Christie had a few crazy designs, like a flying tank. I think it was called the M1919 or something...
Anyway, it had no turret and had only three MGs pointing out of the sides. It had a biplane frame attached to the top and a prop powered by the tank's engine. The Russians also tried it out after hearing about it.

A fantastic read about massive WWII war machines that were near-impossible is "My Tank is Fight!" by Zack Parsons. It has the Horten 229 (used that part for a school project), the Landkreuzer, the USS Habbakkuk, the V3 supergun, and the German space and nuclear programs, and a few others. I definitely recommend giving it a read.

Yeah there was a whole period of attempts to make flying tanks. Some were so wonderfully ridiculous that they used bi plane wings!

Then you just had the Sturmovik IL2... closest you're going to get to a 'flying tank' at the time.

I also found german measures to put 50mm cannon on stukas amazing.

If you dont know about him you should read about 'Hans Ulrich Rudel'. Total dyed in the wool nazi but a really braze guy. Creditied with themost 'afv kills' in WWII... mainly by diving down on soviet tanks and shooting them in the top armour.

They ran out of gallantry awards and had to make a new one just for him i seem to recall!

I have avoided his memoirs like the plague, largely because he was such a committed Nazi. Don't want to even dignify him with a place in history, whatever his flying talents.

Yep but you need to read past the bias to learn things

You cant just dismiss someones personal account of the war because you dont agree with their politics.

Its like I read edward milchs biography on the rise and fall of the luftwaffe. The man was a total nazi but if i did not read it i'd have missed out on numerous important facts about 3d reich aviation politics that simply would not have been covered in other books.

Yep but you need to read past the bias to learn things

You cant just dismiss someones personal account of the war because you dont agree with their politics.

Its like I read edward milchs biography on the rise and fall of the luftwaffe. The man was a total nazi but if i did not read it i'd have missed out on numerous important facts about 3d reich aviation politics that simply would not have been covered in other books.

That's fair. And if Rudel had been a fighter pilot, I'd have held my nose and read his memoirs, but he was a ground attack pilot, so I was able to avoid it without feeling like I was missing out.

I'd imagine he's probably on the 'reading list' for prospective A10 pilots though

I'd imagine he's probably on the 'reading list' for prospective A10 pilots though

Yeah, and my mentor figure flew A-10s as well as F-16s, and it was required reading for both A-10 and Viper drivers. But I'm an air superiority kind of girl.

Just to throw something out there for those who were curious about the British officer who "invented" Blitzkrieg. B.H. Liddell Hart argued for the use of armour in units and, after the war, suggested that the Wehrmacht was heavily influenced by both J.F.C. Fuller and himself. This has been debated more recently.

Additionally, he wrote an excellent comprehensive work on WWII.

BH Liddell Hart also wrote my favorite biography of Scipio Africanus, and JFC Fuller wrote my favorite biography of Alexander the Great. I read the heck out of those books growing up.

Honestly, I think that Rudell was not a nazi. His memoirs are very interesting, indeed. He was a glorified Hero who was awarded an Iron Cross with real diamonds, so he is remembered as a nazi.

Even more, he never condemned Adolph Hitler action's, but never defended him. He was a ground support pilot, a tank buster, and never exerted upper comand positions. He fought in the loosing side, and in one of the most nazified arm of Germany's armed forces. But he was a pilot.

He describes Hitler as a "soft" and "unstable" person. Per example, when Adolph in person ordered.him to stop flying he said "No". Downed 17 times, lost one leg and several radio operators KIA.

A nazi? I think no.

A soldier who cryed after the war " I knew nothing about crimes, Hitler was a demon, I.am a good boy? No

He said that Hitler was his.commander

Sorry, he said Hitler was his commander in chief and the leader of his nation. And that he was a soldier, fighting a war for the survival of his country. Antired, ok, a short sighted soldier, yes, a fanatic flyer, yes.

But not a nazi. To say " My leader was insane, a demon, I am innocent " was the easy way. But He wa quite a brave man, after the war he lived a couple of years in Spain, and later he lived in Argentina, working in aeronautics.

Was it a myth that Japan and Germany were "really close" to developing atomic weapons?

I've read conflicting material on the matter.

No, they were not. German sciencemen started the way to develop "nuclear energy" but the brutal cost involved in Proyect Manhattan was only posible in the USA. But it was feared that germany could win the race, it was in the last days of the war when truth was discovered.

And Japan...never had a chance

That's what I thought. Even if they had built an atomic bomb, the deliver would have been an issue. I suppose Germany could have launched one in a V2, but those were pretty unreliable and inaccurate. The Japanese would have likely used a sub to deliver it in a suicide mission. The really had no targets they could hit with any bombers.

Perhaps Germany could have obtained the A bomb, very difficult but not imposible.

Japan, 0% chance

No, they were not. German sciencemen started the way to develop "nuclear energy" but the brutal cost involved in Proyect Manhattan was only posible in the USA. But it was feared that germany could win the race, it was in the last days of the war when truth was discovered.

And Japan...never had a chance

I disagree, to an extent. Germany could have, but they would have needed several more years without a crippled resource pool. Japan had the brains for it, but, again, couldn't commit the resources while on a full war footing.

I think Germany were much further down the line than you think, espeicially as they had a delivery system in the form of the V2

The failed 'operation freshman' mission and the later Noweigian SOE mission to put the telemark heavy water production plant out of commission pretty much stuff german atomic bombs reseach but if that hadnt have gone ahead... who knows?

Its 1.30am where i am and my laptops batteries abotu to go but if i remember ill tell you an interesting story about why the US were pretty much forced into giving the UK their nuclear weapons delpoyment systems which they initially didnt want to share.

Honestly, I think that Rudell was not a nazi. His memoirs are very interesting, indeed. He was a glorified Hero who was awarded an Iron Cross with real diamonds, so he is remembered as a nazi.

Even more, he never condemned Adolph Hitler action's, but never defended him. He was a ground support pilot, a tank buster, and never exerted upper comand positions. He fought in the loosing side, and in one of the most nazified arm of Germany's armed forces. But he was a pilot.

He describes Hitler as a "soft" and "unstable" person. Per example, when Adolph in person ordered.him to stop flying he said "No". Downed 17 times, lost one leg and several radio operators KIA.

A nazi? I think no.

A soldier who cryed after the war " I knew nothing about crimes, Hitler was a demon, I.am a good boy? No

He said that Hitler was his.commander

Rudel was completely a nazi. He led a neo-Nazi political party after the war. He said he completely supported National Socialism on many occasions. He met Josef Mengele and helped him to flee to Brazil - you know, the guy who tortured and mutilated Jewish children at Auschwitz. The mourners at his funeral tossed him Nazi salutes. The guy was completely and totally a Nazi.

Yeah to be fair Rudel was a total nazi. You cant really get around that.

But some of the most brilliant soldiers of that age were political fanatics.

I did a paper at university on the '30s' being the 'Devil's Decade'. Life in the 1930s was very very polarised, much more so than life today is for people in the US, less so for us in europe.

(by that i mean that the two main parties in the US appear to the outside world to be 'fairly right wing' and 'moderately right wing' with no true 'left' at all with any influence).

In the 30s pretty much every man had an opinion, not many sat on the sideline with apathy and the two main schools of thought were fascism (fascist countries were making real successes of themselves in the early 30s and the US was very pro fascism until about 1940 when the US government really started to change public opinions) or socialism, which was seen as 'growing' and 'making mistakes' but an essential pruning off of the deadwood and rot of capitalism.

Most soldiers lived in countries where belief in one or the other was pretty much rammed down your throat. even in a very liberal britain we were close to street riots and a socialist revolution at times (as early as 1917 the British Army had mutineed and in 1918 'soldiers soviets' had been formed that worried the government a great deal).

So yeah rudel was a nazi, but also a bloody good combat pilot.

Whitman was a total nazi but is idolised as some 'tank god'

I'm not defending nazi beliefs here (i well to the other side of the political spectrum) but you're talking about men who had lives of poverty as youths, who saw a 'party' bring jobs and food to their families, raise their country from a 'beggar' to a world leader and essentially give them the highest standard of living in europe in about six years.

You can sort of understand why they were a bit keen on hitler.

Yep, im sure they *knew* that horrific things were happenng to other nationals to support this but again in the 30s people gave a lot less of a toss about 'johnny foreigner'. I mean the US was still segregating its military units on a basis of skin colour so they clearly also didnt care that people were being marginalised through factors of their birth that had *nothing* to do with how they could aid society as a person.

The thing is we allow bloody awful things to go on in this world on a daily basis becasue it makes our lives easier. so we turn a blind eye to countries with human rights abuse policies, we allow 'whistle blowers' to be kept incarcerated *withouth charge* for months and years, we wear trainers made by children in the far east who live and sleep by their machines etc etc.

Yep its not belsen.

But it is an afluent nation/west not actually giving a toss that our comfort causes massive poverty and suffering because as long as we exploit that it keeps things sweet for us.

Now to a lesser degree your average german probably felt the same way.

1920... cant afford to feed your family, hyper inflation, whole family live in one room or two, no jobs, hated by world

1940 Awesome food, strong economy, new housing, family owns car, full employment, feared/respected by world.

You can see how it might be easy to slip into thinking of hitler as a bit of a god if you were born in the early 20s.

Too young to remember the horror post WW1 but all you did see was your family get better and better off.

Its the reason 12th SS were so fanatical, they had grown up as hitler youth, idolised the guy and been conditioned to think of themselves as superior human beings worth ten of any other race.

And those old enough probably, not incorrectly IMO, blamed the World War I allies for how messed up Germany was in the 20s.

And those old enough probably, not incorrectly IMO, blamed the World War I allies for how messed up Germany was in the 20s.

"Whoo! Treaty of Versailles! This is the best idea EVER!!!"

*20 years later*

"Well... crap."

The irony is that the nations who put the ridiculous 'penalities' on the germans fo versaille then spent most the 50 and 60s paying to build germany into one of the most brilliant places in europe.

I spent a fortnight in Germany on my honeymoon (actually a bit of it was in Prague) and i'd move to Berlin like a shot, i could still do my job from there but my wife is bound to the UK higher education/lecturing job market.

Back to nuclear bombs.

I have no idea how true this is but was told by a usual 'trusted' source in these matters.

Post WWII the US and UK had soured a little and the US was refusing to share its nuclear weapons research (mainly ICBM delivery with the UK). The uk had built a scale model of peenemunde down in the south to rehouse as many german V2 experts as we'd managed to grab in the great post war piracy of late 45.

we were still struggling to find a way to make the bombs we had (and we had some good ones) able to get to their target.

The US were not helping until we told them our soution

We had a *massive* merchant naval fleet. At any one time over a hundred British ships could be in any world harbour.

We'd decided to put a bomb on a random ship and have it docked their. Obviously ships would rotate so as not to be suspicious but at any one time every major port would have a UK ship with a huge bomb moored off the coast.

(like static nuclear capable subs almost)

The US found out about this and then decided to share rocketry technology and pretty much the entire nuclear strategy as the 'current' UK one was totally uncontrollable and very worrying to certain people in power

That could all by a myth but the fact i've never heard it before (and its my job to know about military history, in particular the cold war period) and the fact it came from a reliable source and more importantly its *odd* enough and *british* enough makes me think its probably true.