History Hustle

[oneh2obabe]

The Charlie Brown and Franz Stigler incident occurred on 20 December 1943, when, after a successful bomb run on Bremen, 2nd Lt Charles "Charlie" Brown's B-17 Flying Fortress (named "Ye Olde Pub") was severely damaged by German fighters. Luftwaffe pilot Franz Stigler had the opportunity to shoot down the crippled bomber but did not do so, and instead escorted it over and past German-occupied territory so as to protect it. After an extensive search by Brown, the two pilots met each other 50 years later and developed a friendship that lasted until Stigler's death in March 2008. Brown died only a few months later, in November of the same year.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_B ... r_incident

[oneh2obabe]

Throughout World War II, British spymaster Vera Atkins recruited and trained hundreds of secret agents — including women — who then parachuted into France to sabotage the Nazis. Along the way, Atkins was known as much for her steely intellect and bravery as she was for her enormous heart and for never giving up on her people.

When she learned that 118 of her agents were still missing after the war, she single-handedly went to work finding them. She spent a full year tracking down former concentration camp commanders and dragging confessions out of them by any means necessary. She even got a confession out of the infamous SS officer Rudolf Höss, the longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz who oversaw the murder of more than 1 million people. Ultimately, Atkins uncovered the fates of all but one of her lost charges.

Go inside the true story of Vera Atkins, the fearless spymaster who inspired James Bond's Moneypenny: https://bit.ly/3A2nkCm

[oneh2obabe]

[oneh2obabe]

Merrill’s Marauders (named after Frank Merrill) or Unit Galahad, officially named the 5307th Composite Unit (Provisional), was a United States Army long range penetration special operations jungle warfare unit, which fought in the South-East Asian theatre of World War II, or China-Burma-India Theater (CBI). The unit became famous for its deep-penetration missions behind Japanese lines, often engaging Japanese forces superior in number.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrill%27s_Marauders

[Bsuds]

I remember they did a movie about them.

https://www.imdb.com/video/vi1030405913 ... _=tt_ov_vi

[oneh2obabe]

[oneh2obabe]

Ahead of International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27, a virtual event on Monday honored a hero often referred to as the “Japanese Schindler” for helping to save thousands of Jews from the Holocaust.

Chiune Sugihara, a Japanese diplomat stationed in Lithuania, defied his own government’s orders by issuing handwritten transit visas in 1940 to more than 6,000 Lithuanian Jews, enabling them to escape Nazi-occupied Europe. He continued to do so for a month until the Japanese consulate was closed. More than 40,000 descendants of those Jews are believed to be alive today because of his courageous actions.

https://www.jns.org/honoring-the-japane ... holocaust/

[sobrohusfat]

what does the Pan Am jet got to do with it ?

[oneh2obabe]

Guess the US National Archives didn't have a picture of the actual plane(s) used so supplied one from the same era.

[mexi cali]

054.jpg

What was so unbearable?

[oneh2obabe]

^^^The amount of marble used in the palace - it absorbs the cold. Although rooms and suites had huge fireplaces (big enough for a man to stand upright), but also meant more space for the wind, rain, and snow to come inside.

[oneh2obabe]

[oneh2obabe]

The Scottish soldier who went full “Braveheart” on Nazi soldiers: “Mad Jack” may have donned Scottish bagpipes to fight in WWII, but Sir Tommy Macpherson had the balls to go full “Braveheart” on the battlefield, sporting a kilt while he raised hell with the Scottish commandos. Nicknamed “The Kilted Killer,” Macpherson’s flashy battle attire and relentless tenacity earned him a 30,000 Franc bounty on his head for whichever German could kill him first.

Amazingly, Macpherson made it through the entire war despite the Germans’ determination to take him out — even orchestrating the surrender of 23,000 German troops at the Das Reich Headquarters by bluffing that the Royal Air Force would unleash hell if they didn’t cooperate. In reality, Machpherson was alone and the RAF had no idea he was there, but he still managed to convince German Gen. Botho Henning Elster to give up his men and vehicles.

Macpherson walked away from World War II as the The UK’s most decorated living soldier in history, earning the Military Cross for his escape from a Nazi prison camp in Poland, a papal knighthood and two bars for his valiant — and unusual — service.

[oneh2obabe]

The Ghost Army was a United States Army tactical deception unit during World War II officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. The 1100-man unit was given a unique mission within the Allied Army: to impersonate other Allied Army units to deceive the enemy. From a few months after D-Day, when they landed in France, until the end of the war, they put on a "traveling road show" utilizing inflatable tanks, sound trucks, fake radio transmissions, scripts and pretense. They staged more than 20 battlefield deceptions, often operating very close to the front lines.

Their story was kept secret for more than 40 years after the war, until it was declassified in 1996. The unit was the subject of a PBS documentary The Ghost Army in 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghost_Army

[oneh2obabe]