WW II History

Second world war British fighter planes unearthed in Ukraine

Authorities in Ukraine have discovered the remains of eight British Hurricane fighter planes dating back to the second world war.

The aircraft, found near an unexploded bomb dating from the same conflict in a forest south of Kyiv, were sent to the Soviet Union by Britain after Nazi Germany invaded the country in 1941.

“It is very rare to find this aircraft in Ukraine,” Oleks Shtan, a former airline pilot who is leading the excavation, told the BBC. “It’s very important for our aviation history because no lend-lease aircraft have been found here before.”

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II History

Graf Spee: Nazi battleship’s bronze eagle saved from smelter

The future of a bronze eagle which once adorned the Nazi-era battleship Admiral Graf Spee remains uncertain after plans to melt it down were scrapped.

Treasure hunters raised the eagle in 2006 off the coast of Uruguay, where the Graf Spee had been scuttled in 1939 to stop it falling into enemy hands.

A court ruled last year that it belonged to the Uruguayan state, in whose waters it was found.

It’s history and needs to be preserved.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II History

Malaysia detains Chinese ship suspected of looting British WW2 wrecks

Malaysia has detained a Chinese-registered vessel suspected of looting two British World War Two shipwrecks.

The bulk carrier was seized on Sunday for anchoring illegally at the site in the South China Sea.

Ammunition believed to be from the HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse, which were sunk by Japanese forces more than 80 years ago, was then found on board.

The UK Ministry of Defence had earlier condemned the alleged raid as a “desecration” of maritime war graves.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted in"China - Communist Slave State", UK, WW II History

An Extraordinary Mission to Find an American WWII Bomber Crew at the Bottom of the Pacific

SINGAPORE—In the spring of 1944, Second Lt. Thomas V. Kelly Jr.’s mother received a one-page letter at her home in Livermore, Calif., informing her that her son was killed in action. His plane was hit by antiaircraft fire and disintegrated midair during a mission in New Guinea, his commander wrote.

“Unfortunately this is the only information we can furnish,” the letter read.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II, WW II History

Their plane went down – how this WW2 Canada crew survived

For as long as Janet Reilley can remember, the first day of May has been one of remembrance for her family – of lives lost and saved in combat.

Her father “Mac” Reilley would pick up the phone to his friend “Buddy” MacCallum, to remember the events of 1943 that shaped their young lives – and their futures.

Few of “the greatest generation” who fought during World War Two remain to bear witness. Now, it’s up to their descendants to keep their memory alive, so that others might understand the bravery, sacrifice and trauma of one of the 20th Century’s defining conflicts.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inCanada, WW II, WW II History

Are Swiss banks still hoarding Nazi gold?

In a storage room in Buenos Aires, an Argentinian investigator made a discovery that would reverberate through a boardroom more than 7,000 miles away.

Pedro Filipuzzi unearthed what researchers claimed were files that revealed the names of 12,000 undercover Nazis who lived in the Latin American country during the 1940s and had bank accounts at a Swiss lender: Schweizerische Kreditanstalt, later to be renamed Credit Suisse.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II, WW II History

Explorers find WWII ship sunk with over 1,000 Allied POWs

SYDNEY (AP) — A team of explorers announced it found a sunken Japanese ship that was transporting Allied prisoners of war when it was torpedoed off the coast of the Philippines in 1942, resulting in Australia’s largest maritime wartime loss with a total of 1,080 lives.

The wreck of the Montevideo Maru was located after a 12-day search at a depth of over 4000 meter (13,120 feet) — deeper than the Titanic — off Luzon island in the South China Sea, using an autonomous underwater vehicle with in-built sonar.

God be with them.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II, WW II History

A World War II Pilot Saved His Crew. It Took Almost 80 Years to Find His Remains.

The American pilot felt his aircraft wobble in the sky near the coast of West Sussex, England, where the beach gleamed below him, and the emerald meadow pastures lay ahead on June 22, 1944.

He and nine other crew members aboard a B-24 Liberator had just been jolted by a shell from a German antiaircraft gun that tore through the plane’s metal, forcing the pilot, First Lt. William B. Montgomery, into a dire situation as he tried to fly from Paris back to base camp in Britain.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II History

Traute Lafrenz obituary

Last survivor of the White Rose movement who was twice arrested by the Gestapo but liberated three days before her trial for treason

On February 18, 1943, Traute Lafrenz was walking to a neurology lecture at Munich University with her friend Willi Graf when she spotted Sophie and Hans Scholl hurrying through the empty courtyard. The siblings looked purposeful, if a little frazzled, but it was the leather suitcase that caught Lafrenz’s attention.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inPassings, WW II History

The Militant Pacifists of World War II

In 1940, during the twilight between peace and war, a divided Congress passed a law to conscript young men into the Army—the first federal “peacetime” draft, which lasted throughout American participation in World War II. Congress accommodated young pacifist men whose consciences wouldn’t let them take part in the fighting: If they could convince the government that their pacifism was sincere, conscientious objectors would be assigned to either noncombatant military service or noncombatant civilian service.

They were a bit more direct in WW I.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II History

Poland pressures Germany on war reparations

Following Germany’s latest refusal to pay war reparations to Poland, Polish officials are calling on the US and the UN for support. The government also aims to have its demands “clarified” to Germans.

“Germany’s response is astonishing to us in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as for the Polish state. The German government cannot answer a question that was never posed. Neither negotiations nor conciliatory discussions took place.” That’s what Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk had to say about Germany’s newest refusal to pay Poland reparations for World War II. Mularczyk made the statement on Wednesday in Warsaw.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany, Poland, WW II, WW II History

Old Nazi map sparks treasure hunt in the Netherlands

OMMEREN, the Netherlands, Jan 6 (Reuters) – An old map believed to mark the spot where German soldiers hid treasure worth millions of euros during World War Two sparked the imagination of amateur treasure hunters in the Netherlands this week.

Armed with metal detectors and shovels, groups wandered through the fields surrounding rural Ommeren in the east of the country after the map was made public by the Dutch National Archive on Tuesday.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II History

World War Two: Thousands of bombs still left unexploded

There are potentially thousands of unexploded World War Two bombs around Wales, with emergency services still dealing with up to 20 callouts a year.

With the coastal towns of Cardiff and Swansea key German targets, many are thought to be in these areas.

At the start of the war, the authorities were “utterly unprepared” how to deal with unexploded bombs, according to historian Steve Day.

A bomb disposal officer was expected to live for two months.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II, WW II History

The American Who Gave Us Pearl Harbor

This man helped the Soviets shape U.S. policies that undermined negotiations with Japan.

While most Americans commemorate the anniversary of Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 — what President Franklin Roosevelt called “a date which will live in infamy” — most Americans are probably not aware that the infamy of Pearl Harbor included a Soviet covert operation designed to influence Japan to attack the United States instead of the Soviet Union so that the Soviets would not face a two-front war. The covert operation was code-named “Snow,” and it involved a high-level Treasury Department official named Harry Dexter White.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inWW II, WW II History

Poland issues ultimatum to Germany over €1.3 trillion in WWII reparations

Poland is ratcheting up the pressure on Germany over reparations for the Second World War, with Poland’s Deputy Foreign Minister Arkadiusz Mularczyk giving Germany a new ultimatum to pay up or face Poland bringing the matter to a range of international forums, a move that may harm Germany’s international reputation.

“Now, Germany has a choice: Either it sits down with Poland at the negotiating table, or we will raise the issue in all international forums — in the UN, in the Council of Europe and in the European Union,” he said, according to German news agency dpa.

…“If Germany had been treated as it was in many plans formulated not in the Soviet Union but in the West, today they would be a very, very poor and much less numerous country than they are,” he claimed, adding that the defeated German nation was “treated extremely kindly” given the circumstances.

“Let them thank God that is only so. They owe us, they have to pay,” he insisted.

Long but interesting related reading… 

Fears of Retribution in Post-War Germany

Three groups were at the heart of post-war German fears of revenge: Jewish Holocaust survivors, Eastern European Displaced Persons, and American occupation officials.

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by Blazingcatfur••0•Posted inGermany, Poland, WW II, WW II History