Image by Montague B Black, 1926
From London Transport Museum
Friday, December 23, 2011
Thursday, July 14, 2011
Battel of Kwajalein 1944
That night was unbelievably terrible. There were many of them left and they all had one fanatical notion, and that was to take one of us with them. We dug in with orders to kill anything that moved. I kept watch in a foxhole with my sergeant and we bouth stayed awake all night with a knife in one hand a grenade in the other. They crept in among us, and every bush and rock took on sinister proportions. They got some of us, but in the morning they lay about, some with their riddled bodies actually inside our foxholes. Never have I been so glad to see the sun.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Last mission of E18
E18 in port of Reval, before her final mission
On the calm spring evening of 1916 submarine E18 left the port of Reval. little did Lieutenant-Commander R.C. Halahan know that this will be his last mission.
The patrol of Gulf of Riga had started well. Only days after leaving the port, E18 torpedoed German destroyer V100, blowing off her bow. Had it not been for the calm seas, it is likely she would have sank from the damage. Two days later submarine E18 arrived near Klaipeda were she was seen by a German aircraft. After several days patrolling the area they were well known to German navy who had started hunt for the submarine. On the 1 June 1916 at 1500 hrs German U-boat UB-30 sighted E 18 sailing north by northwest of Steinort, but soon lost the contact. Having being on sea for eleven days and running low on food Lieutenant-Commander Halahan decided to return home. Running west of island Osel he gave order to surface the vessel for recharge batteries. Only to discover that they were middle of minefield…
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Atsuta Maru
As Pompano shifted her patrol area to the main route between Japan and the East Indies, a large transport ship escorted by one destroyer caught her eye on 30 May 1942. Running to a position ahead of the convoy, she waited until her victim was only 690m away, scoring solid hits with two Mark 10 torpedoes which sank Atsuta Maru two and a half hours later.
The Pompano itself did not survive the war. She left Midway on 20 August, bound for Hokkaidō and Honshū and was never heard from again. Pompano was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register on 12 January 1944.
Friday, March 4, 2011
The first airship bombing Warsaw
...it's almost 3 in the afternoon and SL2 has released her 8 t of deadly cargo. There are no signs of enemies aircrafts. Polish army hasn't prepared for war. She leaves burning Warsaw behind, makes turn above the river Vistula and returnes to west.
Schutte-Lanz airship SL2 made her first flight on February 28, 1914. It carried out six missions on the first year of the war over Poland and France. After being enlarged in summer 1915, several more missions were carried out before SL2 was stranded at Luckenwalde on January 10, 1916 after running out of fuel.
Tuesday, January 25, 2011
Churrch at Revigny
The aftemath of bombardment by German troops in 1917
....the cathedral, with its two square towers, still stands at the highest point, and may be seen for miles around. Its windows are all shattered, and many surrounding smaller buildings have been wrecked, but only two shells have actually struck the church, and from a distance it still appears untouched.
On entering the ruined part of the city, one is reminded of Pompeii, not merely because of the terrible loneliness and silence, but from the mute evidences on every hand of the sudden and unprepared flight of the population. In some of the stores on the main business street the whole front of the buildings has been sheered away, yet inside, among the fallen fragments, fragile goods are still seen exposed on counters as if for sale. In a café, the billiard balls and cues are still in their racks on the wall, though a shell which came through the opposite wall has destroyed the tables. In a drug-store there are shelves, along which tiny piles of shattered glass at regular intervals show where the bottles used to stand...
Wednesday, December 22, 2010
Prisoner of War
US Army Christmas Postcard, December 1943
Woodrow Smith never saw the hissing grenade that bounced into his foxhole on June 6, 1944. His last memory of that day was grabbing for his helmet and dropping to the dirt, expecting the shrapnel and concussion.
Smith, woke up an hour later near the
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