WW2HANGAR.NET

As the Allies marched inexorably northward through Italy during World War II, the Nazis set to work photographing the rubble of damaged historical buildings and artwork. The images were supposed to prove that their enemies were cultural barbarians.

The riddle began 10 years ago, when Ralf Peters stumbled across an old box full of photographs in a cabinet at the Central Institute of Art History in Munich. Peters, an art history Ph.D., had just begun a new job at the institute and was trying to get an idea as to what the archive might contain. Little did he know that the box he found during his first days on the job would preoccupy him and his colleagues for years to come.

Inside the box were 600 undated black-and-white images. They were disorganized and appeared on no inventory lists. “Nobody knew what they were doing inside the cabinet,” Peters recalls. “They weren’t in good condition.”

The images were of burned out residences, destroyed monuments and crumbled palaces, all taken in Italy during World War II. Peters was initially flummoxed as to the photos’ provenance: Who took the pictures? When exactly? And, most importantly, to what end? Peters spent years searching for the answers to these questions, and ultimately they were to provide a unique look at Nazi war propaganda as the Allies inexorably pushed the Germans out of Italy in 1943 and 1944…

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The USS North Carolina battleship, now decommissioned and resting across the Cape Fear River from downtown Wilmington, participated in every major naval offensive in the Pacific during World War II. It carried out nine shore bombardments, sank an enemy troopship, destroyed at least 24 enemy aircraft and assisted in shooting down many more. It then survived the scrap yard to become North Carolina’s official World War II memorial.

But when the Battleship Commission announced in 2001 that much-needed refurbishment to the 73-year-old vessel would require a trip up the East Coast to Norfolk, Va., or down to Charleston, S.C., many prepared to cross their fingers. No one knew if the old war horse could survive one more trip.

Now, it doesn’t have to.

During a press conference on the ship’s fantail Thursday, Capt. Terry Bragg, executive director of the North Carolina Battleship Memorial, announced that he and the Battleship Commission voted May 31 to have the refurbishment done where it sits by using a cofferdam.

A cofferdam is a series of walls made of sheet piling, like that along the Riverwalk in downtown Wilmington. The wall is driven into the riverbed surrounding the ship, enabling water inside this watertight “room” to be pumped out, exposing the ship’s hull.

“Our world is changing here on the battleship,” said Bragg…

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British code-breaking institution Bletchley Park has teamed up with technology firm HP in a bid to digitize millions of Second World War documents to make them available online.

HP has donated document-scanning equipment and software to Bletchley Park in Milton Keynes to accomplish the task.

During the Second World War, a number of mathematicians and cryptography experts worked at Bletchley Park to break the code used by Germany’s Enigma machine. The efforts believed to have saved the country from further devastation.

Currently the majority of information is available only in paper format that is hard to view and handle.

Moreover, digitizing the documents will ensure the preservation of the fragile hard copies.

Speaking on the move, Bletchley Park Trust’s director Simon Greenish said, “This will help preserve and considerably increase access to the historic fragile materials.”
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Saturday, June 12, 2010 7 p.m.

Financial Goal: $600,000 to support programs at The Museum of Flight

“This Gala will be an event you will not want to miss as we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the first flight of the Boeing B-17 Flying Fortress. In addition to fantastic Big Band music, great food and dancing, we’ll be honoring the gallantry of the men and women who designed, built, ferried and flew this valiant airplane.”

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Not far from High Flying Coffee is Paul Allen’s Flying Heritage Collection, where I went Wednesday morning for a sneak peek at the museum’s latest wartime artifact, a World War II tank that will be unveiled during a Memorial Day event on Monday.

Mark Kepler, manager of aircraft maintenance, didn’t expect to be driving tanks when he started working here, but the veteran commercial pilot doesn’t mind changing gears. “I used to drive heavy equipment bulldozers and this is similar,” he said.

On Monday, those skills and a poorly translated 3-page Czech manual will come handy when he operates the Soviet T-34, which has been kept under wraps since it arrived. Kepler said it takes a lot of muscle to drive the 34-ton vehicle. “It’s a real workout.”

The World War II tank has been re-militarized to fire blanks and painted snow white like the Red Army tanks that fought in Belarus in the winter of 1945, explained Adrian Hunt, the collection’s executive director. It was shipped to the U.S. from the Czech Republic, where someone had it stored in a barn, Hunt said, and it made a stop in Florida for an engine tune up before arriving to Seattle by truck in April.

Curator Cory Graff said it’s a very important tank because of its design, which was used as a model for future tanks. “It’s the ‘57 Chevy of tanks, it’s a classic,” he said…

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Russian President Dmitri Medvedev has ordered the Defense Ministry to publish all of Russia’s World War II archives on the Internet by 2013, RIA Novosti reports.

The material will be published on the “People’s Heroic Deeds” Web site, which is available in Russian and English here. The declassification project began in 2007…

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April 15, 2010 – Liberty Belle, a restored World War II B-17 bomber, is making a visit to Seattle and The Museum of Flight. The Flying Fortress will arrive Monday, April 19 at 10 a.m. and be on view at the Museum ramp from April 19 – April 26.

On April 24 – 25 aircraft rides will be available hourly from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., followed by ground tours of the plane from 4:30 – 6 p.m. Flight experiences last about 45 minutes, with 30 minutes in the air. Ground tours of the plane are from 4:30 – 6 p.m. The aircraft is owned and operated by the Liberty Foundation.

There were over 12,000 B-17s produced between 1935 and 1945, with almost 5,000 lost in combat. The Liberty Foundation’s B-17 Liberty Belle is one of only 14 B-17s that still fly today.
The aircraft was built toward the end of the war and was not flown in combat. It is painted in the colors and nose art of the original Liberty Belle B-17 that flew missions with the 390th bomb group of the U.S. 8th Air Force. The non-profit Museum of Flight is one of the largest independent air and space museums in the world. The Museum’s collection includes more than 150 historically significant air- and spacecraft, as well as the William E. Boeing Red Barn the original manufacturing facility of the Boeing Co.

The J. Elroy McCaw Personal Courage Wing displays 28 World War I and World War II aircraft from the United States and other countries including Germany, Russia, and Japan. Over 30 aircraft representing the first century of aviation are displayed in the all-glass T.A. Wilson Great Gallery. The evolution of space flight and a look into the future are presented in the exhibit, Space: Exploring the New Frontier.

The Airpark includes outdoor displays including the first jet Air Force One, a supersonic Concorde airliner and the prototype Boeing 747 jumbo jet. Interactive displays in The Flight Zone provide educational and entertaining activities for young children. The Museum’s aeronautical library and archival holdings are the largest on the West Coast…

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The sound of gunfire echoed throughout the valley as the thermometer stubbornly refused to rise out of the teens on Saturday.

Men in uniform fell to the ground. Because there was no blood to mark the wounded, chilly viewers at the two re-enactments of the Battle of the Bulge had to watch carefully to see whose helmet was on the ground instead of on his head. At this re-enactment, that was the signal that a soldier had been wounded.

The battle, this year commemorating the 65th anniversary of the last major Nazi offensive against the Allies, is presented annually by the Allied and Axis Living Historians of the World War II Federation.

Between mid-December 1944 and late January 1945, more than a million troops were involved in the historic battle that stretched through Belgium, France and Luxembourg before the Allies were able to declare victory.

And so it was at Saturday’s re-enactment. Both sides “lost” many men before victory was declared.

As realistic as the chill felt and the gunfire sounded, there’s no way to depict adequately what really happened on that faraway World War II battlefield, according to Alex Kisse, 85, a resident of New Carrolton, Md.

Kisse knows. He fought at the real Battle of the Bulge.

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More than 1,600 letters and other correspondence from several hundred Southern Indiana service members during World War II can now be read online.

It took two years to digitize the Jesse Dorsey collection that Charlestown-Clark County Public Library director Tamsie Meurer said was completed at the end of July.

“This is the largest collection we had on paper,” she said Wednesday. “It was the best way to preserve the originals and not have them handled a lot.”

Dorsey, who was in charge of a biweekly newsletter called the Speedometer for the Speed branch of the Louisville Cement Co. during the war, corresponded with about 350 service men and women from the Sellersburg and Speed areas.

Before Dorsey died in 1976, he declined a request from the Indiana Historical Society to donate the letters to the organization. He believed the letters should stay in the local communities, according to the library.

His collection was handed over to the Sellersburg library branch in 1985, where they have remained for viewing.

Meurer said it took time to digitize the collection–which includes letters, envelopes and postcards–because of the volume of material and the transcribing that had to be done…

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An Australian researcher is enlisting the public’s help to identify photos of Kiwi airmen at work and play during World War II, that were retrieved from a military rubbish tip.

The collection of more than 100 photographs are of the Royal New Zealand Air Force No 6 Flying Boat Squadron in the Solomon Islands. In one photograph, more than 200 men line the wing of one of the giant Catalina flying boats that were affectionately known as “Dumbos”.

The photos were rescued from the rubbish by Flight Lieutenant Alastair “Scotty” Scott, his daughter Jenny said. “They were all lying out on a rubbish tip. Rather than leave them, he scavenged them.” Ms Scott, now an archivist in Adelaide, has put them on photo-sharing website Flickr. “Do they sit at the bottom of my cupboard doing nothing or do I get them out there?” Ms Scott said.

“The men in these photos are largely unidentified but there must be many hundreds of their children and grandchildren in New Zealand who would like a wartime photo of their father or grandfather.”

Among the pictures is a little-known shot of a young Sir Edmund Hillary, who was then a navigator, helping to launch a small boat named the “Jolly Roger”. “They were trying to keep themselves occupied,” Ms Scott said.

Michael Davies served as a flight engineer with RNZAF 6 Squadron the “flying boat” squadron and was one of the hundreds of men who posed on the wings of the Catalina. The photo now hangs above his bed in his Taradale home. His experience in the Solomon Islands led to a lifelong love of “Dumbos”. He is one of the owners of the only Catalina in New Zealand.

At first glance, the parade is like any other in patriotic New England. Red-white-and-blue bunting lines the route. Firetrucks and old military vehicles roll along. Fife and drum corps, Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts, war veterans and pageant winners wave and throw candy along the way.

But the annual parade through this tiny Connecticut town is unusual for what it celebrates: Victory over Japan Day — from World War II.

The 48th annual V-J Day Parade last Sunday is one of the last in the country to celebrate the day that the Japanese surrendered in 1945, ending the war. Parade organizers and many in Moosup call the parade nothing more than another opportunity to honor America’s war heroes.

“It’s patriotic,” says Joe Katusich, 70, a retired Navy master chief who served aboard submarines in the 1960s. “A lot of people gave their lives in World War II, and people forget about it.”

Others, including some participants in the parade, say it’s offensive to Japanese Americans and to a country that now is one of the United States’ closest allies…

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A restored World War II bomber will be up in the skies this weekend, and passengers can ride along. The Liberty Belle, a B-17 Flying Fortress, will offer rides Aug. 15 and 16 from the Sanford-Lee County Airport. “This is the one that got the glory. This is the iconic symbol of World War II aviation,” WWII veteran Clay Wilson said of the B-17.

Wilson flew a dozen missions over France during World War II. During his last flight, his plane was shot down and he escaped by parachute. “I looked down at me and saw I had blood all over me. I didn’t know I was hit,” Wilson said. His pilot took a bullet in the forehead.

“He fell over the controls, and I was right behind him,” Wilson said.

Seven of Wilson’s crew members were killed. He recalled the experience Monday while onboard the Liberty Belle as it flew over Lee County. “Up there, the cold is your enemy and oxygen too. You run out of oxygen, you don’t last but a half a minute,” he said.

The B17 is still flown as it was during wartime, only it now uses modern radios. It operates on four original Studebaker Wright Cyclone Engines, the pilot said.

“I tell people that on a jet engine, you don’t start a jet engine, you turn it on. These engines, you have to have a certain intuitiveness besides the necessary training on them,” pilot John Ferguson said.

The National World War II Museum is getting a $150,000 federal grant to help finance the museum’s planned live performances at its Stage Door Canteen.

The performances are to feature music and entertainment from the World War II era, as well as modern musical pieces inspired by the war.

The Stage Door Canteen will be part of the museum’s newest phase: a 70,000-square-foot complex where visitors will experience the sights, sounds, tastes and feel of the way life was for American soldiers on the battlefield and for their folks back home.

The three-day grand opening of the expansion will begin Nov. 6 with a live broadcast on NBC’s Today Show of the ceremony dedicating the new facility, located across Higgins Drive from the original museum.

“The museum is a wonderful memorial to World War II and the brave men and women who served our country during that conflict, ” said Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., in praising the grant. “This grant will help the museum expand its outreach and bring the live performances at the Stage Door Canteen to fruition.”…

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The red cloth book is thought to be one of only a handful of pre-publication copies given to the Nazi dictator in 1925.

Translated as “My Struggle”, Hitler dedicated the political manifesto to fellow Nazi, Georg Maurer. A lucid black scrawled inscription reads, “Herrn Johann Georg Maurer. In memory of our time together in prison in Landsberg. Cordially dedicated by Adolf Hitler. Christmas 1925.”

The Fuhrer was imprisoned at the jail after the failed Munich Beer Putsch in 1923 when the Nazis tried to seize power in Germany. Maurer, a Nazi party official also believed to be involved in the revolution, was imprisoned with Hitler during the time he penned the manifesto.

But when Maurer was released he betrayed his former inmate by giving a list of Hitler’s supporters to the Munich Post. In 1932 Maurer and his family were helped by a man called Herr Biebl and this is when he is thought to have passed the book on.

Signed editions of Mein Kampf are very rare and even less so with a dedicated inscription. It will be auctioned at Ludlow Racecourse on August 13 where it is expected to reach in excess of £20,000.

Historical documents expert Richard Westwood- Brookes from auctioneers Mullock’s said the book was a great rarity…

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One of Claude Dornier’s planes — the 1925 Dornier Merkur — set seven world records in its first year. Another that could land on water was used by polar explorer Roald Amundsen over the Arctic in 1926.

Now a museum focused on the life and work of the German-born aeronautics pioneer opened Friday in the southern German town of Friedrichshafen, where Dornier started his first factory.

The euro30 million privately funded museum brings together vintage aircraft, replicas and interactive displays on a site near Friedrichshafen Airport.

The focus is on the aircraft, but it also integrates an exhibit on the dark side of the company: its use of slave laborers under the Nazis. Visitors learn about the era through firsthand audio and video displays featuring laborers’ own recollections.

Dornier, an engineer, started his career in the aviation industry in 1910 working for the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin company, which made airships. He worked there through World War I, distinguishing himself and was promoted to the head of his own department.

After the war, in 1922, he started work for the spin-off company Dornier-Metallbauten GmbH, and became the sole shareholder in 1932.

Dornier won international acclaim for his revolutionary designs — bringing to fruition a number of different aircraft projects made completely out of metal.

According to the museum, his Dornier Merkur, a single-engine, strut-braced monoplane, set seven world records in its first year. A replica is on display.

His Dornier Wal, a so-called “flying boat,” was used by Amundsen for his flights over the Arctic in 1926. Another flying boat, the Dornier X, came out in 1929 and was the largest such aircraft of its time…

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