I’ve got into a bit of a friendly argument/competition with a colleague at work regarding obscure military trivia and in order to win this hard-fought campaign I need some more ammunition.
For example he asserts that during WW2 90% of bombs dropped by the RAF fell within three miles of their target while during the first Gulf War 90% fell within three feet of their target. In response to this I fire back that there was significently more tonnage of bombs dropped on Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos during the Vietnam war than during all theatres in WW2.
The US Army uniform is a dark blue coat with light blue pants. When it was a combat uniform, the troops would take off the hot shirt in the summer, allowing the pants t fade. The coat stayed dark. General officers wear dark blue pants and coat.
•There has not been a USS Montana in the US Navy since 1918.
•One of the plans for rescuing the Iran hostages, Operation Credible Sport, involved using three C-130 cargo planes modified to land with the aid of strap-on rockets in the Amjadieh soccer stadium in Tehran (taking off later with additional rockets), and later land on an aircraft carrier. The aircraft reached the testing stage, but never used operationally as the mission was canceled.
An obscure but important battle was the Battle of Tit in 1902. Fought at the small village of Tit in the Hoggar Mountains of north Africa, the French defeated the fearsome Kel Ahaggar Touareg tribes who had terrorized the Sahara for several hundred years. After the defeat, the French were able to open trade routes and expand their empire.
And some other trivia: the word decimate originated in a Roman legion practice of killing one out of every ten soldiers as a collective punishment. Now, of course, it has come to mean an extreme reduction in capability, far more than 10%.
Most people assume Israeli general Moshe Dayan lost his eye fighting Arabs; in fact, it was shot out by a *French *sniper during the Allied invasion of Lebanon in 1941.
I am pretty damn sure all those bomb stats are bullshit, including the RAF WWII states. Their bombing wasn’t nearly that good.
For another “fact” that I heard but don’t know whether it is true. Gulf War I was the first war ever where the US had no infantry – that is, no soldiers who went into and out of battle on foot. All the infantry were “mechanized infantry” who entered and left battle in personnel carrying vehicles.
I don’t think the Army has any straight “leg” units left anymore, and haven’t for some time; the modern battlefield is way too “mobile” for leg infantry to hoof it around and keep up.
The Incas considered their deceased kings to be still-living beings (gods, if you will). They retained all their possessions and staff after death, and were carried into battle as leaders. They were consulted by religious leaders for advice on many issues, and their word from beyond the grave was considered law.
After the fall of Germany in WWII, Britain retained captured German aerial nerve gas bombs…for possible use against Japanese targets, before the war ended. Before their capture, the Allies hadn’t even been aware of the existence of German nerve gasses until they began capturing them.
The standard US submarine torpedo during WW2 was the Mk 14. It was so advanced they only did a single live test firing, to prevent anyone finding out about it. It passed the single test.
When WW2 started, a number of flaws gradually appeared in the Mk 14, which hadn’t appeared in the single torpedo fired during peace time.
Flaw 1. The torpedo’s depth setting equipment was flawed, and the torpedo ran too deep as a result.
Flaw 2. The magnetic exploder, which was designed to cause the torpedo to detonate under ships to break their backs, was faulty. It rarely caused the torpedo to detonate under the target, and frequently caused the torpedo to detonate early due variations in the natural magnetic field.
Flaw 3. A submarine crippled a Japanese ship. The sub surfaced and fired a single torpedo to finish the ship off. The torpedo hit the ship and failed to detonate. The captain ordered maintenance on the next torpedo before it was fired. But when fired, again the torpedo failed to explode. The captain then fired torpedo after torpedo into the crippled Japanese ship, performing maintenance on every one before firing. He fired almost every torpedo he had on his submarine and every single one failed to detonate. He fled when a Japanese destroyer turned up. It turned out there was a design flaw in the Mk 14’s detonator, that meant the torpedo would almost be guaranteed to fail if it hit the target at right-angles. It worked more reliably if it hit at glancing angles.
Flaw 4. The Mk 14 had the occasional habit of running in a big circle and coming back to the sub that fired it. The USS Tullibee sank it’s self in this way.
It wasn’t till late 1943 that the US navy admitted to and fixed the last of these flaws.
The tall ship USCGC Eagle, operated by the United States Coast Guard, was built by Blohm & Voss in Germany in 1936 and originally called Horst Wessel. She was the falgship of the Kriegsmarine sail training fleet, and was taken by the U.S. as a war prize at the end of World War II. If you get the good tour, they’ll show you the VIP stateroom where Hitler, and at least one president, have slept.
In the collection of the Museum of the United States Air Force is the oldest B-17 in existence, which was present in the Phillipines on December 8th, 1941 (other side of the date line), but survived attack. As parts were canibalized from other planes to keep it flying, someone named it The Swoose (after the song Alexander the Swoose, about a bird who was half swan, half goose).
As more capable versions of the B-17 entered service, Captain Frank Kurtz selected this aircraft as the personal transport for General George Brett, the ranking American commander of allied forces in Australia. It was the only B-17 to serve through the entirety of World War II.
After the war, the aircraft was scheduled to be smelted down, but Kurtz stepped in again. It was originally planned to be displayed in Los Angeles, then transferred to the National Air Museum (later to become the National Air and Space Museum), then transferred again in 2008 to the USAF Museum.
Kurtz liked the plane so much he named his daughter after it.
Swoosie Kurtz.
(And if that ain’t trivial, I don’t know what is.)
