History Forum / War History / World War II / March 2008

On the afternoon of 23 December 1944 a B24 flown by Arthur Legath and crew
crashed at some time after 1549 hours, probably near the Yugoslavian coast,
killing all occupants.  Two of those aboard were OSS agents and instructions
had been given not to drop them as originally ...

I'm about half-way through what's supposed to be a vital
memoir of fighting in the South Pacific, and I'm wondering ...
am I the only person who gets the feeling that Manchester
wasn't overly concerned with factual accuracy?  Not when

With the Japanese stopped in the Solomons, and a weakened naval air
situation, would peace negotiations be feasible?  As to Germany,
defeat in Afrika and a questionable situation in Russia, would
concessions to the Soviets be considered by the Nazis?

Basically, start with the premise that the USA subs at the beginning
of WW2 had good torpedoes, or at least as good as they were supposed
to be.  How would the war have been different?

Bombers need range to get to the targert. We flew our B-26 Marauders
at 180mph indicated to get max range. Top speed was not relevant since
it burned too mush fuel to complete the mission. So comparing top
speeds of bombers to determine which is best  has no merit whatever.

"Stephen Graham" <graham1@speakeasy.net> wrote in message
news:X8mdnZ1lwonC93jbnZ2dnUVZ_t_inZ2d@speakeasy.net...

I've read that the German tanks and certain German machine guns (in
particuar the MG-34) were so well-designed that they were expensive to
produce,and, combined with the damage caused by Allied bombings and
lack of resources, this meant that the German military was less well-

I'm currently reading Parshall and Tully's epic, "Shattered Sword: The
untold story of the Battle of Midway" - which explodes several myths
regarding the battle, namely, that the IJN carrier task force was ready to
launch a massive airstrike.

I have a user trying to translate an Honorable Discharge which
shows the person's organization as:
2123 AAF BU
'BU' is the translation I'm looking for.

I see one of the military mags has finally placed an article on a
panzer commander who is mentioned in von Mellinthin's book in glowing
terms.
   Hoth's proposed attack to relieve the 6th Armee in Stalingrad, was

Apparently the Luftwaffe were interested in Japan's Mitsubishi Ki-46-II Type
100 "Dinah" recce plane. Did they express serious interest in other
aircraft? Especially, in light of the successes at Pearl Harbor and Kuantan
(sinking of Prince of Wales and Repluse).

I have talked to many men who were in the ASTP (Army Specialized Training
Program). Every one of them was shipped out of the program to somewhere else
without becoming an officer.
I found the ASTP web site ( http://www.astpww2.org/ ), and it has a long

Where were the lines in Italy on VE day?

This is taken from the book Liberty by Peter Elphick, the chapter
entitled "close to calamity" which deals with the emergence of
structural failures in US built WWII merchant ships and the
investigations undertaken to solve the problem.

The Allies made much use of decoys during WW2, especially prior to D-
Day, but what about the Axis? I have come upon few of their dummy a/c.
Any reason for this?
Examples of Japanese straw zeros: