doublegunshop.com - home Forums WTS: ORIGINAL GERMAN WAFFEN SS DAGGER

Quote:
"And Ernst Rohm was pre- SS (schutzstaffelin) or "protective echelon" and Hitler had himshot him in 1934, fearing his rise with the S, and overt homosexuality, which Hitler abhored, would overrun Hitler's plans- and to also teach: Goering, Himmler, Goebbels, Bormann and Heydrich a very visible lesson."


Nice to see you changed the date in your above post to the correct year.
However your post is still in error. Rohm was head of the SS as well as the SA at one time. He wore a unique dagger,believed to have been destroyed after his murder, that had both the SS and SA insignias set into the wood grip.

As an aside:

The "Rohm" SS Honor Dagger" was only produced and given out to select SS members for a short 3 months and most of them had the Rohm dedication ground off in accordance with an edict issued on July 1,1934. This makes it a very rare dagger and unground examples which surface occasionally will command around $20,000.

BS too.

There were no P-38s on 'the' Ploesti raid, although they tried a version of their own much later that didn't do much damage either.

How does a single pilot in a P-38 navigate better than the guy in a B-24, who is assigned that as his primary job?

Navigation was hardly the issue here. Ploesti is easily found, it's not easily attacked.

One raid in WWII does not make a bombing campaign or target destroyed status with available weapons of that period....(until Nagasaki 1945)........:the P-38's were based in Italy and normally met up with the bombers enroute, but also carried out separate sorties on that target....from Italy the P-38's flew 1244 miles round robin, as an example:

"On the morning of June 10, 1944 96 P-38J's of the 1st and 82nd fighter groups took off from Italy for Ploiesti, the third most heavily defended target in Europe after Berlin and Vienna.
Instead of bombing from high altitude as had been tried by the Fifteenth Air Force, USAAF planning had determined that a dive bombing surprise attack beginning at about 7,000 ft. with bomb release at or below 3,000 ft. would yield better results. 46 P-38's of the 82nd fighter group carried 1,000 lb bombs and the results on the oil fields were good. All of the 1st Fighter Group aircraft and a few aircraft from the 82nd Fighter Group flew top cover for the bombers."

"Some 85-86 P-38's arrived in Romania to find enemy airfields alerted, the target was coverd by a heavy smoke screen and anti-aircraft fire was heavy."

"The P-38's shot down seven enemy aircraft upon arrival over the target. One flight of 16, the 71st squadron, was challanged by a large formation of Romanian single seat IAR.81C fighters. The Americans claimed 23 aerial victories on this attack."

"Eleven enemy locomotives were destroyed, along with flak implacements, fuel trucks and other implacements, all the result of strafing targets of opportunity."

"The 82nd Fighter Group was awarded the Presidential Citation for their part on this attack."

"P-38 Pathfinders generally lead the attack for the bombers"...... (Have you ever heard of pathfinder navigation, look it up.......)

There are another eight or nine pages of other attacks, other days on Ploiesti by the P-38's out of the Italian bases should you like to read them........

Read my previous post carefully and you may understand that I said on the "Round Robin" or return for you....you know, like desert, like mediterranean sea, like on the way back for the Libyan based B-24's. Many of the B-24 aircraft lost on this target were returning bombers that "got lost" and ran out of fuel....

**The bombing of Ploiesti on 1 August 1943, "Operation Tidal Wave" heavily damaged four refineries and more lightly affected three refineries. It damaged the Ploiesti rail station but did not have much impact on the city itself. Campina was more severly damaged. 660 American aircrew were killed or captured WHILE PETROLEUM EXPORTS EXCEEDED PRE-TIDAL WAVE LEVELS BY OCTOBER...........

The famous Ploesti raid that was so costly was in 1943, as you have pointed out. There were no B-17s there, and no P-38s either pathfinding or otherwise.

If you're talking 1944 through the rest of the war, then your assertion of B-17s not being involved is also incorrect.

This covers it.

http://www.roconsulboston.com/Pages/InfoPages/History/Ploesti.html

Again your our assertion that navigation was hardly an issue here is very incorrect, the list is long. Such as "Operation Tidal Wave" a single raid ,that you keep talking about like it was the only raid on Ploiesti , where Col. Keith K. Compton identified "the wrong" set of rail tracks at the Targovist check point and Compton then followed these wrong set of railway tracks on his turn into the Ploiesti oil fields, leading the formation in from the wrong heavily defended direction which, as we know, proved especially costly. 53 B-24's lost. 440 KIA. 220 MIA/POW. "Operation Tidal Wave" that you call famous was well documented because of it's heavy losses.

Finding a city and finding a target were two different matters entirely in the 1940's, especially NOE.

End of Story.....

Hey Guys:
Just how did we go from a thread about someone posting an inappropriate item for sale here at Double gun to arguing about WW II navigation?
Jim

Ted started it, then pulled his post and ran off.

Whatever.

My pal the B-24 driver got to England in the spring of '44.

He went to 4-engine school in TN, then picked the airplane up new in Detroit. Flew it to England via South America and Africa.

Claims by that time they were bombing on LORAN coordinates, using what the Brits called 'Gee'.

Jim: It's better than talking about daggers......

Jones:

For high altitude carpet bombing, Gee (Hyperbolic Navigation) was better at night than dead reckoning.....

1. A Gee set provided an accurate fix from an altitude 10,000 feet or more at a range of up to 400 miles....NOT N.O.E.....

2. Gee was an accurate short range system used over the UK and was good before the summer of 1944 primarily for returning aircraft who had difficulty finding their base....

3. Eventually ,post D-Day after mobile chains were installed in France, it was used for high altitude carpet bombing of German cities at night...

4. The very first Gee system used on the continent was a short range mobile unit used for the first time at Foggia, Italy on 24 May 1944....

5. Gee was designed by Robert Dippy at TRE and was initially designed to help make night missions safer for the Lancasters. Gee was then tested to increase the destructiveness of nightime bombing by the Lancasters FOR LARGE FIXED TARGETS, like cities bombed at night.....

I don't think any bombers or fighters, of any type, used Gee while on the deck approaching to and from Ploiesti or on the way in or out of Libya or Italy for that matter ON ANY OF THE RAIDS.....if that's what we're still talking about.........

All my old friends, many now dead, who flew in WWII (fighters and bombers of all kinds) have said that navigation was a nightmare at best.....second only to mid-air collisions on re-forms and initial forming.....

I just thought it remarkable that LORAN style systems were in use in 1944.

After 7 missions, my pal went to London on a 3 day pass and when he came back there was a B-17 on his hardstand.

He took part in D-Day, Cobra, and actually went back (!) for a few more missions after his 25.

This guy returned to England almost annualy for the rest of his life. Strong friendships.

I was honored to do some flying with him.

I had a relative whose bomber was shot down over Germany. He had nine gunshot wounds and owed his life to the excellent care he got in a German hospital. He served the remainder of the war in a POW camp but said they were not mistreated and he was a hell of a solitaire player. What goes around, comes around, hIs father in law was the head civilian at the German POW camp in Aliceville, Al. My son's godmother's grandfather was the military head. Until recently, the German POW's and their families would return for reunions. As an aside, I have have a SXS 9.3 x 74R double made my Chs. Tribel and sold by JJ Reeb that was "liberated" from a German General's collection by a local boy and brought home in a duffle bag. Not certain of the story, but someone must have had some clout to get a sporting arm "proofed" in 1942. Hate Natzies but the gun is not for sale.