Free Republic

A Navajo Code Talker has died in New Mexico. David Patterson Sr. served during World War Two and used the Navajo language as a communications code that was never broken. Patterson was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal. His service will be held in Shiprock, New Mexico on Thursday. Patterson was 94 years old.

His Only Fools and Horses character might have tried to avoid the war, but in real life actor Lennard Pearce once came face to face with Adolf Hitler, according to his co-star Nicholas Lyndhurst. Lyndhurst, who played dim Rodney in the classic BBC sitcom, has said that his on-screen grandad met the German dictator before the war, and later regretted not taking the opportunity to kill him. “He was a young actor touring Europe and they were playing some German city and the Nazis walked in," Lyndhurst said. "The top honchos of the Nazi party had seen the play and...

Poland's governing conservatives have set up a parliamentary committee tasked with looking into the extent of World War II reparations they claim is owed by Germany, the new body's head said Friday."We want to begin work in the Polish parliament that will result in an analysis of the estimated amount that Germany owes Poland," the committee's presiding lawmaker Arkadiusz Mularczyk told the Polish news agency PAP. The member of the governing Law and Justice (PiS) party added that there is no set date for the committee to produce its results. The issue of war reparations -- for years considered as...

Adolf Hitler thought he was going to win. The Nazis didn’t just take battle plans and explosives into World War II; they had plans for a whole new world order. When the fighting and the bloodshed were done, they were going to build a new fascist empire over the ruins of Europe. The Nazis already had already written up the blueprints for their new order. If everything had gone according to Hitler’s plan, the world today would be a different place. And in many ways, the Nazi new world order wouldn’t have been what you’d expect.

A German Second World War pilot has made his maiden voyage in a Spitfire seven decades after he flew for the Luftwaffe. Hugo Broch, 95, who last flew in 1960, took to the skies above Kent on Tuesday as a passenger in a British TR9 MJ627 Spitfire. Born on January 6 1922, Broch is a former Messerschmitt 109 fighter pilot and Luftwaffe ace. During his career, Broch flew 324 combat missions and shot down 81 enemy aircraft on the Eastern Front, including 18 Soviet Sturmoviks. His score included twelve double victories and three triple victories.

It was on this date in 1945 that, for good or ill, the "nuclear age" began, with the explosion of the first experimental atomic bomb, code-named Trinity, in the western desert near Alamogordo, New Mexico. Trinity, with a yield equivalent to 20 kilotons of TNT, was the first spherical implosion bomb, developed at Los Alamos under the auspices of the Manhattan Project during World War II. The weapon designers were so confident of the success of the simpler gun-barrel configuration that the device of that type dropped on Hiroshima only three weeks later had never been tested. The subsequent Nagasaki...

Swiss journalist Sacha Batthyany knew he belonged to an aristocratic family, centered around his respected aunt. He didn’t know about the murderous ball held in 1945, that led to a personal quest, threats from relatives and a book One morning in April 2007 journalist Sacha Batthyany was approached by an elderly colleague at the Swiss daily where they both worked at the time. The colleague waved a newspaper clipping in front of him. It was an investigative report entitled, “The Hostess from Hell,” published by a German daily. Glancing at the headline, Batthyany didn’t understand why he was being shown...

In a hidden room in a house near Argentina's capital, police believe they have found the biggest collection of Nazi artifacts in the country's history, including a bust relief of Adolf Hitler and magnifying glasses inside elegant boxes with swastikas. Some 75 objects were found in a collector's home in Beccar, a suburb north of Buenos Aires, and authorities say they suspect they are originals that belonged to high-ranking Nazis in Germany during World War II. "Our first investigations indicate that these are original pieces," Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich told The Associated Press on Monday, saying that some pieces...

We are losing World War II veterans at an alarming rate. According to the Department of Veterans Affairs, an average of more than 370 World War II veterans die every day. But, 17-year-old Andy Fancher is dedicated to keeping their legacy alive and he's racing against life's clock to tell their stories. "I would see this man just sitting in his wheelchair with no one to talk to," Fancher recalled. He was only 12-years-old when he met that gentleman, and it was then that he realized someone had to record the story of those veterans. He decided to use his...

It’s never too late to graduate. That’s the lesson World War II veteran Milton Mockerman shared with the Kalkaska High School class of 2017 with whom he graduated on Saturday. Mockerman, 89, received an honorary diploma from the school and participated in its graduation ceremony, fulfilling his lifelong dream of earning a high school degree – 71 years later than expected. “We got a phone call from Milton Mockerman wondering if there were any classes he could take to finish his graduation,” Kalkaska High School Principal John Sattler told CNN.

JAPANESE peace campaigners have written to US President Donald Trump urging him to declare the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings a war crime. A copy of the letter from the Society for Requiring the Admission of Historic Responsibility of the US Government for Dropping Atomic Bombs on Japan, dated today was sent to the Morning Star. “This indiscriminate mass killing should not be forgiven, because it was a crime against humanity,” it read, pointing to the 340,000 deaths from the bombings on August 6 and 9 in 1945. But Washington continues to justify the atrocities “with the excuse that they hastened...

My Review and Build of Merit Kit #65302, 1/350 Aircraft Carrier, USS Enterprise, CV-6 REVIEW & BUILD, Doolittle Raid Vessel Note: You can see all the pictures in highest resolution at My USS Enterprise, CV-6, Flickr Album, or you can click on any of the pictures here and get a higher resoultion image. USS Enterprise, CV-6, Aircraft Carrier The USS Enterprise aircraft carrier, CV-6, was the sixth official aircraft carrier that the United states Navy had acquired, and she was specifically built from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. Earlier carriers leading up to the the Enterprsie were:...

Activision officially unveiled the next Call of Duty game this morning. Call of Duty: World War II is being developed by Sledgehammer Games, the makers of Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. That was a good game, and I'm excited to see what Sledgehammer can do with a World War II setting. Prior to Advanced Warfare, the developer had been working on a Vietnam-era game which was ultimately scrapped when Activision promoted the studio to one of its three regular Call of Duty developers. We know nothing about the game at this point beyond the setting and name. A livestream is...

The Lower Merion resident gave President Roosevelt some unpleasant news on the Soviet massacre.Gov. George H. Earle (wearing the spotlight cap) with striking coal miners in 1937 Most people who work for the president of the United States know not to bring him news he doesn’t want to hear. But some just can’t help themselves—and so they suffer the consequences. Take George H. Earle III of Lower Merion, who, in 1944, passed on to Franklin Roosevelt some unpleasant facts about the Soviet Union’s massacre of an estimated 22,000 Polish army officers in 1940. The Soviets had blamed the atrocity...

My Review and Build of Trumpeter Kit #05309, 1/350 New Orleans Class Heavy Cruiser, USS Vincennes, CA-45 REVIEW & BUILD, Doolittle Raid Vessel Note: You can see all the pictures in highest resolution at My USS Vincennes, CA-44, Flickr Album, or you can cloick on any of the pictures here and get a higher resoultion image. New Orleans Class Heavy Cruisers The New Orleans-class cruisers were a class of seven heavy cruisers built for the United States Navy (USN) from 1933–36. All of them were put into commission bb 1938. They were succeeded by the Baltimore Class Heavy cruisers...but the...

Jonathon M. Trugman at the New York Post reported this week that the final numbers for the Obama Administration are in and they are abysmal: On Thursday we closed the book on the Obama economic “miracle” — and it’s a miracle we are not in a recession. Last week the Commerce Department released its third revision for fourth-quarter 2016 gross domestic product. The number came in at a paltry 2.1 percent, meaning that growth during President Obama’s final year in office — the end of an “Error of Hope” — landed with a big thud at just 1.6 percent. That...

Acclaimed Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, whose work focused on war atrocities and denounced anti-Semitism and tyrannical dictators, has died. He was 84... Yevtushenko gained notoriety in the former Soviet Union while in his 20s, with poetry denouncing Josef Stalin. He gained international acclaim as a young revolutionary with "Babi Yar," the unflinching 1961 poem that told of the slaughter of nearly 34,000 Jews by the Nazis and denounced the anti-Semitism that had spread throughout the Soviet Union... Until "Babi Yar" was published, the history of the massacre was shrouded in the fog of the Cold War...

My Review and Build of Dragon Kit #1027, 1/350 Gleaves Class Destroyer, USS Grayson, DD-435 REVIEW & BUILD, Doolittle Raid Vessel Gleaves Class Destroyers The Gleaves-class destroyers were a class of 66 destroyers of the United States Navy built from 1938–42. They were designed by Gibbs & Cox. and these were the main production destroyers of the US Navy when it entered World War II. The succeeded the Benson class of which 30 were built before and into World War II. They were initially meant to be a part of a 24-ship class authorized for 1938–40. Bethlehem Shipbuilding, whichhad been...

My Review and Build of Merit International Kit #89001, World war II Aircraft carrier, USS Hornet, CV-8, Doolitlle Raid Note: You can also see all of the pcitures from this page in full resolution on the Flickr Album Here on Flickr. Otherwise, click on the picture here and you will get a higher resolution version here. This build is of an already built model. it comes painted and with 12 B-25 Bombers. However, I addded the Tom's Model and GOld Medal Model Photo Etch Kits, as well as building four more B-25s to get the depiction up to the...

When we think of Adolf Hitler, we tend to imagine him as the raging, crowd-inciting dictator. But “Blitzed: Drugs in the Third Reich” paints a very different picture, one of a full-on junkie who could barely show up for military meetings without his regular injections of cocaine, methamphetamine and opiates. In one of the book’s most harrowing scenes, author Norman Ohler describes how “Hitler’s veins were so wrecked” by late 1944 that even his personal physician “could hardly penetrate them.” When he finally did manage to break the skin, “it actually made a crunching noise.”