What have you learned about WW2 recently?

Discussion in 'General' started by dbf, Oct 22, 2010.

  1. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    That's a versatile factory.
     
  2. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    The Wikipedia article for Canadian Car and Foundry mentions unspecified tanks. I wonder if that was in addition to the planes or if it is an error.
     
  3. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    They built ships (minesweepers) at the same plant in WW1.
     
  4. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    To my knowledge they did not manufacture tanks. That reference may have been to railroad tank cars, which they did manufacture, pre-war.
     
    Chris C likes this.
  5. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Wiki says that the Ram was built in the Montreal Loco Works
     
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  6. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    And I believe the Valentines were also manufactured in Montreal. So it was probably just an error.

    Apparently the factory in Thunder Bay had sat disused for a while and only became operational again a few years before WW2, according to the blurb for a book about it.

    Canadian Car & Foundry Aircraft at Fort William – Thunder Bay Museum

    There are a few other digitized pictures of the airplanes under construction in the LAC archives.
     
  7. Chris C

    Chris C Canadian

    I did not know until recently that Canadian WW1 fighter ace Raymond Collishaw had the rank of Air Commodore and commanded "Egypt Group" for Operation Compass and afterward and that he and O'Connor worked closely together. And that he had his one operational Hurricane ("Colly's Battleship") moved to and fro so as to give the impression that he had more Hurricanes!
     
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  8. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I learned that Yogi Berra fought at D-Day.

    He was one of the best baseball players of all time and always a very humble guy. I was a NY Mets fan and always hated the NY Yankees but I liked him. He would swing at anything that he could reach and still had a great batting average.




    Yogi Berra
    Teams
    New York Yankees (1946-63), New York Mets ('65)

    Honors
    18-time AL All-Star (1948-62*), three-time AL MVP ('51, '54-55), Hall of Fame ('72)

    *Played in two All-Star Games in '59, '60 and '61

    Championships
    10 -- New York Yankees ('47, '49-53, 56, '58, '61-62)

    Career stats
    .285/.348/.482, OPS -- .830, Hits -- 2,150, HRs -- 358, RBIs -- 1,430

    The player

    Casey Stengel once explained the Yankees' success this way: "I never played a big game without my guy." He meant Berra. Yogi will live on with his quotes and quips, but above all he won, playing in 14 World Series and winning 10 of them. He finished in the top four of the MVP voting seven consecutive seasons, a testament to his durability, respect and, yes, good numbers at the plate. During those seven seasons he averaged .295/.364/.502 with 27 home runs and 108 RBIs -- and, despite being a notorious bad-ball hitter, just 24 strikeouts per season. -- Schoenfield

    So much could be said about Yogi; he's one of the game's most iconic historical characters. But I'm a stats guy, and this stat always amazed me: Berra homered 358 times but struck out only 414; he and Joe DiMaggio are the only players in history with at least 300 homers and fewer than 500 K's. -- Cockcroft

    The most fascinating thing about Yogi Berra is that there are very few highlights in which he is portrayed as the star. He's always the other guy-- he's the guy leaping into Don Larsen's arms, or the guy arguing with the ump when Jackie Robinson steals home, or the guy watching helplessly at the outfield fence as Bill Mazeroski's homer wins the World Series. But though Yogi was rarely the man of the moment, he was an amazing player. From 1949 to 1958, he hit 257 home runs and struck out 250 times. I thought only Joe Dimaggio was capable of numbers like that. -
     
  9. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Last edited: Jul 31, 2017
  10. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    C-47 Glider extraction

    Saw them use this while watching "Operation Burma" last night

     
  11. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Several Canadian soldiers who landed at Juno reported seeing an Allied fighter caught in one of the rocket barrages and simply disappearing.
     
    Dave55 likes this.
  12. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Wow. That would disintegrate a fighter even if none of the warheads exploded
     
  13. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    Jim Wilkins of the Queens Own Rifles describes it as a Spitfire that "flew right into it and blew up".
     
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  14. SDP

    SDP Incurable Cometoholic

    Very clever! Any diagrams available as to how that worked? Lots of issues to resolve such as how the 'hook' engaged, was the tow rope 'elastic', what did it feel like in the Glider, how failsafe was it?....and the list goes on.
     
    Dave55 likes this.
  15. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    I don't know anything else about the procedure, but found this:
     
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  16. paulcheall

    paulcheall Son of a Green Howard

    When my Dad was approaching Gold beach he said “
    We were about two miles from the coastline, Rommel’s Atlantic Wall, when on
    our port side we saw something which we had never seen before. It was a rocket
    ship, about half-a-mile away from us, and it was firing a massive, continuous barrage
    of missiles, screeching simultaneously dead straight towards the coast. We could
    hear – almost feel – the heat generated by the displaced air. ‘Hell’, we said. ‘Fancy
    being on the end of that lot!’ It was fantastic and the bombardment was something
    the enemy could not have imagined it was possible to be on the receiving end of.”
     
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  17. Dave55

    Dave55 Atlanta, USA

    Here is a picture from the Wiki entry. Looks fearsom

    [​IMG]
     
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  18. rememberthem

    rememberthem ex member

    That is almost a Monty Python skit waiting to be written. It's so mad!

    I feel so badly for the Poles and how they were sold out to the Russians

    Do you Brits know of Magda Szubanski who played the farmer's wife in BABE and Sharon in Kath and Kim? She had a Polish father who joined the Resistance as a teenager and ended up on an assassination squad that tracked down Poles who betrayed and/or exposed their members. Oh dear

    Thats a Dick Emery moment but you know what I mean...
     
  19. canuck

    canuck Closed Account

    My favourite quote from Yogi:

    “It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
    Yogi Berra


    That one should receive more circulation among those who pretend to tell us what will happen in fifty years.
     
  20. rememberthem

    rememberthem ex member

    Really sad to find page for Grizedale Hall ?doesnt exist any more and cant understand why

    I had to edit this as I thought my comment would be attached to original post about it
     

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