Cool story. Let’s hope this gets preserved.
Odd WW2 factoids.
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Among the trickle of supplies which the Luftwaffe managed to deliver to them, the starving and frozen German soldiers besieged at Stalingrad once received a large shipment of ground pepper and twelve cases of condoms.
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@CWO:
Among the trickle of supplies which the Luftwaffe managed to deliver to them, the starving and frozen German soldiers besieged at Stalingrad once received a large shipment of ground pepper and twelve cases of condoms.
It’s amazing how you can do without the necessities in life provided you have the little luxuries lol…
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The French naval vessel Surcouf was a bizarre hybrid of an 8-inch-gun cruiser, a submarine and a seaplane carrier.
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@CWO:
The French naval vessel Surcouf was a bizarre hybrid of an 8-inch-gun cruiser, a submarine and a seaplane carrier.
no doubt one of the weirdest ships if WWII
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Surcouf had a checkered social history too…
French ships lying at ports in Britain and Canada were also boarded by armed marines, sailors and soldiers, and the only serious incident took place at Plymouth aboard Surcouf on 3 July, when two Royal Navy officers[4] and French warrant officer mechanic Yves Daniel[5] were fatally wounded, and a British seaman was shot dead by the submarine’s doctor.[6]
The acrimony between the British and French caused by these actions escalated when the British attempted to repatriate the captured French sailors: the British hospital ship that was carrying them back to France was sunk by the Germans, and many of the French blamed the British for the deathsBecause of the British-French tensions with regard to the submarine, accusations were made by each side that the other was spying for Vichy France; the British also claimed that Surcouf was attacking British ships. Later, a British officer and two sailors were put on board for “liaison” purposes. One real drawback of this submarine was that it required a crew of 110–130 men, which represented three crews of more conventional submarines. This led to Royal Navy reluctance to recommission her.
And then there is this! LOL! Talk about Obscure!
In December 1941, Surcouf carried the Free French Admiral Émile Muselier to Canada, putting in to Quebec City. While the Admiral was in Ottawa, conferring with the Canadian government, Surcouf’s captain was approached by New York Times reporter Ira Wolfert and questioned about the rumours that the submarine would liberate Saint-Pierre and Miquelon (a French archipelago 10 kilometres from Newfoundland) for Free France from Vichy control. Wolfert accompanied the submarine to Halifax, Nova Scotia where, on 20 December, they joined the Free French corvettes Mimosa, Aconit, and Alysse, and on 24 December took control of the islands for Free France without resistance.
United States Secretary of State Cordell Hull had just concluded an agreement with the Vichy government for the neutrality of French possessions in the Western hemisphere, and he threatened to resign unless President of the United States Franklin Roosevelt demanded a restoration of the status quo. Roosevelt did so, but when Charles de Gaulle refused, he dropped the matter. Ira Wolfert’s stories — very favorable to the Free French (and bearing no sign of kidnapping or other duress) — helped swing American popular opinion away from Vichy.
I didn’t know Vichy France extended all the way to Canada!
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AND THE SURCOUF IS SURROUNDED IN CONSPIRACY!!!
As there is no conclusive confirmation that Thompson Lykes collided with Surcouf and her wreck has yet to be discovered, there are alternative stories of her fate.
Disregarding the predictable story about her being swallowed by the Bermuda Triangle, one of the most popular is that she was caught in Long Island Sound refuelling a German U-boat, and both submarines were sunk, either by the American submarines USS Mackerel and Marlin,[12] or a United States Coast Guard blimp.
In response to the above theory, retired US Navy Captain Julius Grigore, Jr. has offered a one million dollar prize to anyone who can prove that the Surcouf engaged in activities which were detrimental to the Allied cause. The prize has yet to be claimed.
Many stories add that much of the gold from the French Treasury was in Surcouf’s large cargo compartment, and that the wreck was found and entered in 1967 by Jacques Cousteau.
Diver Lee Prettyman reported finding the Surcouf in the 1960s (1967?) and there was a newspaper article about it with his picture in the Hartford Courant newspaper. It was later retracted after threats were reportedly made.
James Rusbridger examined some of the theories in his book Who Sank Surcouf?, finding them all easily dismissed except one: the records of the 6th Heavy Bomber Group operating out of Panama show them sinking a large submarine the morning of 19 February. Since no German submarine was lost in the area on that date, it could only have been Surcouf. He suggested that the collision had damaged Surcouf’s radio and the stricken boat limped towards Panama hoping for the best.[13]
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Gar,
––That’s a totally fascinating story,…thanks for telling it. Do you know if there is a book about the Surcouf including all of it’s exploits? If so,….I’d love to buy a copy and learn more. Thanks again.
“Tall Paul”
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Credit all goes to CWO! His has does an incredible job in this thread, I check it everyday!
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Credit all goes to CWO! His has does an incredible job in this thread, I check it everyday!
Much appreciated. I’m starting to run out of WWII oddities that I can recall from memory, however, so the solid week of daily anecdotes which you’ve just seen will start to fizzle into something much more irregular (starting tomorrow, when I’ll be away on business for the day). Contributions from the board’s other history buffs will be most welcome to pick up the slack.
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Agreed. Great job Marc. Thank you.
I was going to ask if you had a book on this wierd stuff( like some of us do on other equally bizarre subjects) or if it was from memory.
Your memory is better than mine!
I am forgetting more and more these days. -
@wittmann:
I was going to ask if you had a book on this wierd stuff( like some of us do on other equally bizarre subjects) or if it was from memory.
Usually I’ll just remember the core element of an odd anecdote, but I’ll then need to research it to get more details and to verify that it actually happened. On one occasion I discovered that an anecdote I was about to post turned out to be of dubious authenticity. This was the story about Enrico Fermi offering at Alamogordo to take bets on whether a miscalculation in the yield of the Trinity explosion would result in the A-bomb igniting the Earth’s atmosphere or whether it would merely incinerate the state of New Mexico. It’s possible he did in fact make the remark as a joke, but it would only have been a joke because I found a desclassified Manhattan Project report which shows that the scientists had already calculated that a fission explosion would not be capable of setting off an atmospheric reaction of that kind. (Though as I recall, the report did caution that this wouldn’t necessarily be the case for a fusion explosion.) Sometimes, though, I’ll stumble across an anecdote by accident, as was the case in the one about the pumpkin bombs; I’d never heard of them, but came across them while looking up something else.
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I seem to recall reading on several occasions that Germans spies deployed abroad would always keep a german uniform with them.
The purpose was so that if they felt they were to be ‘caught’, as long as they were wearing their uniforms, they could not be sentenced to death for whatever sabotage or spying they were responsible for.
Specifically I remember the RCMP catching a spy freshly dropped off from a submarine - in uniform!
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Wolfgang Heyda, a German U-boat commander interned at the POW camp near Bowmanville, Ontario, escaped and managed to get all the way to the New Brunswick coast (where he was supposed to picked up by a U-boat), but was arrested there by the Canadian authorities (who were waiting for him). His claims that he was a Canadian ex-soldier – bolstered by an impressive collection of forged documents – were met with considerable scepticism when the arresting officers found that he was carring Red Cross chocolate from Germany and a wad of Canadian banknotes dating from before the First World War.
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I did learn one interesting little tidbit while stationed at Schofield Barracks, HI a couple years ago. Right across from Schofield is what is now known as Wheeler Army Airfield. During WWII, the US started to build an underground factory right next to Schofield and the air field. This bombproof factory would be an area where they’d conduct final assembly of fighters. These fighters would roll off the line, make a hundred yard journey to Wheeler, and then fly out to a carrier deck or if necessary straight into the battle of Hawaii.
This undertaking was originally started during the early months of the US of the war when everyone feared that Japan would soon invade the islands. The underground factory wasn’t completed until several years later and by that point Japan didn’t have a navy left, so it was never used for it’s intended purpose. At various points it’s been mothballed, used as a storage facility, or for other purposes and still exists to this day.
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Also, while I was stationed there ('07-'10) it was possible to still see superficial damage and crappy patching to several of the old buildings, specifically barracks. These were caused during Pearl Harbor when Japanese planes strafed the other military installations on the island. Obviously these barracks were pretty moldy due to their age and were slated to be torn down completely and rebuilt or extensively renovated. The process actually started during my stint there, but yeah I got stuck in an old moldy barracks and didn’t get any of the newer barracks. Yay me! :roll:
I don’t know if you’ll still be able to see the damage if you visited today. And unfortunately I don’t have any pictures. I did however find some evidence of similar damage at Hickam.
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Nice Seth.
I like it left like that as a reminder of the attack. -
King Tiger tanks required 5 litres of fuel per Kilometer
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When the cruiser USS Astoria was sunk at the Battle of Savo Island in 1942, one of her crew members – Signalman Third Class Elgin Staples – spent several hours floating at sea in a lifebelt until he was picked up by another American warship. The lifebelt, which had been manufactured in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, had a number of factory markings stamped on it. One of these markings turned out to be the identification number of the Firestone quality-control worker who had inspected and approved the lifebelt which had helped Staples survive: his own mother.
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Now that is an excellent story.
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Guys,
@CWO:
When the cruiser USS Astoria was sunk at the Battle of Savo Island in 1942, one of her crew members – Signalman Third Class Elgin Staples – spent several hours floating at sea in a lifebelt until he was picked up by another American warship. The lifebelt, which had been manufactured in his hometown of Akron, Ohio, at the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, had a number of factory markings stamped on it. One of these markings turned out to be the identification number of the Firestone quality-control worker who had inspected and approved the lifebelt which had helped Staples survive: his own mother.
@wittmann:
Now that is an excellent story.
––I would call that a 5 star story!
“Tall Paul”
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