I’ve just learned about 10 minutes ago that the Coca-Cola Bottling Company operated a propellant ammunition loading plant in Talladega, Alabama. An average of 30 railroad cars a day was reportedly produced from their Coosa River Ordnance Plant unti it closed in August of 1945. And also they managed to produce and distribute 10 billion bottles (yes billion, with a b) of Coke to Allied military bases and fleets in both the ETO and PTO. Africa was mentioned in the article, so that must mean that the MTO received their share of Cokes as well. The CBI wasn’t mentioned but no doubt they didn’t go without Cokes either. It was also revealed in the article that in North Africa, occasionally the Germans would come across unmanned caches of Coke and was reportedly considered a prized item of battlefield booty. I’m afraid to say that the Afrika Korps first contact with Coke was more than likely when they roughly handled the US II Corps at the Kasserine Pass debacle. Lots of vehicles and supplies were hurriedly abandoned on the battlefield that day you know. Anyway, things go better with Coca-Cola! At least here in the states they do.
The Disney Bomb. I had never heard of it until today, Never knew The Allies had anything like this in the 1940s. Disney bomb - Wikipedia
Admittedly, not exactly the Second World War (1936), but thematically very close. During my research on German arms deliveries to Ethiopia, three aircraft were also mentioned. I came across a curious story full of aberrations and twists in which Ethiopia, Spain, a tiny independent kingdom off the British mainland, a British captain and three German planes played the main roles. But read it for yourself: Index
Project Natter. I had never heard of Erich Bachem or Lothar Sieber. They were both pretty young in their fields of expertise. It is nothing short of Amazing what The Germans achieved while being bombed and attacked on two fronts. It sort of makes you shudder to think what they would have achieved if they had been isolated in safety like the war industries of the usa. Lothar Sieber - Wikipedia Bachem Ba 349 Natter - Wikipedia
Only half 'about WW2': I've just discovered that Lieutenant Colonel John Masters DSO OBE (ex-4GR with various commands in Burma and a successful novelist) is the stepfather of General Sir Hugh Michael Rose KCB CBE DSO QGM (ex-Coldstream Gds), who came to fame for commanding 22 SAS in the Falklands War and later for his role with the U.N. peacekeeping force in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1994-95. If this is general knowledge, it passed me by.
Great Britain had axuiliary "stay behinds" who wore Home Guard uniforms and were armed with Stens, Enfield and one suppressed 22 LR rifle. Trained in hand-to-hand in the Fairbairn manner and in weapons and explosives, they were expected to be disrupt the Germans, kill officers and according to one Paul Cheall interview, British who were suspected of cooperating with the Germans.
Sudaplatov was in charge of guerilla operations behind German lines. Raoul Wallenberg was arrested by Smersh and when they failed to make them a spy, they killed him.
'BIGOT' an acronym derived from British Invasion of German Occupied Territory, a designation that remained unchanged even after the USA entered the war. Courtesy of combinedops.com. I'll go to bed smarter tonight.
During WW II, British MI-9 was responsible for assisting Allied personnel to escape from German lines to England was desperately in need of Colt 32 ACP pistols with which it could arm its personnel.
I just learned that the agent my uncle Don Atkins and his crew (148 SD Squadron, RAF) dropped into Austria on the night of 23rd March 1945 was Leo Hillman, the subject of a recent book Return To Austria, by Peter Dixon; Hillman was a fascinating character, whose mission (Operation ELECTRA) was to contact the Austrian socialist resistance and galvanise them into action on the approrach of the Russians. This he did, despite losing his W/T set in the drop. Born in 1923 he was an Austrian Jewish refugee from the Nazis who joined the British Army; he had fought in Eritrea, then North Africa with SIG and SAS, before joining SOE. Operation ELECTRA 23/03/45 Halifax MkII JP254 FS-T, 148 Special Duties Squadron, Brindisi Crew: P/O DC Atkins (pilot);P/O EF Lock (air bomber); F/O AS Allen (navigator); F/Sgt D Sullivan (W/Op); Sgt J Allcock (flight engineer); F/Sgt BA Lawler (airgunner); F/Sgt J Sharples (airgunner); F/Sgt HS Milman (additional despatcher). As the SD Halifaxes carried no mid-upper turret F/Sgt Lawler acted as despatcher; on some operations an additional despatcher was employed to get personnel and stores out of the aircraft as fast as possible. This was Stuart Allen's first operation with the Atkins crew, replacing P/O WA Belson DFC as navigator; he remained with the crew until the end of the war in Europe. Operation ELECTRA was the crew's 26th operation (one with 624 SD Sqdn, the rest with 148).
Not really a ground breaking thing here but it is something new that I learned about WW2. I already knew about Tokyo Rose and Axis Sally but this is new to me. Seems that Douglas Chandler, a former officer in the U.S. Navy during World War I broadcasted for Nazi Germany during World War II. He was known as the American Lord Haw-Haw. He was convicted on ten counts of treason and fined $10,000 and sentenced to life imprisonment. He sentence was commuted in 1963 on the condition of immediately leaving the United States. He is what you British folks would call a “bloody bastard” methinks. I lifted this from Quora.
I seem to learn something new almost every day, and some of it about WW2! Cornelia Fort was instructing a student pilot when they almost collided with a Japanese aircraft leaving the attack on Pearl Harbor. She and her student were some of the few eye-witnesses to be airborne during the attack. Cornelia was the second woman to volunteer for Women's Auxiliary Ferrying Squadron (the WAFS), which would eventually merge with the Women's Flying Training Detachment (WFTD) to form the WASPs. According to the National Air and Space Museum, "on a routine ferrying flight in 1943, Fort died at the controls of an aircraft when another plane struck hers. She was the first woman pilot to die in the line of duty for the U.S. military. A marker at the Cornelia Fort Airport in Tennessee bears this quote from the pilot: 'I am grateful that my one talent, flying, was useful to my country.'" Yesterday marked the 80th anniversary of her death. Thanks to the National Air and Space museum for their image and detailed bio of Cornelia. So the real incident was not at all like the scene in “Tora Tora Tora” when Cornelia and her student-pilot were buzzing along and overtaken by the IJN aircraft enroute to bombing the ever lovin sh1t out of the USN at Pearl Harbor. Ah well, it worked real good in the movie. Courtesy of Quora.
German Combat Night Viewing Device Development/Experimentation I vaguely remember briefly looking at parts of one of these (it was non-functional) in the early 80s on a military technology course at Shrivenham and a short discussion on why it was being paired mainly with a Sturmgewehr 44 assault rifle, rather than an MG 34/42, given battery issues. However, I had not been aware until very recently that another system, the Sperber FG1250 was also being developed. There is a wadge of twenty odd year old discussion at: Panthers & night vision which those who contributed to: Fighting at Night may find of interest.
When I was a kid, there were these comics: This particular "Barracuda" story was about a refurbished X-Boat, that fascinated me incredibly back then - until today Eons later I'm involved in archaeology - and that's when I discover this: Maritime Scotland 1: The WW2 Midget Submarines of Aberlady Bay - SNR Daughter of Elysium, We enter, drunk with fire, Heavenly One, thy Holiness! .... Di Dum, Di dum
