1) London and Baghdad: What do they have common? Both are the only cities that have been attacked by ballistics and cruise missiles.
2) B-25 played an important roll in the PTO, MTO and ETO and suffer a lot of loss. However, the B-25 is also know as a robust, reliable bomber to take a beating and still flying. Case example with 321st Bomb Group. One B-25C name "Patches" completed over 300 missions and has the scares to show it "literally". It had six belly landings, and over 400 patched holes from flak. The airframe was so bent out of shape that to fly straight and level the pilot had to set aileron trim 8 degree left and right rudder 6 degree. Should mention that the crew chief painted every patch hole with zinc chromite primer giving it’s name "Patches".
3) HMS Venturer (P68) was the first and only submarine to engage and destroy another submarine (U-846) while both fully submerge under water. At the same time, the wreckage of U-846 remained as a war grave and one of the worst environmental disaster in the Baltic sea. U-846's cargo included approximately 61 tones of metallic mercury in 1,857 71 lb steel flasks stored in her keel. It is estimated approximately 8.8 lbs of mercury is leaking per year into the aquatic environment.
4) The class of 1915: West Point. Know as " the class that stars fell on", 61 of the 164 men held the rank of general.
5) By war's end, Polish military unites fought under four flags: Great Britian, Poland, France, and Russia.
6) An Syrian brown bear name Wojtek was the first and only bear to be enlisted in the military and saw action. He was assigned to the Polish 22nd artillery Supply Company of the Polish II Corps as privet. His duty was to carried artillery shells during the Battle of Monte Cassino. The 22nd company was given approval of an effigy of a bear holding an artillery shell as the official emblem.
7) The first German bomb to fall on Leningrad killed the only elephant in the city zoo. Sigh, sigh.
8) Paratroops: Russian the first country to formed units, Germany the first country to used them in battle and America perfected it in battle.
9) The only country that Germany declared war on was U.S.
10) Chemical weapons: Some countries, like Japan and Germany, used chemical weapons as test or on civilians, but never in battle. Most countries had stockpiles on the front line ready to be used, but nobody did not want to.
11) The oldest warship casualty of WWII was the H.M.S Victory (1765) received a direct hit from a 500 lbs German bomb in the Battle of Britian.
12) Why no U.S Mariens in the ETO? This goes back to WWI, in the Battle of Belleau Wood, June 1-26, 1918. 1st Battalion, 5th Marines saw German forces punched a hole in the French lines to the left of the Marines' position. They responded quickly and in 26 days later defeated the Germans. The marines had so much publicity from the U.S, Britian, France and Germany that the U.S. Army was nearly forgotten.
Moving forwarded to WWII: When the U.S. enter the war, top Army staff did not want the U.S Mariens to gain fame so they make sure that the Army was going to defeat Germay on their own. Even though the Army had got the publicity in the successful Normany invasion, Mariena once again gain great publicity and the most icon pitcher of WWII. Note: other reasons for no Marines was do to number of Marines that they could not fight on both fronts.
13) Besides the 332 FG there are other military units that were all blacks that served and saw combat action:
761st Tank Battalion - (Unit that Jack Robison served on) ETO
366th Infantry Regiment - MTO/ETO
369th Infantry Regiment - PTO
370th Infantry Regiment - MTO
371st Infantry Regiment - MTO
10th Cavalry Regiment - The original Buffol Solders- replacements for 92nd Infantry Division
555th Parachute Infantry Battalion - never saw any action but to reconized as the only all black parachute infantry.
USS Mason (DE-529) (Evarts-class destroyer escort) - all black except seniors officers where white. ETO
USS PC-1264 was a PC-461-class submarine chaser -
14) German where the first country to used air drones as recon.
15) Captain Paul Hall's P-47D Thunderbolt fighter 'Dixie Gal' of 57th Fighter Group, US 64th Fighter Squadron, made an attack run on a German tank. Mis-judge his altitude, his P-47 bounce off the ground infleciting damage to all four props (all badly bent back), but not the engine. The P-47 flew 150 mile back to an air strip and landed successfully.
16) There were over 150 different designations of Bf- 190s, but some never went into combat. These include Ta-152.
17) Number of German Generals killed in WWII: General = 1; Lieutenant General = 19; Major General = 55; Brigadier General = 61.
18) The top 112 fighter aces of WWII were all Germans. Only two got over 300 kills.
19) First non-German fighter ace was Ilmari Juutilainen with 94.
20) Ivan Kozhedub, Russian's highest fighter ace and top fighter ace of Allies, shot down 62 Germans and believe to kill two P-51.
21) Remy Van Lierde, British top fighter ace, was credit with 50 kills, 44 of them were V1's.
22) Lydia Litvak; Russia, top female fighter ace to date with 12 kills.
23) Hans-Ulrich Rudel, Germany's top stuka pilot; flew 2,530 combat missions claiming a total of 2,000 targets destroyed; including 800 vehicles, 519 tanks, 150 artillery pieces, 70 landing craft, nine aircraft, 4 armored trains, several bridges, a destroyer, two cruisers, and the Soviet battleship Marat. Never shot down by another plane, but crashed land from flack 32 times. Few times behind enemy line.
24) The highest (altitude) air to air kill: ETO - On 12 September 1942- Emanuel Galitzine intercepted a Ju-86R at 43,000 in the spitfire. Never shot the Ju down, but did fire at and made contact to force the Ju-86 back to France. PTO - F4U intercept a Ki-47 at 48,000 feet. Ack-Ack knows more about this story, please fill in on it.
Sent on behalf of Oaktree
