WWII facts continued

Before she was sunk at Pearl Harbor, the U.S.S Arizona appeared in a 1934 movie, 'Here comes the Navy', starring Jimmy Cagney and Pat O'brien.

William Hitler, a nephew of Adolf Hitler, served in the U.S. Navy during the war. He changed his name on his return to the U.S. after the war.

Nasos was the original abbreviation for the National Socialist German Workers' Party, not Nazis. Nazi is derived from a Bavarian word that means 'simple minded', it was bastardized from 'Nasos' by Konrad Heiden as a way of poking fun at them.

Henry Ford kept a picture of Adolf Hitler on his desk in Dearborn, Michigan.

Josef Stalin refused a German offer of a prisoner exchange that included his own son! Jacob Stalin later died in a German prison camp.

The last action of U.S. Cavalry involved the 26th Cavalry Regiment against the Japanese in January, 1942 in the Philippines. The horses were later slaughtered for food in the seige of Bataan.

The allies used a plastic explosive that resembled Cow manure as a road vehicle mine.

Most of the German officers absent from their units on D-Day, June 6, were in Rennes for war games simulating a Paratroop assault and amphibious landings at Normandy!

German prisoners of war in Russian had an 85% mortality rate!

The United States is the greatest haven for Nazi war criminals, over 3,000 are believed to have lived there.

Churchill's famous radio "We will fight them on the beaches" speech was actually made by an actor, Norman Shelley. Churchill made the speech in Parliament but was too busy with the evacuation of Dunkirk to recreate it on the radio. The speech even fooled Churchill's closest friends.

Portugal had an official two day mourning period after the death of Adolf Hitler on April 30 and May 1, 1945, with Flags were flown at half-mast. The Irish Prime Minister, Eamon De Valera also sent his condolences to German representatives in Dublin.

Russia had two top aces that were women, Lt. Lilya Litvak with seven kills and Lt. Katya Budanova with six kills.

The last 'dogfight' of WWII took place in April 1945, when an unarmed Piper Cub spotter plane of the 5Th Armored Division met up with an unarmed Fieseler Storch spotter plane. The two American crewmen fired their Colt .45's at the German plane and forced it down. The Piper crew then landed and took the Germans prisoner. It was the only German plane to be shot down with a handgun in WWII.

Four U.S. dive-bombers were accidentally shot down on the night of December 7th 1941. They had been out searching for the Japanese fleet and returning in the dark were mistaken for Japanese planes.

The battleship Iowa with President Roosevelt and several high ranking Admirals and Generals aboard, had a narrow escape when a torpedo exploded in its wake while on it's way to the Tehran Conference. Unfortunately, the torpedo was fired accidentally by the U.S. Destroyer William D. Porter during an excersise!

Winston Churchill also had a lucky escape while on the battleship H.M.S. Nelson in 1939, two German torpedos hit the ship but failed to explode.

The largest Navy of WWII was the U.S. Navy with 19,000 ships of all types. The smallest navy was the New Zealand Navy with just four ships. The total combined naval strength of all other nations was 5,500 ships.

By the end of the war the 'Aryan' Waffen SS had included men from Russia (100,000), France (20,000), Holland (50,000), Norway (6,000), Denmark (6,000) Finland (20,000). There had even been Americans and Asians in it's ranks.

The U.S. Navy had a ship in the South Pacific whose sole purpose was to make ice cream! It could produce 5,000 gallons of ice cream an hour.

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