The Mess

[TheReal_ND]

After reading the thread a bit more the second image I posted was probably a line crossing ceremony. Still too many fags there tho.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony

[Speaker to Animals]

After reading the thread a bit more the second image I posted was probably a line crossing ceremony. Still too many fags there tho.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line-crossing_ceremony

At the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry, there is a captured German u-boat you can climb into. They have all the photos the submariners took on their journey too. One of the photos I remember was this ceremony where one of them was dressed like Poseidon.

You would really like this exhibit.

[Speaker to Animals]

The photos also show that these guys were decent people. They'd still have to sink merchant ships, but they would hand out supplies to the survivors on their life rafts before continuing on. There are several pictures of American merchant marines on life rafts getting food and water from the u-boat crew.

[TheReal_ND]

Unlike ground units where retreating units could feasibly regroup to attack you again, naval units were required to help any survivors of ships they sank. It's not really surprising to find out that German sailors were decent human beings.

[Speaker to Animals]

Unlike ground units where retreating units could feasibly regroup to attack you again, naval units were required to help any survivors of ships they sank. It's not really surprising to find out that German sailors were decent human beings.

It would be if all you knew about them was from recent Hollywood films (like a lot of people nowadays).

[Speaker to Animals]

Cool story about one of the crewmen:

http://www.historynet.com/german-submar ... war-ii.htm

It has been more than 50 years since the aircraft carrier USS Guadalcanal‘s hunter-killer group captured the German submarine U-505 off Cape Blanco in French West Africa, but for former crewman Hans Goebeler the memories are as fresh as ever. The 74-year-old retiree still bristles at any suggestion that U-505, the first ship captured on the high seas by the U.S. Navy since the War of 1812, was an unlucky ship.

‘There’s no reason to say that the U-505 was a hard-luck ship,’ says Goebeler. ‘No matter what happened to her, she always brought us back. She wouldn’t even let anything happen to the Americans who boarded her. Those other so-called lucky ships, well, you might have shaved with them yesterday because they are all scrap now. But U-505 is on display in Chicago [at the Museum of Science and Industry] as a monument to the boys on both sides who died in the war. I think our boat was the luckiest ship in World War II.’ Goebeler should know; more that 50 years ago, in the warm ocean waters off the West African coast, it was he who ‘pulled the plug’ to scuttle U-505 — the U-boat that wouldn’t die.

Goebeler was born in 1923 in the small Hessian farming community of Frankenburg, about 75 miles northeast of Frankfurt. His father was an official in the German Reichsbahn railway system and raised his son with a firm belief in the value of hard work, self-reliance and patriotism. ‘My father was a soldier in the First World War,’ Goebeler says. ‘He fought in the East but was captured by the Russians. He saw horrible, unspeakable things done by the Bolsheviks during the revolution. They did these things to their own people in the name of communism! I swore I would work to make Germany strong and to never let the Communists take over my country.’

Pretty cool guy.

As they approached the Caribbean, however, the war once again intruded. On June 28, the crew’s afternoon sunbathing was interrupted by the sighting of a large American freighter. Loewe maneuvered in front of the zigzagging 6,900-ton ship and fired two torpedoes into her. It was typical of Loewe’s sense of honor and humanity that he waited a full hour, to allow the ship’s crew to board lifeboats, before sinking her with a third torpedo. U-505‘s luck continued the next day — the crew sighted another American freighter, the 7,400-ton Thomas McKean. Once again, Loewe fired a double shot of torpedoes to stop the ship and allowed the crew to escape before finishing her off, this time with deck-gun fire.

For Goebeler, the attack on Thomas McKean remains one of the incidents of the war that he remembers with great emotion. ‘Some of the freighter’s crew were hurt, so we gave them medicine and directions where to row to safety,’ Goebeler recalls. ‘A lot of people think German U-boat men sank ships without mercy, but if we had a chance, we always tried to help their crews. After all, they are humans, too. It was only later in the war, when the airplanes were attacking, that we couldn’t wait around after firing torpedoes. Since the end of the war, I’ve attended some reunions with former enemies. We all cried and hugged each other like brothers. We never hated the Americans; we were just doing our duty, just like the boys on the ships hunting us.’

[Speaker to Animals]

Pilots: only we can wreck airplanes.

Flight line troop: hold my beer.




https://www.aviation24.be/military-airc ... B4cytvHvc0

[Montegriffo]

Oops...

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/201 ... ock-sinks/

Russia's one and only aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, is in the middle of a long-forestalled refit in Murmansk. But its repairs may take a bit longer now that the floating dry dock that was carrying it at Murmansk's Shipyard 82 suddenly sank—causing a giant crane to crash onto the Kuznetsov and gash a 16-foot hole in its hull. One shipyard worker is missing, and four others were hospitalized—two of them in critical condition.

The floating dry dock, the PD-50—one of the largest in the world—apparently sank as the result of a power outage following a power surge at the shipyard, possibly related to damage to power lines caused by ice.

According to the press officer of the Zvezdochka Ship Repair Center, Evgeny Gladyshev, the accident occurred while the Kuznetsov was being floated out of the dock. "When the 82nd Shipyard was launching the Admiral Kuznetsov, an emergency situation occurred," Gladyshev explained to Interfax. "Due to interruptions in the supply of electric power to the PD-50, the floating dock dived out in an off-design mode."

Without power to control the pumps or control the filling of the ballast tanks, the dry dock completely submerged. In the process, a 70-metric-ton (77-US-ton) crane crashed into the ship as it floated out of the sinking dock. Another crane fell as well.

[Montegriffo]

Martin should let a couple of Russian trolls sign up. They are having a lot of fun winding up Putin's spawn over this cock up on PF.com.

[Speaker to Animals]

Yeah, now everybody will forget about the RMS Titanic, like that shit never happened.