-If you’ve been unsatisfied with the post quality on this forum as of late, we NEED your help-
I’m looking to add a few more moderators to the sub. Currently we have three, including myself but it is getting harder to monitor new posts for rule violations, namely AI
Nothing too serious or formal. I’m mainly looking for people who are active in the subreddit, know the community, and are willing to help keep things running smoothly.
If you’re interested, just DM [u/JoltyJob](u/JoltyJob) or leave a comment on this thread with a couple words related to:
- How long you’ve been participating in the sub
- How active you are (# of posts / comments per week)
- Your typical Reddit browsing hours i.e (3pm - 8pm PST)
- Any previous Reddit moderation history
No formal application or resume or anything like that.
Just looking for some active members who want to help out.
You would begin with the ability to remove and lock posts, but more permissions can be added down the road if all goes well.
I’m a Bostonian who recently visited the Normandy beaches and Sainte-Mère-Église for the first time. While visiting the Paratrooper Museum, I learned about General James Gavin and his legendary career. He also had close ties to Boston. Would love to read more in depth about him. Thanks in advance!
Relative brought some old family stuff and was going through it. Appears to be a B-29, and a door gunner. Pic is from Saigon. I was curious what position in the plane this would have been, and if anyone knows what happened to this plane? Unfortunately the nose cone "42" doesnt help much as 42 also designated the year the plane was ordered/built.
Hey, I'm curious about the history of this jacket and would love to hear from anyone familiar with WWII US Navy uniforms, submarine crews, or naval memorabilia.
The jacket appears to be a US Navy N-1 deck jacket with an alpaca lining. It has an embroidered patch on the chest reading "USS BREAM SS 243."
On the back, you can see the name "R.
MANLEY" is written across a white rectangular area, with what looks like "G109" underneath and "USS BREAM" written lower down.
What's particularly interesting is that there appears to be older, faded writing beneath the R Manley text. I can make out what looks like
"OPS-1" and "USS WALKE," which makes me wonder whether the jacket may have had an earlier tie to the ship DD-416 or DD-723?
Some info on DD-416: this destroyer fought in the Pacific, including the Guadalcanal campaign. It was sunk on November 15, 1942, during the Battle of Guadalcanal.
On DD-723: this was another U.S. Navy destroyer commissioned on January 21, 1944. It had a remarkable WWII service record, including the Normandy invasion in Europe. After WWII, it supported atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in 1946.
I was wondering, does anyone have any insight into the markings "G109," "OPS-1," or the faded
"USS WALKE"?
Is there a way to identify an R. Manley who served aboard USS Bream (SS-243) during
WWII? I was doing some research myself but it appears that online Navy rolls are only viewable on the website Ancestry, and I don't have a subscription.
I'm definitely not making any assumptions about this jacket's authenticity. I'd like to hear if you all think it is legitimate and Im interested in finding out who R. Manley might have been and whether there's a documented story behind the jacket.
Any information, archival leads, or suggestions for further research would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
WW1 truly was a human slaughterhouse. The technology, as we all know, grossly progressed past the tactics of the day. It’s incredible how at the start commanders replicated the tactics of rje previous century, lining men up and swapping volleys and pushing forward. Of course, with the perfection of the machine gun and advent of tanks and brutally accurate artillery, the men became quite literally puppets of meat to be fed into the woodchipper. Of course, my impression is heavily influenced by movies like Galipoli, 1917, all quiet on the western front, and they shall not grow old, but the bravery of those high school kids and young men seeing their buddies get massacred, and still going over the top when they hear the whistle brings tears to my eyes.
Got these in a thrift store under the "junk" section. These costed me ₱750 for both (about $12), most likely used in the Pacific Front (though, I guess it does since I live IN the Pacific). I find it quite a shame that the US water canteen no longer has its cover or the lower section metal cup or the sling of the IJA water canteen (I think it's gone forever and rotting since a small piece of the rope crumbled when I tried to tie them even though I was very gentle.
based on my basic research, the water canteen is most likely a water canteen for the officers of the IJA Special Naval Landing Forces. The group that invaded Shanghai and the northern provinces of my country in Luzon. Can't say the same for the US canteen since it's lacking many things. Though, I can't find any info for the symbol at the bottom of the IJA water canteen
The legend of Alexander the Great began when he was still a young prince. One of its most famous stories is the taming of Bucephalus, the horse who would become his trusted companion.
According to the ancient biographer Plutarch, when the magnificent horse was presented to King Philip II of Macedon, none of the king’s attendants could tame him. Just as Philip was about to send the horse away, Alexander stepped forward and accepted the challenge. By observing that Bucephalus was frightened by his own shadow, Alexander turned him towards the sun, calmed him, and successfully mounted him.
The episode offers an early glimpse of the intelligence, confidence, and powers of observation that would become hallmarks of Alexander’s leadership. Ancient writers described Bucephalus as an unusually large and noble horse who was especially attached to Alexander.
Another intriguing legend connects Bucephalus to the man-eating Mares of Diomedes, captured by Heracles during his Twelve Labours. Although this supposed ancestry cannot be established historically, it adds another fascinating layer to the horse’s legend.
Bucephalus accompanied Alexander during his campaigns in Asia and became a symbol of their extraordinary bond. After the horse’s death during the Indian campaign, Alexander reportedly founded a city in his memory. Ancient sources disagree, however, on whether Bucephalus died from battle wounds or from old age and exhaustion.
I’ve explored the story of Bucephalus, his legendary origins, his connection to Alexander’s military campaigns, and the mystery surrounding his death in my latest article.
Read the full article by clicking on the link in the comments. I’d love to hear your thoughts and any interesting historical details you think deserve more attention!
Ignoring a theoretical case where a pending promotion was still being finalized when a member of the military was captured, have there been cases where a service member was given a promotion with full knowledge they were being held as a prisoner of war?
While the DPAA makes good progress on the Lindell crew lost on Dec 26th 1944 (with recent reburial of Myron Yaw, and upcoming ceremony for Avery Gilliland), there are more airmen who died over Blechhammer and are still unaccounted for.
On October 13th, 1944, 2nd Lt Meyer’s crew of 455th BG was shot down, and the wreck fell into the forest between Blechhammer North and Blechhammer South. There were only two survivors, and 8 men died. Four were recovered and identified after the war, but the burial sites of 2nd Lt. Meyer, F/O Fajans, F/O Bray, Cpl. Bartholow were never found. They are still unaccounted for.
The local Blechhammer 44 Association remembers the crew in their museum.
i keep seeing different camos about it and im getting confused, and also if anyone knows how berets would be given out to elite units/commandos but most had their own color who were the different colored berets
My grandpa was in the navy and WWII and this showed up in his family footage. Just curious what he was filming.
Edit: by flying I just mean it was going fast!
Edit: ok you figured out the vehicle but any guesses why he was filming it out in the desert? He was an engineer that died young so I don’t know much about him.
I recently made a short documentary about Herman V. Wall, a U.S. Army Signal Corps photographer who landed on Omaha Beach on D-Day. He was severely wounded and lost part of his leg, but the photographs he fought to protect survived.
The film follows Wall’s story and the journey of his 35 negatives from Normandy to England and across the Atlantic. According to the U.S. Army’s official history, they were the first photographs of the actual landings received by the Army. What drew me to this story was the man behind those images, which were credited simply to the U.S. Army Signal Corps.
I used archival footage, photographs and documents, and created the animations, maps, timelines and motion graphics myself in After Effects. There are no AI-generated images or video clips. I used an AI narrator because I’m not a native English speaker; the music and sound effects were also created with ElevenLabs. The full sources, archival credits and historical notes are in the video description.
I’m just starting this YouTube channel because I love history, especially WWII, and I wanted to put that interest into making documentaries. I’m curious whether this kind of archive-based storytelling is something people would want to watch more of.
If you enjoy the film, I’d really appreciate a comment on YouTube letting me know what you thought. Honest criticism is welcome too — whether it’s about the pacing, narration, historical detail or anything I could improve.
Had you come across Wall’s story or his photographs before?
This may be a wild goose chase, but could anyone tell me if this fictional character's uniform even loosely matches up with the uniforms (or even a specific rank/role) of real women in the German armed services during WW2? (The character is supposed to be from 1941.)
As a layman, I can't tell if this uniform does match up with the Wehrmachthelferinnen (non-combatant auxiliaries), the Wehrmachthelferinnenkorps, or even SS-Aufseherin (concentration camp guards). It's also entirely possible that it's just something the costume department cobbled together or got from a costumier.
After a thoroughly miserable yesterday spent trying and failing to get to Odense by train (cancellations and delays everywhere), I am having an unplanned day at home. Now having done chores and prepared pizza for my son, I can use a few hours to translate some more. Here are some more recipes from the 1887 Des Soldaten Kochbüchlein, this time the daily fare of men in the field: soups.
Pre-1909 German soldiers. The man on the left is shown carrying the regulation mess kit and canteen referenced in this cookbook.
A. Soups
a) thick, with rice and vegetables
1.Rice Soup with Beef
Ingredients: Salt; celeriac; onions; carrots\*
\footnote: The materials listed under ingredients are not necessarily required in their entirety; you can leave out some; the less central ones are listed last; salt must never be omitted.*
Fill the cooking pot half with water and boil it; Wash the meat if it is not clean, beat it, and add it to the boiling water. Salt it. Cut onions into pieces of equal size, likewise carrots and celeriac; Add all of it to the soup in the cooking pot; Put on the lid. Clean your rice ration (it amounts to four heaping tablespoons) by removing all bad grains; Pour the rice into your drinking cup, add cold water; Wash it by stirring it and then slowly pouring off the water; Wash repeatedly; Once the rice is clean, leave the last water you added in the cup. Once the meat has begun boiling, pour off the water from the rice and add the rice to the boiling broth. After at most 1 1/2 hours (reckoned from the moment the meat was placed in the boiling water), the rice soup with beef is done and you can eat it.
Example how to cook this recipe in a cooking group (Kochrotte): No. 1 (e.g. a three-year serviceman) supervises the cooking, receives the victuals, prepares the meat and is in charge of salting (ONLY ONE person is allowed to do this). He commands No. 2 to clean vegetables, No. 3 to provide fire and water and prepare the whisk and masher (implements carved from firewood). No. 4 is disposable and available to run errands, see to other duties etc. The Küchenmeister supervises all Kochrotten under his authority. He sees to it that the Kochrotte behaves in a comradely fashion (kameradschaftlich) and each of the 4 people is busy, nobody lazing at the expense of the others and only showing up (angeturnt kommt) when the food is ready: Only men who are very tired and not needed to cook may sleep; He checks water supplies and the progress of all cooking, the latter by his watch, and if necessary makes notes to give a clear report to the Feldwebel, if one is required.
2.Barley Groat Soup (Graupensuppe) with Mutton
Ingredients: Salt; onions; potatoes
Fill the cooking pot half with water and boil it; Wash the meat if it is not clean; Beat it; Add it to the boiling water: Salt it; Cut onions into small pieces of equal size, or leeks into larger pieces; Put all of this into the sop. Clean the barley groats (Graupen) as yo did with the rice, but do not leave the last water in with them as with the rice, but pour it off and add the groats straight to the boiling broth. Cover with the lid. After the meat has been cooking for 1 1/2 hours, add some potatoes that you peeled, cut in pieces, and washed; After the potatoes have cooked with it for 1/2 hour, they are done and the entire dish is ready, thus requiring two hours altogether from the moment the meat was put in the boiling water.
3.Potato Soup with Meat (Beef or Mutton)
Ingredients: Salt; pepper; onions
Fill the cooking pot half with water and boil it. Wash the meat if it is not clean; Cut it into small cubes, each one cubic centimetre in size. Place the meat in the boiling water. Salt it. Add some finely cut onion, or 8-10 whole peppercorns. Peel potatoes, cut each one in 4 parts (large ones in 8), wash them, and add them to the meat broth, enough so the broth still reaches three fingerbreadths above the potatoes. Once the potatoes are done, mash them with the masher or the spoon. Dinner is ready.
4.Egg Groat Soup (Eiergraupensuppe) with Meat (beef, veal, or mutton)
Prepare boiling water in the cooking pot (half full); Wash the meat if necessary; Place it in the boiling water. Salt it. Cut in small pieces: Celeriac, onion, and carrots, and add these potherbs (Suppenkräuter) to the meat broth. If yo have no fresh potherbs, use extract (Suppenkräuterextract). Place in the lid of the cooking pot: 3 spoonfuls of wheat flour, add 3 spoonfuls of cold water; Stir into a thick batter; Break one egg into it and mix it thoroughly with the flour. Once the meat has been cooked soft enough to be eaten, drizzle the flour batter you mixed into the boiling broth, and see to it that the soup continues to boil until you are finished. Now remove the cooking pot from the fire; If you have parsley, chop it very fine and add a little. You can also add nutmeg. Dinner is ready.
5.Pea Soup with Boiled Bacon
Ingredients: Salt. – Baking Soda.
The peas are picked clean and washed; Fill the cooking pot half full of cold water (if you have a choice, use soft water; If you only have hard water, add a pinch of baking soda so the peas soften quicker). Clean the bacon (scrape and, where necessary, cut). After the peas have been boiling for 1/2 hour (reckon cooking time from when they first boiled up), you add the bacon into the boiling pea water; Now the peas need to boil another 2-3 hours to soften, and they must always be covered by water. During the cooking, you must not stir the peas or they will easily burn. Once they are soft, mash them with the “masher” or the spoon. Only now may you salt them; If you do this earlier, you slow down the softening of the peas.
6.Pea Soup and Fried Bacon
Ingredients: Salt; – baking soda; onions
If you are issued bacon that is very fat, you do not prepare it according to recipe No. 5, but according to this one, which is this way: The peas are prepared exactly as per No. 5. Once they are done, salt them. Now you cut the bacon into small cubes of equal size; (about 3 tablespoons full of these cubes are needed); If you take more bacon, the sop will be too fat and produce revulsion; Rather eat the rest of your bacon issue raw with bread (for breakfast). Fry the bacon cubes in the cookpot lid with onion cut in pieces of equal size which must only turn a light yellow in the process. Pour this fried bacon over the finished soup.
7.White Bean Soup with Meat (Pork or Beef)
Ingredients: Salt
Cook the beans as you do the peas in No. 5. Once they begin boiling, you add the meat; Now beans and meat must boil together for 2-3 hours. If the pork is fat and young, it will be soft sooner and you must remove it in the meantime so it does not fall apart (zerkocht); once the beans are done, put the meat back into the pot; Salt it; You can cut the meat into the required portions during the time it is out of the pot.
8.Lentil Soup and Bacon
Ingredients: Salt; flour or potatoes; onions; vinegar
Clean and cook the lentils as you do the peas in No. 5. Once they are done – this is the case after you have put them in cold water, then boiled them for 2-3 hours – you fry the bacon until it is soft. You do that this way: Place the bacon in the cookpot lid cut into small cubes and add a spoonful of flour along with finely diced onion, which you allow to turn light yellow. Now you let all of this boil once more (durchkochen) with the lentils. If you have no flour, that is no problem either; Maybe you have rescued 1-2 potatoes (large ones) at your last bivouac and saved them in your bread bag (Brodbeutel); You peel these and cut them into small pieces, and add them to the soup 1/4 hour before the lentils are done; When the potatoes are done, they are mashed with the “masher” or spoon. If you have vinegar, add a spoonful to your soup before you eat it.
These recipes are not easy to read. The punctuation is idiosyncratic, the diction odd, and they presuppose a lot of shared knowledge modern readers do not have. But if you get past that, they make sense. First, the ingredient list does not contain everything the goes into the soup. It lists the things that a soldier needs in addition to their rations to prepare it. Meat, bacon, bread, and rice, groats, or legumes were all issued by the army, but salt, pepper, onions, leeks, celeriac, vinegar or flour were up to the troops to provide somehow. The book deals with aspects of this in other sections which I hope to get to in more detail. Second, the additional ingredients are listed in order of importance, as explained in a footnote to the first recipe. That principle though sensible, has not stood the test of time.
The equipment used to cook them is also taken as familiar. It is the regulation Kochgeschirr of the German soldier, a deep metal pot with a close-fitting, shallower lid and a canteen with a mated drinking cup, all in standard sizes. We have seen them used as measuring tools in the section on drinks from the same book. These vessels are suspended over, or placed in, a standard fire pit, a layout every soldier would have learned to produce quickly. The addendum to recipe #1 also makes it clear that cooking was no individual pastime. This was a group effort with soldiers preparing their meals in groups of for, an NCO tasked with supervising, and the whole thing subject to the watchful eye of the “mother of the company”, the Feldwebel (roughly the Company Sergeant Major). The focus here was not quality – the men themselves were responsible for that – but fairness, ensuring nobody got away with shirking their duties. Cooking duty would be shouldered kameradschaftlich; The German words for comrade and their layers of meaning are probably worth their own post at some point.
As regards the actual dishes, they are basic, but given the circumstances, probably as good as you cold expect. No. 1, a beef soup with rice, onions, carrots, and celeriac, wold most likely be improved even further by first sautéeing the vegetables as we do with Suppengrüntoday, but the layout of a cooking pit made that challenging. No. 2 seems deprived by comparison, but it is so similar to No. 1 that one hopes the reader understood the other vegetables could be use here too. Graupen, incidentally, can technically refer to cooked whole grains of any cereal, but typically were (and today exclusively are) hulled barley. The Eiergraupen in No. 4 are named that because of their similar appearance. They are a kind of improvised egg pasta, more liquid than spaetzle and easily improvised in the field.
Recipes No. 5-8 use legumes, another easily portable, cheap source of nutrition. Pea and lentil soup are still ubiquitous in Germany, with bacon or sausage added to the former, potatoes and vinegar to the latter, while bean soup is becoming rarer. The roux thickening given to the lentil soup suggests that the lentils issued were of the hard, brown variety that did not fall apart even after lengthy cooking. It is also an ingenious field-expedient solution to the problem.
When we look at these soups, we need to keep in mind they were meant to be eaten along with bread. That was the function of most soups in history, and the German military of the 1880s issued generous daily bread rations that soldiers were free to consume over the course of the day. Carrying this Kommissbrotwas the purpose of the bread bag mentioned in No. 8, an otherwise unclaimed light cloth bag that soldiers cold fill with whatever fit inside on the march.
None of this is unusual for its time. The food here is similar to what cowboys ate at a chuck wagon or sailors might receive in their mess. An important difference is that, unlike those, German soldiers were expected to cook their own. Not everyone would have had the necessary skills, which is why this fascinating book survives. When the German army finally abandoned the practice in favor of cooking for entire units in field kitchens, the recipes largely carried over. These soups would be familiar to German soldiers well into the twentieth century.
Finally, a linguistic aside that illuminates how twentieth century cuisine was subject to top-down manipulation. These are substantial, solid dishes. If you left them to cool in the mess tin, you could probably slice them. This consistency was called ‘standing’ in English cookery books. By the lights of the 1880s, they are soups, the same as much daintier, more liquid dishes served at the beginning of a meal of multiple courses. The word to make this distinction does not exist until the First World War, when Eintopfgerichtwas coined. Literally a “one-pot-dish”, it describes, quite technically, a dish cooked in one large pot, practical, economical, not necessarily pleasant. This was, however, a unifying experience for men who had served in the military, and in the years of shortage during and after the war, for many more Germans.his allowed it to be imbued with an air of patriotic sacrifice, a mock-equality around the shared soup pot that constituted everyone as Kameraden. The Nazis understood this well when they popularised the word, instituting Eintopfsonntag: One Sunday a month, middle-class families were asked to forgo their usual roast, instead sharing a hearty Eintopf and donating the resulting savings to party charities. Participation was strictly voluntary, but – people kept notes. The men following these recipes to make ‘thick soup’ in 1887 could have lived to see this. It is hard to guess how they felt about it. If you grew up in Wilhelmine Germany, your later life was a chronicle ofmaterial loss.
Hi - I am trying to identify/rule out anything about what this uniform could be. This is my grandmother that I never knew and the only information I have is that this should be 1951 and she was from Hungary.
I was told she was born in Budapest in the 30s but I have been unable to find any evidence of her existence outside of her emigration papers in 1956-1959 from Hungary to the US.
I haven’t been able to find a match for this uniform, specifically the bits on the collar. There’s also the two buttons but I can barely make out anything about them.
From what I’ve gathered, this doesn’t match to any photos I’ve found of the police at the time nor the military.
You may remember my post from a few weeks about a B-24 sitting in a Soviet airfield in Poland and captured in a German Luftwaffe recon photo taken just 12 days after Polando landed in that airfield. I had some archival documents related to this story, and was lucky to find a relative of the pilot who was so kind to share more information and many photos.
I would love to tell you more but self-promotion is not allowed here.
I’m the grandson of a member of the 747th Squadron, 456th Bomb Group (15th Air Force). He was shot down on his second mission on 17 February 1944 near Grottaferrata / Anzio on B-24H 42-52286 “The Little Joker” (MACR 03078 / 06330). He successfully bailed out, evaded for about four months with help from Italian civilians, and reported back to the British 8th Army on 6 June 1944.
I’m trying to find a copy of the 1994 Turner Publishing unit history:
456th Bomb Group: 1943–Steed’s Flying Colts–1945
(ISBN 1563111411 / 9781563111419)
A few sellers are asking inflated prices, so I’m hoping someone here has a spare, knows of a fair listing, or has scanned the relevant crew / mission pages they’re willing to share. Happy to pay a normal used-book price.
