History Forum / War History / World War II / December 2006

I read that Tokyo had a modern subway in 1938.  Would anyone know how
the subway fared during the war?  Was it used as a bomb shelter?  Did
it (stations, maint yards, open track) suffer from attacks?
As an aside, I noticed in old books from that era that they spelled the

The book "1942" by Winston Groom says that 40% of volunteer men had to
be rejected due to health problems and most of those probs were because
of the Great Depression.  Are you surprised it was that many??
It also states that two million volunteers were rejected by

History tells us that Hitler was not given a wake-up call when the
Allies landed at Normandy. I would have to think that when he
eventually woke up and was briefed on what was going on that he would
have exploded into a fit of rage for not being informed immediatly. Is

This past week two interesting news stories pertaining to events
occuring in World War II appeared on the same day in papers
throughout the country and on the internet, one written by the
Associated Press and the other by the Scripps Howard News Service.

Don Phillipson wrote:
I joined in the 1950s a special RAF unit that paraded with riflles adorned
by the earlier knife bayonet, that had to be polished shiny.
And I, as an RAF officer also in a special unit. was for a period issued

Hello to all.
Does anyone of you know about the air drop supplies to the occupied
Greece from 1940 to 1945?If there are any photos about the material
which include the supplies( like containers type 'c' or 'h'), i would

Can anyone kindly translate a short passage of German text from a Nazi
document? Here is a small scan of it:
http://tinyurl.com/y383bm
Thank you,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGZpZrSITOA
Here is some information you may find interesting. This is a diary of
Jim Brown who was on the Tottori Maru with my grandfather. My
Grandfather was captured on Leyte Sept 17th. He ended up at a POW camp

My previous inquiry was a little too arch and
indirect.
What I'd like to find out - if it is known - is:
What proportion of shots fired by tanks were

What was the situation like in towns and cities directly adjactent to
the Franco-German border during the Phoney War?

At HistoryNet.com there is an article entitled Lost Prison Interview
with Hermann Göring: The Reichsmarschall's Revelations edited by
Gilberto Villahermosa. This information is interesting, at least to me
insofar as Goering's POV about U.S. entry into the war.

On todays date (Oct. 25th.) in 1944 one of the greatest navel battles
was fought during WWII. The Battle of Leyte Gulf. The US dealt a severe
blow to the Japanese fleet and my grandfather was on board the USS St.
Lo. The St. Lo was an Escort Carrier (part of Taffy 3) and she was ...

I'm looking for information on cases where the Japanese were defeated
because they deceived themselves. For example, how much was IJN
strategy at the Marianas affected by false reports that land-based
aircraft had devastated the U.S. fleet, or how did false reports of

I read D-Day by Stephen Ambrose but then people (on this group) said it
wasn't accurate.

I got interested in aviation in the late 60s, and one of the first
books I ever bought was Toliver & Constable's"Horrido".  In the early
80s, I met Ray Toliver for the first time.  He was cordial and
approachable, far more so than almost anyone from his age group that I