The White War—a snow-bound World War I battle between Italy and Austria—claimed the lives of countless soldiers way up in the Alps. Now, melting ice is revealing frozen soldiers, some of them perfectly preserved—but not Captain America-preserved—for nearly a century.
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Given how devastatingly effective both newly-invented tank and airplane technologies proved during World War I, it was only a matter of time before enterprising military designers on both sides of the Atlantic thought to combine them into a flying Reece’s Peanut Butter Cup of armored mayhem. And they almost succeeded. Well, at least the Soviets did.
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It’s hard to know where to begin describing artist Jan Manski’s brutal new show forthcoming at London’s BREESE LITTLE gallery. Called "Possesia" and opening to the public on February 26, it’s a surreal and over the top look at "archaic instruments" turned into end-of-the-world machinery used by some unnamed conquering force of the future.
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An absolutely fascinating but little-known story—described as a "forgotten theater" by the U.S. Navy itself—is the tale of Kiska and Attu, Alaska: two remote Aleutian islands where the Japanese military established a submarine base during World War II.
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In 2010 a Dutch WWII bunker was sliced in half to create one of the most unique war memorials in the world. This video documents the transformation of bunker 599 into a work of art. The sculpture, designed by Dutch studio RAAAF and Atelier de Lyon, recently won the Architectural Review Award in 2013 for Emerging Architecture.
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There is nothing cool about war in the real world, but I am a fan of movies and stories about what went on during WWII. I’ve seen more than a few movies that show submarines used in WWII. Honestly, I thought the Germans and their U-boats were the only subs. It turns out that the Japanese had a number of submarines too.
Close to the end of WWII, the Allies captured five submarines and brought them back to Pearl Harbor for inspection. One of the captured subs was a massive beast called the I-400. It was a Sen-Toku class sub rivaled is size only by modern nuclear submarines. The I-400 was 400 feet long and carried enough fuel to transverse the world 1.5 times before refueling.
After the war was over, Russia wanted access to the subs. With the cold war heating up, the US didn’t want to give Russia access to the tech inside the Japanese submarines and they scuttled the I-400 in 1946 – promptly forgetting where it was sunk. A group of researchers from the Hawaii Undersea Research Laboratory (HURL) has been searching for the sunken subs for years and finally found the I-400 in off the coast of Hawaii. The discovery was made in shallower water than expected last August, but was just announced this week. Check out the video footage below to see their first sighting of the sub:
“The I-400 has been on our ‘to-find’ list for some time,” said veteran undersea explorer Terry Kerby, who led the expedition that found the submarine. “It was the first of its kind of only three built, so it is a unique and very historic submarine.”
[via Fox News]
Photographer Marc Wilson has spent the past four years traversing the British Isles to document once-mighty monuments from World War II for a photo series he calls The Last Stand.
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The number of soldiers on both sides of WWII that were killed or went missing is just staggering. Now, the mystery surrounding one RAF pilot and what happened to him and his plane has been solved after 70 years. RAF flight Sergeant Dennis Copping climbed into his Kittyhawk P-40 aircraft in June 1942 to fly the plane to another airbase for repairs. He was never seen or heard from again.
The RAF long believed that Copping became disoriented during his flight and strayed off course. Recently an explorer working for an oil company came upon a very odd site in the Western Desert in Egypt. The explorer came upon a mostly intact and incredibly well preserved P-40 sitting on the ground in the desert.
The aircraft had some damage from the crash, for one the propeller was torn off and lying away from the aircraft. The plane also notably had what appeared to be bullet holes in the fuselage. It’s unclear if those bullet holes were the damage the pilot was taking the aircraft in to have repaired or if perhaps they are why the aircraft crashed in the desert. The aircraft was complete with its .50 cal machine guns and ammo and hasn’t been touched since the pilot left the aircraft sitting on the desert floor.
Indications are that the pilot survived the crash. The pilot’s parachute was found alongside the wreckage along with a makeshift shelter. However, the pilot’s remains are nowhere to be found. The theory is that the pilot tried to walk out of the desert and perished somewhere in the sands. The crash location is 200 miles from the nearest city.
[via Daily Mail]
After being invaded by Germany in the west and later by Soviet Russia in the east, the Polish government fled Warsaw but continued to fight from abroad. After Germany attacked Russia, the Russians decided to release their Polish prisoners of war, who then began re-forming into an army.
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When you think about World War II tech, chances are your mind leaps right to the atomic bomb. But there was another less explosive tech that complete changed the defensive game: Radar. And this map outlines exactly how it saved Great Britain.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
