Iranian Railways, Red Cross Care Packages, and Tail Gunners - WW2 - OOTF 31
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- čas přidán 2. 06. 2024
- How did the Allies build and manage an enormous railway supplying the Soviet Union through Iran? How did the Red Cross deliver aid parcels through enemy territory to Allied POWs? And, how effective were the rear gunners in ground attack aircraft like the Stuka and Sturmovik? Find out in this episode of Out of the Foxholes
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Written by: T.J. Hennig, Jamie Nagele, Jacob Deck
Research by: T.J. Hennig, Jamie Nagele, Jacob Deck
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A TimeGhost chronological documentary produced by OnLion Entertainment GmbH.
Thanks to T.J., Jamie, and Jacob for researching these answers for us. T.J., is one of our interns and he’s really thrown himself into things here at Timeghost. Jamie is a former intern and we’re grateful that he has carried on contributing to our work. Jacob has done excellent research for us and has a real passion for transit and its history. And, of course, thanks to everyone in the TimeGhost Army and our community as a whole for sending in questions. Keep them coming!
05:02 Fun Fact: CARE packages did not exist during WW2. CARE, the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, was formally founded on November 27, 1945.
My grandfather was stationed in Iran as a US Army supply sergeant during WWII. Before the United States took over the supply efforts the British had stationed upwards of 100,000 men in Iran in case of a Soviet collapse. They were in Iran to seize the Soviet oil fields in the Caucuses and deny them to the Germans. The problem for the Soviets was the shortage of rolling stock in Iran, a lack of Commonwealth trucks, and the large number of Commonwealth troops in Iran meant that very few supplies were getting through from the Persian Gulf. Once the USA took over the Iranian supply effort they provided construction equipment, construction materials, trucks, drivers, rolling stock, and improved Iranian port facilities. The USA ran its operations with a bare minimum of staff to maximize the amount of material going to the Soviets. That's a big reason why the Southern Front in the Soviet Union was the most mobile and post 1943 why the Soviets were able to conduct large-scale offensives.
We need to know ur bilster
I did not expect a reference to Space Fury. I loved that game! "You were an amusing opponent"
@@jokodihaynes419HOGAN!!!!!!
The Chair of Infinite Knowledge is becoming the Cheshire Cat of WW2 in Real Time, gradually fading away with time.
It's a Schrödinger's Chair of Infinite Knowledge now.
It's both there and not.
@@Uncle_Roadkill It is both infinitely knowledgeable and knows sweet FA. AT THE SAME TIME...
We might need to give that chair a little spotlight soon. Thanks for tuning in!
A French prisoner of war of my family was a prisoner for many years in Germany and was saved by the Red Cross deliveries.
After the war, he contributed his whole life to the red cross.
Thanks for sharing your family's personal connection to history and thank you for watching.
My Grandfather was a Japanese POW in Japan and as I recall they probably received 3 or 4 packages or less over 44 months of captivity. Some letter he wrote home did get there but my Grandmother maybe went a couple of years without knowing if he was still alive or not. The epitome of the cruelty of man towards his fellow man.
Do you mean that your grandfather was Japanese-American and taken prisoner by the Japanese?
@@jamesbinns8528my guess is that he means he was a prisoner of the Japanese, not that he was Japanese and a prisoner. I'm not sure of how someone of Japanese ancestry who was captured by the Japanese would fare. I would think that there is a good chance they would be seen as traitors and not even allowed to be captured.
@@edwardblair4096 Yes, they were seen as traitors. I think I read somewhere of one who survived but he had somehow managed to persuade the Japanese he was not in American service.
@@edwardblair4096 If I correctly recall, Japanese -American soldiers were sent to Europe. That was behind my question. Thanks.
@@jamesbinns8528 I would also guess that Japanese Amerinan service members were primarily sent to Europe to prevent "friendly fire" problems, and a fear of spying. The fear of spying is mostly unfounded, but it's presence was real
The last tail guns in USAF B52's were not taken out until 1992. There are people that have served as tail gunners that are still around.
At least the tail gunner didn't need to actually sit in the tail though. 😀
@@captainyossarian388 On the B-52D he did. The crew appreciated his ability to spot incoming SAMs and MiGs over North Vietnam.
Yup, Fighter Tales had a videon on that.
So technically it might be possible for someone to have been in operation Desert Storm/the Gulf War, and having flown as a tail gunner?
@@anttibjorklund1869 Yes, you are correct.
Note that the Trans-Iranian Railway is still in use, and also that Iran, India and the former Soviet Union each use a separate gauge, so the IRIR has short sections in Russian gauge and Indian gauge, for trans-shipment outside of Iran.
My grandpa’s B17 was shot down around this time in 1944. The last few months of the war he spent being marched around in circles in Germany because so many of the camps had been overrun by the soviets. Many prisoners died on the marches. My grandpa said if it wasn’t for the Red Cross deliveries many more, including himself, would have died of starvation.
Some died as a result of strafing by Allied fighter-bombers, some of whom attacked anything moving along the roads - German troops retreating, refugees, POWs being marched along roads. At war's end Soviet troops advancing on roads were occasionally strafed by Western Allied planes, though the reverse situation also happened.
The distribution of Red Cross packages was sometimes an issue in POW camps. Camp administration or individual guards would sometimes filch them, but some prisoners in authority would also sequester them. In some cases it was to create a pool of rations to be issued to POWs making escape attempts, or to bribe guards, but in other cases the motivations were more dubious and even the more altruistic or operational reasons could create resentment.
My Uncle was a Japanese PoW from the fall of Singapore until Japan surrendered. He never received (or saw) any red cross parcels!
The artist Ronald Searle, also captured at Singapore, wrote and illustrated an account of his captivity, 1942-45. He never mentions Red Cross parcels.
Yay for another Out of the Foxholes episode! It is always interesting to see the questions being asked and often we realize how much we don't know about some lesser known areas of the war. Thank you Indy & team as always.
Glad to hear you enjoy the series so much!
My uncle, Norman Hines, was a tail gunner in USAAF 8th Airforce. He was shot down in May 1944 and imprisoned. He spoke very highly about the various red cross parcels, and could list the contents of each in great detail. At the end of the war, he was marched west. He said that during the march, the column was overflown continuously by American planes, until one day, the guards were gone and American jeeps arrived.
I don’t want to understate the massive amount of work the other talented members of the TimeGhost crew are doing to make this series possible but I think we can all agree Indy’s wit, way with words and charisma is what cements this channel as the most interesting history one on CZcams
Thank you!
- TimeGhost Ambassador
The Il-2 is a great example of the effectiveness of, and sometimes demand for, rear gunners. Initially, as you said, the plane was designed as a single-seater, with the idea that its strength of armour and fast speed would be enough to ward off incoming attacks. But almost as soon as the Il-2 was put into real combat, crews learned that this idea was more of a wishful hope than a reality, with German fighters proving to easily be fast enough to catch up with them and no plane is bullet proof enough to withstand someone just sitting behind it and dumping rounds into it with near-impunity. Almost as soon as the Il-2 was put into real use, crews began to demand, sometimes quite fiercely, that a rear gunner be added, but for a while such demands fell on deaf ears, often through either simple disbelief or from not wanting to halt production of aircraft in order to approve and switch over to a new design. But where there's a will there's a way, and not-dying is certainly a very strong motivator, and so ground crews actually began to modify their planes *at* their airfields, using saws and torches to cut away at the rear of the cockpit and create just enough space to squeeze in an extra man and a gun of some sort. As these were literal field modifications, the quality of the work and the exactities of the technical specifications were all over the place, everything from cannons to machine guns were appropriated for this purpose and the actual seating position for the rear gunner was equally varied, and of course modifying equipment without prior approval was sorely frowned upon as it was in any military. But, even though Soviet command constantly put out harsh warnings against these practices, crews kept doing it anyway. It even got to the point that entire batches of brand new Il-2's delivered from the factories would be immediately set upon with saws and blowtorches once they reached their respective airfields, and such was the sheer scale of these modifications that eventually the Soviet command saw that they genuinely had no choice and so they relented and approved a factory-built design for an Il-2 with an added rear gunner.
Fun fact to the above: there was actually a design for a pilot-operated machine gun that faced rearward, and this was proposed as an alternative for a rear gunner. Obviously that didn't quite pan out, but it's an interesting side note. And of course, there are photographs of this design, and of all the rag-tag field modifications that crews did to their Il-2's in order to add a rear gunner.
Couple of further points to add to this. The Il-2 was far more vulnerable than the stories would have you believe. It was armored only in certain places, while the tail, belly and wing roots were frequently targeted by German fighters to bring them down easily. Also, that armour was not enough to really stop an effective burst of anything over a 20 mm shell, but it did keep many pilots alive that would have died otherwise.
However, the same could not be said of the rear gunners, as even in the "official" 2 seat versions, the rear gunners had basically no protection and were killed at much higher rates than the pilots; this was only somewhat rectified in late war modifications. The 2nd seat also badly affected the center of gravity of the aircraft making it far less stable and prone to depart controlled flight. Again, this was only rectified in later versions from 1943 with the outer wings being swept back to restore the original CoG. While the armour probably did help against ground fire, overall it's very questionable whether all that extra weight of the armour + gunner really helped overall as the IL2 would have been much harder to hit in the first place if it had been faster and more maneuverable.
However Indy is correct in saying the IL2 did become a serious threat to German bombers due to it being still fairly maneuverable, if slow and very resistant to fire from the front, with heavy armament of twin 23 mm cannon. The engine was in-line and liquid cooled, so a hit to the coolant system could still ruin the crew's day, but it was better protected than on most fighters. However, this was not really because of the added rear gunner; it had more to do with improvement of pilot quality/experience for both the IL-2 crews and their escorting fighters.
Pima Air and Space Musuem in Tucson, AZ has an IL-2 and it has the rear gunner position.
That was pretty damned good for not even having your butt actually in the CHAIR OF INFINITE KNOWLEDGE!
And a word of recognition to my 6th grade teacher , Paul Kowatch of Thompson, Ohio, who was a tail gunner in a B-17. That is how I first learned of the tail gunner position, and learned more about WW2 and the Holocaust. RIP Mr. Kowatch.
I like how George Lucas took inspiration from many aspects of WW2 and that's why we can see so many tail or rear gunners throughout Star Wars media
There’s that one gun in SW that is literally just a mg42 with a different stock too lol.
@xeagaort the DLT-19 Heavy blaster rifle. The one you see more often though, is the T-21 light repeating blaster.( which is basically a Lewis gun without a clip.)
And agree, though there is only two featuring a tail gunner in the original star wars, the t-47 airspeeder and the y-wing...the latter having it only speculative to be rear gunner controlled.(though later featured in comics and animated series)
The classic stormtrooper blaster is also a barely-modified Sterling submachine gun; the Sterling is a successor to the Sten and technically post-war, but it's the same era. You can even see them ejecting casings in the original films (A New Hope has some especially clear examples, the bridge scene on the Death Star for example), as they were indeed used with blanks.
Han Solo's C96, the MG 34s, Lewis guns, and MG 15s used by stormtroopers, the StG 44s used by rebels on Hoth, as well as M16s used by rebels on Endor (fitting, as it's much more Vietnam-inspired), just to name a few. The VAST majority of SW blasters are based on real guns, and this is the case across the original, prequel, sequel, and Mandalorian eras (Din's blaster is a Bergmann 1894, for example).
The exceptions tend to be the ones that deliberately stand out as fancy/ornate/sci-fi, like Padmé's royal Naboo blasters or Jango Fett's blaster pair, but they're quite rare.
IIRC there's a blaster that highly resembles the Lee-Enfield No. 4, but with a much shorter cannon.
I was into arcade games in those days as well, although I don't honestly remember Tailgunner. I think I was starting to drift away from it by then. I do remember the first time I destroyed the Death Star in that Star Wars game, I then went to the nearest phone box. Called my brother and yelled ' I just blew that Flipping Death Star to pieces!'. Or words to that effect. But the game I probably ended up playing the most was Asteroids. I loved getting into the arcade when it opened. Getting change. Going straight to an Asteroids machine with ten Ten pence coins, and playing the game ten times in a row. Because the high score table had reset when it was switched off the day before, that meant you would get onto it ten times. Regardless. Seeing my initials there as the only one it was great fun. Different times. Simpler pleasures.
10:29 Indy is a time traveller confirmed🤯
My grandfather was shot down over Verona Italy and spent 13 months as a POW (waist gunner on B-17). He reluctantly talked to me about how the Germans moved his POW group further and further into Germany as the Allies advanced. He mentioned that care packages from home or the Red Cross were a rare occasion and rarely included food. He would unravel knitted sweaters in care packages to knit mittens and toboggan hats for fellow prisoners (and the occasional cigarette or item of food).
The small number of British POWs who joined the Waffen-SS British Free Corps received Red Cross packages, as they were still classified as POWs. They were a source of some conflict as there were attempts to withhold them. They were in the odd position of being paid Reichmarks as soldiers in the German service, but they also received packages for being POWs. There may have been other POWs in German service from other countries who were in the same relatively privileged position, but I don't know about them.
Tailgunners were recruited from among short guys. CZcams has a short called "The Rear Gunner, " which actively recruited shorter men. Burgess Meredith, a short guy, was the actor who finds a home at the back of the plane. My uncle, Norman, mentioned earlier, was maybe 5 '6".
In American four-engine bombers, ball turret gunners were likely to be especially short as tall or large individuals would not fit into the turret.
14:00 - the prototype for the IL-2 (TsKB-55), conceived in 1938 and first flown in October 1939, had two seats from the start. Then came the usual problems with engine and structural weight, the military wanted this and that, adding more weight... and the only way to keep it flyable was to dispose with the navigator/gunner station. Enter the single-seat production IL-2.
Gotta love people asking questions that can be answered by a 10sec google search (or the read of a book).
Still thank you for shining a light on some maybe more unknown topics via this format.
05:02 Fun Fact: CARE packages did not exist during WW2. CARE, the Cooperative for American Remittances to Europe, was formally founded on November 27, 1945.
The German Stuka) had _no_ maneuverability during a dive bombing run - they would drop from ~ 2 km down to ~ 500 meters to release their bombs, and were sitting ducks for any passing fighters during this period. The tail gunner was their only protection during the bombing run, and having one I think was psychologically very important.
Dive bombers like the Stuka were really vulnerable when they were pulling out of their dive and that was often when they were shot down, either by fighters or flak. However by then they had dropped their bomb or bombs. It would take a brave fighter pilot to follow the bomber down during its dive as not all fighters were built to withstand steep dives without the wings coming off, the flak that might be coming at the bomber might hit a pursuing fighter and last but not least, there was the rear gunner to deal with.
They were sitting ducks for Hurricanes and Spitfires in the Battle of Britain because of their somewhat slower speed in level flight and lack of manoeuvrability, That's why they were withdrawn early in that Battle. They could be effective only with heavy fighter escort.
You think any other aircraft was less vulnerable when bombing? When dive bombing you gain speed and Ju-87 was a maneuverable compared to most bombers. Its a far better position than a level bomber or a torpedo bomber had when dropping payload.
@@Paciat Yes, but dive bombers lose speed pulling out of the dive and climbing, which is why they often got hit at that point.
Of the 29 Japanese planes lost in the Pearl Harbor attack, 15 were Val dive bombers, of which 14 were part of the second wave (in which 20 were shot down - unlike the first wave they did not achieve surprise, so losses were higher). Only a few American fighters got into the air, but those that did seem to have found Vals both more available and more vulnerable than either the Zeros or the Kate level or torpedo bombers. I don't know whether any Vals were hit by fighters or flak while coming out of dives, but it seems likely to me some were.
@@Paciat If so, then why did Goering withdraw the Ju-87 early from the Battle of Britain? His decision is all the proof you need about the Ju-87s vulnerability against much faster fighter aircraft.
We all thank God for the Chair of Infinite Knowledge.
Amen
2023 is the year of the Jug. It was started by an 8 part series in YT in Greg's Planes and Automobiles, all about the P-47, in 2022.
I still remember the cheesy 8-bit version of "Toccata and Fugue in D Minor" from Tempest. Good times
Back in the 1980s, I attended an information briefing with an Israeli fighter pilot as the speaker. Similar to the waving the tail guns at enemy causing them to shear off, he told the attendees that during one middle east war, if your jet was on the tail of an enemy jet, you just had to paint the enemy jet with your targeting RADAR and some of the enemy pilots would eject without you having fired any ordinance - typically an air-to-air missle at the time. 😮
The Israeli pilot was on a multi-national training program with the USAF at the time. We were stationed in Alaska, but I never thought to ask if he was adjusting to the much colder sub-arctic temperatures.
Came here for WW2 knowledge. Left with more classic Arcade games knowledge. Love it
Glad you enjoyed!
Star Wars was another good vector graphics video game. First you shoot at tie fighters as you approach the Death Star, then you fly along the surface shooting at towers as you approach the canyon, finally you fly down the canyon avoiding obstacles and gun batteries until you get to the exhaust port to blow up the whole thing. If you do the last stage without firing a shot other than the one to blow up the Death Star, you get a "use the force" bonus. Then do the whole thing over again with tougher opponents until your sheilds are worn down.
Always good to see the return of OOTFH
Glad you enjoyed it, thanks for watching!
P-47 was the best plane based shoot-em-up of the 80s, and era appropriate for this content too!
As an indication on how the rear turrets on the Il-2 was needed, from the Greg Airplanes and Auto channel, there were on-the field modifications to place the rear gunner position. Unfortunately, the gunner was outside the steel armor hence the need for the redesign.
My father received a Red Cross package near the end of his imprisionment in Japan, he said it managed to keep him going a little longer till he was freed.
It feels like it's been ages since I last watched an episode of Out Of The Fox Holes
A wonderful historical coverage video shared by WW2 channel. Video showed railway construction on Iranian territories by British and USSR for supporting USSR by Britain and USA
I often feel overwhelmed by the amount of information provided,but thats a compliment not a complaint.
Been a while seen we had a ootfh! Nice!
The B-52 kept its tail gun until after the Gulf War. It also got two MiG kills in Vietnam. I believe the Tu-95 still has its tail gun.
There's a game called IL-2 Stermovik on PS3
The Defiant was *not* designed strictly as a night fighter. It was meant to be a day/night fighter, but it was unsuccessful in its daytime role because the German pilots learned to avoid approaching it from the rear, to avoid its turret, and instead attacked it from the side or front.
An interesting side note to the care packages question, is that there was a program to smuggle in various aids to the POWs. An example being maps hidden in board games.
My uncle said my grandfather (flew a B-17) and held his tailgunner (all his gunners actually) in high esteem.
A German pilot claimed that the tail gunner on a B-17 saved his life by carving a groove out of the top of his skull with a .50 cal round. The wound was enough to keep him from flying in the latter days of WW2.
In summer 1943 a 109 fighter pilot went up with an experimental 30mm cannon to intercept B-17s raiding Hamburg. The Germans were finding 20mm cannons were not powerful enough against four-engine bombers so they were trying out heavier cannon, rockets, bombs and so on. The pilot got behind a B-17 and one of the 30mm shells hit its tailplane and blew it off. The bomber went into a shallow dive. Six of the crew bailed out but four were killed. The 109 pilot's aircraft was hit by defensive fire, however, and he too had to bail out. He was severely injured on landing and never flew again, which probably explains why he survived to be contacted by the British historian Martin Middlebrook as part of his book on the Hamburg air raids.
Thank you for your careful account of how the "Persian Corridor" was used during WWII. One small correction: The Trans-Iranian Railway was completed in 1938.
The Douglas AD (A-1 Skyraider) was ordered into production in mid 1944 based on experience that two seat attack planes were obsolete. The extra weight of the second/third crewman and turrets could be better utilized as bombs, bullets, and fuel.
Context matters. In mid 1944, US planners could expect bomber/strike planes to be heavily escorted virtually all the time, and the A-1 could get along a bit. Some planes needed a tail gunner more than others.
Indy covered this really well. Even a 'scare 'em' gun like the Stuka or Lancaster had was far better than allowing en enemy fighter to close at leisure, and Indy's point about being 'eyes' was really important. My father was a Lancaster tail gunner. He did 40 ops, shot down nothing, opened fire once, but he was able to see approaching fighters on multiple occasions and tell his pilot what to do to lose them.
I spoke to one of his fellow crewmen, who attributed the crew's survival mainly to the navigator and my father.
Re: Tail-Gunners... Back-seat drivers. "You are too close", "In-Coming", "Are we there yet?", "Why you flying so fast"? "Watch out for that other plane", "I need to pee"...
As someone else mentioned, torpedo bombers, dive bombers, planes like the IL2, Stuka or Dauntless shared with the regular altitude bombers the issue that during an attack run they can't be bobbing and weaving which is the usual primary defense against a fighter giving chase. So you get a rear gunner to deal with defense in that stage and you have the situation of two men closing distance on each other face to face firing machine guns at one another until either one goes down or the pursuer quits the game of chicken. Not for the fainthearted.
The massive engineering efforts in Iran... staggering
Indy being an arcade game history expert is just perfect.
From WW2 to the arcade era, and lets not forget baseball!
Thanks for watching!
- Jake
the bit about the lend lease material sitting in the port waiting for shipping on the rail line in Iran reminds me of the pre-siege section of the warhammer 40k book, Helsreach, where it regales how the endless shipment of promethium (what is used to fuel all manner of machinery) as well as a wide range of other material for the upcoming siege by the Ork Waagh coming to wage war on the planet of Armageddon was of such scale and freqency that it often fouled up one dockworker's work, necesitating it's moving to some other spot where it invariably fouled up another dockworker's day... I'd even go so far as to say the bits describing the life of a Hive City dockworker were my favourite parts!
On another note i seem to recall a cartoon, I think from shortly after the war, were the devil walks through Iran reading from a guide book taking salt tablets, sweating a ton, and eventually returning to hell exasperated by the lend lease support going through Iran... was a neat little cartoon
14:56 Minor spoiler?? You’re telling me that the war won’t be over by Christmas??
My Grandad was posted to Persia in 1941 (disembarked at Bhandar Shapur) with the 159th Railway Construction Company with the Royal Engineers. I have just found this out from receiving his service records. Apparently there was a mix of German, Swedish and then British locomotives that were all oil burning, not coal. The British locomotives were some massive Beyer-Garrett articulated 4-8-2+2-8-4s and War Department Stanier-designed 8F 2-8-0s. I assume he was there either upgrading the existing mainline freight capacity or building the branch to the port city of Khorramshahr you mentioned.
The TU-95MS still has a tail gun.
Indy gaming channel coming soon
YES out of the foxholes/out of the trenches is one of my favorite things you guys do
Thanks for the kind words on this series, love to hear it!
I would absolutely love to see Time Ghost do a series on the history of arcade games in real time. While there is a ton of gaming content on CZcams, some of which is extremely well made and scholarly, I think Indy would do an amazing job and there isn't nearly as much content about the early arcade era (1970's through the 80s) than when home consoles become prevalent.
Many years ago I attended an air show that hosted a gathering of WWII Aces and famous flyers, I was fortunate enough to not only meet and shake hands many of my childhood heroes, for once I was smart enough to get autographs, which include Saburu Sakai, but also Gregory Pappy Boyington and Franz Zeigler and many more who all signed my program. I treasure it still.
Thanks for the side-story of arcade machines!
Hey Indy, if you ever happen to be in Columbus, Ohio; the Old North Arcade has an original Tempest machine. I think you are correct. Tempest is the best vector graphics game in colour.
10:35 Out of the foxhole and down a rabbit hole!😂
Great questions and answers.
The allies also added escape tools to some of the items in the parcels...
Excellent episode, fascinating stuff! Thank you so much for the questions everyone, and of course the responses.
Indy, I loved Tail-Gunner also.
wow, great rear gunner rap, and Fantastic video clips!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Mattel mad a system in the early '80s called intelevision. Later they came up with "talking intelevision. They created a game called B-17 bomber. A voice called out where fighters were coming from and you had to jump from each gun position to protect the bomber. Great beer & pretzil video game
11:38 - 35 minutes later, Indy remembers where this was originally going but no one else remembers how it started so we begin all over again, as all the best pub-history conversations go.
"I'll get my coat." I take it Indy is/was a fan of The Fast Show.
The Japanese used Red Cross markings on ships as target points.
Their own medics frequently had their medical supplies taken away and they were issued rifles and ammunition instead, to fight as infantry. Their own wounded or sick were frequently "taken care of" with grenades.
Their opponents stopped wearing Red Cross insignia as it simply attracted Japanese fire. In contrast, in Europe on the Western Front at least, it was generally respected and medics wore the largest Red Cross insignia possible. The German medics sometimes even wore a white smock with a huge Red Cross emblazoned on it.
Thank you.
Great episode, especially loved Indy's digress into vector graphics which were pretty awesome at the time. I remember playing a lot of Star Trek The Motion Picture at the arcade.
Woot, woot! Out of the Foxhole is back! It's great to see all the mini series videos coming back after D-Day.
Happy to hear your excited!
Thank you so much for watching.
Great episode of OOTF. Also, that tie is great! 😎
Indy looking dapper as always, thanks for watching!
Another fine episode.
This is neither a comment nor a question for Out Of The Foxholes
Always interesting. Thanks a lot.
That tangent about Tail Gunner was really interesting and unexpected.
Hi Indy
Amazing and interesting question
Great answers.
More video like this needed.
Please restart between two wars episode.
Thanks for the video.
Great episode .. thanks for posting.
Thanks for watching!
Tailgunner by iron maiden.... Ah good times 🎉🎉
Much apprechiate the coverage of MoH and VC rewarded actions on the ww2 day by day channels. Will you consider covering notable axis actions as well?
Great stuff like always Indy! Never really researched Iran during the war so I had no idea about that famine! Horrific.
Though it isn't exactly a WW2 production aircraft, the B-36 peacemaker is an example of post-war aircraft with "tail gunners".
Of it's ten engines it was said: Two turning, two burning, two smoking, two choking, and two more unaccounted for. Part of the 'Aluminum Overcast"
nice one!
Epic rear gunner recap! 😁
At 11:50 the image of the RAF Blackburn roc I’m curious what that is beneath its wing in that picture?
Bomb racks.
My fav arcade game was the sub game, looked through a periscope shot torpedoes @ PT boats (bonus pts)
Thanks TG
Thanks for watching!
I guess I should really consider becoming a Patreon supporter.
I had no idea about the Iranian famine. Thanks for covering it.
Tempest! them spikes tho...
Here's something about the Il-2. The rear gunner was often, a condemned prisoner. They were told, survive ten missions and you will be pardoned. The fine print clause to this deal, is it must be ten missions in the same aircraft.
Since the Communist Authorities aren't known for their forgiving nature. If a Prisoner survived nine missions in one plane, he was assigned to another plane.
And had to start over!
I have seen this maintained in English-language sources, but never Russian-language ones.
@@stevekaczynski3793 The story does have a whiff of anti-soviet vibes to it. Could very well be a cold war legend. It also sounds improbable. Stalin certainly didn't need to trick convicts into manning his aircraft to find soldiers, and who would let a capable gunner go after just 10 missions anyway?
@Oxtocoatl13 But doesn't ring true that a Communist regime isn't going to waste a resource like that? It's better use of a Prisoner than putting him up against a wall. Or sending him to Siberia to count tree's, as the saying goes.
@stevekaczynski3793 I think I first read it in, Inside the Soviet Army, by Victor Suvarov. He was a GRU defector in the 80s.
@@downunderrob my point was that Stalin wouldn't need to make false promises to his men. Soviet troops knew the consequences of not doing as they were told. Besides, any kind of aircraft related task required some amount of special training. I find it improbable that convicts would be used in specialist roles, when there were far more expendable jobs to be done.
The IL-2 originally didn’t have tail guns, they were added after the initial planes proved vulnerable to fighters. The position was basically unarmored compared to the heavy armor the pilot had to protect him, making it a very dangerous position to man. I once heard that the tail gunners were penal troops being assigned to those positions for punishment but I think that’s just yet another myth about the war.
Indy. You should do a show about FOOD! because lets face it that is what drives an army. You guys should go over rations from each Power and see if you can come across some type of repo and see what you and the crew think of said ration to put yourself in the trenches with the men to see what fueled the Advances (or retreats)
On the Eastern Front, some German fighter pilots who followed down Il-2s they had hit in order to confirm their destruction were killed, because the latter's rear gunner was still on board and firing his guns even as the plane was crashing.
I don't know if Otto Kittel was killed under those precise circumstances. However, in general the urge to follow a victim to the ground to confirm its destruction could get fighter pilots killed.
32 degrees that frost weather here that's Celsius about 95 that's warm
shout out to 80's Arcade Games !!!
"Tail End Charlies" by John Nichol and Tony Rennell covers the experience of WW2 bomber tail gunners although it is a more general description of the bomber war in Europe, 1944-45.
You guys havent added OTF videos to their playlist for a while
Ngl this is so engaging while stoned