Yeah, I think I call BS on this story. Although the phone call could have been a radio patch by the Command Post at Mildenhall. Lot's of people would have had to screw up to let him get off the ground, but at 4:30 in the morning and low vigilance, I guess it was possible and maybe why it was all hush hush. He would have had difficulties pre-flighting and flying by himself, was someone helping him?

Stive said:

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BQ_90 said:

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I didn't realize UK offered to merge countries with France prior to France surrendering to the Nazis. Guess the French thought Britain would,fall so best to kiss up to the nazies sooner than later

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Maybe I'm not being analytical enough....but what would that have accomplished in the end?

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I think Churchill was hoping the French would continue the fight. The French navy was,asked to,keep,fighting under British flag and they refused. Then Britain bombed their ass

I just read about the Ni'ihau Incident, kind of surprised I'd never heard of it before but I thought it was a pretty interesting read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident

Hosa08 said:

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I just read about the Ni'ihau Incident, kind of surprised I'd never heard of it before but I thought it was a pretty interesting read.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niihau_incident

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Love this story.

I think I saw a documentary on YouTube that talked about how the US government, some time before Pearl Harbor, came to Robinson telling him his island might be used as launch point for an attack on Pearl. He then tilled some flat areas into furrows so the Japanese couldn't easily land there. Sure enough, that Zero tried to land there and crashed his plane.

Found this one discussing General Mitchell and his warning regarding Ni'ihau, really enjoyed it.




https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.jsonline.com/amp/91625442

Also found this article about General Mitchell, not sure if that is the video you were referring to or not, but thanks for your response. I really found all of this pretty fascinating.

From the article-

"In his 1925 book, "Winged Defense," Mitchell detailed how Japan might attack Hawaii starting at 7:30 a.m. with 60 Japanese pursuit planes destroying hangars and planes on the ground at Schofield Barracks, followed by 100 bombers striking Pearl Harbor's naval base.

Though Mitchell correctly predicted the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, he did get some things wrong. He thought the Japanese would attack using land-based air power with submarines transporting airplanes in crates for assembly at an airfield on the northern Hawaiian island of Niihau and bombers flown from Midway Island. He undervalued aircraft carriers, contending that the large ships could not operate efficiently nor launch a sufficient number of aircraft for a concentrated operation. Also, Mitchell didn't need a crystal ball to predict a Japanese offensive at 7:30 a.m. since military commanders often favor morning attacks."

Yeah that's probably it. Although I enjoy WW2 history, I stumbled onto the Niihau story a few years ago after visiting Hawaii. I've always found this island mysterious and forbidden so I searched for YouTube videos about it. Next to impossible for someone to visit unless they have family there. I think they still speak a native language there as well. I asked some locals in Maui about it and even they knew next to nothing about the place. Then again it's a long way from Maui I suppose...like 300 miles. Folks from Kauai probably know more as I think they are in the same county.

Hawaii is one of my favorite places on earth.

The sinking of the Atlantic, White Star Line's first major disaster, 39 years before Titanic.

Dr. Watson said:

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I think the US was helped by a long tradition of largely self-rule, significant elite buy-in for the revolution, low population density, and threats that could not be easily mitigated in slaves and hostile native nations. It made some of the excesses impossible and lessened the impact of other atrocities that might have blown up in a different situation.

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That is a good point. We had a blueprint of sorts from Great Britain and with it a history of representative rule and the rights of man. Not perfect by any means, but a tradition and understanding of what self rule meant.

That doesn't mean it's always repeatable. And what should unnerve people a bit is that erstwhile civilized western nations have fallen into tyranny.

And nations that have little or no history of any sort of self rule have it hard to transition to democracy. Attempts often fail.

JJMt said:

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We did have some atrocities. From reading a biography of Alexander Hamilton recently, it appears that our forebears were not all that kind to Tories or suspected Tories. However, the number and severity of the atrocities can't hold a candle to the French Revolution.

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Lots of atrocities took place during the American revolution in regards to what you mentioned. One could say that what was taking place in the southern colonies/states during and after the war was one big atrocity.

JJMt said:

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We did have some atrocities. From reading a biography of Alexander Hamilton recently, it appears that our forebears were not all that kind to Tories or suspected Tories. However, the number and severity of the atrocities can't hold a candle to the French Revolution.

I wonder what impact the fact that many of the American colonists were devout Protestant Christians also had on the path of the American Revolution, whereas the leaders of the French Revolution were largely atheists? It's hard to quantify, but I suspect that difference also had quite a significant impact.

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There were some pretty remarkable atrocities on both sides during the American Revolution. Comparing it to France is a bit apples-to-oranges given the population sizes and population density. Also, it doesn't make sense to compare the leaders of the French Revolution to the people of the American colonies. The leaders of the Americans Revolution were largely apathetic about religion or deists. The people were generally more religious. As were the people of France.

Interesting read. A story from that same website .... this is one tough and brave dude....

the story of Captain Witold Pilecki

I learned that the japs actually had a significant atomic weapon program, two actually, in ww2. That they had a number of physicists equal to and having studied with fermi, einstein, bohr, etc. That it is still classified. That the russians had a huge offensive into korea in '45, for the purpose of seisimg their main facility.

that it is public that we caught the germans shipping them at least 5kg of u235 after their surrender. We dont know how much they made or how much germany sent them previously. That it probably took 10-20kg to make a bullet type uranium bomb, and that many people have reported that japan 'fizzled' their own atomic weapon off korea in august of 45, as their 'bullet' was too slow. In other words, to get a nagasaki bomb, the bullet has to fit in 1/300 of a second but theirs only hit 1/30, thus the while it was an atomic explosion, it was less than half as powerful.

They also hired a bunch of spaniards and mexicans to sneak across the border to infiltrate los alamos with marginal success.

In other words, it seems that the atomic race was much more of a race than is acknowledged.

that was one interesting fellow....

I just recently learned that a huge number of south Texas Germans served in the confederate army. I had thought they were unionists but an enormous number of the troops who mustered in in the Victoria area were Germans, including my great great uncle, who was cited by his commander as the bravest man in the company. He got shot on July 24, 1864 in the battle of Atlanta,

Also, the father of the Kleberg who was Richard King's lawyer and son in law was commander of a home guard outfit in DeWitt County (Cuero area) which was composed almost exclusively of Germans and Mexicans. I guess they trusted them to fight Comanches but not Union troops.

I did some reading into Attila the Hun and the Hun empire for a history podcast and was surprised to find the Roman commander, Flavius Aetius, incredibly fascinating.

For example, he at one point lost a civil war battle and was forced to flee the western Roman Empire. The leader of the empire, Galla Placidia, wanted to kill him, and he had no major army to back him up or keep him safe, so he recruited a small force of Hun bodyguards and started riding around northern Italy telling everyone who would listen that his small force was but the vanguard of a mighty Hun army and he'd better be made head of the western empire's armed forces or his fictional Hun army was going to kill everyone.

The lie worked and he went on to loyally defend the empire for the rest of his life. Pretty wild.

Here's the podcast episode on the wars with the Huns: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/history-on-the-go/id1449429666?mt=2&i=1000428571760

Martin Van Buren's VP, Richard Mentor Johnson, considered himself married to one of his slaves and gave the two daughters he had with her his last name. It was not an secret and the least bit.

I had no idea Madagascar was a possession of Vichy France and I certainly never knew the Allies invaded it:



This guy has a pretty cool channel BTW.

Rabid Cougar said:

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How influential the Communist were in the Western Allies intelligence agencies. They were setting the stage for what was going to take place after the war was over.

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Yeah the Cambridge Five come to mind. They did a crapload of damage to western democracies during and after WW II through the 1950s and for some of them well into the 60s and even later.

One example is that in the 1950s the US and the Brits were training Ukrainians to be spies and resistance leaders and then parachuting them into the Ukraine. Every one of them were quickly intercepted by the KGB soon after they landed. The KGB knew when and where they were coming, thanks to the traitors in MI6.

I learned today that the Japanese developed and weaponized chemical weapons, mainly the plague and typhus, and killed 6 figures of people in manchuria field testing the weapons.

Quote:

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Vallandigham died in 1871 in Lebanon, Ohio, at the age of 50, after accidentally shooting himself in the abdomen with a pistol. He was representing a defendant, Thomas McGehean, in a murder case for killing a man in a barroom brawl in Hamilton, Ohio. Vallandigham attempted to prove the victim, Tom Myers, had in fact accidentally shot himself while drawing his pistol from a pocket while rising from a kneeling position. As Vallandigham conferred with fellow defense attorneys in his hotel room at the Lebanon House, today's Golden Lamb Inn, he showed them how he would demonstrate this to the jury. Selecting a pistol he believed to be unloaded, he put it in his pocket and enacted the events as they might have happened, snagging the loaded gun on his clothing and unintentionally causing it to discharge into his belly. Although he was fatally wounded, Vallandigham's demonstration proved his point, and the defendant, Thomas McGehean, was acquitted and released from custody (only to be shot to death four years later in his saloon).

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I just read about him. After all that, this is how he died. Wow.

From Wikipedia.

The story of the Abernathy Boys from Frederick, Oklahoma. Really cool story about some pretty interesting and cool kids whose father was friends with Teddy Roosevelt.

JJMt said:

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We did have some atrocities. From reading a biography of Alexander Hamilton recently, it appears that our forebears were not all that kind to Tories or suspected Tories. However, the number and severity of the atrocities can't hold a candle to the French Revolution.

I wonder what impact the fact that many of the American colonists were devout Protestant Christians also had on the path of the American Revolution, whereas the leaders of the French Revolution were largely atheists? It's hard to quantify, but I suspect that difference also had quite a significant impact.

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This is very true... in doing research on my ancestors, I discovered one of my ancestors was hung as a Torie. That lead me to read a little about the Southern front of the revolution. It was very similar to the civil war in that neighbors were fighting neighbors and communities raiding other communities.

I learned that Germany had built huge stockpiles of freaking advanced sarin and tabun gas bombs.

We had no clue even what that was until post war testing.

Enough to be a huge, huge problem if they had chosen to use them.

A tiny exposure on skin kills a human in less than 2 minutes. There would have been no defense. Colorless. Odorless. Gasmasks useless. Only full pressurized suits could have helped, but even then you probably die taking the suit off. They had enough that if they had used them in certain key situations - Stalingrad, perhaps Normandy or the bulge, it could have turned the war. London dear lord.

No memoirs about why they didn't. Other than maybe hitler was gassed in ww1. But then why make them?

Stive said:

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The story of the Abernathy Boys from Frederick, Oklahoma. Really cool story about some pretty interesting and cool kids whose father was friends with Teddy Roosevelt.

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What a great story.
[url] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Abernathy_and_Temple_Abernathy[/url]

cbr said:

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I learned that Germany had built huge stockpiles of freaking advanced sarin and tabun gas bombs.

We had no clue even what that was until post war testing.

Enough to be a huge, huge problem if they had chosen to use them.

A tiny exposure on skin kills a human in less than 2 minutes. There would have been no defense. Colorless. Odorless. Gasmasks useless. Only full pressurized suits could have helped, but even then you probably die taking the suit off. They had enough that if they had used them in certain key situations - Stalingrad, perhaps Normandy or the bulge, it could have turned the war. London dear lord.

No memoirs about why they didn't. Other than maybe hitler was gassed in ww1. But then why make them?

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They made them because the French, British and Americans had them too. Why do you think that the gas mask was a major part of the soldier's kit in all of these countries military even before the war started? It was as ambiguous in the U.S. military as the pistol belt and the M1911 holster in the 1930's and early 1940's. Look at the pictures of the airborne troops getting ready to jump into Normandy in June of 1944. Gas mask bag on every one of them. The U.S. even had Chemical Companies armed with mortars.

The German's didn't use them because they didn't want them to be used on their own cities.

I don't think the Russians had that great of quantities. They would have most certainly used them if they would have had them.