March 5, 1943: first flight of the Gloster Meteor, the Allies’ only operational jet plane during WW2, from RAF Cranwell.

December 17, 1939: Germany’s Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by her crew outside Montevideo harbor. This famous German commerce raider had been so succesful in the preceding months that the British and the French sent more than 20 ships to track her down. That culminated in the Battle of the River Plate, in which Admiral Graf Spee sustained critical damage. They found refuge in neutral but Allied-friendly Uruguay, but with no hope of getting the ship repaired and the prospect of the crew being interned, Captain Hans Langsdorff made the decision to scuttle her.

January 12, 1945, saw the beginning of the Soviet Vistula-Oder offensive, led by the celebrated marshals Zhukov and Konev. The operation had been prepared for many months during which the Soviet amassed a force of such magnitude that Hitler refused to believe the incoming reports.

World War 2 was pretty much hopeless for the Germans at this time, but decisions made on either side would have a lasting impact on post-war Europe. Hitler had mostly lost his sense of reality and failed to order the trapped German forces in the Courland pocket home, where they could have helped defending; he even sent troops out to Hungary. Zhukov on the other hand, stopped the offensive at the Oder, just a bit over 40 miles from Berlin – but the Soviet front line had become dangerously extended, and he considered pushing on too dangerous.

They each had their detractors: Guderian fell out with Hitler about the failing defense and Chuikov with Zhukov about the stalled offensive. Plenty of room for alternative history writing: would the Soviets have been stopped before they reached the Oder if Guderian’s advice had been followed? Would they have taken Berlin if Chuikov had had his way?
The offensive was halted on February 2. Two days later, the Yalta conference started and all the decisions that would draw the map for decades to come were made.

I herewith confirm my continued existence.

August 21, 1942: German soldiers on Mount Elbrus, Europe’s tallest mountain. This was about as far as the German army would reach in the Caucasus. And the feat itself didn’t work wonders in German propaganda: Hitler was livid when he heard about it and thought it was a complete waste of time.

See https://europebetweeneastandwest.wordpress.com/2014/10/06/hubris-arrogance-on-europes-everest-mt-elbrus-a-metaphor-of-german-defeat-in-the-east/ for a recounting of this story.

August 29, 1944: American troops of the 28th Infantry Division march down the Champs Elysees, Paris, in the ‘Victory’ Parade.

From https://www.archives.gov/historical-docs/todays-doc/index.html?dod-date=825

@captainwalker said in On this day during W.W. 2:

(…) the airborne invasion of Holland (Operation Market Garden) (…)

Thanks for sharing this. However, Operation Market Garden didn’t happen in Holland, but in the eastern part of the Netherlands. Holland is in the west.

It’s a pet peeve of mine: ‘Holland’ is frequently, but inaccurately, used as a synonym for ‘the Netherlands’. Unfortunately, this happens so often that many people have come to believe that the two are actually the same. Even the Dutch government only recently stepped away from this habit.

Aged only 51, Napoleon Bonaparte died on St Helena May 5, 1821. Arsenic poisoning has long been believed to be the cause of his death, but at present, the original diagnosis of stomach cancer is considered more likely.
Opinions on Napoleon’s many deeds and achievements will probably diverge forever, but if anything, he was a memorable figure.

I could try and say something intelligent about this myself, but there’s a vast array of well-documented posts on Quora about this: https://www.quora.com/If-Japan-had-attacked-the-USSR-in-1941-instead-of-the-United-States-at-Pearl-Harbor-would-the-USSR-have-been-defeated

Once the Soviets knew that Japan wasn’t going to attack (from the famous journalist/spy Richard Sorge), they felt safe to move troops from the East towards Moscow. Whether they would have done that anyway if Japan would have fought, is a matter of speculation. Maybe they would just have given up on that theatre in order to save Moscow - after all, the only real damage that Japan could have done, would have been the loss of a vast but sparsely populated and extremely remote part of Siberia that would have been a logistical nightmare to occupy.

‘Panther’ seems a logical successor to the preceding ‘Leopard’, but as far as animals are concerned, ‘panther’ isn’t a separate species - it’s a term often used for black leopards. And the official Latin names of all the big cats start with Panthera, including Panthera tigris. So from that perspective, a Tiger is a Panther.

Sorry to hear about your dad, ABW. I remember going through some of my family pictures after my mom passed away and kicking myself for not having asked her more about some of those.

Anyway, after some searching, I’m thinking that the ship in your picture could be USS San Jacinto (CVL-30). That ship was launched at New York on 26 September 1943 and Commissioned on 15 November. So what we could be seeing in the October picture, with cranes on either side of the ship, could be the New York Shipbuilding Corporation being busy finishing the ship.

In the left part of your picture, in the background, there appears to be a large and long building with structures on its roof. Here’s a picture of USS Kitty Hawk in 1960:

Now maybe, but this is just speculation, the building in the background of that picture is the same building as the one in yours, taken from a different angle. Rather a wild guess of mine and other details may not match, but things would also have changed at the wharf between 1943 and 1960.

January 12, 1945, saw the beginning of the Soviet Vistula-Oder offensive, led by the celebrated marshals Zhukov and Konev. The operation had been prepared for many months during which the Soviet amassed a force of such magnitude that Hitler refused to believe the incoming reports.

World War 2 was pretty much hopeless for the Germans at this time, but decisions made on either side would have a lasting impact on post-war Europe. Hitler had mostly lost his sense of reality and failed to order the trapped German forces in the Courland pocket home, where they could have helped defending; he even sent troops out to Hungary. Zhukov on the other hand, stopped the offensive at the Oder, just a bit over 40 miles from Berlin – but the Soviet front line had become dangerously extended, and he considered pushing on too dangerous.

They each had their detractors: Guderian fell out with Hitler about the failing defense and Chuikov with Zhukov about the stalled offensive. Plenty of room for alternative history writing: would the Soviets have been stopped before they reached the Oder if Guderian’s advice had been followed? Would they have taken Berlin if Chuikov had had his way?
The offensive was halted on February 2. Two days later, the Yalta conference started and all the decisions that would draw the map for decades to come were made.

January 2, 1942: 33 members of the Duquesne spy ring are convicted to prison terms in New York.

The Wikipedia lemma on Duquesne is worth having a look at. That man truly led a life of high adventure.

@witt said in Who would win?:

@kaleu how have you been? Been a while .

Thanks! I’ve been reading the forums but haven’t been too active.

Happy New Year!

@superbattleshipyamato said in Who would win?:

@crsluggo

Oh, I see what you mean. You meant that the Iowa would sink the Kongos before they ever got into 10 kilometre range. My mistake.

True enough, but your original premise was, that they would start at 10 km distance, so whether or not they could have reached that position is outside of that premise. You didn’t state their exact position, but let’s say that Iowa is in the center and the Kongo’s are approaching from all four directions.
Now, 10 km is just not very far for those big guns, so it stands to reason that they would start firing at each other right away, and it also stands to reason that they would typically hit their target. But let’s say that due to superior fire control, Iowa always hits, whereas the Kongo’s are 50% effective (I actually think they’d do better than that, at that range and closing in). The Kongo’s have 8 14" guns, Iowa has 9 16" guns.

Salvo 1: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 16 shells.
Salvo 2: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 12 shells.
Salvo 3: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 8 shells.
Salvo 4: Iowa kills one Kongo but gets hit by 4 shells.

I know that I’m adding a lot of assumptions here, but my vote goes to the Kongo’s. The first Japanese salvo alone, would just be too much to take.

And of course, all of this is quite unrealistic and would never have happened this way.

December 17, 1939: Germany’s Admiral Graf Spee is scuttled by her crew outside Montevideo harbor. This famous German commerce raider had been so succesful in the preceding months that the British and the French sent more than 20 ships to track her down. That culminated in the Battle of the River Plate, in which Admiral Graf Spee sustained critical damage. They found refuge in neutral but Allied-friendly Uruguay, but with no hope of getting the ship repaired and the prospect of the crew being interned, Captain Hans Langsdorff made the decision to scuttle her.

‘Panther’ seems a logical successor to the preceding ‘Leopard’, but as far as animals are concerned, ‘panther’ isn’t a separate species - it’s a term often used for black leopards. And the official Latin names of all the big cats start with Panthera, including Panthera tigris. So from that perspective, a Tiger is a Panther.

@superbattleshipyamato said in Biggest crime against ship preservation:

And which ship from world history?

From history - the Royal Charles. This English ship was captured by the Dutch in 1667, but it turned out to be unsuitable for the shallow Dutch coastal waters and was then turned into a tourist attraction. The English were far from happy about that situation, and the Dutch decided to scrap the ship after all in response to their complaints, keeping only a small part. But since the nations would soon be at war again anyway, they might just as well have kept the whole ship.
Whether it would have survived the centuries is quite another matter, but how cool would it have been to have an original 1655 ship of the line today!

@midnight_reaper Thanks, I was not aware of that.

March 5, 1943: first flight of the Gloster Meteor, the Allies’ only operational jet plane during WW2, from RAF Cranwell.