Topics created by Raunchy The Pirate

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/09/16/enigma.machine.auction/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_cnn

“In November last year, we set the world record price (£67,250, $106,164) for an Enigma machine at auction,”

Nice read.  Thanks

This one looks more like it was “coloured” …  Makes Hitler kinda look like a Cartoon:

Sounds a bit like the plot of the Len Deighton novel “XPD”.

I suppose that if you’re a POW, there are worse places to be held than that camp. I wonder if any of these men stayed in Canada after the war, if that option was available.

Am I missing something here?

HERO - a man of distinguished courage or ability, admired for his brave deeds and noble qualities.

Tell me to lay down if I’m drunk but…

What’s so heroic about this?  The dude did his job?  Theres nothing particularily “distinguished” about it.  Other then the fact it was big H on the stand.

Hans was a lawyer and he cross examined Hittler rightfully on the stand, did a good job (But not good enough to convict?) and pissed off the Nazi’s, ok - cool.  But so what?

Whats the big deal?  For this Type A personality, it’s normal to be good at what you do, and not care what anyone else thinks - be stubborn and often RUDE in your interactions with people in general, which he was.

I’m still not seeing the heroics… ? ? ?  Heroic would be he put a luger in Hitlers face, and took one for the team.

Otherwise… where do you draw the line?  Is every footsoldier in the conflict a hero?  Is everyone who passed information, sent thier children to war, or baked applie pies for the troops a hero?

Everyone has parts to play, Heroic’s in my understanding is when you step up and above that?

I mean, is a paramedic a hero for saving lives everyday - or is that just his job?

It is wholly unheroic not to stand up in the face of tyranny, but that does not make it heroic to do the right thing everyday.

all the best NATO military testing facilities

Canada should get an award for that. Most important thing ever!

For someone with years of preparation, skill, and determination, What an idiot.

He deliberately goes to cross the border, with the BOMB making plans, his communist membership card, and everything needed to convict himself.  Then he tells the story whilst there.

He could have easily said nothing, and been denied entry - sent back to Nazi Germany, with likely no questions asked.  Or just stayed in Germany, planning his next attempt, no one would have caught him, or figured it out.

Too much Bone instead of Brain.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-france-britain-spy-20110808,0,7510226.story?track=rss&dlvrit=104530

Then there is the other side of the war, the Pacific theater.  I don’t think any events in Europe regarding Hitler (or even Churchill) would have affected the decision by Japan to annex Manchuria in 1931, China proper (at least as much as they could get) in 1937, and then to attempt the quick strike at Pearl along with the dash to the oil-rich Dutch East Indies in 1941.

WWII, at least in the Pacific, was pretty much going to happen regardless of events in Europe.  Considering the culture of the Japanese (essentially controlled by the military leaders) at the time, I don’t think the change of any single person in Japan (even the emperor considering the Japanese military could and did replace emperors when convenient for them) could have altered this course.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2026494/Albert-Brown-Oldest-survivor-Baatan-death-march-died-aged-105.html

I think that the “White Rose” was a different agent

The Gestapo gave her the nickname of the “White Mouse” as she always escaped.

She was number one most wanted with a heck of a price tag on her head.

I’s spend IP’s to get this kind of bonus.

That’s a remarkable story.

I suppose the British wanted to avoid even the slightest risk of compromising Irish neutrality - so if the Irish put someone in a camp and the British acknowledge their status as a neutral and non-belligerent country, then it follows that they would honor the laws and regulations of that country and return the escapee. But I don’t think they would have followed the same reasoning if Mr Wolfe would have been a British subject.

These guys had guts!

It seems mines in general are usually overlooked in WW2 History.  Not only were mines a danger to U-boats, much of the Allied shipping losses in the first 3 years of the war were attributed to mines.

Thanks for the great post!

A more realistic distance is over 800 statute miles.

Zero had a range of 1,600 miles, so yes thats consistent with Sakai’s account over Java.

Also, they had over 400 Zeros in active service by July 1940.

Thanks for sharing and posting a link to the article.

November 06, 2009 
By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune
Hugh Curthey was tired of working long hours for low pay in the gladiolus fields just south of Grants Pass in the spring of 1941 when he learned of a high-paying job overseas.

“My brother and I were working in those bulbs for a dollar and a half a day,” recalled the 93-year-old Medford resident. “That’s when we heard about this construction work on Wake Island.”

At that point, he couldn’t have told you where Wake Island was on the globe. What he did know was that he would be making at least $500 a month — good money in those days — as a construction worker for the Morrison-Knudsen Co. to help build a U.S. Navy base.

“We didn’t know what we were getting into but we sure found out soon enough,” he said during a recent visit with stepson and daughter-in-law Royce and Joyce Webber of Ruch.

“I still think about it every day,” he added. “I thank the good Lord I made it through.”

He and his brother, Robert “Bob” Curthey, were among some 1,200 civilians taken prisoner when Wake Island was captured by the Japanese on Dec. 23, 1941. Following a 16-day siege in which a 450-man Marine Corps garrison aided by civilians fought to repel the overwhelming Japanese invasion, they were held prisoner until the war ended nearly four years later. Both survived.

“It was rough on people like me because I’ve always like to eat,” said Curthey, a retired maintenance worker for the city of Grants Pass.

Meager meals were the least of his worries during an ordeal that included years of forced labor. More than 200 Americans with him died either during the battle or while in captivity.

Born May 3, 1916, in Kenosha, Wis., Curthey arrived with his family in southwestern Oregon a few years before the Great Depression gripped the nation. He attended first grade in Riddle, then went to schools in Grants Pass, a region where gladiolus were a popular cash crop in the late 1930s into the early 1950s.

Accompanied by brothers Bob and Charles, Curthey arrived on Wake Island in May 1941, although Charles returned to Grants Pass before the war erupted. They were among numerous residents from the region who had jumped at the chance for good jobs overseas.

For seven months, they helped build a naval base on the Pacific coral atoll located between Honolulu and Guam. But their balmy blue-sky world exploded nearly simultaneously with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941. Maj. James P.S. Devereux, the officer in charge of the Marines, told those on the island to hunker down and prepare for an assault. In addition to the Marines, there were 68 Navy personnel on the island.

During the next two weeks, the island was bombed eight times by Japanese aircraft. Many of the structures were leveled.

“There wasn’t enough rifles to go around so we didn’t have any,” Curthey said. “During the siege, Bob and I worked throughout the night changing gun positions and carrying ammunition and filling sandbags. During the day we stayed down in our dugouts that we had to dig. We didn’t have any protection. But we held out 16 days.”

He tells of a civilian who stood up on the edge of one dugout when a Japanese dive bomber swooped down. The man died instantly.

The defense was crushed by 9 a.m. Dec. 23 with 109 Americans — 62 military, 47 civilians — killed compared to an estimated 900 Japanese soldiers and sailors dead. Using their shore batteries, the Wake Island defenders sank at least two Japanese warships.

Following the surrender, the Americans were held under guard in their barracks. But one man continued to sneak out at night to dig up booze that had been buried before the Japanese invasion, Curthey said.

“He was a big man with a bull neck,” he said. “They told him if he got drunk one more time, off comes the head. He went out and got drunk again. They laid him on a block and off went his head.”

When the prison ship Nita Maru arrived to take the prisoners off the island, Curthey, by then a powerhouse operator, was supposed to stay with 98 other prisoners of war to teach the Japanese how to operate the powerhouse and other facilities.

“I told my brother I wasn’t going to stay so I went with the other POWs getting on the Nita Maru,” he said, noting that Bob was a truck driver on the island. “If I had stayed, I would have been history.”

Indeed, the 98 people left behind were executed on Oct. 7, 1943. They included David F. Chambers of Grants Pass and Wesley W. Stringer of Lakeview.

“I knew both of them,” he said quietly.

The Curthey brothers were placed in the stifling-hot hold of the ship with most of the other prisoners.

“We stayed down in that ship for 12 days — never saw the light of day,” he said. “There wasn’t enough room for us all to sleep so some people took their belts off and tied themselves to those big timbers down in the ship so they could stand there and sleep. The sweat just puddled beneath us.”

They were eventually taken to Shanghai, where they were marched a half dozen miles to the first of two POW camps where they would be held. They were given three scant meals a day.

“They confiscated all the food from the Chinese farmers,” he said. “It was a cup of white rice with a piece of meat in it once in a while. That and a cup of soup. And if we did anything wrong, they’d cut us down to two meals a day. I got a little thin.”

Each group also had a loaf of bread to divide once a week. Normally weighing about 185 pounds, Curthey dropped 50 pounds on the POW diet.

When hunger gnawed at his gut, he would pretend he was chewing gum and crack jokes to keep his mind off food.

“I’ve always had the ability to laugh at myself,” he said. “We (he and Bob) always figured we were gonna make it.”

Knowing his survival depended on it, he ate everything he was given.

“One guy when we first got there said he wasn’t going to eat their garbage,” he said. "Well, after about two weeks he decided he would eat it. But he couldn’t hold it down. He died.

“I’ve always said rice is like a drug to me — I couldn’t get enough of it,” he said. “Every so often you’d get burned rice. Tasted like toast.”

But they worked hard for what little food they were given.

“When I was a prisoner, I got down to about 135 pounds and carried 220-pound bean sacks,” he said. “The last time I had my back X-rayed, the doc asked me what I did for work. I told him about the bean sacks. He said, ‘That’s the answer. You have about five or six vertebras that are crushed. You will live in pain the rest of your life.’ Well, he ain’t been far off.”

As POWs in Japanese-occupied China, they served as slave labor, doing everything from hauling beans to moving dirt to building a rifle range, he recalled.

“And twice a day we had to stand at rigid attention and they’d come along and count us off,” he said. "One time, a group next to us weren’t ready for inspection on time. The Japanese sergeant came along and banged them all on the head with the clipboard.

“Well, the clipboard broke, so he beat them on the head with the pieces. All 36 men had blood dripping off their foreheads.”

When the war ended on Sept. 2, 1945, the POWs were placed on a ship and sent back to the states. Curthey returned to Grants Pass but not to the gladiolus fields.

“Never again, not for a dollar and a half a day,” he said. “I was ready for something else.”

War creates a thousand heroes a day and almost no one ever hears about them. Vernon Buss  of Portland is a hero of the unsung variety, but he never cared about recognition or notice for his actions that day on Samar.

But Irving Saunders  did – and long ago, Buss realized that Saunders was “a stubborn man” and it was pointless to deter him.

At last, the stubbornness paid off. All Buss had to do was show up Tuesday morning at a state office building and accept the thanks of a grateful nation . . . and of a grateful Saunders.

It would not be far wrong to say that Saunders, 87, has thought about Buss, 84, almost daily since Jan. 24, 1945. He gets reminders when he looks in the mirror, when he celebrates a birthday, when he speaks of his wife, Pearl,  his children and grandchildren.

He should have died that day, at 22, but Buss saved his life. For decades, Saunders, then an aircraft ground crewman, never even knew the name of the fellow Marine who had pulled his burning body from the crashed F4-U Corsair  on the speck of an island in the Philippines.

“I wasn’t supposed to live,” Saunders said, “but the Marines had developed this new way to treat burns, and as soon as I could, I asked to go back to my unit, so I could find my rescuer.”

When Cpl. Vernon Buss, a 20-year-old aircraft mechanic, saw the Corsair explode, he raced to the burning aircraft searching for survivors. He scooped up the unconscious Saunders, carried him to an ambulance and returned to the crash site to rescue others.

Nearly a year later, when his tour ended, Buss returned to his hometown of Portland, worked seven years in a rendering plant then joined the Fire Bureau, where he spent 31 years, retired as battalion chief and even had a fire boat named after him. He and Madge  have been married 63 years; they had four children and are great-grandparents.

“I wondered what had happened to him,” Buss said of Saunders. “But there were other things to do.”

Saunders finished his service – never finding his rescuer – and went back home to Southern California. His back, arms and legs carry the scars from third-degree burns he suffered in the aircraft fire. The back brace he wears daily is another reminder.

Saunders went to veterans’ reunions with the No. 1 aim of finding his rescuer. In 1996, he went to an event wearing a T-shirt silkscreened with an image of an F4-U. A woman approached him and complimented the T-shirt; she said her husband would love to see it.

A moment later, the husband appeared and said his name was Vernon Buss. He and Saunders engaged in the veterans’ eternal guessing game: Where did you serve?

In the Pacific – check. Through Guadalcanal  – check. In the Philippines – check. . . On the island of Samar  . . . Jan. 24, 1945 . . .

Saunders had found him. He gave Buss the T-shirt.

They stayed in touch. Saunders carved a plaque from solid basswood with the Marine Corps’ emblem and presented it to Bass. But that wasn’t thanks enough.

So Saunders got stubborn. Three times, he petitioned the Marine Corps to give Buss a medal. But few witnesses were alive to corroborate events. Finally, he contacted a staff member in the office of U.S. Rep. Earl Blumenauer  because Buss lived in that House district.

After much back and forth, with Saunders pushing hard, Blumenauer’s office worked out a plan for Rep. Darrell Issa,  R-Calif., who represents Saunders, to read a commendation into the Congressional Record on July 29:

“With total disregard for his own safety, Corporal Buss rushed to the side of Staff Sergeant Irving Saunders and carried him away from the burning aircraft, the burning pools of gasoline and the random detonations of .50 caliber ammunition as it ‘cooked off’ from the Corsair’s burning ammunition supply.”

The Marine Corps in Portland and Blumenauer’s staff arranged for the ceremony in Blumenauer’s district office to present Buss with a framed copy of the Congressional Record statement.

The day before the ceremony, Saunders said he wouldn’t make it. He is 87, after all. Then, “My daughter said, ‘Dad, this is what you’ve worked for! You have to be there! I’ve already bought the plane tickets.’ So, here I am.”

Buss never wanted the attention – Madge Buss said, “Vernon is a very, very modest man” – but he didn’t deter Saunders from his quest.

"I didn’t say, ‘Go to it, pal,’ but I didn’t say, ‘Let it rest,’ " Buss said. “It was obviously very important to him.”

Saunders’s son-in-law, Derek Barton, who accompanied Saunders to Portland, said Buss “literally saved Irv twice: One, in the wreckage; two, it kept him going. He had another will to live, to continue to find this man and to recognize him.”

Shortly after 9 a.m., two Marines in dress uniforms arrived. They invited Buss and Saunders to stand before them for the reading of the Congressional Record commendation.

The veterans stood side by side. Saunders put his arm around Buss’s waist.

When it was over, Buss said, “OK, pal.” Saunders said, “OK, pal.”

After the ceremony and handshakes, Saunders plopped down on a soft couch. Buss’s daughter, Jan, sat with him.

“It was so nice of you to persevere,” she said.

“I could not give up,” Saunders replied.

“Well, now you can rest.”

“Yeah,” he said, “now I can rest.”

By Anne Saker, The Oregonian
October 20, 2009, 7:51PM

August 23, 2009 
By Paul Fattig
Mail Tribune
His large hands, which once gripped wrenches to dismantle and repair engines on patrol torpedo boats during World War II, are losing their battle to arthritis.

But Navy veteran Ollie J. Talley, 88, of Talent, can still maneuver his stiff and swollen fingers enough to gently open the envelope containing an invitation to attend a memorial Sept. 14 in Arlington National Cemetery at the nation’s Capitol.

Related Stories
Friendly-fire survivor hailed from OklahomaTwo accounts of the incident
Two powerful accounts of the friendly fire incident involving the three PT boats are now in print and online.

“Enemy in the Mirror,” a 136-page, self-published book by Jo Frkovich, daughter-in-law of Navy corpsman John Frkovich, who was aboard PT 346, was published earlier this year. Her story can be read online at www.mailtribune.com/enemyinthemirror.

“Tragedy at Sea,” by Dan Williams, the youngest son of Lt. Robert Williams, who commanded PT 347, is available at www.danwilliamsgraphics.com.

“I got this invite to attend the memorial for my skipper,” he says as he displays the letter. “Our skipper, he was just like a brother to me. He was a prince of a guy.”

The memorial at Arlington will honor Lt. James R. Burk, one of 14 American PT boat crewmen killed by friendly fire on April 29, 1944, in the South Pacific.

Talley is the last surviving member of PT 346, one of three PT boats sunk by a squadron of Marine Corps fighters and bomber planes that mistook the U.S. Navy boats for Japanese gunboats.

When the smoke cleared late that day, of the 50 aboard the boats, 14 were dead and 17 wounded, including Talley.

Two Marine pilots also died, the result of defensive gunfire from the PT boat crews.

Burk was fatally wounded while holding up an 8-foot American flag in an attempt to save his crew by alerting the pilots that they were attacking an American vessel. As he lay dying on the deck, his last order was for Navy corpsman John Frkovich to take his life jacket. The medic reluctantly pulled on the Mae West and lived to help save other wounded sailors that day.

“I’d like to go to the ceremony for the skipper but I can’t,” Talley says. “My hands don’t open and close like they should anymore. And I can’t stand up without hanging onto something. I’ve lost my equilibrium. I don’t know why.”

“It might be because you are 88 years old,” offers Dottie, his wife of nearly 65 years, causing them both to chuckle.

The invitation coming in the autumn of their lives has brought back memories of a time when they were young lovers caught up in a world at war. Like countless other young couples of that era, they would know firsthand separation and sadness.

The crew of PT 346, which Burk had dubbed the “Betty Bee” in honor of his wife, suffered the most with nine killed and nine wounded. Only two sailors on board were physically uninjured in what the U.S. Department of Defense lists as the worst friendly-fire incident involving PT boats.

Talley has a box of paperwork containing Uncle Sam’s investigation of the incident. The reports conclude the catastrophe was caused by pilot error due to miscommunications and misidentification in the turmoil of war.

The old sailor reared in the Dust Bowl of Oklahoma puts it another way.

“The Marines sank my boat — that’s what happened,” he says. “But I don’t hold any grudges against nobody. We was all on the same side.”

Talley joined the Navy in 1942 and later was sent to the New York Naval Shipyard in Brooklyn, where PT 346 was being completed. Like others of its line, the craft was 80 feet long and powered by three V-12 Packard gasoline engines. It held 3,000 gallons of high octane aviation fuel, which the three engines could gobble at the rate of 300 gallons an hour when the craft hit speeds that could exceed 40 knots. Its firepower included torpedoes and twin .50-caliber machine guns.

The crew broke in the boat as it traveled down the Eastern seaboard, heading to the Panama Canal. En route, they stopped at New Orleans, where they adopted a feral Irish terrier they named Chopper.

“That was a real buddy of ours, that dog was,” Talley says. "Any stranger tried to stick a foot on that PT boat, he wouldn’t have it.

“When we went through the canal, the natives there came around with a pig and wanted to trade,” he adds. “They wanted to eat that dog. We didn’t trade.”

By summer 1943, his boat, which had been carried piggyback by a Dutch freighter across the vast Pacific Ocean, began patrolling among the array of islands dotting the South Pacific.

“We was just like family,” he says. “You get to living with these guys on an 80-foot boat and you get to know each one real well.”

April 29, 1944
The harrowing incident began when PT 347 became stuck on a reef off Japanese-held Rabaul during a nighttime patrol. PT 350 soon arrived to try to pull the boat off the reef.

At 7 a.m., two high-flying Marine Corps Corsair fighter planes attacked, mistaking the PT boats for Japanese gunboats. The PT 350 crew fired back, believing they were being attacked by enemy aircraft. One Corsair was shot down, killing the pilot.

Talley’s PT 346 powered in to help.

“When we arrived (about 12:30 p.m.) we saw 350 and they was all shot up,” Talley says, noting that PT 347 remained on the reef. “You could see the (Japanese soldiers) on the beach from there. We were ordered to blow up 347 if we couldn’t free the boat.”

PT 346 backed up to the stranded craft so the crew could tie a heavy rope around it.

About 2 p.m., the men spotted a squadron of planes on the horizon.

“We recognized them,” Talley says of the arrival of 22 Marine Corps fighters and bombers. “We knew they were Corsairs, Hellcats and Dauntlesses. We thought it was our air cover. So we went back to trying to get the boat off the reef.”

After all, the PT 346 crew had contacted its headquarters about the earlier attack, asking for aerial protection from the Southwest Pacific Command headed by Army Gen. Douglas MacArthur.

The problem, Talley explains, is that the squadron was from the adjacent South Pacific Command, whose top military boss was Adm. Chester Nimitz. The general and admiral had no use for each other, resulting in limited communication between the two commands.

“Today, we have Republicans and Democrats against each other,” Talley says. “Back then, we had that in MacArthur and Nimitz. They had a problem with each other.”

The pilots, looking for Japanese gunboats, believed they had found their prey. The squadron included four Corsair fighters, six Avenger dive-bombers, four Hellcat fighters and eight Dauntless dive-bombers.

“The first bomb went right under my engine room and blew my engines and batteries all out of whack,” Talley recalls. “When I climbed up out of there, I saw the skipper had been mowed down.”

The boat, made of plywood and mahogany, was sinking when the last bomber came around, he says. Their radio was knocked out.

“We had no guns left,” he says. “I’m still on the boat, trying to get this cork life raft off when he comes in. He dropped his flaps and put a 1,000-pound bomb right in the middle of our boat. When it blew, it knocked me right out of my shoes.”

Nightmare in the water
Chopper, who had been wounded in the face by shrapnel, came swimming up to Talley, who shared his life preserver with him. But their nightmare was just beginning.

“That’s when the planes started strafing us,” Talley says. "It seems like every plane that came was lining up with me. I’m sure the other guys must have had the same feeling.

“I’d see the smoke go out of the guns up there, then the bullets would start hitting the water ahead of me,” he says.

Each time, Talley would dive under water to the point where the .50-caliber bullets’ velocity would be spent. One bullet hit his pants, but didn’t puncture the cloth. Miraculously, Chopper was not hit by a bullet.

The ordeal went on for at least an hour and a half, possibly two hours, he says. The bodies of eight members of PT 346, including an Army officer who came along as an observer, sank below the waves as Talley fought to survive.

“Up until then, I was never afraid of being shot — I was always afraid of sharks,” Talley says. “But I never thought of sharks during that time I was in the water.”

Baptism by bullets
Talley says he was not a religious man before that day, but he became converted during the baptism of bullets.

"I remember I said, ‘Lord, if it would only rain they wouldn’t be able to see us,’ " he says. “Well, it rained and they went away. I wasn’t a believer until that day.”

At 5:30 p.m., a Navy seaplane looking for a second Hellcat pilot who was shot down came flying in low and discovered the victims of the friendly fire.

Talley was among the crew members initially picked up late that day and taken to a hospital on Green Island. Although he had a shrapnel wound behind his left ear and his left leg had been blown forward at the knee during the explosion, causing his knee to swell up like a water balloon, he refused aid, insisting the doctors help those in worse shape.

Other survivors were not rescued until after 10 p.m., when two PT boats arrived.

‘I don’t hold any grudges’
After Talley recovered, he took a leave to his parents’ home in California with Chopper. His crewmates had decided he should adopt the dog.

“I hate to tell you what happened to him, after him being a survivor of what happened to us,” Talley says. “About a month after I left him, he was chasing a rabbit in a grape vineyard and some kid shot him with a .22 (caliber) rifle. My dad rushed him to the veterinarian but he passed away.”

Talley was discharged Sept. 6, 1945, as a motor machinist mate first class.

Looking back on the most horrific day of his life, Talley says he has no animosity toward the Marine pilots. He recalls being visited in the hospital by the pilot who had dropped the 1,000-pound bomb on PT 346.

"He said, ‘If you ever need anything a’tall, here’s my name and my folks’ address in Kansas,’ " Talley says. "I had that about a week and I thought, ‘What am I doing?’ I tore it up.

“We was all out there for the same purpose,” Talley says. “It was a mistake. I don’t hold any grudges.”