the "first German servicemen".


"Most members of the Waffen SS were not German."

In 1944 and 1945 there were a lot of foreigners drafted into the Waffen SS, however before that 50% and more were German.

PS: Is it intentional that the language is so blurry and avoids exact words ? "Most" what is that ?
perhaps a number of totality. From its inception til the end of the war, what were the total number of SS men? and of that number how many were not German? It doesnt matter if in 1942 100% of the SS were German if by 1945 their number was 5 times as many and all of them foreign. The statement 'most' would still be correct in all regards.

[Breakfast in Vegas]

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

Sounds believeable to me. The Germans did send some military advisors to help the KMT.In 1937.

The war began in 1939.

[Titani]

Very interesting facts.

[capixaba]

Additionally, according to the Wiki it's possible the toilet had nothing to do with U-1206's loss.



More info is here (http://canmore.rcahms.gov.uk/en/site/101830/details/u+1206+north+sea/).

Also similar info at http://www.uboat.net/boats/u1206.htm

[Atlantic Friend]

In 1937.

The war began in 1939.

In Europe. But the ongoing war in China could be considered part of the conflict.

[SineJustitia]

Sheesh, most of the "facts" here are facts only if you very very carefully cherry pick your data.

Never let the truth get into the way of a good story.

[LineDoggie]

According to Wiki, the 45th had a swastika emblem as tribute to Native Americans in the US Southwest, who used the symbol.

The symbol was dropped already in 1939 to avoid association with the Nazis however, therefore before Pearl.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/45th_Infantry_Division_(United_States) A 1st Version 45th ID Patch is worth a few buck nowdays if original.