Picture of the Day

[Dukat]

Genuine German Forkspoon from 1939

It's a fork... AND A SPOON!

My grandparents had these in their cutlery tray and used them for cooking while I refused to eat from them because they looked that strange.




DD Class Destroyer 1934A Z6 Theodor Riedel

[:| Hi]

It is for anti-submarines.  The camo disrupts the eye and makes it extremely difficult to calculate the range, speed, and bearing of the ship for a torpedo attack.  It worked extremely well too I might add.

so did the hedgehog

Hedgehog <3

[Battlefieldfan45 (CroPanzer)]

A freaky looking marder I 

Marder I (Sd.Kfz.135). Built on FCM36's chassis

[G.Drew]

Reminds me of the Geschützwagen 39H(f).

[THeTA0123]

 

[Rawhide]

[THeTA0123]

US troops eating their BELOVED C-rations!

[Yustax]

Reminds me of the Geschützwagen 39H(f).

Because it is a Geschützwagen; they were some variations. The one with the Lefh 18 artillery piece was called the Geschützwagen 39 h(f) and the one with a Pak 40 was a Geschützwagen FCM(f)

[Kading]

Not sure who they are. At first I thought FJ, obvious.

But they are all wearing mountain boots

Guy in background on left has Heer eagle breast insignia.

[Dnarag1M]

Not sure who they are. At first I thought FJ, obvious.

But they are all wearing mountain boots

Guy in background on left has Heer eagle breast insignia.

Kading, you are probably showing one of the most important moments of ww2 without knowing it Not important because of it's battle influence, but because of what it did to one of Europe's countries after the war - all because of their failure.

The uniform they are holding is from Tito - barely escaped.  They shot it up later out of frustration.
According to what I know, SS FJ held the uniform of Tito (I saw this picture with that description once). I don't know however who these guys are.

The XV. Gebirgs-Korps, the same that invaded Poland in Fall Weiss, also participated in this battle.

This is the entire list of participating forces ..maybe someone smart can identify which are on the picture :

Regimental Kampfgruppe, 373rd (Croatian) Infantry Division Tiger-Division
reinforced Reconnaissance Battalion, 373rd (Croatian) Infantry Division Tiger-Division
reinforced Reconnaissance Battalion, 369th (Croatian) Infantry Division Devil's-Division
1st Regiment, Brandenburg Division (without 3rd Battalion)
Platoon Kampfgruppe, Brandenburg Division
92nd Grenadier Regiment (motorized)
54th Mountain Reconnaissance Battalion
2nd Armored Assault Battalion
Schutzstaffel (SS)
500th SS Parachute Battalion
Kampfgruppe of the 1st Parachute Regiment, 1st Airborne Division
Sonderkommando (special unit) Zawadil
Regimental Kampfgruppe, 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen
13th SS Volunteer Mountain Regiment Artur Phleps, 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen
7th SS Volunteer Mountain Reconnaissance Battalion (motorized), 7th SS Volunteer Mountain Division Prinz Eugen
105th SS Reconnaissance Battalion

[Kading]

OF COURSE! I always forget the SS FJ. Still odd they would ALL have mountain boots.

[IrishReloaded]

wiki says this to 500th ss fj bat:

Published photographs show them to be wearing Luftwaffe standard jumpsuits complete with Luftwaffe breast eagles, although these were often removed, and the Luftwaffe fallschirmjager pattern steel helmet. It was worn with the standard fieldgrey fallschirmjager trousers with either front lacing paratroop boots or cleated mountain boots.

the guy with the cap does not wear the luftwaffe eagle - pos a member of another division -

[silian]

Probably a Brandenburger.

[Herc]

Ive looked long and hard for Pictures of the Philippines Airforce pre japanese invasion.
Simply because they were using P26 peashooters in ww2

heres a pic I stumbled accross



p26 right at the back



Hi Res:
http://images.google.com/hosted/life/f?q=airfield+philippines+source:life&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dairfield%2Bphilippines%2Bsource:life%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1916%26bih%3D987%26tbs%3Disch:1&imgurl=cccd732c0a236224

[VonMudra]

wiki says this to 500th ss fj bat:

Published photographs show them to be wearing Luftwaffe standard jumpsuits complete with Luftwaffe breast eagles, although these were often removed, and the Luftwaffe fallschirmjager pattern steel helmet. It was worn with the standard fieldgrey fallschirmjager trousers with either front lacing paratroop boots or cleated mountain boots.

the guy with the cap does not wear the luftwaffe eagle - pos a member of another division -

Nah, some of them did in fact put SS eagles on the front of the jump smocks, and rarely on the arm.

And the basic story is in their first combat jump (out of a modified chute in He111 bombers) their mission was to go capture Tito.  They fought their way up into his stronghold just minutes after Tito made his escape.  They also took extremely heavy casulties, as one would expect from what was actually an SS PENAL battalion.  They ended up later fighting around the ostfront where the unit was repeatedly wiped out due to poor quality commanders and poorly trained ex-criminal soldiers, and eventually found themselves in Austria, and surrendered to the americans.