World War II

[Elpenor]

Not related to the V weapons, but the earlier Blitz, I found this map fascinating.

Bomb Sight - Mapping the London Blitz

Explore the London Blitz through our website. Discover London during WW2 bombing raids, exploring maps, images and memories. The Bomb Sight web map and mobile app reveals WW2 bomb census maps between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941, previously available only by viewing them in the Reading Room of The...

bombsight.org

When I was looking at buying a house in South London it was looking at the map that explained why some houses in a road looked totally different!

 

[scalyboy]

I was not aware of this artist before.

The life less ordinary of artist Laura Knight

From painting nudes at a time when it was forbidden to sleeping among the troops in both world wars, the vitality of her work makes her still strikingly relevant

www.theguardian.com

That Nuremberg piece is amazing. If only other courtroom artists' impressions were as good as this

 

[spitfire]

Not related to the V weapons, but the earlier Blitz, I found this map fascinating.

Bomb Sight - Mapping the London Blitz

Explore the London Blitz through our website. Discover London during WW2 bombing raids, exploring maps, images and memories. The Bomb Sight web map and mobile app reveals WW2 bomb census maps between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941, previously available only by viewing them in the Reading Room of The...

bombsight.org

When I was looking at buying a house in South London it was looking at the map that explained why some houses in a road looked totally different!

I picked this coffee table book up when I was feeling rich.

The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps 1939-1945 by Laurence Ward | Waterstones

Buy The London County Council Bomb Damage Maps 1939-1945 by Laurence Ward from Waterstones today! Click and Collect from your local Waterstones or get FREE UK delivery on orders over £25.

www.waterstones.com

My neighbourhood took a pounding as proven a couple of years ago when they found a 250kg bomb in someone's cellar. (I think I posted on this thread about it?).

Brixton got a V1 slap bang on the town hall.

 

[Carvaged]

^ It is a fab book, excellent coffee table material

 

[brogdale]

Can't remember whether it was the V1s or V2s, but I recall reading somewhere that by a cunning piece of disinformation fed to the Nazis, maybe fiddling with radar data, a lot of them fell short of the capital in Kent somewhere. Mind you, I saw a signboard the other day in Russell Square saying that a direct hit from a V-weapon had destroyed a bandstand right in the middle of the square

My mum used to tell a story of walking in Hyde Park with her friend (they'd met on the farm they'd both been evacuated to, earlier in the War), hearing a V1 engine cut out and then, as per official advice, falling flat on the ground, but - in her words - feeling "self-conscious" at doing so! She would've been around 17. She also spoke of the morning after a raid and seeing rows of houses obliterated

My recollection of watching a documentary on this is that the location of V bomb landings was deliberately misreported to the West and North West to mislead the Nazis to adjust their timings/trajectory in order that more fell to the South and East of GL.

 

[scalyboy]

My recollection of watching a documentary on this is that the location of V bomb landings was deliberately misreported to the West and North West to mislead the Nazis to adjust their timings/trajectory in order that more fell to the South and East of GL.

Cheers, yes that might well have been what I'd read. So then after this 'info', the Nazis recalibrated their V-weapons so as to land several miles short of where they'd previously been aiming for. I suppose rocket technology was still in its infancy then, so they weren't able to accurately predict exactly how far a V-bomb would travel, and exactly where to

 

[T & P]

Sorry if it’s been mentioned already as I haven’t read the entire thread. I am right now watching the rather excellent Blitz Spirit 90-minute documentary by Lucy Worsley, on BBC iPlayer. I’ve read or watched a lot of Blitz material over the years, but I had not previously heard of this.

In the very early stages of WWII, the first week since the declaration of war in fact, the government issued official advice to people in London with pets, and recommended that unless they could guarantee they could evacuate with them if asked to, they should really destroy them now humanely. Adverts appeared at the same time in the press for bolt guns to effectively destroy animals. Apparently around 750,000 London dogs and cats, and fuck knows how many more other species of pets, were killed in that week alone as a result.

 

[Sue]

Cheers, yes that might well have been what I'd read. So then after this 'info', the Nazis recalibrated their V-weapons so as to land several miles short of where they'd previously been aiming for. I suppose rocket technology was still in its infancy then, so they weren't able to accurately predict exactly how far a V-bomb would travel, and exactly where to

This is a fascinating book which explains a lot of the technical skulduggery that went on.

Most Secret War

Most Secret War is R.V. Jones's account of his part in …

www.goodreads.com

Reginald Victor Jones - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[T & P]

Not related to the V weapons, but the earlier Blitz, I found this map fascinating.

Bomb Sight - Mapping the London Blitz

Explore the London Blitz through our website. Discover London during WW2 bombing raids, exploring maps, images and memories. The Bomb Sight web map and mobile app reveals WW2 bomb census maps between 7/10/1940 and 06/06/1941, previously available only by viewing them in the Reading Room of The...

bombsight.org

When I was looking at buying a house in South London it was looking at the map that explained why some houses in a road looked totally different!

Once you have the Blitz in mind, random gaps in Victorian terraced streets that are filled with 1950s apartment blocks become self explanatory. My OH used to live on a street in Herne Hill with such an occurrence, and sure enough when I checked the map you referenced, a bomb had landed there.

 

[spitfire]

Bamboo Bombers and Stone Tanks—Japanese Decoys Used in World War II

While researching World War II images at the U.S. National Archives, I came across several photos I had not seen before, of Japanese dummy aircrafts made of bamboo and wood planking.

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Carvaged]

Bamboo Bombers and Stone Tanks—Japanese Decoys Used in World War II

While researching World War II images at the U.S. National Archives, I came across several photos I had not seen before, of Japanese dummy aircrafts made of bamboo and wood planking.

www.theatlantic.com

Some pretty clever ideas they were using with some of their dummies.

We used dummy aircraft in the UK to try and trick the Germans into thinking their runway bombing campaign wasn't working and that production was much higher than it really was. Not sure they'd have bothered had they known just how far behind the Germans were already in '40-41.

 

[Sir Belchalot]

Amazing Danish beach littered with German bunkers due to coastal erosion:

 

[spitfire]

HELLO, WHICH POSTCODE WOULD SIR LIKE OBLITERATED?

ALL OF THEM?

YES SIR!

WHY AM I SHOUTING?

YES I'M IN THE ARTILLERY, WHY DO YOU ASK?

 

[spitfire]

I love the way it even gives the guy pulling the bang string a fright.

 

[spitfire]

You couldn't make it up.

 

[Pickman's model]

You couldn't make it up.

Sure this was in a book about pow escapes I had when I was little, it had stories about colditz, the Great escape,the wooden horse and iirc one from the Korean war

 

[Pickman's model]

Amazing Danish beach littered with German bunkers due to coastal erosion:

You should have a look at virilio's bunker architecture

 

[Pickman's model]

Amazing Danish beach littered with German bunkers due to coastal erosion:

For me the second world war defences remaining in london are very interesting, especially the citadel by the national police memorial on the mall. The issue of London defences was from the 1870s on very interesting, and sadly little I've found written about it.

 

[scalyboy]

For me the second world war defences remaining in london are very interesting, especially the citadel by the national police memorial on the mall. The issue of London defences was from the 1870s on very interesting, and sadly little I've found written about it.

Yes, I find it quite fascinating. Something about the idea of a complex set of structures that was never actually put to the test, but it's not hard to imagine an alternate reality in which they were...

I think there's a structure from the Outer London Defence Ring near me, beside Pymmes Brook in New Southgate. "The ring used a mixture of natural rivers and artificial ditches..."
Big concrete thing. Might be the remains of a tank trap or block? Looks rather like this photo (I found it on here)



Although - the OLDR may have been further out than New Southgate; Potters Bar is mentioned in some descriptions. More M25 than North Circular?

 

[spitfire]

 

[spitfire]

https://twitter.com/ckolonko?s=11

This guy is an expert on defences in the uk. He has done some London stuff as well.

 

[Carvaged]

In the footsteps of the women who escaped a Nazi death march

When Gwen Strauss' great-aunt revealed she had led nine women in an escape from a Nazi death march in 1945, Gwen decided to retrace their steps.

www.bbc.co.uk

When Gwen Strauss' great-aunt revealed she had led a group of nine Resistance women in an escape from a Nazi death march in 1945, Gwen wanted to find out more. It set her on a path that would see her retrace the women's steps and ensure the bravery of their work was recognised over 75 years later.

[...]

When Gwen recorded Hélène's full account of what happened she says her great-aunt had wanted her to know that even though they were incarcerated, they were still soldiers, and the women worked together sabotaging the making of the shells for a weapon called the panzerfaust.

In April 1945 the allies had bombarded the factory so many times and the Nazis decided to evacuate the camp says Gwen, leading 5,000 starving, exhausted women in thin clothes and with bleeding and blistered feet, east across the German countryside.

Gwen says the women realised how dangerous this march was.

"They really knew that they had one choice," says Gwen, "they had to either escape or they would be killed or die starving. So they found a moment when there was a kind of chaos and they jumped into a ditch and pretended that they were a pile of corpses. There had been so many piles of corpses that that worked and the march continued without them."

Over the next 10 days, the women set off to find the American soldiers on the front line. Jacky had diphtheria, says Gwen, Zinka had tuberculosis, Nicole was recovering from pneumonia, Hélène had chronic hip pain. They had broken bones and were starving, but they were determined to find freedom together.

[...]

 

[rubbershoes]

I watched a good video explaining the Battle of Midway. No flashy graphics but it gives a solid explanation of what happened and why, seen from the Japanese side . It's in three parts

Part one

 

[Elpenor]

I listened to an interesting podcast dramatising the Nuremberg trials, not a topic I knew much about despite having read a lot of the war itself. It’s a bbc production, and largely based on official documents, transcripts etc.

BBC Radio 4 - Nuremberg: The Trial of the Nazi War Criminals

The story of the trial of Nazi war criminals following Germany's surrender in 1945.

www.bbc.co.uk

It got mixed reviews by the critics, but for me with a novices interest in history, I took a lot from it - listening to it over the course of a day. There is a lot of background on the political horse-trading amongst the allies that surrounded the trials. I also enjoyed the section on the challenges of live interpreting.

It goes without saying that the episodes where they gather evidence from the survivors is a particularly tough listen.

 

[AmateurAgitator]

Semen Hitler - hero of the Red Army. Awared the Medal for Courage and died at the Battle of Sevastopol in July 1942.

Semen Hitler

en.everybodywiki.com

 

[Pickman's model]

Going out that way tomorrow, I'll keep my eyes open for it

 

[Hollis]

 

[Hollis]

Pretty incredible couple minutes of footage..



Full film here.. from US National Archives. ETA: the whole thing is worth watching..

 

[bcuster]

Remembering the Spitfire

‘Spit’ pilots flew their first combat missions over Dunkirk during the Battle of France.

getpocket.com

 

[Hollis]

Stick this here, rather than the Ukraine thread.. but there's something grimly fascinating about watching the Ukraine footage on social media, because I think it gives you more a sense of the reality of some of the stuff in WW2 - like France being invaded... the mixture of civilians and military, confusion, even the nature of combat..