War is itself a strange phenomenon. In war, people who do not know each other kill each other for the glory and benefit of people who know each other and do not kill each other. But even here, in the midst of death and horror, in the bizarre pattern of human destinies, the palette of feelings and the alphabet of ideas, there is always a place for curiosities, incredible facts and crazy coincidences. I bring to your attention a small overview of interesting cases that took place during the Second World War
The first German serviceman to die in World War II was killed by the Japanese in China, the first American serviceman was killed by the Russians in Finland in 1940.
One of the Japanese methods of destroying tanks is to manually bring a large artillery shell and hit it against the tank. “Lack of weapons is not an excuse for defeat,” said Lieutenant General Mutaguchi.
During the war, Soviet pilots carried out more than 600 air rams.
During the attack on Pearl Harbor, the emblem of one of the units of the US Navy was a swastika.
Hitler's personal train was called America.
Due to the lack of horses, camels took part in the Battle of Stalingrad. The animals withstood the test with dignity, and the camel named Yashka even made it to Berlin.
After massive bombing, thirty-five thousand American and Canadian soldiers broke into the island of Kiska (Aleutian Ridge). Twenty-one soldiers were killed in the indiscriminate shooting. Meanwhile, Japanese soldiers left the island 2 weeks before the Allied landings.
Most of the Waffen SS personnel were not Germans.
The anti-aircraft fire of the Allied ships was 70 times more effective than the Japanese air defense. The reason is the use of centimeter-range radars and the presence of radio fuses in 40 and 127 mm projectiles.
The youngest US soldier was 12-year-old Calvin Graham. He was injured and fired for lying about his age. (His privileges were subsequently restored by act of Congress.)
Pilot Hiroyoshi Nishizawa shot down 87 aircraft. But the best Japanese ace died while flying as a passenger on a transport plane.
When the Allied forces reached the River Rhine in Germany, the first thing they did was urinate in it. It was done by everyone, from the soldier to Winston Churchill (who made a show out of this process) and General George Patton.
Among the first "Germans" captured in Normandy were several Koreans. They were forced to fight for the Japanese army until they were captured by the Russians, and then fought on the side of the Russian army until they were captured by the Germans and were later forced to fight for the German army until they were captured by the US army.
St. Isaac's Cathedral in Leningrad has never been subjected to direct shelling. The Germans used its high dome as a reference point for sighting. Only once did a shell hit the western corner of the cathedral. But in general, the beautiful building was not damaged, moreover, values from other museums were preserved in its basement, which they did not manage to remove before the blockade began.
Junior lieutenant of the Japanese army Onoda Hiro, not knowing about the end of hostilities, continued to wage a guerrilla war until 1974. In 1944, he was ordered to lead a detachment on the Philippine island of Lubang. All of his soldiers were killed, but he managed to survive and continued to follow the instructions unquestioningly.
The myth that carrots improve vision was spread by the British to obscure the development of a new radar that would allow pilots to see German bombers at night.
There were more ships in the US overland than in the US Navy. The German Air Force had 22 rifle divisions and 2 armored vehicles.
Japanese engineer Tsutomu Yamaguchi managed to survive two atomic bombings. On August 6, 1945, he was on a business trip to Hiroshima. Having survived in the midst of hell, Yamaguchi returned to his hometown of Nagasaki, where after 3 days he was again hit by an atomic attack.
Physicist Niels Bohr was taken out at the last moment from German-occupied Denmark. While Danish resistance fighters covered his retreat, he ran through the back door of his house, pausing for a moment to grab a beer bottle of "heavy water." Panting at high altitude in the Mosquito bomb bay, Bohr until England did not let go of the precious bottle, which, alas, contained beer. In the confusion, someone drank heavy water by mistake.
The only victim of the first bomb dropped by the Allies on Berlin was an elephant. The animal was killed at the Berlin zoo.
At the start of World War II, the German Coca-Cola bottling plant lost its supply of ingredients from the United States. Then the Germans decided to produce another drink from food waste - apple pomace and milk whey. The name came up quickly - "Fanta" (short for the word "fantasy").
At one time, German newspapers published a snapshot of the ideal German soldier - a blue-eyed blonde in a helmet. This soldier was Werner Goldberg, whose father was Jewish.
During the Normandy landings, to reduce the losses of troops from the German coastal batteries, heavy bombers "Lancaster" RAF all night imitated the ships of the paratroopers. Moving at an extremely low altitude, they slowly spiraled closer to the coast, performing synchronous maneuvers. On German radars, they were displayed in the form of landing barges going at 20 knots. By morning, the Germans had shot several thousand shells into the void.
And finally, an absolutely incredible coincidence. In the days of the last preparations for the landing in France, which was being prepared in a state of secrecy, the Daily Telegraph published a crossword puzzle, the answers to which were the code names of the landing sites, and the key word was … "Overlord" (that was the name of the entire landing operation). As it turned out, the crossword puzzle was composed by an ordinary school teacher, Mr. Doe, who is infinitely far from military affairs. After a thorough check, the likelihood of any kind of espionage was completely ruled out. Deja-vu and nothing more.
