Officially, maybe. But the October 1943 issue of Time magazine detailed the shoot-down and named one of the pilots (the wrong one.)
According to Mr R.V. Jones (who was certainly in a position to know) they knew that the germans were experimenting with highly accurate navigation aids, and were getting ready to carry out a major night raid. Various measures were readied to jam the navigation beams and generally hamper the raid, but on the night itself it all went wrong because of a mix-up over the frequencies in use by the X-Gerät. In his book I believe he pointed to a deficiency in the listening posts (they had supersonic filters fitted to their radios and couldn’t hear the signals) as well as the issue with the ECCM built into the german receivers mentioned on the wiki page.
And going back a bit, I want to comment on the ammo:
Contrary to what Hollywood has taught you, one does not typically fire a machine gun in a long continuous burst. It was standard practice to fire your guns in short controlled bursts in order to avoid misfeeds. Consider that the bombers travelled at speeds around 150-200MPH and the German fighters would be moving closer to 400MPH, and you can see there were few opportunities for a long string of fire anyways. There’s a reason that fighter escorts and screens were so important to the survival of bombers.
ETA: Also, the primary concern for carrying additional things (cargo, ammo, people, fuel, etc.) on a plane is rarely a question of volume, but rather of weight. If you look at lots of cargo and passenger planes, you will find many examples of designs that were lengthened (C-130, C-141, DC-9, etc.) because they realized their their primary cargo tended to not be all that dense. Bulky cargo vs. heavy cargo. Ammo is fairly dense, and thus disproportionately heavy.
In the previously mentioned ‘Dirty Little Secrets’ by Dunnigan another tale is told of the ‘gedunk’ (ice cream) line on one of the big ships. Seems there was a long line (there always was) and a couple of new officers came on the scene and decided they were too important to wait. So calling out ‘gangway for officers’ they started to make their way to the front. There was general grumbling but the officers didn’t stop until one person waiting patiently barked out ‘get back in line where you belong!’. The officers stopped and turn to dress down the rating who dared speak so to a commissioned officer of the US Navy.
And out of the line stepped Admiral Halsey.
Another bomber tale told is that at one point a study was done concerning the defense of bombers and they concluded that the bombers would actually fare better if they removed the machine guns, ammo and all the crew needed to operate them as this actually added tons of weight to the plane and made it much more sluggish.
The response to that from the bomber crews was a universal ‘heck with that! We want to shoot back!’
Never heard of “gedunk” before. What’s the origin of the phrase?
When the original breakers of the “Enigma” coding machine (Polish Army Intelligence) discovered how to generate the coding, the Enigma machine was fairly simple-I believe it had only 3 encoding discs. This made the number of possible combinations small enough to allow a primitive computer to search all the combinations. Later, the German increased the encoding discs to 4-which Bletchly Park could handle. Did the Germans figure out that their messages were being read, and increase the rings to five?
There is a persistent urban legend that says that during World War II, a German sailor came ashore on the coast of North Carolina and saw a movie at Southport’s Amuzu Theater. His body was reportedly washed up on shore after the submarine was sunk and a ticket stub was found in his pocket. I don’t know how famous it is, but a lot of folks around Wilmington, nc tell it.
This sounds similar to the one that we have here in Québec about U-boat crews coming ashore and purchasing supplies in isolated communities on the St-Lawrence.
Per this, the answer appears to be no. My guess is that there wasn’t room in the existing chassis to squeeze a fifth rotor in. There was an attempt to alter the wiring with four rotors to further increase the complexity. From the cite:
IIRC, the Germans did not suspect that their later refinements to Enigma were being decoded. Per the wiki for ULTRA, it was only declassified in 1974.
Didn’t the armed forces of germany all have different codes for the Enigma? From what I have seen on the History Channel, Alan Turing contributed greatly to the cracking of the code by reversing the procedure. Instead of what could be broken, he turned it around to what could not be broken.
By all accounts he was an odd character. Riding around on a push bike with a mask on so pollen didn’t affect him. Even at Bletchley Park he stood out.
I don’t know if it’s legend or ignorance, but I’ve heard people claim that the only Blacks that fought in World War II were the Tuskegee pilots! Not all Tuskegee were pilots, and not all Blacks in WWII were with the Tuskegee squadron.
Off the top of my head, I know there was also the Black Panthers, an all-black tank unit, and of course many others.
And the Red Ball Express, black truck drivers supporting the Third Army. Had their own movieand their own TV sitcom, too.
This is more of a post-World-War-II legend, but it is about the war: The Norwegian gold reserves were smuggled out of the country, right under the noses of the Nazis, by little children on sleds who hid the gold under their coats. Not true. This is from a children’s novel, and it is entirely fictional. Much of the gold was indeed smuggled out, at times just in front of the advancing German army (it took two months to fully occupy Norway), but no children were involved.
Gold bars are heavy. A child on a sled couldn’t carry one, certainly without raising suspicion. Besides, the occupation started in April, and sledding conditions near the coast are not exactly good in April…
All or mostly black (then officially called “Colored”) WW2 US Army units included:
92nd Infantry Division
366th Infantry Regiment
93rd Infantry Division
369th Infantry Regiment
371st Infantry Regiment
2nd Cavalry Division
4th Cavalry Brigade
9th Cavalry Regiment
10th Cavalry Regiment
5th Cavalry Brigade
27th Cavalry Regiment
28th Cavalry Regiment
Air Corps Units
332d Fighter Group (Tuskegee Airmen)
Non Divisional Units
Infantry Units
555th Parachute Infantry Battalion
Cavalry/Armor Units
US Military Academy Cavalry Squadron
5th Reconnaissance Squadron
758th Tank Battalion
761st Tank Battalion
784th Tank Battalion
Field Artillery Units
46th Field Artillery Brigade [15] .
184th Field Artillery Regiment, Illinois National Guard.
333rd Field Artillery Regiment [16] .
349th Field Artillery Regiment [17]
350th Field Artillery Regiment [18]
351st Field Artillery Regiment [19]
353rd Field Artillery Regiment [20]
578th Field Artillery Regiment [21]
333rd Field Artillery Battalion
349th Field Artillery Battalion
350th Field Artillery Battalion
351st Field Artillery Battalion
353rd Field Artillery Battalion
578th Field Artillery Battalion
593rd Field Artillery Battalion
594th Field Artillery Battalion
595th Field Artillery Battalion
596th Field Artillery Battalion
597th Field Artillery Battalion
598th Field Artillery Battalion
599th Field Artillery Battalion
600th Field Artillery Battalion
686th Field Artillery Battalion
777th Field Artillery Battalion
795th Field Artillery Battalion
930th Field Artillery Battalion, Illinois National Guard
931st Field Artillery Battalion, Illinois National Guard
969th Field Artillery Battalion
971st Field Artillery Battalion
973rd Field Artillery Battalion
993rd Field Artillery Battalion
999th Field Artillery Battlaion
Tank Destroyer Units
614th Tank Destroyer Battalion
646th Tank Destroyer Battalion
649th Tank Destroyer Battalion
659th Tank Destroyer Battalion
669th Tank Destroyer Battalion
679th Tank Destroyer Battalion
795th Tank Destroyer Battalion
827th Tank Destroyer Battalion
828th Tank Destroyer Battalion
829th Tank Destroyer Battalion
846th Tank Destroyer Battalion
Two segregated units were organized by the United States Marine Corps:
51st Defense Battalion. (Composite)
52nd Defense Battalion. (Composite)
http://5thplatoon.org/notable.html
This list does not include non-combat and support units such as Engineers, Transportation, etc. where black soldiers served with distinction in both European and Pacific theaters.
Heh I remember reading that kid’s book. 
Yeah, 3rd or 4th grade I think. Snow Treasure.
That was the plot of one of Isaac Asimov’s short mysteries. Seemed dumb then, seems dumb now.